William Vollmann - The Royal Family

He remembered Irene’s eyes, Irene’s dark, made-up eyes, almost sickeningly beautiful, certainly hurtfully so, while fireworks pounded like his heart.

He remembered the Queen’s dark, scarred little face. He remembered going fishing with John up near Placerville when he was a boy. He remembered the moving stream of heads in Chinatown, heads like boulders in a stream.

Suddenly he felt that his position in the world was absolutely intolerable. He could not remain at Coffee Camp for another instant. He could scarcely bear to remain himself.

A new campfire, which appeared to be just above the shoreline, swelled into hemisphericality like a rising second moon. Twin fires made a tunnel of light beneath a tree.

Now he realized that he had left his blanket somewhere, but he could not for the life of him recall the place — probably Donald and Dragonfly’s camp, but he felt an inexplicable revulsion against going there…

From under the other bridge, the railroad bridge, women’s husky voices and radio music ascended through the grating. Over the river, the pale full moon left a trail of shimmering greenish wrinkles. A train blared in the night, its utterance hollowing and decreasing in pitch, like metallic fluid being poured out of an immense metal jug.

I missed my train again, he thought to himself in agony.

He walked across the railroad bridge, leaving Coffee Camp, he hoped forever.

A steamy hissing from the almond factory accompanied him on his journey into darkness. He entered the train tunnel and heard a spooky laugh, and then footfalls running echoingly away. The twin track-ribbons were dull grey, leading him deeper into the trap. A crunch of broken glass around the railroad pillars exemplified the brittleness of the night.

A man stood in the center of the tunnel, barring his way. Tyler said to the man: I’m hungry.

Silently, the man reached inside his jacket and pulled out a dirty crust of bread. He broke off a hunk and put it into Tyler’s hand.

Thank you, brother, said Tyler.

The man laughed. His laugh echoed. He stepped aside, and Tyler went on.

At sunrise he was walking between two very long trains whose boxcars blanketed most of the world with immense shadow-blocks interrupted by narrow ribbons of light.

I’m hungry, Tyler said to a man.

The man said: My name is Peter. What’s your name?

Henry.

Come in, Henry, said the man, and I’ll give you the most nourishing food there is.

He led Tyler into a room where there was nothing but a table, two chairs and a Bible.

I wouldn’t mind a glass of water, Tyler said.

First things first, said Peter. Have you been saved?

Depends on whom you talk to. Would you have anything to eat?

The essence of Christ is forgiveness, Peter said. Christianity is the only religion which forgives. I can testify to that, because God has forgiven me. When Jesus forgives us, he buries our sins so deep and so far that we remember them but we feel no pain. I’m saying that to you personally, Henry.

I guess you are, said Tyler, shifting in his chair. I mean, I appreciate that.

The Bible does not leave any room for speculation, Peter went on earnestly, and Tyler nodded with a glum face and said: I wish it did.

Any questions so far? asked Peter.

What’s your position on Catholics? asked Tyler, just to say something.

We’ve got a wonderful woman, a Catholic woman, on our board of directors. She received Christ as her Lord but she still lives within the Catholic church.

Suddenly Tyler rose to his feet and said: I have something to say to Jesus.

Peter cocked his head, a little disconcerted. — And what might that be?

Tyler took a deep breath. He gazed upward at the bare light bulb. Then he shouted:

Let my people go!

On the concrete embankment, chin-bone of the night, an immense whitish menacing face winked its painted eye.

I’m hungry, he said.

Then get a job, the woman said.

I can boil some leaves for you if you want, said Donald. I’d be happy to do it. Because this is Coffee Camp.

Little white speedboats and jet-skis played upon the river, sometimes wiping out and making big waves. He heard the laughter of the unhomeless. Fat oiled legs clenched small boats.

I need to get out of here, he said.

Dragonfly likes to say that, too, said Donald. What did you say your name was?

A pair of knees and a cap passed along the riverbank, enthroning themselves upon a sofa statioined amidst concrete. Donald’s voice was as brassy as a train horn. It was early afternoon. Gazing around, Tyler seemed to see a beer bottle in the crotch of every tree. He listened to the ringing clinking of the signal on the trestle bridge, and despaired.

You have to be careful, Jose said. Sometimes it go fast and sometimes it go slow. When it go fast, dem wheel can chop off your arm or leg just like that. Can kill you. Dat’s why I ride my bike. I ride my bike down to San Diego no problem.

How long does that take?

One or two week. Sometimes one or two month. I don’t care. My wife is dead. Nobody to hurry up for no more…

You must meet bad people from time to time, said Tyler.

Laughing grimly, Jose flashed a serrated kitchen knife and said: Die is OK. But I tell them, cut de throat is a bad way to die. You cut your finger with a knife by mistake, and you feel that pain right away for fifteen minute. I think just see the knife, start the pain. And when I cut your throat, you got mebbe two long, long minutes, man…

Here’s how I know where to git off, Riley the tramp explained. I git on in Roseville shitfaced drunk, and when that wine wears off, I know I’m in Reno.

Uh huh, said Tyler.

Jist do zackly like I tole you. An’ be sure you jump off before you get to the yard.

Even if it’s moving?

Well, no. You wanna lose a leg? Wait till it stops. Dead stops.

Slipping onto a boxcar, he waited for hours, but it never moved.

Then finally came the night when the yellow eyes of the train’s face came boring along the embankment so that the trestle burst into radiant light; and from among the squatting backpackers silhouetted at trackside Tyler ran, seized the first ladder of a boxcar, not the dangerous second one, and pulled himself up, threw himself in, and clackety-clacked triumphant into the darkness.

Trains and trains and trains: he wanted to ride them all! Long blue cloud-lines shot across the salmon-colored sky, stretching on like railroad tracks. Riley the tramp, hunched and grizzled, would be proud of him yet. See Tyler at seven on a June evening with the Sierras faint and bleached-blue on the horizon, at his ease in an open boxcar which was creeping into the yard at Roseville, probably seen but ignored by the benign and brawny driver whose arm he could see hanging out of the locomotive window. The train slowed. He threw his bedroll out and leaped, not wanting to meet any yard bulls because he’d been warned that Roseville was a hot yard, but his precautions were about as availing as superstitions because everything was already very open and exposed there among the slow trains. Long black cylinder cars of liquefied petroleum gas moved slowly forward and back, their rusty wheels turning slowly enough for him to count the revolutions. He wanted to climb between the cars so that he could get to the edge of the yard and run, but didn’t dare. Suddenly there came a tremendous slamming boom, and the cars stopped, then eased backward again, creaking. The whole horizon was train. When the cars were still, he rushed between them, arriving just in time to hide behind an oak tree before the bull in the blue uniform came motor-scootering by…