The Royal Family (138 page)

Nicely done, he said.

Sorry it smells in here, said Connie. The next one over there is a little bit decomposed.

Something to look forward to. Are you near the Black Sea?

Sort of.

Echoing Connie’s first unanswerable question, Dr. Jasper slashed Dan Smooth open from each shoulder to the chest, and then down to the base of the belly, in an immense, bloodless letter Y. The skin and fat was a good finger’s breadth thick. Steadily Dr. Jasper peeled and skinned away that human hide, announcing to his invisible audience: The exterior genitalia is male comma circumcised period. There is a one-and-one-fourth- by three-and-five-eighths-inch scar.

They had brought Irene to this room which smelled like the Hotel Liverpool, which is to say like garbage, she not falling into the ranks of the six thousand who’d died unsuspicious deaths. Perhaps she’d lain naked and cut open on this very table: one chance in six. But the fat beneath Irene’s skin and inside her breasts would have been yellowish—white, most likely, not bright orange as was Dan Smooth’s. (And the Queen, had they brought her here, too, or was she still alive somewhere?) Inner color was no mystery. It all depended on blood content, Dr. Jasper would later explain.

Then the knife went grating across the rib cage, and Connie was pressing the whirling blade of a stainless steel saw across the top of Dan Smooth’s head, her bloody gloves slowly whitening with bone dust.

The river now behind him, the new county a
tabula rasa
of free opportunity, he bore right, the white round bulk of a storage tank glowing in the night like Dan Smooth’s skull. Another right, and he was parking in the lot above the launching slip. Quietly he walked down to the water, listening to the crickets. His father had courted his mother here. On the other shore, an ugly red light hung in the sky, brighter and steadier than any star—the eye of some radio tower, he supposed. He didn’t remember it, although doubtless it had unwinkingly overseen every river night for years. The pale cube of a houseboat was not quite as still as that, and its moonlit reflection even less so, continually decaying and renewing itself. The night was beautiful and smelled of water.

An impure mixture of emotions polluted his chest. He admitted that he had always turned away from Smooth, in death as in life, that he had been disgusted by the man and in equal measure afraid of him, that his omnivorous needs had nonetheless most cheerfully taken everything which Smooth, who had done him only but good, had ever offered him; in sum, that Smooth’s death afforded him not only a car, but relief. Yet, having confessed (if only to the river and to himself) his selfishness, which had gone beyond exploitation almost to cruelty, he now with unfocused surprise discovered within himself a sincere grief, too, which stank within his soul like one of Dr. Jasper’s partially decayed patients—no doubt because it was tainted with the greenish bile of guilt. First
his life had been full of Irene; then briefly the false Irene had accomodated his despair, afterwards, of course, the Queen had had him. He felt that only now was he coming to possess himself. —But how had he done wrong? —By worshiping only his own desires, came the answer. —But that was one reason why I loved them all, he protested, to
help
them! —a fact undeniably true—but what had he ever done for Smooth, who’d wanted to be his friend? From the prostitutes he’d taken only the worst maxims, the ways of giving not himself, but his mere shell, like that gorgeous scarlet and yellow mantle of flesh which Dr. Jasper had undone with his scapel and thrown open across Smooth’s shoulders. Hadn’t the ancient Athenians, the rich ones, gotten interred in cloaks of scarlet? That came back to him, maybe from Plutarch . . . John would know for sure. It had been so long since Tyler had done anything worthwhile, even reading, which was not worthwhile in and of itself but could dispose one to worthwhile acts. And for a moment, but only a moment, he felt that he had awakened from a long and flabby sleep. But he didn’t want to wake up anymore. —My days are late and wasted, he thought to himself. Better to float back into the river-night. The Queen had been awake; perhaps Smooth had been, too, between or behind repulsive dreams. (The Queen done offed him, said a Polk Street runaway, a scrawny little blond boy, in unshakeable and malicious ignorance.) Had Irene killed herself out of knowledge or out of dreamy fear of knowledge? Tyler, however, wanted to live life selfish and unaware like everyone else he knew—but none of his desires and pretensions were licit. After all, this had been precisely the situation of Dan Smooth.

I must remember, he said to himself distractedly, that he helped me, never did me any harm . . .

A sudden, incoherent anxiety lurked at his ear, as meaningless as his tears.

So only the Queen had been awake, then. So awake, and hence so tired! For a moment he could almost hear her rich, hoarse, lilting voice.

The skyscrapers of Sacramento, such as they were, rose white and stubby above the dark trestle bridge over which he had just driven, which made a tolerable frontier between the moon-clouds and the long thin water-fingers of orange light. Entering the wooded darkness alongside the river, he began to walk toward the bridge, loaded pistol in the pocket of his big, baggy jacket, and suddently saw a silhouette, stocky and hunched, which stood upon the riverbank, never turning round, although it must have heard his footsteps. The cool air was growing cold.

He walked on, and the tramp rose up behind him and said: What’re you doin’ down here? Fishin’?

Walking, he said. How about you?

Just spendin’ the day out, the tramp said.

He and John had caught some perch here when they were boys, so he said to the tramp: Any perch here?

Nope, said the tramp, walking away.

Ahead, between the trees, he saw a pale light, but when he got to that spot, thinking to see a homeless camp, he found nothing there.

A train whistle, rich with sadness of the longing rather than the despairing kind, drew him on until he stood beneath the bridge, almost blind to the moving of the darkness, which rumbled and squeaked westward; but at strange intervals he’d be granted the sight of vertical light-bars marching by. This train was as endless as darkness—solid it was, heavy, groaning, hissing; while beyond and below its empty purposefulness the river
bled and bled from severed fingers of light, and another man stood silhouetted on the shore-sand, gazing down at a lantern, while two silhouettes went fishing. The rump of the last freight car dragged behind it a chain of silence. Foliage reappeared through the trestle’s hollow segments, and the signal rang mutely like a desk-bell at a bank or hotel lobby, while at that moment a real bell began to toll across the river. Tyler looked at his watch, but couldn’t read the dial.

Cause of death colon compression of the neck vessels period, said Dr. Jasper. Severe emphysema comma heart disease comma unrelated to direct cause of death period. No changes consistent with . . . —as meanwhile Connie lifted off the top quarter of Smooth’s skull, withdrew a syringeful of clear cerebospinal fluid, then with crooked scissors pulled away at the stubbornly crackling meninges. Dr. Jasper, lifting his foot from the dictaphone pedal, swigged from a cup of coffee (which he held in a bloody latex glove) and said: Okay, we still have the neck to take out . . .

Golden ripples infused the black river, finger-whirls of gods; round lights clustered on the far bank like the leaves of the tree of heaven.

Tyler ascended the smooth-worn embankment, stepped onto the bridge, and began to walk out toward the water, pale dirty darkness far underfoot, while ahead the gleaming tracks, soberly precious, met across the river in four lines of shining silver. Dan Smooth, the Queen, and the two Irenes true and false were all in the place where parallel lines meet. Now the darkness bled and trembled into a silhouette—as unexpected and forced a differentiation as that suffered by the heart-shaped chunk of fatty ribs which Dr. Jasper had crunched out of Dan Smooth’s chest; this darkness ought to have been granted the right to remain itself, but from its flesh, without reference to the shining, burning ribs behind, nonetheless came that silhouette, approaching almost silent, a stranger, a black man with a bedroll who uttered a low, shy greeting, a murmur, and did not stop. Then darkness asserted its rights after all: The man became darkness again. Darkness smiled. Tyler stood alone on the bridge, gazing downriver at the pale yellow glowing phallus which rose from the drawbridge to the south . . .

He had planned to drive down to L.A. one more time to visit Irene’s grave, but opening the glove compartment to look for the registration, he saw a note in Smooth’s handwriting which read:
Henry—Please give the car to Domino.

Tyler clenched his teeth. Then he drove to San Francisco. He parked on Capp Street between Seventeenth and Eighteenth, got out, and locked up, striding along with the car keys jingling in his hand. Nobody on Capp Street, so he went to South Van Ness and by a lucky chance saw Strawberry.

It’s the black Dodge right around the corner there, he said. Give it to Domino. From Dan Smooth.

She stared at him.

Happy fuckin’ New Year, he said.

What are you talking about?

You don’t remember me either, huh? he muttered with a sad grin. I guess I can leave word at the parking garage, too. Does she still use that place for her mail drop?

He dropped the keys in her hand and started to walk away, but when he looked back she was still staring at him with eyes like marbles.

It’s for
Domino,
he said. You got that, sweetheart?

A flash of terror illuminated her understanding, and she began to piss.

Lift up your skirt or it’ll be bad for business, he said. Oh, hell.

It was almost chilly on Haight Street. Two fat cops slowly trudged past Villain’s. Nobody sat in front of the Goodwill store. In a glitter-shop’s window he saw an old silver-painted wooden crown which reminded him of his Queen. His feet hurt. The sidewalk smelled like meat and urine. On the wall of Cala Foods someone had written:
TONIGHT’S A BLAST, TOMORROW YOU’RE HOMELESS
.

It was then that he realized he was homeless, too.

And so his way led to the yellow-orange freight cars of the Union Pacific, land-ships of freedom, thrilling the lonely souls who rode them from broken promises to promises not yet broken, ferrying the dead souls from one sunset to another, carrying the fearful and the hopeful out of law’s imminence. Long low warehouses hunkered in the Sacramento twilight. A man lay upon a loading dock, his head pillowed on his bed roll and his boots dangling into space. Tyler heard booming sounds coming from the direction of the ruined mill. A man in a red wool cap walked toward the sunset, holding a Bible near his eyes. Four or five years ago one homeless camp had gotten religion and erected a great cross in the trees, but the new Christ who was going to launch the cult got cancer and died. The long curvy train tracks led to that rotten monument to a dead belief. The smell of creosote annointed him with labor’s seriousness. He knelt and picked up a heavy crooked old spike gone red and yellow with rust. Then he let it fall out of his hand and clang against the steel. His right leg moved, and then his left. With a blanket rolled beneath his arm, he approached the sad self-absorbed hum of generators, passed beneath the conveyor bridge of the Blue Diamond almond factory, and left the hum behind, heading toward the American River, with long trains sleeping beside him. He walked for a long time, but the trains’ length kept pace with him. On one freight car someone had drawn the ace of spades. Then on his left a train loaded with cargo from or for Portland, Oregon, came rapidly, smoking and silhouetted, the heavy cars clattering ear-ringingly, the emptier ones merely clicking. Far ahead, the locomotive reached the trestle bridge and began to slow down. From the doorway of a reddish-brown boxcar leaped a long bedroll, followed by a man who landed softly in the gravel on his knees and outstretched hands, a shirtless man in his late prime whose muscular chest and arms screamed with tattoos. He powerfully rose, slung the bedroll over his shoulder, and began to lope with immense sureness toward another train.

Pardon me, called Tyler.

The man stopped and faced him, alert, unafraid.

What’s the quickest way out of here? said Tyler.

See that track over there? the man said. That goes north.

Any chance of getting locked in?

Take a loose pin and stick it in the boxcar door. I’ve got to head my way now.

The man was gone.

Tyler stood looking after him with admiration. The man had known who he was and what he was about. He was travelling but not searching. Tyler longed to be like him.

Half-heartedly following the track that the man had pointed out, he finally found himself at the skeleton-roofed silver trestle bridge which invited him into the evening river-smell. A tagger who went by the monicker “T.F.” had painted said initials on every strut, and someone else had x’d them out with equal painstakingness, but the black x’s had run and faded after many rainstorms, while T.F.’s blue initials lived triumphantly on. A swastika grinned its crooked grin. Beneath his feet, the river was low and still and silver, bisected by the reflections of cloud trails. Bored, weary, lacking self-surprise, Tyler withdrew his keychain, which clasped the outer and inner keys to his former apartment in San Francisco, his old office key, a key whose provenance he’d forgotten, and the front and back door keys to his mother’s house, let them all roll out of his hand and watched them spread apart in the air like a fist opening, every key glittering white, loose upon the chain, dwindling until they met the water with a ridiculous little splash. The sun began to balefully glow, like the eyes of someone with a lethal secret; but its rays had not yet come to their summer strength, and so the air continued to get cool. A duck quacked, almost in an undertone. The bridge led him on and on. Tyler would not be riding any freight trains today; he was already considerably beyond the place that the tattooed man had pointed out to him.