William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Cause of death colon compression of the neck vessels period, said Dr. Jasper. Severe emphysema comma heart disease comma unrelated to direct cause of death period. No changes consistent with… — as meanwhile Connie lifted off the top quarter of Smooth’s skull, withdrew a syringeful of clear cerebospinal fluid, then with crooked scissors pulled away at the stubbornly crackling meninges. Dr. Jasper, lifting his foot from the dictaphone pedal, swigged from a cup of coffee (which he held in a bloody latex glove) and said: Okay, we still have the neck to take out…

Golden ripples infused the black river, finger-whirls of gods; round lights clustered on the far bank like the leaves of the tree of heaven.

Tyler ascended the smooth-worn embankment, stepped onto the bridge, and began to walk out toward the water, pale dirty darkness far underfoot, while ahead the gleaming tracks, soberly precious, met across the river in four lines of shining silver. Dan Smooth, the Queen, and the two Irenes true and false were all in the place where parallel lines meet. Now the darkness bled and trembled into a silhouette — as unexpected and forced a differentiation as that suffered by the heart-shaped chunk of fatty ribs which Dr. Jasper had crunched out of Dan Smooth’s chest; this darkness ought to have been granted the right to remain itself, but from its flesh, without reference to the shining, burning ribs behind, nonetheless came that silhouette, approaching almost silent, a stranger, a black man with a bedroll who uttered a low, shy greeting, a murmur, and did not stop. Then darkness asserted its rights after all: The man became darkness again. Darkness smiled. Tyler stood alone on the bridge, gazing downriver at the pale yellow glowing phallus which rose from the drawbridge to the south…

He had planned to drive down to L.A. one more time to visit Irene’s grave, but opening the glove compartment to look for the registration, he saw a note in Smooth’s handwriting which read: Henry — Please give the car to Domino.

Tyler clenched his teeth. Then he drove to San Francisco. He parked on Capp Street between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, got out, and locked up, striding along with the car keys jingling in his hand. Nobody on Capp Street, so he went to South Van Ness and by a lucky chance saw Strawberry.

It’s the black Dodge right around the corner there, he said. Give it to Domino. From Dan Smooth.

She stared at him.

Happy fuckin’ New Year, he said.

What are you talking about?

You don’t remember me either, huh? he muttered with a sad grin. I guess I can leave word at the parking garage, too. Does she still use that place for her mail drop?

He dropped the keys in her hand and started to walk away, but when he looked back she was still staring at him with eyes like marbles.

It’s for Domino, he said. You got that, sweetheart?

A flash of terror illuminated her understanding, and she began to piss.

Lift up your skirt or it’ll be bad for business, he said. Oh, hell.

It was almost chilly on Haight Street. Two fat cops slowly trudged past Villain’s. Nobody sat in front of the Goodwill store. In a glitter-shop’s window he saw an old silver-painted wooden crown which reminded him of his Queen. His feet hurt. The sidewalk smelled like meat and urine. On the wall of Cala Foods someone had written: TONIGHT’S A BLAST, TOMORROW YOU’RE HOMELESS.

It was then that he realized he was homeless, too.

And so his way led to the yellow-orange freight cars of the Union Pacific, land-ships of freedom, thrilling the lonely souls who rode them from broken promises to promises not yet broken, ferrying the dead souls from one sunset to another, carrying the fearful and the hopeful out of law’s imminence. Long low warehouses hunkered in the Sacramento twilight. A man lay upon a loading dock, his head pillowed on his bed roll and his boots dangling into space. Tyler heard booming sounds coming from the direction of the ruined mill. A man in a red wool cap walked toward the sunset, holding a Bible near his eyes. Four or five years ago one homeless camp had gotten religion and erected a great cross in the trees, but the new Christ who was going to launch the cult got cancer and died. The long curvy train tracks led to that rotten monument to a dead belief. The smell of creosote annointed him with labor’s seriousness. He knelt and picked up a heavy crooked old spike gone red and yellow with rust. Then he let it fall out of his hand and clang against the steel. His right leg moved, and then his left. With a blanket rolled beneath his arm, he approached the sad self-absorbed hum of generators, passed beneath the conveyor bridge of the Blue Diamond almond factory, and left the hum behind, heading toward the American River, with long trains sleeping beside him. He walked for a long time, but the trains’ length kept pace with him. On one freight car someone had drawn the ace of spades. Then on his left a train loaded with cargo from or for Portland, Oregon, came rapidly, smoking and silhouetted, the heavy cars clattering ear-ringingly, the emptier ones merely clicking. Far ahead, the locomotive reached the trestle bridge and began to slow down. From the doorway of a reddish-brown boxcar leaped a long bedroll, followed by a man who landed softly in the gravel on his knees and outstretched hands, a shirtless man in his late prime whose muscular chest and arms screamed with tattoos. He powerfully rose, slung the bedroll over his shoulder, and began to lope with immense sureness toward another train.

Pardon me, called Tyler.

The man stopped and faced him, alert, unafraid.

What’s the quickest way out of here? said Tyler.

See that track over there? the man said. That goes north.

Any chance of getting locked in?

Take a loose pin and stick it in the boxcar door. I’ve got to head my way now.

The man was gone.

Tyler stood looking after him with admiration. The man had known who he was and what he was about. He was travelling but not searching. Tyler longed to be like him.

Half-heartedly following the track that the man had pointed out, he finally found himself at the skeleton-roofed silver trestle bridge which invited him into the evening river-smell. A tagger who went by the monicker “T.F.” had painted said initials on every strut, and someone else had x’d them out with equal painstakingness, but the black x’s had run and faded after many rainstorms, while T.F.’s blue initials lived triumphantly on. A swastika grinned its crooked grin. Beneath his feet, the river was low and still and silver, bisected by the reflections of cloud trails. Bored, weary, lacking self-surprise, Tyler withdrew his keychain, which clasped the outer and inner keys to his former apartment in San Francisco, his old office key, a key whose provenance he’d forgotten, and the front and back door keys to his mother’s house, let them all roll out of his hand and watched them spread apart in the air like a fist opening, every key glittering white, loose upon the chain, dwindling until they met the water with a ridiculous little splash. The sun began to balefully glow, like the eyes of someone with a lethal secret; but its rays had not yet come to their summer strength, and so the air continued to get cool. A duck quacked, almost in an undertone. The bridge led him on and on. Tyler would not be riding any freight trains today; he was already considerably beyond the place that the tattooed man had pointed out to him.

Halfway across the river, a diamond-shaped concrete platform, graffiti’d with stars, grids and more swastikas, looked out on the water. A man with a long, long beard was sitting on it. The man gazed into Tyler’s eyes and said: I’m lost.