William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Waldo, Tyler asked him earnestly, recalling what the wise tramp had said, have you ever learned anything from the stars?

Oh, we beam in. We maintain transmission.

Who’s we?

Oh, yeah, we got a badger out there. He’s a wild one, but we get along fine even though base regs say absolutely no pets or furry critters.

Well, I want to screen out everything but pure transmissions, Tyler said. Can you make me a bullshit detector?

Let’s take this concept here, Waldo replied thoughtfully, raising a propeller from the dirt. I use it to track wind speed against time factor. This is all multi-purpose. This might be the building block. Got all kinds of fans, he added with satisfaction. If it’s ugly, paint it. If it doesn’t work, make it spin.

Well, Tyler asked, can I buy it from you? There’s too much bullshit in this world. I need to know where it is.

Couldn’t sell it myself, said Waldo. It’s one of the project groups. One of the off-budget type groups.

And I’d like an anti-loneliness device, said Tyler.

Waldo spun a propeller, thinking deeply. — Well, it sounds simple but that’s actually as deep and wide as an aircraft carrier.

How much would it cost me?

I’d probably give you a variety of options, and then you can dial in. I’m rated for microprocessors and basic machine language.

Here’s five dollars, said Tyler. Maybe you could give me a prototype next time I come through.

Waldo took the money and stared at it. Then he put it in his shirt pocket. Flies crawled on the underside of his cap.

Could I see your command post?

Yeah, all right, said Waldo, hopping on his bicycle and slowly pedaling, brown like a Missouri Pacific boxcar and almost naked, with a load of bottled juice in his saddle-baskets. Tyler walked behind, overseen by the low blue mountains with their tan ridge of boulders, and then the hot wind rattling sheet metal against the van with boarded up windows. That most infallible of all guardians, the nosecone, never blinked.

On the edge of a low wash lay a dead bus whose windows were blacked out by more boards, in regulation style, and whose skin had been painted a sort of crude camouflage. — It’s been here the longest time, Waldo boasted, but you don’t see it. Now this just looks like a trailer, but this is actually a deployment of the Marine Corps group. Any recono pod in strange places, we monitor that. We see what drug deals and what activities he’s committing and where he’s fencing his goods.

On the inside of the rusty door was handwritten: EMERGENCY FIRE EXIT. On the walls: TRUE LOVE and DANGER — RESTRICTED.

Waldo explained: We threw out the useless love-sex books and replaced ’em with technical books you can use, books on electronic circuits and how-to books…

The interior of the van was almost cool. On the counter lay a packet of breakfast powder, circuit boards, rusty gears, a meat thermometer, and alertness aid tablets. On the floor was a cooler full of ice.

This is part of our conceptual dream group where we lay down the hardware like our gear rotor, said Waldo. We cover the whole range.

He raised a kaleidoscope and said: This is called our cold fusion power. Aim it right at this reflector; that thing’ll give you an eye burn.

On the counter Tyler saw a palm-sized metal disk which Waldo had painted beautifully green, white and flesh-pink, all pastel-blended. — What is it? he said.

They got some good drugs, they think they’re gonna fly that. That used to be one of our saucers, a remotely powered three-man toroidal anti-magnetic jewel lift system. They developed that back in the early 40s and 50s, during the Philadelphia Experiment. Me, I don’t believe in none of that stuff. I believe in the theoretical technology.

All right, said Tyler. If you have the technology to do that, and even make me an anti-loneliness device, maybe you can help me with a project that will make the anti-loneliness device obsolete. See, I want to find my Queen even though it’s no use because she’s dead.

Lots of queens out there.

I mean the Queen of the Whores.

Well, said Waldo, hitching up his underpants, so what you’re requisitioning is a way to help you track a whore type critter. Well, we can build kites for faggots and all them critters, but it’s just an image that’ll dance around; it’s just a piece of plastic. Well, it works really well if you want to piss off your old lady…

In Niland, California, which as the crow flies was not very far from where Waldo lived, but if a man walked straight it would be a pretty hot and lethal march, there was a cafe whose long wood-veneer counter had been worn into dark brown spots in front of each stool. Stuffed fish, birds and deer-heads hung on the walls from the long gone days before the Salton Sea turned poison. The proprieter, who was eighty-eight years old, said: It’s a shame, though, what they’ve done to the Salton Sea. Hurts the whole Imperial Valley. Probably cost us a hundred and fifty thousand a year in sales.

Tyler nodded wearily, drinking his root beer float, and the waitress came and added more root beer for free. The glass was huge and there was about a quarter-pint of vanilla ice cream in there, so cold and good that for the first time since the sun had come out he felt that he could think.

When I come here in 1956, this was winter tomato country, the proprieter was saying. In ’65 they took the duty off at the border. Then we couldn’t compete against the Mexican tomatoes. That just killed our tomato growers.

Tyler said: Did you ever see a skinny little black woman named Africa? I expect she’s long dead now.

Doesn’t ring a bell, the proprieter said. But there’s so many transients at Slab City up the road, just about a three-mile piece…

You look pretty hard up, the waitress whispered. Don’t worry about that float. I’ll charge it to me.

Thanks, he said.

What’s that? said the proprieter, cupping his ear.

Oh, shut up, the waitress said. She turned back to Tyler and said to him: You gonna stay at Slab City? she said.

That depends, ma’am, he said.

(The proprieter, deaf and bored, had gone back to reading his newspaper.)

My parents brought me out there from when I was in fourth grade until I was fourteen years old and got a boyfriend and could get away from it, she said.

Doesn’t sound as if you enjoyed it too much.

In the winter you’d wake up with frozen feet. In the summer those slabs would be scorching. And scorpions and ants and everything. Strange, strange people. I hated every minute of it.

On the refrigerator case, near the row of decals of a longtime Ducks Unlimited donor, hung a handwritten sign in English and Spanish which read: I WOULD LIKE TO BUY A BOX OF FLAME GRAPES.

Boy, it’s slow, the waitress said. The day goes so slow when you just sit. You want a refill?

That would be mighty kind, he said. He hunched himself smaller, hoping that he did not stink too much.

Tyler went into the men’s room and filled up his water bag. The advertisement on the vending machine for adult novelties read: IF SHE IS A MOANER THIS WILL MAKE HER A SCREAMER. IF SHE IS A SCREAMER THIS WILL GET YOU ARRESTED. When the waitress wasn’t looking, he paid for his root beer float, left a tip and went out. He still had twenty-two dollars in his pocket.

In the vast gravel lot, a painted sign said: SALVATION MOUNTAIN 3 MI.

He turned down that road and started walking away from Niland, where this store was closed and that store was boarded up and the Mexican restaurant closed at two in the afternoon, and every now and then one saw a notice to buy a great business opportunity — not that Niland didn’t still have some life left: just ask the old café proprieter and the waitress, who were still hanging on… It was now nine in the morning and very hot. A train oozed slowly by, bearing immense blue Hanjin crates. He wondered what might be inside. Whatever it was, it must not be for him. Swallowing dust, he walked on, knowing that somewhere near the horizon his destiny might be dryly slithering down the wide paths and roads of Slab City. Not a single car passed him on his trudge. The Salton Sea stewed and stank unseen at his back. Ahead lay the dusty-blue Chocolate Mountains; and after a weary two miles or so he began to see Salvation Mountain gleaming whitely like a bunch of melted candle-wax. The landscape in which it stood (in company with its tamarisk tree and its two trucks which said REPENT) could have been Hebrew, but the mountain itself resembled an aquatic amusement park, because its bulk of desert dirt had been painted in white and blue streaks to resemble water. The mountain itself, with all its colored slogans bulging like breasts, was composed of dirt, hay bales, and colored latex paint which felt smooth and cool under his hand. On the mountain’s chest, a scarlet heart, tricked out in white adobe letters, said to him: JESUS, I’M A SINNER. COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART. He ascended to the summit-cross, and in place of inspiration discovered more dogged artifice, where a long dry ridge marked the watermark of a lake which had vanished four centuries before, and hay bales and paint cans were discreetly laid, ready for the next good work. Irene would have loved it here. She’d been a good Christian girl. That was why Tyler respected the preacher’s mad sincerity. He had started building back in 1984, but after three years the Mountain collapsed, so he started all over again. Tyler stood there for a while, alone on the hot flat sand below Salvation Mountain except for one cicada which produced the only sound. He thought: If only I could build a mountain for her, or a… — But he could not decide what he wanted to build.