William Vollmann - The Royal Family

And you’ve been alone your entire life, said Tyler in a tone of almost nasty defiance.

Oh, I lasted almost six months with one partner once, said Missouri. He went into one detox place and said he’d be back in ten minutes, but after three hours he never come out so I took off.

Maybe they wouldn’t let him out.

Maybe, said Missouri. But I’ll tell you a better one. I know one guy up there in Oregon. He woke up there in a boxcar and found everything gone: his food, his duffel bag, his wallet, his knife, his money — not to mention his partner of twelve years. He expected that, so he didn’t mind too much, but what really pissed him off was that his partner even stole his dog. Now that’s low.

Yeah, that is, Tyler agreed. So where are you headed today?

Oh, north. Generally north. Well, I’ve gone as far back as Cleveland by freight. I know how to do it. From Indiana, everywhere east is great because the cities are so close together you just need to go a few miles to escape the cops and jump the state line, but out here you got three or four hundred miles between towns, so you gotta hop a freight; you gotta be an expert so that they don’t get you.

Tyler rubbed his chin. — Who’s after you?

You heard about that Tent City down there in Arizona? That’s where they take all the homeless people and put ’em like in a prison camp. I don’t want to go there. Salt Lake’s building one, too. Everywhere you go now, they’re out to get you.

I think God’s been closing in since the get-go, Tyler said. I think pretty soon we’re not going to have anyplace left to run.

You’re one of them religious nuts, said Missouri complacently. I live and let live myself. But if you think prayin’ for me’s gonna do any good, why, then, you just send up a prayer for old Missouri. I ain’t never turned down anything free, even something I can’t see.

Have you run into a small thin black woman who—?

You already asked me that, sonny. I’m not interested. Hey, you got any tobacco on you?

You already asked me that, said Tyler.

No, I didn’t.

All right, so you didn’t. I was just checking on you.

On the embankment, the locomotives of the long, long train shrieked brassily past, and then the train began to slow.

Which way’s this one going? asked Tyler.

Check the first two numbers on the lead car. Didn’t you even know that? If they’re even, it’s going east or west. If they’re odd, it’s north or south, just like the highway. This one’s going north.

The train was going much more slowly now, and Tyler saw the square mouth of an open boxcar coming toward him. He slid his pack over his shoulder and got ready to jump into it.

They got a change off in Phoenix, Missouri said. Then it gets a local. They got a nice mission there in Phoenix where you can eat decent.

I’m not much into decency anymore, said Tyler.

Hey, you got any tobacco on you?

You never asked me that.

I hate boxcars, Missouri said. You got all this metal here that gets hot in the sun. Round about four or five in the afternoon, you get cooked.

Well, I like the view from a boxcar, said Tyler.

I always try to catch a grainer with an air compressor, Missouri said, trailing after him. But really I’m too old for this.

The train stopped. Tyler threw himself up onto his boxcar.

Can’t get inside them car carriers anymore, Missouri went on, looking up at him, in no hurry to board. — Used to be paradise. They put a couple gallons of gas in every tank, so on a cold night you could hop right in, turn on the heater and the radio, and later on tear the speakers out, rip off the cassette decks and sell everything… Where’s your spike?

Without waiting for an answer, he snatched up one of his own and pounded it into the groove beside the boxcar door, so that Tyler would not be lethally trapped by any sudden lurch.

Thank you, Tyler said.

I seen some Mexicans, the old man said, I seen how they died in a boxcar. They pounded their hands bloody, trying to get out, but nobody heard. Sun cooked ’em to death.

A loud hiss almost woke up the two sleeping tramps.

Getting ready to move, Missouri shouted. Or maybe he’s just testing his brakes…

You’d better grab your grainer, said Tyler, and the older man started and scurried down the track.

The brakes hissed again. Then the train began to move. His heart thrilled with joy. He was somewhere in northern California again. The hot strip of daylight, sand, gravel, trees, wires and skies unwound, anonymously strange. Every now and then he could glimpse a striped signal bar and a line of automobiles waiting for his train to finish occluding them. He felt a sense of borrowed power, that the train could interrupt so many people. It was only mid morning, but the temperature felt like it might breach a hundred. His skin was hot and sweaty. He dwelled inside the humming rattling roar of trainness. The train began to accelerate, and with dreamlike surprise he saw Sacramento: midtown, a signal tower, a brief ring of tunnel-darkness, graffiti; here stretched the yard he’d walked through on that first night; they were making up a long train at perpendiculars to him on the embankment behind; the train rattled in his teeth. Edging closer to the boxcar door, he gazed deliciously out as he flashed across the bridge with the river so lovely below and a guy on the bank fishing and then he was rushing through Coffee Camp; two cyclists waved from the pedestrian bridge — a whiff of steaming anise, and then Coffee Camp was gone…

Heat rose from the rails. He sped across dusty streets and gravel embankments, followed only by wires, going maybe forty miles an hour now, way too fast to jump. A smoldering burnt heat dried his nostrils every time he breathed.

Now the train really started going, flashing and flickering past man-shaped wicker-wire power towers, shaking him from side to side as if he were a single pea in a collander. It rushed him past a country road where he saw more backed-up traffic. He wondered if anyone could see him. The vibration massaged him within the base of his skull and in his back which was pressed against the dusty boxcar wall, and above all in his teeth like a speedball rush; and he understood the orgasms of the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen. Roaring and shaking past a long cornfield, he imagined fucking her right there on the floor of the boxcar with the vibration dissolving them into each other. He thought of his own dead Queen but no longer believed in her.

For hours, the parallelogram of sunlight in the open door kept swaying and pulsing, like his own brightly blank mind. He drank from his bag of water, which was still cool. A cropduster plane followed him, jetting what looked like flour which tumbled with slow gorgeousness. The train was slowing. He came to the doorway and gazed upon bright golden grass and fields of strange, blackened crops. On an impulse, having no idea where he was, he threw his backpack into space and then himself made the leap, falling exultantly to earth.

It was very hot. The flesh-rags of a dead cat lay stiff and flat in a ditch, reeking of mucilage. He walked for miles. Finally he came to a town, his lips cracking, and heard the blessed sound of a sprinkler. Across the road, behind a picket fence, a little blonde girl stood in the center of a green, green lawn, playing in the water. He waved, and she waved back. He was happy.

He walked on and on, looking for a store where he could buy a cold soda. Finally he stopped at a crossroads and drank from his water bag. The water was hotter than spit from having pressed up against his back.

Far away, he heard the whistle of a train. His soul glowed like a crackhead’s after that first hit of rock, and he began to run.