The Royal Family (149 page)

The mayor belched and rubbed his head.

Hey, said Stanley. I’m talking to you, Charles. I mean it. Are you my friend or not?

My head hurts, said the mayor.

What do you always got to be calling me nigger for? I don’t go out of my way to insult you. Most of the time I don’t pay you any mind, but today for some reason you’re getting to me, so would you lay off?

I’m sorry, Stan, said the mayor. Case closed. Now
you
lay off. I’ve got a bad headache.

They sat there for a while drinking and breathing in smog, and then the mayor said: Hey, Stan.

What?

Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a goddamned ugly stupid monkeybrained black black nigger?

Stanley stood up and tried to punch the mayor in the face but the mayor blocked it and shot a hard brawny punch into Stanley’s chest which knocked him down onto the concrete. Stanley lay there groaning.

Jesus, Stan, said the mayor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit so hard. You okay?

I hit my head, said Stanley. I’m gonna have a lump the size of a robin’s egg. What did you have to keep calling me names for?

Listen, Stanley, I’m sorry. I mean it. I was an asshole.

I’m not so young, you know, Stanley said.

All right, the mayor said. Please let me help you up.

Charles, I want you to know something, Stanley said. People been calling me nigger when I was still inside my Mama’s ass. I really don’t like it. I want you to listen to me, Charles. If you call me nigger one more time today, I’m not gonna say nothing, but when I get a chance I’m gonna hit you over the head or stab you. Tomorrow I don’t say nothing about. Tomorrow nobody can hold you to, you ornery old cracker fool.

You’re bleeding on the back of your head, the mayor told him. I’m going to bandage you up.

Did you hear what I said, Charles?

I heard, and I’ve already told you twice that I’m sorry, which I wouldn’t say to anybody else. You know I have a short fuse.

Oh, fuck it, said Stanley, getting to his feet. I’m the one with the bleeding head and he’s the one with the short fuse.

The mayor looked around to see if anybody was listening, but the place was empty except for one drunk who, attended by the friendly goggling faces of parking meters, snored in a lair of cardboard plates and newspaper sheets draped over ridges of garbage, with his shoes off and his stinking stockinged feet inside an old lampshade. The mayor wasn’t worried abut him. His other constituents were sleeping, screwing, shitting,
whoring, scoring, snorting, shooting or most likely panhandling. The mayor himself never left camp. That was why he was the mayor. He ran security.

It must have been three o’clock now, because the blue truck with the white cross on it pulled up to the brown-skinned island.

Oh, shit, the mayor said, treasuring this distraction. —Our guys go out and they work all day and they’re tired, and then those Spics set up the loudspeaker in Spanish. Guys in the holy circle getting saved.

My head hurts worse than yours, said Stanley. Gimme another beer.

I only have but one more.

Give it to me, Charles.

The mayor turned red and clenched his teeth. Then he slammed the beer down on the arm of Stanley’s chair.

Why, thank you, Mr. Mayor. You’re gonna make a nice cocktail waitress someday. Beer could be colder, though.

The mayor rose and stalked away, swearing.

A dirty man whose beard was almost as long and ragged as his backpack came slowly ambling toward the white island. Stanley sat watching him regally, a beer in his hand. The man came closer. Now the man could see the shelters, some of wood, some of cardboard roofed with plastic. The mayor’s house was roofed with an American flag.

The mayor came hurrying back from the toilet. He looked the stranger up and down. He said: You a cop? You a cop?

Nope, said the stranger.

A woman stuck her head out of her cardboard box and perorated: Hey, the police’s attitude toward the homeless sucks. They catch your ID to check on warrants and they don’t return it. I’m monogamous, but I’m homeless so I must be a whore or a crack addict . . .

So sue me, said the stranger. I said I’m not a cop.

Nobody bothers anybody down here, the woman went on eagerly, because this is the
white
end. We used to live in the black end. We got robbed three times a day. Anything they think might be useful to trade or sell, they gotta take. And Charles over there, he’s the mayor. He’s the one that saved us from the blacks.

When the woman’s head first appeared, the mayor had wondered whether she might have heard his argument with Stanley, and he was afraid, but her comments appeased his scuttling eyes, so that he smiled.

You look familiar, the stranger said to her. You know Dan Smooth?

Oh, him? said the woman. He raped my daughter an’ only gimme forty bucks . . .

To no one in particular the stranger said: You mind if I set my bedroll here for a night or two?

Where are you from? said the mayor.

California.

If you want bare ground, that’s free, said the mayor. If you want a house, you’ll have to pay me rent.

How about a house with a yard and a white picket fence? said the stranger.

Are you trying to pull my chain? said the mayor. Stanley! Hey, Stanley! Security!

I’ll just take the yard, the stranger said. I’ll just spread out my roll right there. Any thieves in these parts?

Watch out for those niggers over there, said the mayor. But this guy’s all right. This guy’s my buddy. This is Stanley.

What’s your name, man? said Stanley.

Henry. Henry Tyler.

Not just any black can move in here, Henry, continued the mayor with relish. We had problems when we first went here, so we came out with baseball bats.

Pleased to meet you, Henry, said Stanley.

Tyler shook his hand.

These people in this little area are the only ones I asociate with, the mayor explained. And I advise you to do the same. As soon as you cross that street there, they’ll come after you. Just addicts over there, Henry. Anything they can do, they will do.

Okay, said Tyler. What are the rules here?

Now, everybody here, they’re all fixing to follow either Plan A or Plan B, said Stanley, looking Tyler up and down with shrewd eyes. Which one is it for you?

I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Tyler wearily.

Plan A or Plan B. You can either go to jail, turn your life around and get back to what you need, or you can stay here. What’s your goal, Hank? What’s your aspiration?

Plan P, said Tyler. I could use some pussy. You people have a problem with that?

Stanley said: Mr. Mayor, I think we got another jerk. It’s a good thing you called me. I’m gonna be
watching
this one.

Why? said Tyler. Is getting a piece of ass against your rules? You still haven’t told me your rules.

A tiny bluish TV shone far away, illegally hooked into the grid. Ellen was bent over the fire hydrant, filling a jug and goose-stepping like a chicken, mumbling beneath the gracious palm trees that bordered the island.

You stayin’ out of trouble, Henry? said the mayor.

Yeah, I’m on a good ticket.

No bullshit, but you just need to respect everybody else. I don’t care what else you do or where you come from.

I know what he gonna do, said Stanley, giggling idiotically. He gonna get me a place. Gonna get me a piece of the rock.

The mayor whirled round. —Stan, did you just snort something? You told me you weren’t going to use no more. You were trying to keep clean. I thought you were going to do it. Oh, you stupid fucking nigger.

Nigger this and nigger that, Stanley chuckled, his pupils huge.

Goddamn. When could you have done that? I thought I was watching you every second. Now what’s going to become of you? Don’t you remember that seizure you had, Stan?

Stanley put his arm around the mayor’s neck. He whispered in his ear: I wanna get out of here, man. So bad.

All right, Stan. Sit down, boy. Sit down and sleep it off. Yeah, I still have that tongue depressor here. Look how you chewed it last time when you seized up. I don’t know why I love you, you worthless nigger.

The woman’s head continued to suspend itself from her box’s doorway, the hanging twitching blanket covering the rest of her.

Tell Stan to get a job, Mr. Mayor, she called laughingly.

Oh, Celeste, you know better than that, the mayor said, getting on his soapbox. Americans can’t get a motherfuckin’ job these days. When we try, they ask us: You speak Spanish? The Spics rule. An’ you know what the Jews say? They say:
Take care of your own.

Tyler unrolled his sleeping bag onto the concrete, enjoying the woman’s eyes upon him.

Celeste emerged from her box, armed with mirror sunglasses, almost blonde, trying to look good, checking herself in a dagger-shard of mirror which she kept in her ripped and greasy purse. —You know what kind of job I like best? she whispered in Tyler’s ear.

He smiled at her long cat-face trying to look good, her lipsticked face, her hair shining feebly in the wind, and said: Let me see. Oh, I know. A blow job.

You wanna blow job? I can see you got a big dick.

No, I’m married to Queen Africa.

Oh, well that’s cool. I didn’t really want to do the blow job. What I wanted was the money.

Can I go inside with you and we’ll talk about it?

I got my girlfriend in there. Lemme see if it’s cool with her. I think she’s probably passed out or something . . .

Celeste scampered back inside, wiggling her rear at him, and then rushed out again and said: Okay, come on, come on, come on, she’s cool with it. What you got for me?

Nice place you have here, said Tyler as soon as he was in the humid stinking darkness. He heard the girlfriend’s unsteady snoring.

Celeste groped for his penis. He put his arm around her and stroked her hair.

You didn’t come in here for head or for pussy, did you?

Nope.

Are you one of them right-wing virgins?

Nope.

I like the Bible a lot, Celeste said shyly. I started out reading the New Testament, reading about Jesus. The thing is, I forget the chapter and the scripture and the verse, but I know it says:
No man cometh to the Father except through Me.
It doesn’t really matter which church I go to, ’cause I pray to Him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But don’t tell the mayor that. He’s an atheist.

Okay. I won’t tell him.

So, the woman said then, using the word with Germanic finality. What the fuck do you want?

Did you ever hear tell of the Queen of the Whores?

That’s just a stupid old story, like the King of the Road . . .

No it isn’t, he said. And maybe the King of the Road is out there somewhere, too. You never can tell. But this one, she’s my Queen. I love her and I’m married to her and she’s in trouble so I want to help her. First I need to find her.

Oh, baloney, said Celeste.

Look, you have a mayor, don’t you?

Yeah, he calls himself that.

All right, so why can’t I have my Queen?

What’s her name then?

I already told you she’s Queen Africa.

So she’s a nigger. Then what did you come to me for? Why don’t you live on that nigger island over there?

She lost something magic and I’m trying to get it back for her, which I guess is another way of saying that I lost
her.

What did she lose then?

A sapphire.

I’ll put the word out. You have something to make it worth my while?

Well, he said thoughtfully, I could give you five, but if I do that I might as well try out that pussy of yours.

Deal.

When he came out, the mayor said to him: See? Nobody touched your backpack.

Thank you, said Tyler.

We never had a victim in this lot, the mayor said. We call it the American place. Nobody can build here except your black and white Americans. That one over there, you have your Hispanics, and whatever you have over there, we have better over here. We might get into it against each other, but we don’t kill each other like they do.

I get it, said Tyler wearily.

He could see how it had to be. —At Coffee Camp, or even at Slab City, anyone who wanted to could have his bushy privacy; humanity hid away from itself; but under the freeway people couldn’t get away from each other like that; they had to deal with each other, to be citizens.

It was almost evening now. The panhandlers were coming home. Stanley lay reading on a knitted quilt on a piece of foam rubber on a cement divider in the parking lot, next to his coffee can on its two bricks which smoked and smudged to keep the mosquitoes away, and the man beside him, tattooed, naked except for a pair of underpants, sweaty, went and crouched in his box of plywood and tarps, brick bricks on top to keep it dry; and the yellow lights glowed in the tiers beyond the great pillar—the brownskinned island and the white and black islands of separateness.