The Royal Family (141 page)

A freight train lay still and ready, with three locomotives on it. That meant it was going somewhere. Looking both ways, he spied no spies, and ran to the open boxcar. He threw himself in, insured his life with the spikenail, crawled into the back, and met a migrant worker who smiled at him gravely. He offered the man a drink of water. The man smiled, and gave him a fresh ripe peach.

The boxcar jerked. The train began to move.

Well, looky here, laughed the railroad dick. All right, fellas. You might as well come out now.

His heart overwhelmed him with booming echoes as of dark boxcars.

Come back here now, said the railroad dick.

The train slid away, leaving him and the Mexican alone on the gravel with the railroad dick. It was almost night. At the back of the receding train blinked a red eye. That was FREDdy, the Fucking Rear End Device. A tramp had said that it was called that because it had stolen three railwaymen’s jobs. FREDdy flashed triumphantly in the twilight. Two more parasites, two more evildoers had fallen into the hands of the righteous.

You first, said the railroad dick. What’s your name?

Tyler, said Tyler.

What’s
your
excuse?

I’m homeless.

Yeah, you could pass for homeless. That’s against the law. Don’t get upwind of me. I could cite you. I should cite you. Now get out.

Thanks, said Tyler, as sincerely as he could. He started walking away.

Now you, said the railroad dick to the Mexican. We don’t call you wetbacks no more. Call you
scratchbacks
from duckin’ under the border fence. Call you
gravelknees.
Is that right? Hey, fella, are you a scratchback?

The Mexican smiled and nodded three times quickly.

Okay. That’s the spirit. Now beat it, and don’t let me catch you riding my train again.

When Tyler and the Mexican were out of sight, the railroad dick radioed the locomotive and told the driver that his two unwanted pasengers were gone.

What were they this time? asked the driver, bored.

Usual. One drunk and one Spic.

Used to be just them hobos, the driver ruminated. Pleasant people. Sometimes you
just gotta throw rocks at ’em. And them migrant workers, them scratchbacks. But now I keep seeing the gangs. They use my train for transportation. They got guns. What am I supposed to do against a gun?

Carry a gun, laughed the railroad dick.

Well, see, those people are kinda leery, unless you have the look, the tattooed man said.

So you’re saying I don’t have it, said Tyler. Ain’t that a shame.

That’s what I’m saying. Now, that Mexican there, he has it, but who cares? He’s just a Mexican. As for you, they gotta be careful. Maybe somebody could justify how you look, but they don’t trust you.

Who doesn’t trust me, partner? You?

The Mexican waved and began to walk away. Tyler waved back, a little sadly.

What are you about? asked the tattooed man.

Riding the rails, I guess, said Tyler. How come I need to justify my existence to you?

The tattooed man smiled weakly and resentfully, his gaze like some cold yellow light at the end of a long trestle bridge, and Tyler sighed.

All right, he said.

What are you about? asked the tattooed man again, standing in his way like a sentinel in some ancient myth.

Looking for somebody I know I’ll never find, said Tyler. Getting away from people who know me.

Amen to that, said the tattooed man; and Tyler felt that he had answered correctly and could move on. —So which way goes east? he said.

As far as how to go, said the tattooed man, carefuly spying him out, they got certain routes. There’s certain places they got to catch you, but normally they let you do it. I more or less quit doing it after my last stretch in jail. I don’t really enjoy dogging it that much. Where you from?

Sacramento.

Oh. Well, what’re you gonna do? You got to run it somewhere else. Sac’s just got that evil feel to it. Just feels too negative to me.

Tell me about it. I was born there.

The tattooed man laughed, his eyes yellow like empty plastic cigarette lighters on railroad gravel.

So where was you an’ that Mexican when you got busted?

Boxcar, said Tyler.

Normally, the boxcar’s the lousiest ride you can get. I can see you need advice. Now, the ones that know, they’re lookin’ for the grainers, those T-48s or whatever. There are holes in the back. You just pop right in like a prairie dog. And you got water? You don’t want to go without a bunch of water.

Yeah, I have water, said Tyler. And when that runs out, I can just marry somebody and drink her spit.

Ooh,
said the tattooed man with a sort of sinister gentleness.

So which track runs east?

Normally, see, some people are hooked up with the people in the yard. There’s certain tracks set up already. So if I want to go to Salt Lake, these here are the tracks I can get
on. You got another track there that’s gonna wind north. Let’s say you want to go to Washington . . .

And suddenly Tyler felt an exultation that he hadn’t been able to own for so long now, a breezy thrill of freedom even as he stood there sweating with the evening sun burning his arms. He could go anywhere. He had nothing to guard and defend except his own body. He had fallen, but he had landed. Now he was happy and safe.

The tattooed man read his eyes and said: There’s
something
about trainhoppers, anyway. All of us are transients on this earth. I’m a Buddhist. This is just taking it to the next level.

And you feel free? Tyler couldn’t help asking.

My whole concept is, what’s out there and rolls my way I have a right to. Like if I go into a supermarket and can walk out with a can of tomato soup in my pocket and they don’t catch me, I have a right to it. See what I’m sayin’? Because they’re bilking the world anyway. And when I steal from them, nobody gets hurt.

Well, I guess I’ll be heading my way, Tyler said. Thank you.

I been wanting to ride the rails myself, the tattooed man suddenly volunteered. I just can’t decide which direction to go . . .

Behind the man’s wistfulness, behind his softspoken charm, Tyler had begun to sense a crocodile’s soul, intelligent and vicious, perhaps even lethal—held in check right now mainly by the inertia of this exceedingly hot day (certainly over a hundred degrees). If a cloud were to pass over the sun, so that the tattooed man’s reptilian blood could cool sufficiently to refresh his torpid brain, then Tyler might be in danger. This was only intuition, and very possibly wrong, like the intuition of so many street-whores who had been sure at first that Tyler was a cop; nonethless, he was afraid of the tattooed man.

I’ll walk up with you, the tattooed man said with an insidious grin.

Why, thank you, said Tyler, his heart pounding.

This used to be the Greyhound bus station, right here where it says
GOLF
, the tattooed man was saying. I know where I’d catch out if I was riding. See that track there, with all those grainers? That’s where I’d catch out.

All right, said Tyler plodding steadily toward the sleeping train.

Watch out for the heat, laughed the tattooed man lazily, although
they
must be sweatin’ it more than ever, I mean those
cops.

Okay. See you when I look at you, said Tyler.

And watch out for the Sidetrack types. You remember Sidetrack? He rode the rails and he befriended trainhoppers like you, and then in the night he slit their throats. Ha, ha, ha!

I hope he enjoyed it, said Tyler wearily, looking for the perfect grainer to crawl into, one where the hole would be too small for him and the tattooed man together.

Shit, he got caught right here, in this fuckin’ town. The fuckin’ S.P. bulls said he told them he was just cleanin’ up the lowlifes, the ripoff artists.

You a friend of his? asked Tyler.

No, but I know a woman who used to know him. You want to meet her?

No, I think I’ll take this bus, said Tyler, clambering up up the ladder of a grainer whose oval womb, as he could see, was choked with juice bottles, wine bottles and crumpled newspapers. This train had been thoroughly hopped. Now he was high above the world. Safe and lofty, he waved to the tattooed man.

Hey, I’m kind of broke, said the tattooed man. You mind helping me out?

Here’s a buck, said Tyler, letting the paper note flutter down.

That’ll work, said the tattooed man. Well, watch out, or somebody just might get you.

Thanks for the warning, Sidetrack, replied Tyler with a harsh and ugly laugh . . .

It took a good three hours before the train began to slam and thud, and another hour or so before it went anywhere. When he finally felt the clittery-clatter in his bones, Tyler stuck his head out of the hole and saw in the hole of the facing car the head of an ancient black man. He waved, and the black man smiled at him.

Somewhere in the desert before Salt Lake, the train stopped for an hour, and he woke up and looked out. The black man looked back at him.

Where you bound, sonny? said the black man.

Bound for heaven, sir, said Tyler.

Just remember, child, you’re only stealin’ a ride. Nothin’ else. Don’t you harm anything on them cars. Don’t take nothin’. The railroad is good to us. It gives us our freedom. Don’t you take advantage of that.

All right. Kind of a nice ride up here, don’t you think?

The black man smiled. It was the smile of one who knew. He said to Tyler: If you ain’t seen America on a boxcar, you ain’t seen America.

Striding into Coffee Camp like a conqueror, he found at afternoon’s end the black woman, the Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen, who had herself, as she said, just emerged from the long, long place between two trains where rectangular worlds of boxcar-shadow were separated by narrow bright zones of sunlight on the gravel, and she didn’t remember him. Midges crawled like flecks of living gold in the sun-barred air between vine covered trees. The sandy space where he’d slept at Donald and Dragonfly’s camp a month ago was already bursting with poison oak. Mosquitoes bit him silently. Above the black woman’s Jesus-singing, strange half-shadowed lattices of trumpet vines greenly glowed in the dusk. He could smell smoke and roasting hot dogs.

I still feel good listening to you, he said.

Who the fuck are you? she said.

The one you told to go ride the trains to find my angel.

And you done it, she said, softening. I can see you done it.

He grinned, filled with pride.

And you found your lovin’ angel, she said.

Actually, I’m getting pretty sure I’ll never see her again. But if I keep looking, it gives me something to do.

So you didn’t find her? That why you come back to Coffee Camp, with your tail between your legs? Maybe you just don’t
believe.

Maybe I never did, he said sadly.

But she
helped
you, the black woman insisted, her sentences thrilling him like Union Pacific locomotives riding backward, ringing their bells. —You
rode
them trains when you thought you couldn’t do it. That’s good for you. That train wind baptizes all your
sorrow away. Even just come and go, come and go, those trains takin’ you somewhere. Takin’ you to
freedom.

You feel like taking a walk with me, Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen?

Honey, I’m not your queen and I’m not your angel but if you want to take a walk with me I’ll gladly welcome you home. Just a minute. Just a minute. Let my hide my stash in this hollow tree . . .

On the concrete under the bridge, someone had painted a giant purple heart. He took her hand in his and touched it to the heart. She kissed him. Just then a yellow and red Union Pacific train flickered overhead, and night came and sun and colors were lost. He heard a woman’s screaming laugh.

That night the black woman was sleeping in another’s arms. His soul began to swing back to loneliness, like the bridge between Sacramento and West Sacramento pivoting on its cylindrical concrete base, turning counterclockwise to rejoin its own metal flesh, swinging like a door, its shadow following it upon the water, slow and slow; then suddenly no lacuna anymore; the rails now went all the way from West Sac to Old Sac; and a metal piece dropped and a white box hummed. The bridge swung again, adjusted again, until the raised rails dropped with a slam. Now anyone could walk like Jesus over the sunny green water.

He wandered through midtown and reached that bridge one day; then he crossed it, standing where he’d stood on that night now months ago when he’d come in Dan Smooth’s car; and looking down and to the side, he perceived three who sat beneath the bridge with their hats on—a woman between two men, bleary-eyed railroad tramps swinging their arms at their sides. The Hundred Thousand Dollar Boxcar Queen was the woman. She began to unzip one man’s fly and the man grunted, his breath full of beer.