William Vollmann - The Royal Family

STARS AND STRIPES FUNDING IS NOT A GOVERNMENT AGENCY

Is It Worth Three Minutes to Cut Your Payments in Half?

Dear Tyler001error69 Henry G.,

Wouldn’t you like more cash in your pocket with a $200,000.00 loan from Stars and Stripes Funding, Inc., at a LOW, LOW fixed interest rate of 14.99 %? Consolidate your bills. No equity needed. Save thousand and thousands of dollars. Take that dream vacation, Tyler001error69 Henry G. Call toll free.

Then he thought: Thank God I don’t fall for that. Thank God I can say fuck you to all equity. Thank God for my Mark of Cain.

The Queen, rolling off a concrete block in the abandoned meatpacking plant, then walking like a crab, pale with dead eyes, asked Tyler of whom or what he had dreamed; and while he considered, she laid her middle finger across his wrist, in order to drink in his pulse. He had dreamed that he held a small black spider in the palm of his hand, a perfect little spider which bit him. — Ah, said the Queen, you had the spider dream! and he was afraid. That’s good, baby, the Queen whispered, sliding her long, long grey tongue into his mouth. He felt nauseous but also excited. Soon he was relearning the spidery angles and steep curves of her buttocks. Her eyes were rimmed and outlined. She leaped on him. When her orgasm came, he was terrified by her round and screaming eyes as she squatted on him, beating and scratching at his flesh.

Her tiny feet mastered the palms of his hands as he raised her up, setting her upon his shoulders for her to command and worry at his body. His love, his life, had become as richly weird as the Queen’s hair hanging down from her bowed head in darkness.

Her pussy tasted like crack. The girls could drink from it all day and their cravings would go away. But the more they drank, the more addicted they were. (For that matter, Celia craved the sharp knife-crease of muscle behind John’s knees.) Her spit was just the opposite.

The Queen said: Maybe I’ll get pregnant.

He smiled. Tears came into his eyes. He thought of that little Vietnamese girl he’d seen playing with her father that morning and realized that something that good could happen to him and perhaps be safely hidden behind the high gates of anonymity for a long, long time until death and destruction came, and then the eyes narrowed in his grey face and he realized that sentimentality was corrupting him. It was all false, like Hitler killing millions of human beings while weeping over the cruelty of fox-hunting. But where did such false emotions come from? He feared himself and his own unreliability. And yet weren’t such errors perhaps the necessary consequence of taking an uncharted path? He felt that he had to learn as much from the Queen and love her as greatly as he could before the vigs came, not only for her own sake, but because her love and her truth might well comprise his final chance to learn who he was, where he must go, and what was expected of him. He did not believe that he was destined to be a father now, because Irene… But Irene’s child… He sat very still, insufferably unable to think.

Domino, seeing now in him the uprolled eyeballs and pale puffy cheeks and slack-hanging lips of Sunflower in her last months of life, feared what she saw, and accordingly attacked it, sneering in her most stinging tone: Henry, don’t you even care what Maj just said? Is that shiteating grin on your face a sufficient response to anything? I think a man should be committed. Whereas you…

He scarcely heard her. He felt so anxious and alone that he almost screamed.

Beatrice, whose breath was as rotten mucilage oozing and crawling with disease, coughed apologetically into his face and said: Henry, you okay? I doan know, maybe you look so sad…

Yeah, I’m all right, he said heavily.

And you think you gonna be pregnant, Mama? I get so happy I’m gonna light a candle for you…

I don’t believe it, said Tyler harshly. Somehow I just don’t figure it’s going to happen.

You know, Henry, I got to say it takes two people to create a child. I doan know my English, but I think society is coming to like thousands of years ago. All of a sudden women, they saying, this is my body, and I know that ’cause I said it too when I had my baby; I swear I didn’t want him. You have to remember though that there are two people involved. I had to get involved!

Yeah, then where’s the little brat now? said Domino, grinning elfishly as if she had her back up against some wall and were slowly upcurling her tongue at the oncoming cars and licking her lips, back and forth, back and forth, with an intensely mirthful but also lustful expression in her huge-pupiled eyes.

Yeah, Dom, so maybe I doan be no good. I know that. I’m no good. But Henry he still want to do the good thing, so we should help him. Henry, when your novia she talk about get pregnant, you better believe in case God is listening and think about sending you a baby. You want a baby? Baby gonna take away so much of your pain, Henry. You gotta believe. Please Henry, you—

Then where the fuck’s your little Mexican brat? screamed Domino, whose soul was itself as lost and sad and grimy up close as the face of Beatrice, whose belief in the Virgin, which meant belief in herself, had been reduced to mere endurance palliated but perhaps by that very token rendered more dangerous and poisonous by the sincere and unmitigated love of her Mama, her Queen as Beatrice’s hair twirled heavily down the sides of her face and she bit her thin, herpid lips to keep herself from tears, her forehead lined, the bridge of her nose doubly lined, and her huge, lost eyeballs mottled like the full moon with its faint mountains and seas.

Henry, she whispered, it all starts from the fact that when you do those types of practices, you gotta get responsible for your actions. And our Mama Queen, she’s knowing that already. Mama takes responsibility for all of us already.

Domino said: Did he take responsibility when he knocked up your brother’s wife?

Hush up now, said the Queen. Ain’t nobody gonna talk to Henry about that. And nobody need to make Bea start cryin’ for nothin’. Domino, when you gonna see how much you hurt yourself with that kind of talk? You—

But, Maj, don’t you even care that Henry was an asshole to that Oriental whatsher-name? She offed herself, and here’s this jerk walking around scot-free like some rapist who preys on little girls. Don’t you think that Henry ought to pay for what he did? Aren’t you on our side?

Domino, said the Queen, that’s between Henry and me.

You don’t understand, Maj. Oh, hell, it’s all so pathetic. Nobody understands. And Beatrice just sits there and blubbers, and Henry’s mad at me, and you’re mad at me when all I did was say the truth.

See how she manipulates, laughed Strawberry, throwing back her head and fanning her hair across her shoulders as Domino liked to do. — She’s jealous of all the attention Henry gets. She wants to be sad so she can get first in line to be comforted…

With an eagle-like scream of rage, Domino rushed her with her long silver fingernails whirling like airplane propellers, but the weary Queen said: Hush, Domino. C’mere, sweetie. And Domino fled into the Queen’s embrace, nuzzling her armpits like a puppydog.

It’s so crazy, Tyler muttered, and no one said anything, so he hung his head and cleared his throat and very carefully asked the dark cracked windowpanes of the abandoned meatpacking plant: When will they stop bugging me?

When you let it go, said the Queen, rocking the sobbing girl. You got to let Irene sink under the earth and turn into grass. That’s what she needs to do now. She wants flowers to come up out of her breast. Don’t hold her back.