William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Stanley said: Mr. Mayor, I think we got another jerk. It’s a good thing you called me. I’m gonna be watching this one.

Why? said Tyler. Is getting a piece of ass against your rules? You still haven’t told me your rules.

A tiny bluish TV shone far away, illegally hooked into the grid. Ellen was bent over the fire hydrant, filling a jug and goose-stepping like a chicken, mumbling beneath the gracious palm trees that bordered the island.

You stayin’ out of trouble, Henry? said the mayor.

Yeah, I’m on a good ticket.

No bullshit, but you just need to respect everybody else. I don’t care what else you do or where you come from.

I know what he gonna do, said Stanley, giggling idiotically. He gonna get me a place. Gonna get me a piece of the rock.

The mayor whirled round. — Stan, did you just snort something? You told me you weren’t going to use no more. You were trying to keep clean. I thought you were going to do it. Oh, you stupid fucking nigger.

Nigger this and nigger that, Stanley chuckled, his pupils huge.

Goddamn. When could you have done that? I thought I was watching you every second. Now what’s going to become of you? Don’t you remember that seizure you had, Stan?

Stanley put his arm around the mayor’s neck. He whispered in his ear: I wanna get out of here, man. So bad.

All right, Stan. Sit down, boy. Sit down and sleep it off. Yeah, I still have that tongue depressor here. Look how you chewed it last time when you seized up. I don’t know why I love you, you worthless nigger.

The woman’s head continued to suspend itself from her box’s doorway, the hanging twitching blanket covering the rest of her.

Tell Stan to get a job, Mr. Mayor, she called laughingly.

Oh, Celeste, you know better than that, the mayor said, getting on his soapbox. Americans can’t get a motherfuckin’ job these days. When we try, they ask us: You speak Spanish? The Spics rule. An’ you know what the Jews say? They say: Take care of your own.

Tyler unrolled his sleeping bag onto the concrete, enjoying the woman’s eyes upon him.

Celeste emerged from her box, armed with mirror sunglasses, almost blonde, trying to look good, checking herself in a dagger-shard of mirror which she kept in her ripped and greasy purse. — You know what kind of job I like best? she whispered in Tyler’s ear.

He smiled at her long cat-face trying to look good, her lipsticked face, her hair shining feebly in the wind, and said: Let me see. Oh, I know. A blow job.

You wanna blow job? I can see you got a big dick.

No, I’m married to Queen Africa.

Oh, well that’s cool. I didn’t really want to do the blow job. What I wanted was the money.

Can I go inside with you and we’ll talk about it?

I got my girlfriend in there. Lemme see if it’s cool with her. I think she’s probably passed out or something…

Celeste scampered back inside, wiggling her rear at him, and then rushed out again and said: Okay, come on, come on, come on, she’s cool with it. What you got for me?

Nice place you have here, said Tyler as soon as he was in the humid stinking darkness. He heard the girlfriend’s unsteady snoring.

Celeste groped for his penis. He put his arm around her and stroked her hair.

You didn’t come in here for head or for pussy, did you?

Nope.

Are you one of them right-wing virgins?

Nope.

I like the Bible a lot, Celeste said shyly. I started out reading the New Testament, reading about Jesus. The thing is, I forget the chapter and the scripture and the verse, but I know it says: No man cometh to the Father except through Me. It doesn’t really matter which church I go to, ’cause I pray to Him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But don’t tell the mayor that. He’s an atheist.

Okay. I won’t tell him.

So, the woman said then, using the word with Germanic finality. What the fuck do you want?

Did you ever hear tell of the Queen of the Whores?

That’s just a stupid old story, like the King of the Road…

No it isn’t, he said. And maybe the King of the Road is out there somewhere, too. You never can tell. But this one, she’s my Queen. I love her and I’m married to her and she’s in trouble so I want to help her. First I need to find her.

Oh, baloney, said Celeste.

Look, you have a mayor, don’t you?

Yeah, he calls himself that.

All right, so why can’t I have my Queen?

What’s her name then?

I already told you she’s Queen Africa.

So she’s a nigger. Then what did you come to me for? Why don’t you live on that nigger island over there?

She lost something magic and I’m trying to get it back for her, which I guess is another way of saying that I lost her.

What did she lose then?

A sapphire.

I’ll put the word out. You have something to make it worth my while?

Well, he said thoughtfully, I could give you five, but if I do that I might as well try out that pussy of yours.

Deal.

When he came out, the mayor said to him: See? Nobody touched your backpack.

Thank you, said Tyler.

We never had a victim in this lot, the mayor said. We call it the American place. Nobody can build here except your black and white Americans. That one over there, you have your Hispanics, and whatever you have over there, we have better over here. We might get into it against each other, but we don’t kill each other like they do.

I get it, said Tyler wearily.

He could see how it had to be. — At Coffee Camp, or even at Slab City, anyone who wanted to could have his bushy privacy; humanity hid away from itself; but under the freeway people couldn’t get away from each other like that; they had to deal with each other, to be citizens.

It was almost evening now. The panhandlers were coming home. Stanley lay reading on a knitted quilt on a piece of foam rubber on a cement divider in the parking lot, next to his coffee can on its two bricks which smoked and smudged to keep the mosquitoes away, and the man beside him, tattooed, naked except for a pair of underpants, sweaty, went and crouched in his box of plywood and tarps, brick bricks on top to keep it dry; and the yellow lights glowed in the tiers beyond the great pillar — the brownskinned island and the white and black islands of separateness.

The Cubans on the brownskinned island knew something about magic, Celeste had said. — And you think she’s sane? said Stanley in disgust when Tyler told him. — And yet I did hear the same story, Henry. I don’t go over there much. Everybody says they sacrifice stray cats and dogs on Thursdays. Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t.

What day is it today?

Monday. No, maybe it’s Saturday. I don’t know what the fuck day it is, guy. Now lemme read!

Okay, said Tyler, stretching and yawning and wandering across this dismal concrete place, past the box in which Celeste and her girlfriend Pat were loudly making love, and he came to the Cuban island.

The first Cuban he met said: I a good man. I never been in prison. Immigration don’t wanna give me my residence. Four months I wait for my permit, two and one-half year… I leave my work because I don’t like it anymore. Then my possibility is finished.

What kind of work was it? yawned Tyler, narrowing his eyes with boredom. Hey, have you seen a small, black-skinned—

In the field, some illegal job pick the fruit, you know. They pay me for one hour one dollar. By the river there is a lot of job they give you, but now with Haiti people come here, not so many job. A lot of people you see here no have the job. Many people here have paper but the problem is they have no job. Some mission come here with food. I think that’s the Baptist church. Right now I have the part-time work for the fields. I been here only one month. Before I was in my sister apartment and she change the apartment and they change their regulation so I can no stay with her no more. My sister is cry…