William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Tyler gripped her hand.

Pat likes you, Celeste said pleadingly. And she never likes anybody. She loves you.

I like her and I love you, he said.

Why do you love me?

Because we have the same sadness, I guess. Because neither of us will ever find what we’re looking for.

And you don’t love Pat?

Well, I don’t know her that well.

Take a walk with me, Henry?

Sure.

Hand in hand, they followed those heavy white double freeway pillars which could go anywhere, even into the brown canal water at the edge of the Hispanic island where a woman pulled a bucket up and carried it back into the world, into the faint smell of excrement.

What we had here once, said Celeste, there’s a big house with a pipe where we can hook us up. That’s what the mayor always talks about. So the county comes up and rips it down. Then they want to cut the water in the fire hydrant. The mayor’s right. Pretty soon we’re all going to have to move.

Tyler waited.

You’re not going to stay with me and Pat, are you?

I don’t know, honey, he said. I just met you yesterday.

I mean, stay for good.

You might have fallen as far as you can fall, he said. You’re maintaining, like the addicts say. I have a feeling I’m going to keep falling and falling, he said.

Well, would anything make you stay? Like, if you found that sapphire, or if you got convinced that it could never be found?

I don’t know, he said again.

Oh, cut the baloney, Henry. I want to know what’s going on inside your mind.

Does Pat beat you?

She hit me once. How did you know? She promised she’d never do it again.

And has she?

No. Yes. Twice. But I love her, so it’s okay. And I know she loves me.

So you do follow the Bible, he said. Doesn’t it say that we’re supposed to love our cross?

What are you trying to tell me, Henry? I’m not stupid.

I love my cross, too.

So when you said you loved me and Pat, was that just bullshit?

No. But my Queen was the Queen of the Whores. I lived with her. I could feel myself changing. Now I’m like one of her girls, he said. Love comes pretty easy to me now, maybe too easy. Maybe it comes pretty easy to you, too.

So you love her more than me. Well, that’s only natural. I love Pat more than you. Why’s that such a problem?

Maybe what you call love is just the feeling of needing to be loved, and maybe what I call love is just — I don’t know what it is anymore.

I don’t need you! she cried fiercely. I just love you!

And why do you love me? said Tyler, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets. The concrete made his feet hurt.

Celeste looked as if she were about to cry. But instead she made herself smile and said: Why do I love you? I told you right when I met you that I could see you had a big dick.

Tyler hopped a freight train — or, I should say, a series of freight trains — to get himself back to Sacramento because he might be able to collect his Supplemental Security Income benefits; and in Indianapolis he met on the rails none other than Missouri the hobo, who, being once again fresh out from detox, was filled with eloquent words for Tyler, whom he did not quite remember.

Oh, I ain’t been able to get nothing, the old man whined. That’s why this country spits on its vets. The hippies were right back in the sixties. I tried to get a mental instability when I got out of Nam, but they just gave me what I call a drunk check. And I only got that for about seven or eight years. Now they go and cut me off. But I showed them. I blew my last SSI check in Reno playing slots… And then the Vietnamese, they get a billion dollars. I never met a decent Vietnamese. The only ones I met, they’re out there hustlin’ and sellin’ their mothers and their sisters. Dealin’ drugs.

Tyler rubbed his eyes, longing for a drink.

I can’t stand authority and I can’t stand the government, Missouri went on. I got a basic commonsense philosphy: Anything the government is for, I’m against.

Sounds like a good political platform to me, said Tyler. Say, Missouri, would you happen to have a dollar on you? I could use a cold drink.

Oh, no you don’t, Missouri said. Don’t you go and hit me up, too. I’m always getting robbed and rolled, especially by the cops. They hate doin’ anything with druggies, because them types got guns. But I’m a drunk, and drunks is easy pickings. There’s no such thing as an honest cop. You think about it. They go to a restaurant, so they get a free coffee. That’s graft, is what it is. The cops didn’t pay for it. That’s insurance. Restaurant knows if they don’t give way, cops just might not show up when they get robbed.

Forget it, said Tyler. By the way, have you run across a small, slender black—

And I’ll tell you something else, kid, said Missouri. There ain’t such a thing as a decent wetback, just as there ain’t such a thing as a decent cop.

All right, Missouri. I’ll file that away under W. I’m going to crawl inside this grainer and sleep.

Hey, where you headed? asked the old man.

What’s the difference? laughed Tyler. Long as I’m rolling, I’m rolling.

I heard that.

Maybe Sacramento. Is Loaves and Fishes still open?

That place? They never give you nothing. Why, the food’s only half cooked. And they tried to take control of my entire SSI check, back when I had SSI. Why, if I’d allowed them push me around that way, I wouldn’t even have had tobacco! But I always have tobacco, ’cause I buy a month ahead of time.

Okay, Missouri, said Tyler. I feel rotten. I need to sleep. You taking this train?

Damn right I am… You got any tobacco?

See you in the yard in Omaha…

And he crawled into the back of his grainer and refused to stick his head out, even though Missouri whined and pleaded.

When he got back to his former home eight days later, thirsty and stinking, Coffee Camp looked crowded, so he wandered through midtown and downtown, which didn’t seem to have grown, and crossed the I Street bridge to West Sacramento where it was cool by the river and the long swirly pillars of light slanted through the water. This was the last place he’d ever seen the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen. The water-smell of the dark black night flowed around the windy bridge where Tyler stood gazing at downtown. One skyscraper resembled a perfume bottle full of light. A long time ago, when he’d been a teenager in high school, he’d walked along this catwalk holding a girl’s hand. Here at the midpoint where it was bright they’d kissed. He looked down through the grating at water-darkness.

Two men with a dog were coming down the bridge. The dog’s paws clicked upon the grating. One of the men said to Tyler: You want some doses?

Africa’s my drug, he replied.

The men walked on, with ugly sneering laughs.

He thought to himself: Is there no place anymore, not one, not the smallest darkest hiding place for me?

He longed to know whether he had failed or whether he was already there. Had he continued steadfast enough? Was the Queen proud of him? Most important of all, was he becoming a better person, or had he merely laid himself waste?

He knew what John would saty. And Dan Smooth would not have praised him, ever. But in his living dream, when slumberous Africa comforted him in her arms, and Irene opened her womb to him, the world’s shadow-figures amused him only, unable to touch him either for good or harm. In a sense, he lived now like Buddha himself — or Cain, wandering, free of all attatchments except his own adorable charms. And so… And so…