The Royal Family (152 page)

All right. See if you can hold your breath forever. Just stop breathing. If you can do that, you know you’re dead.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, said Tyler in disgust. You’re telling me you’re dead, but you’ve been sitting here breathing all this time. What’s more, brother, you have wicked bad breath.

I do? said the hobo in amazement. I guess I ain’t brushed my teeth in a week or two. My wife used to nag me about that, but I don’t hold it against her. Out of all the woman I’ve known, she was the one who . . . You know, her mind . . .

You talk as if
she’s
the one who’s dead.

She might as well be. Don’t you know that the dead grieve for the living? Don’t you know
nothin’?

From the coupling between two tanker cars a young man appeared, leaping down onto the tracks. Tyler waved. The young man swerved toward them, coming rapidly, alertly along the splintered, splitting ties whose stamped dates proclaimed them to be less than fifteen years old. How quickly everything goes! Strips had rusted off the verde-grising rails. The hobo looked him over, then cracked open a hip flask of Wild Turkey in a paper bag and gulped. Tyler watched the young man stony-eyed, not sure yet whether he was friend or foe. He was still far away, but now they could hear the young man’s rapid footsteps on the gravel. Irene’s eyelids trembled open. Tyler ran to her and held her hand. —It’s okay, honey, he said. Don’t be afraid.

Irene smiled and gripped his fingers tight. Her dark, made-up eyes were sickeningly beautiful. He felt as intimate with her as with his Queen, with whom he had shared so much pain.

Anyone been bothering you? said the young man.

So far, so good, said Tyler. What’ve you been up to?

Just checking out some pieces, the young man said.

Over the same coupling now emerged a black-uniformed railroad bull, with another bull coming briskly around from the rear of that string of cars. —Hold it! they called.

The young man lowered his head and began to walk away.

Stop right there! called the first railroad bull.

The young man ran.

The railroad bulls chased him but couldn’t catch him. So they gave up and came slowly gravel-crunching back to Tyler, the hobo and Irene.

Did he say anything to you? said the first bull.

Just asked if anybody were bothering us, said Tyler.

And what did you say?

I said nope, said Tyler.

He must’ve been doing something wrong, to be running away like that, the bull said smugly.

You got that right, officer, Tyler said.

What do you mean? cried Irene. Is it wrong to run away from a man with a gun?

Nobody said anyting.

Well, said the first bull, upon whose silver badge the sun sparkled with an ominous splendor, what are
you
all doing here?

We love trains, said Tyler. We’re train buffs, officer. We’re just trying to figure them all out.

What do you mean, figure them out?

Well, like you see that car over there? That says Burlington Northern. And right next to it, there’s a Southern Pacific car. And it’s so strange to think that two railroad cars from so far apart would end up coupled like that. It’s almost like magic. In fact, it’s almost divine. I for one never could have predicted it. I mean, can you explain how that could have happened?

Explanations aren’t exactly my job, said the bull with a sly smile.

You see what I mean? said Tyler enthusiastically. And then there’s the matter of that train that just blew through here without stopping. It was loaded full of brand new automobiles! And we wondered where it was going. I was thinking maybe Stockton or maybe Los Angeles. But both of those places already have so much traffic that they almost don’t need any more cars. So it’s quite a mystery. There’s so much to think about.

So you’re saying you’re train buffs, said the railroad bull.

I guess you could call us that. Train enthusiasts.

We’ll need to see your identification now, said the first bull.

Tyler took out his driver’s license, and the second bull took it and began writing up a report.

You’re homeless, right? said the first bull to the old hobo.

Homeless, well, I don’t know about that, officer. I got my own little plot of ground.

Where are you from?

Georgia, originally. But I been out here in California for about thirty some-odd years.

You have any ID?

Well, I have this food bank card but it’s expired.

The second bull took the card, studied it, and announced: This card is
expired.

Yeah, that’s what I said, the hobo replied. I’m expired. I done expired four years ago now. And this fellow here, we needed you to figure out if he casts a shadder or what.

He’s drunk, said the second bull.

The first bull, spying around wisely, saw the paper bag with the bottle of Wild Turkey in it. —Whose is this? he said.

Tyler and Irene kept quiet. After a long silence the hobo said: It ain’t mine.

Sure looks pretty fresh, said the bull. And the cap is off. —Expertly he kicked it over, and every drop sank down into the gravel. The hobo licked his lips more sadly than ever. And the railroad bull smiled.

How about you, miss? said the railroad bull to Irene. You live with him?

We’re just friends, said Tyler quickly, not wanting to implicate Irene in his own filthiness. Do you have any ID, honey?

Irene stood up and took her billfold out from under Tyler’s coat. She opened it. Tyler suddenly began to get a sinking feeling in his chest, confirmed by the whistle and glimmer of an oncoming locomotive. Irene withdrew her California driver’s license and gave it to Tyler, who passed it over to the second bull.

This ID card is expired also, the bull said.

Well, sonny, now you know, the hobo said to Tyler. The gummint test is more reliable than mirrors and shadders. ’Cordin’ to the gummint test, you ain’t dead. She and I, we flunked the test. But the gummint said you’re still alive. You still gotta pay taxes to the gummint.

Pardon me, officer, said Tyler. I was wondering if my ID was expired.

Nope, said the railroad bull.

All right then, said Tyler to Irene. I was pretending about you, but you’re—

Please please don’t say it, said Irene. I’m not here for that. It hurts me to hear that said.

The locomotive screamed loudly. The train roared and clanked through the yard while everyone waited patiently. Tyler counted cars until he was nauseated. He never saw a single open doorway. The train trembled angrily, perspiring diesel-fumes. Then it was gone.

Don’t they ever stop here anymore? he asked the bulls.

Why don’t you ask your friend there, chuckled the bull who’d kicked over the hobo’s Wild Turkey.

In silence, the other bull handed back everyone’s identification cards.

We’re going to have to ask you to move on, said the first bull. Technically, you know, you shouldn’t be on Union Pacific property.

I understand, officer. How about just letting us watch the next train go by? said Tyler.

All right, the bull said. But you’ll have to move up to the right of those power poles. That way you’ll be off railroad property.

All right, said Tyler. Thank you, officer.

Thank you, officer, said the hobo obsequiously.

Irene, glaring nobly at the two bulls, gathered up her belongings in silence.

Now what? she said when they reached the power poles.

What are you asking me for, sweetheart? I thought you were supposed to be telling me what to do.

Oh, that’s rich, the hobo said. You’re such an idiot. You don’t even know if you’re dead or alive.

Knock it off, said Tyler. If you’re so enlightened, how come you can’t stop being an alcoholic even after you’re dead?

Irene smiled sadly.

After a long time, the long, wheeled wall of waiting boxcars across the track suddenly clanked. Then hissing screams of steam were uttered. The engineer was testing the breaks. In a moment, the train would depart. Anxiously the three sojourners looked both ways, and found the railroad bulls gone or at least out of sight. Tyler and Irene ran across the gravel-clattering open space, knowing that the engineer could see them and hoping that he did not care. Just in time they threw themselves up into the sunstruck interior of a boxcar: yellowed old paint with brown scratches and black rust-islands all indescribably beautiful like taffy with caramelized sugar. As for the hobo, he first rabbited himself into a grainer car, then changed his mind and leaped into Tyler and Irene’s almost perambulating cave. —I still move pretty good, he chuckled. I ain’t got no complaints. —Tyler sat beside Irene on his bedroll, with his arm around her waist.

The train began to move. The whole world paraded past! And Tyler realized that this was the ultimate extended trace.

Look! said the hobo raptly, raising his arm in a Roman salute. The new courthouse! —He had civic pride.

When she was alive, Irene, who thanks to a dangerously well hidden addiction to unrealistic expectations had never known much happiness anyhow, excepting the anticipatory kind, had developed a stomach ulcer in her first half-year of marriage—fitting emblem of that marriage: painful, bloody wound. She vomited blood in secret. She
didn’t want to tell John. She pitied herself, seeking out Tyler’s pity in an oblique manner obscured by layers of affection. And he’d obliged; he’d pitied her and worried about her.

I love you so much, she said then.

I love you, too, he said. You have to go to the doctor or you’ll croak.

Maybe that would be the best solution.

But where would I be? he cried out.

I love you so much, she said.

And where
would
Tyler have been? Why, right here! And right here was not so bad . . . The ceiling was corroded beach-white and sky-blue around the edges, metal semblance of some tropical heaven. And yet Irene’s expressionlessness as she stared out the open door stirred up in him an unpleasant thrill of eeriness, which rapidly sank to dreariness, as if he had hopped a freight train which was surely going all the way to Elko but which after crossing the river then backed up, turned, and went west across the I Street bridge to end in some dead switching yard in West Sacramento where, after having been slammed back and forth for a long time, he suddenly felt deadness: his locomotives had abandoned him; he was to be left amidst gravel and mosquitoes all night and maybe all the next day or even all week; his water would last two days, so he’d better come out, put his bedroll on his back, and start walking to God knows where, maybe to the Land of Nod. Irene did not care for him at all.

I love you so much, he said experimentally.

What’s the use of loving a dead person? she bitterly replied.

I don’t see what
use
has to do with anything.

How do you feel now, Henry?

I feel—well, tortured and confused, but I know that my unhappiness isn’t yours.

Irene was silent.

Well, he said finally, do you still love me?

I don’t remember. You didn’t call me back to love you. You just prayed that I’d come and be your angel.

That’s rich, the hobo said. You’re both just a couple of chumps.

They reached Coffee Camp and crossed the American River, then backed up near Loaves and Fishes, and the old mill towered grimly out the open door. Tyler and Irene passed rusty wire, sunlight, bowing trees, the stylized outline of a woman white on a grey siding. Irene wanted to lean out to see everything, but he gripped her arm, he said because that was how you did things when you were pulling a surveillance job, but really because he did not want her to fly away.

A glossy black locomotive bore toward them. It said
TRUCKEE.
The paint shone and glistened with a mirror finish, reflecting golden blobs of sunlight. Then came the long mahogany passenger cars. Irene gasped with pleasure. Through one of the windows Tyler glimpsed playing cards laid out by a sherry decanter.

Did you see that? cried the hobo. That was a blast from the past. That train sure don’t cast no shadder.

What do you care? said Tyler. You’re a blast from the past yourself.

The tarnished pigeonholes of an old mail car rattled by, gaping its many lips of canvas mail sacks.

My Daddy told me they used to dump a mailbag every five seconds an’ sort it out, the hobo said.

Oh, come on, said Irene.

No, darlin’, I swear it. My Daddy didn’t never lie to me.

Irene smiled. —I know what’s on that mailcar, Henry, she said.

What’s that? Tyler said.

All the letters I never sent you, and all the letters you wrote me that I never answered.

Maybe you’re right, he said, and just then an envelope blew out the window and into the open boxcar where Irene, laughing, snatched it up and opened it. It said:
Irene, please. I want to live inside your heart, to know you, care for you, and sleep within your arms. I want to drink your spit. I want to make you happy. I think about you every day.
—Irene giggled and showed it to the hobo, who said: I don’t give a fuck. —Tyler was red with humiliation and rage.