William Vollmann - The Royal Family

I’ll walk up with you, the tattooed man said with an insidious grin.

Why, thank you, said Tyler, his heart pounding.

This used to be the Greyhound bus station, right here where it says GOLF, the tattooed man was saying. I know where I’d catch out if I was riding. See that track there, with all those grainers? That’s where I’d catch out.

All right, said Tyler plodding steadily toward the sleeping train.

Watch out for the heat, laughed the tattooed man lazily, although they must be sweatin’ it more than ever, I mean those cops.

Okay. See you when I look at you, said Tyler.

And watch out for the Sidetrack types. You remember Sidetrack? He rode the rails and he befriended trainhoppers like you, and then in the night he slit their throats. Ha, ha, ha!

I hope he enjoyed it, said Tyler wearily, looking for the perfect grainer to crawl into, one where the hole would be too small for him and the tattooed man together.

Shit, he got caught right here, in this fuckin’ town. The fuckin’ S.P. bulls said he told them he was just cleanin’ up the lowlifes, the ripoff artists.

You a friend of his? asked Tyler.

No, but I know a woman who used to know him. You want to meet her?

No, I think I’ll take this bus, said Tyler, clambering up up the ladder of a grainer whose oval womb, as he could see, was choked with juice bottles, wine bottles and crumpled newspapers. This train had been thoroughly hopped. Now he was high above the world. Safe and lofty, he waved to the tattooed man.

Hey, I’m kind of broke, said the tattooed man. You mind helping me out?

Here’s a buck, said Tyler, letting the paper note flutter down.

That’ll work, said the tattooed man. Well, watch out, or somebody just might get you.

Thanks for the warning, Sidetrack, replied Tyler with a harsh and ugly laugh…

It took a good three hours before the train began to slam and thud, and another hour or so before it went anywhere. When he finally felt the clittery-clatter in his bones, Tyler stuck his head out of the hole and saw in the hole of the facing car the head of an ancient black man. He waved, and the black man smiled at him.

Somewhere in the desert before Salt Lake, the train stopped for an hour, and he woke up and looked out. The black man looked back at him.

Where you bound, sonny? said the black man.

Bound for heaven, sir, said Tyler.

Just remember, child, you’re only stealin’ a ride. Nothin’ else. Don’t you harm anything on them cars. Don’t take nothin’. The railroad is good to us. It gives us our freedom. Don’t you take advantage of that.

All right. Kind of a nice ride up here, don’t you think?

The black man smiled. It was the smile of one who knew. He said to Tyler: If you ain’t seen America on a boxcar, you ain’t seen America.

Striding into Coffee Camp like a conqueror, he found at afternoon’s end the black woman, the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen, who had herself, as she said, just emerged from the long, long place between two trains where rectangular worlds of boxcar-shadow were separated by narrow bright zones of sunlight on the gravel, and she didn’t remember him. Midges crawled like flecks of living gold in the sun-barred air between vine covered trees. The sandy space where he’d slept at Donald and Dragonfly’s camp a month ago was already bursting with poison oak. Mosquitoes bit him silently. Above the black woman’s Jesus-singing, strange half-shadowed lattices of trumpet vines greenly glowed in the dusk. He could smell smoke and roasting hot dogs.

I still feel good listening to you, he said.

Who the fuck are you? she said.

The one you told to go ride the trains to find my angel.

And you done it, she said, softening. I can see you done it.

He grinned, filled with pride.

And you found your lovin’ angel, she said.

Actually, I’m getting pretty sure I’ll never see her again. But if I keep looking, it gives me something to do.

So you didn’t find her? That why you come back to Coffee Camp, with your tail between your legs? Maybe you just don’t believe.

Maybe I never did, he said sadly.

But she helped you, the black woman insisted, her sentences thrilling him like Union Pacific locomotives riding backward, ringing their bells. — You rode them trains when you thought you couldn’t do it. That’s good for you. That train wind baptizes all your sorrow away. Even just come and go, come and go, those trains takin’ you somewhere. Takin’ you to freedom.

You feel like taking a walk with me, Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen?

Honey, I’m not your queen and I’m not your angel but if you want to take a walk with me I’ll gladly welcome you home. Just a minute. Just a minute. Let my hide my stash in this hollow tree…

On the concrete under the bridge, someone had painted a giant purple heart. He took her hand in his and touched it to the heart. She kissed him. Just then a yellow and red Union Pacific train flickered overhead, and night came and sun and colors were lost. He heard a woman’s screaming laugh.

That night the black woman was sleeping in another’s arms. His soul began to swing back to loneliness, like the bridge between Sacramento and West Sacramento pivoting on its cylindrical concrete base, turning counterclockwise to rejoin its own metal flesh, swinging like a door, its shadow following it upon the water, slow and slow; then suddenly no lacuna anymore; the rails now went all the way from West Sac to Old Sac; and a metal piece dropped and a white box hummed. The bridge swung again, adjusted again, until the raised rails dropped with a slam. Now anyone could walk like Jesus over the sunny green water.

He wandered through midtown and reached that bridge one day; then he crossed it, standing where he’d stood on that night now months ago when he’d come in Dan Smooth’s car; and looking down and to the side, he perceived three who sat beneath the bridge with their hats on — a woman between two men, bleary-eyed railroad tramps swinging their arms at their sides. The Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was the woman. She began to unzip one man’s fly and the man grunted, his breath full of beer.

Not jealous, not sick at heart, not even empty, he slept in the bushes on the West Sacramento side that night, in an abandoned camp with plenty of pieces of cardboard. He smelled bad, and he had holes in his shirt. He wanted to bathe in the river, but it was too cold. The next morning he returned to the greasy ledge where the three had been, and found the black woman’s dress, slick and silky to his touch, probably rayon, with a dozen cigarette butts beside it, and above its collar, empty air. A drunk lay above him, cackling. Pawn of providence, the drunk threw down in place of the black woman’s missing head a woman’s wadded-up panties which were now stiff and dusty and the color of mud; and this sad ball duly landed on the ledge just above the collar of that blue dress which he remembered from yesterday. Then the drunk staggered down beside him and pissed on everything. Tyler walked on, continuing beneath the belly of that strange half-living armature for tramps and trains, the river lashing and sizzling against the embankment below. Overhead came the rumbling roar as the train crossed the river.

He learned how to scoop out for himself a hollow along the riverbank laid down with cardboard and jugs, and sometimes even with a couple of coats. Nine in the morning, and he could already tell that the day was going to be as hot as Mexicali, everyone sweating and lurking in the shade. A guy in a white sombrero and grey coveralls hitched up his belt. Hiding the railroad spike underneath his shirt, Tyler went to the shelter, got his ticket, played poker for cigarettes with an old goner named Red, stood in line for two hours, and got lunch.