The Royal Family (146 page)

All right, said Tyler. If you have the technology to do that, and even make me an anti-loneliness device, maybe you can help me with a project that will make the anti-loneliness device obsolete. See, I want to find my Queen even though it’s no use because she’s dead.

Lots of queens out there.

I mean the Queen of the Whores.

Well, said Waldo, hitching up his underpants, so what you’re requisitioning is a way to help you track a whore type critter. Well, we can build kites for faggots and all them critters, but it’s just an image that’ll dance around; it’s just a piece of plastic. Well, it works really well if you want to piss off your old lady . . .

In Niland, California, which as the crow flies was not very far from where Waldo lived, but if a man walked straight it would be a pretty hot and lethal march, there was a cafe whose long wood-veneer counter had been worn into dark brown spots in front of each stool. Stuffed fish, birds and deer-heads hung on the walls from the long gone days before the Salton Sea turned poison. The proprieter, who was eighty-eight years old, said: It’s a shame, though, what they’ve done to the Salton Sea. Hurts the whole Imperial Valley. Probably cost us a hundred and fifty thousand a year in sales.

Tyler nodded wearily, drinking his root beer float, and the waitress came and added
more root beer for free. The glass was huge and there was about a quarter-pint of vanilla ice cream in there, so cold and good that for the first time since the sun had come out he felt that he could think.

When I come here in 1956, this was winter tomato country, the proprieter was saying. In ’65 they took the duty off at the border. Then we couldn’t compete against the Mexican tomatoes. That just killed our tomato growers.

Tyler said: Did you ever see a skinny little black woman named Africa? I expect she’s long dead now.

Doesn’t ring a bell, the proprieter said. But there’s so many transients at Slab City up the road, just about a three-mile piece . . .

You look pretty hard up, the waitress whispered. Don’t worry about that float. I’ll charge it to me.

Thanks, he said.

What’s that? said the proprieter, cupping his ear.

Oh, shut up, the waitress said. She turned back to Tyler and said to him: You gonna stay at Slab City? she said.

That depends, ma’am, he said.

(The proprieter, deaf and bored, had gone back to reading his newspaper.)

My parents brought me out there from when I was in fourth grade until I was fourteen years old and got a boyfriend and could get away from it, she said.

Doesn’t sound as if you enjoyed it too much.

In the winter you’d wake up with frozen feet. In the summer those slabs would be scorching. And scorpions and ants and everything. Strange, strange people. I hated every minute of it.

On the refrigerator case, near the row of decals of a longtime Ducks Unlimited donor, hung a handwritten sign in English and Spanish which read:
I WOULD LIKE TO BUY A BOX OF FLAME GRAPES
.

Boy, it’s slow, the waitress said. The day goes so slow when you just sit. You want a refill?

That would be mighty kind, he said. He hunched himself smaller, hoping that he did not stink too much.

Tyler went into the men’s room and filled up his water bag. The advertisement on the vending machine for adult novelties read:
IF SHE IS A MOANER THIS WILL MAKE HER A SCREAMER. IF SHE IS A SCREAMER THIS WILL GET YOU ARRESTED.
When the waitress wasn’t looking, he paid for his root beer float, left a tip and went out. He still had twenty-two dollars in his pocket.

In the vast gravel lot, a painted sign said:
SALVATION MOUNTAIN 3 MI.

He turned down that road and started walking away from Niland, where this store was closed and that store was boarded up and the Mexican restaurant closed at two in the afternoon, and every now and then one saw a notice to buy a great business opportunity—not that Niland didn’t still have some life left: just ask the old café proprieter and the waitress, who were still hanging on . . . It was now nine in the morning and very hot. A train oozed slowly by, bearing immense blue Hanjin crates. He wondered what might be inside. Whatever it was, it must not be for him. Swallowing dust, he walked on, knowing that somewhere near the horizon his destiny might be dryly slithering down the wide paths and roads of Slab City. Not a single car passed him on his trudge. The Salton Sea stewed and stank unseen at his back. Ahead lay the dusty-blue
Chocolate Mountains; and after a weary two miles or so he began to see Salvation Mountain gleaming whitely like a bunch of melted candle-wax. The landscape in which it stood (in company with its tamarisk tree and its two trucks which said
REPENT
) could have been Hebrew, but the mountain itself resembled an aquatic amusement park, because its bulk of desert dirt had been painted in white and blue streaks to resemble water. The mountain itself, with all its colored slogans bulging like breasts, was composed of dirt, hay bales, and colored latex paint which felt smooth and cool under his hand. On the mountain’s chest, a scarlet heart, tricked out in white adobe letters, said to him:
JESUS, I’M A SINNER. COME UPON MY BODY AND INTO MY HEART.
He ascended to the summit-cross, and in place of inspiration discovered more dogged artifice, where a long dry ridge marked the watermark of a lake which had vanished four centuries before, and hay bales and paint cans were discreetly laid, ready for the next good work. Irene would have loved it here. She’d been a good Christian girl. That was why Tyler respected the preacher’s mad sincerity. He had started building back in 1984, but after three years the Mountain collapsed, so he started all over again. Tyler stood there for a while, alone on the hot flat sand below Salvation Mountain except for one cicada which produced the only sound. He thought: If only I could build a mountain for her, or a . . . —But he could not decide what he wanted to build.

Past Salvation Mountain the road went on toward the Chocolate Range, but before it had gone very far there was another sign which said
SLAB CITY—WELCOME
. Turning right, he entered a grid of dirt streets, desert scrub in between. Past the rusty red bus you had to go deeper into that maze of wide empty roads in the low brush, with trailers lurking between on the half-broken low concrete flatforms, trailers with tarps, singles with mailboxes, until you came to a trailer with a sticker that said
AWOL
, and on the slab beside it, under a tree-shaded tarp, an old man sat at a manual typewriter which didn’t work, thinking about composing a letter. His white poodle lay beside him, guarding the cartridge box and other gear against death as the old man explained to Tyler:

Now the left side over there, they call that Poverty Flat. On the right, that’s called High Rent Area. Actually, the names are reversed, just to keep people amused. In the High Rent Area, people live kind of hand to mouth.

We got a club in here called the Slab City Singles. I founded it fifteen years ago and I’ve been coming every year for fourteen years, ever since I lost my wife. But Slab City itself has been around much longer than that. Back in World War II, General Patton had these kind of camps all over the desert. After they moved out, the Navy moved in and then the Marines took over. That slab over there, that was a hospital. Then they shut the whole thing down and sold it. My slab, that was the officers’ latrine. And this lot here, that’s the parade ground.

(One of the old man’s thermometers said 105° and the other said 120°.)

We still don’t have too many rules, the old man said. With all that nice shade and everything, I can’t stop others from moving in. Anyone can drive in and park. This is America. That guy over there, he’s dying to move in.

Tyler inquired: Have you seen a skinny little black lady named Africa? I wanted to live and die with her.

They don’t allow a man and a woman not married to live in the same rig, but we talked it over and decided to let ’em. And we got eight of ’em now, married couples, and we set up an auxilliary.

I get it, said Tyler.

This little gal and I, we play trionomoes, said the old man. This little gal here, she weighs only sixty-five pounds. And she used to drive a big truck! he said proudly.

Well, the little gal said (she was tattooed with the word
MOTHER
), I’d rather be where it’s cooler. I’d rather be in Oakdale where I come from. I used to have a home. I had to buy this trailer because of my health. I’ve been here for four years. I’m stuck here this summer because my motor home needs work and I can’t afford it.

Clearing his throat, Tyler said: Or have you seen a pregnant Korean lady named Irene?

The tracked and trodden sand on either side of the trestle bridge at Coffee Camp might not have been so different from the sand of Slab City, but in Slab City there was more sand and less of everything else, long wide dazzling avenues of sand down which no one passed, so that he recalled a typical oddball comment uttered by Waldo, who’d heard of Slab City even through his ringing autism, though he’d never been there, and said to Tyler: They don’t move around in the daytime, man. Just like vampires. —Already the white shimmer of Salvation Mountain like cake icing or wax running down the ridge lay out of sight because Salvation Mountain was actually not very high and at Slab City the hot sandy plain had begun a downward slope which steepened a little near the canal’s edge where Slab City gave way to the Drops, or as some called it, the outback, where the true squatters lived. The place felt wild and strange to him.

Past the cross by an immense flat slab, past the perimeter of tires laid down upon the sand in a long strange black line of symbolic menace, he swung round one camp’s snarling dogs, and at the next camp under some shade-trees he met an angry man.

How long have you been out here? said Tyler.

Shoot, said the angry man in disgust. We’re havin’ a hell of a time out here, on account of some bad people. I was attacked by two persons with clubs, and I defended myself with a baseball bat. They attempted to murder me. One woman out there, she instigated the whole thing. They knocked me unconscious. They beat my head in. I get up, defend myself, police show up, and my attackers tell the police I’m just some drunken maniac. The D.A. takes their side of it. And then the bureaucrats take us down. Since it never goes to trial, I never get my say. They make me come down to court, and then they keep changing the court dates. Once I spent the whole day in court so they could tell me in thirty seconds to come back on another day, and while I was there I had to keep my dog chained up out here all day, and because he wasn’t used to being chained up, he strangled to death. I feel I’m beat down.

I’m his only source of income, his mother said. I get my widow’s pension. It’s hard for me to maintain. I promised I’d help him out for four or five months. And every time we go to court, I have to worry about gasoline, gasoline. The trip to court and back costs about fifteen dollars.

Where is all them court papers, Mom? said the angry man.

He spread them out on the hood of one of his dead cars and began to reread them
obsessively. Then he looked up at Tyler and said: My plan was to be out of here before the summer hit.

How long have you been here? said Tyler.

Last time we went to court in the truck, his mother said. An officer pulled us over for a cracked windshield and Idaho plates. So they slapped that fine on top of that.

It’s like they’re keepin’ us broke, the angry man said.

How did you end up here? said Tyler.

Well, we came here originally around Thanksgiving, the old mother said. We left twice. Somebody told me about Slab City, and there are some good things about this place, but I hope we get out of here before it gets too hot. I’m afraid this heat will kill me. Put a wet towel on me, is the only thing that will keep me cool. And then this happens, with those people trying to murder my son.

What made you pick the Drops over the slabs? asked Tyler.

Privacy, the man said. And on the slabs, it’s hard to find any trees to live under. Them snowbirds are already in the good spots.

Hey, said Tyler urgently. Have you seen a little black gal who, uh—

By the mother’s trailer lurked a skinny woman who watched Tyler with a sort of weary gingerliness. Finally, as the angry man returned to his court papers, Tyler strolled over to her and asked her how she was.

The skinny girl looked shyly down. —What we’re doin’ is mopin’ around. I used to have an apple ranch . . .

How long’s it been for you? he said.

I been here about fourteen months now. My boyfriend brought me here but then he took off on me. He’d already got us kicked out of the place we’d stayed in town, this condemned apartment run by a black con artist. When my boyfriend took off, he ripped off the best of my food stamps, ninety goddamn dollars’ worth.

Yeah, they keep on kickin’ you in the teeth when you’re down, the angry man said, anxious to resume talking about himself. He showed Tyler a nunchuck that his would-be murderers had left—two pieces of steel pipe connected by a chain.

Well, said Tyler to the skinny woman, how about you? Have you ever met a black woman named Africa who—