William S. Burroughs (10 page)

Now he waits until
he doesn't have to push at all, his ass lets go and he starts
shooting and with every shot a can flies off the wall and powder
smoke drifts back across his face with a faint smell of fresh
excrement. The sensation is intense. He leans back and stretches and
reloads the
38.
He knows that people
often lose control of their bowels when they die so to shoot right
from his opening asshole is powerful magic. He pulls up his pants and
picks up his "alligator" and lights a sulfur candle,
staying just long enough for a whiff of brimstone before he closes
the door. So many smells are nice if you don't get too much, like
skunks and cyanide and raw meat and carrion.

He walks down to the
barn, where he finds the millstone of the dream sunk in the dirt
again. He pries it up with a rusty crowbar and leans it against the
wall. An exposed scorpion sidles about, tail raised. Kim draws his
38
and the scorpion disappears in a smoky flash, writhing
fragments around a black hole. With a rope and pulley he lifts the
millstone and lowers it onto the two sawhorses to form a table where
he lays the guns out at the cardinal points of the compass. With
drawing paper from the studio he draws four man-sized targets and
tacks them to a backdrop of heavy oak planks thirty feet from the
table.

Now to mark out
targets. The classic gunfighters mark just above the belt. Three-inch
circle. Kim taps his solar plexus, remembering the feeling of
being hit there once in football practice. He draws a three-inch
circle. And now the heart, which is right in line if you are facing
somebody. Hollow at the base of the neck in front where the
collarbones converge. Spot just below the nose. Spot between the
eyes. He stands back and looks at the targets. If you want to be sure
of no recovery
...
He draws a three-inch
circle over the liver.

He selects the
22...
inside belt holster that fits down behind his fly,
the rosewood handle just under his belt buckle...Lightest pistol,
easiest to shoot. Must hit a vital spot vulnerable to this
load...Heart, the two neck shots, and between the eyes. Not enough
shock for below-the-nose shot.

With a smooth
unhurried movement he drops his hand to his belt and sweeps the
pistol up to eye level, steadied with the left hand, and fires six
shots aiming for the heart. All shots within a three-inch
circle
...
"a heavier powder load with
this accuracy
...
I'll ask old
Anderson...
"

He sits down and
runs through the draw-aim-fire sequence a number of times, seeing the
bullets hit the target, imprinting the sequence on his "alligator
brain," as he calls it, that part of him that knows just what to
do and does it with a depraved reptilian smile.

Now the
44
Russian. He touches it with gentle precise fingers as
he would touch Denny's cock, oh he'd love to have little tiny naked
boy cameos cut in opals and rubies, set in mother-of-pearl handles.
His holster, oh not a vulgar tie-down, is a flap of leather that
clips onto the pants. Relax completely and don't trigger the action.
Now smooth, deliberate, both hands, a solar-plexus bull's-eye.
Paralyzing shot. Now up to the hollow of the neck...Now up to the
middle of the forehead just for jolly before he falls. Now
belt-buckle shot up to the heart. The gun is so
easy
with the
adjustable hair trigger, almost shoots itself...Need a double-action
Russian...I'll ask the Old Man
...
Kim saw
himself in a sleigh picking off wolves with the
44.
But there are too many wolves.

"THROW THE
COUNTESS OUT," he bellows lustily. So he and the handsome
footman just make it back to the castle.

Now the
32-20
with the holster tied down. He goes into a sheriff act.

"Fill your
hand, you stage-robbing sidewinder!"

Draw aim fire, just
above the belt buckle...A little off, trigger pulls hard. Needs some
custom work, but the load feels good. He does a good workmanlike job
with this gun, but it doesn't seem to have the élan of the
others. No doubt about it, double-action is better not only for speed
but because gun stays on target whereas the act of cocking throws gun
off target. Still the
44
Russian has a
balletic sort of grace with stylized movements, the hand snaking out,
whole body lining up
...
he sees himself in
pink tights with a disdainful nonchalant hard-on. Perhaps he
will wear a skeleton suit for his gunfights, or a codpiece with a
skull on it. He tries the
38,
wearing a
glove on his left hand. He clasps the frame above and below the
cylinder
—
what a grouping, you just
point and squirt the bullets out like a hose.

He packs away the
guns except for the
38,
which he wears, and
picks up the bag, the four canvases, a double-barreled shotgun,
and the huge Gray's
Anatomy.
Carrying this rather awkward
load he starts down the path thinking about Denny, getting a hard-on
and not looking where he is going, he jams his right foot between two
rocks and his body pitches forward, bag, guns, canvases and Gray's
flying ahead of him and skidding down the path. He gets his foot out
using both hands and grimacing with pain. He can't walk on the right
foot. Using the shotgun as a cane he drags himself down to the
riverfront and into the boathouse.

He strips off his
boot and sock, the ankle is swollen and turning blue. He puts on a
pot of hot water to clean the guns and soak his ankle. The throbbing
pain is getting worse by the minute. He hobbles to the night
table and takes out the bottle of laudanum. Dose: fifteen to
thirty drops every six hours for pain. Kim measures out thirty-five
drops into the medicine glass and washes it down with a little warm
water. Bitter and aromatic, with a taste of cinnamon. He makes a cup
of tea and sits down at the table, his foot in hot water and Epsom
salts.

In a few minutes the
hot throbs of pain from his ankle turn to cool blue waves of pleasure
and comfort that hit the back of his neck and spread down the back of
his thighs. What a feeling. He squirms like a contented alligator. He
dries his foot and rubs his ankle with camphorated liniment.

From
Kim's Diary

Always take time
enough to be sure of your shot. Always give the impression that
you
have
plenty of time. This will fluster and hurry your
opponent.

The
22
is the easiest pistol to shoot. Light weight and light
load.
The lighter the pistol the better.
Avoid heavy pistols
with a lot of weight in the barrel.

General procedure
for the heavier calibers is to aim an inch above the belt buckle.
Drawing from a low tied-down holster when the arm is extended and
ready to fire you line up on this target. However, if the draw is
from belt level, the lineup is on the solar-plexus shot which has an
even surer knockdown, breathtaking shock and in many cases will go
through and shatter the spine. (He can see the shiny lead bullet
embedded in white coral.)

There are various
shooting positions. Lining the gun up using both hands from the
one-point position. Holding gun forward at eye level, steadied with
both hands. One-hand position, arm extended, leaning slightly forward
to sight the shot from above. Gun held above and below cylinder by
gloved hand.

Quick unexpected
body movements can produce a crucial miss on the first shot. Simplest
of these for a thin person is the sudden turn sideways. Or drop to
one knee. As you reach for the gun,
smile.
The generous
gesture:
"Here
is something I want to
give
you."

Identify yourself
with your gun. Take it apart and finger every piece of it. Think of
the muzzle as a steel eye feeling for your opponent's vitals with a
searching movement. Move forward in time and see the bullet hitting
the target as an
accomplished fact.

If an opponent is
looking for trouble it is always well to seem to be avoiding the
encounter. He is leaning further and further into your space. He
is more and more off his home base.

He studies Gray's
Anatomy,
plotting path and trajectory of the bullet in body.
What is between solar plexus and spine? Where are the veins and
arteries?

As the cave painters
often depicted animals with the heart or other vital organs visible,
so it is well to take an X-ray view of your adversary. Identify
yourself with
death.
See yourself as
death
to your
opponent.

On the fourth day
Kim wakes up with very little pain in his ankle. He can get around
quite easily on a heavy hickory cane he has cut and smoothed down
with sandpaper. He takes a dose of the hashish extract instead of
laudanum, and writes...

I am learning to
dissociate gun, arm, and eye, letting them do it on their own, so
draw aim and fire will become a
reflex.
I must learn to
dissociate one hand from the other and turn myself into Siamese
twins. I see myself sitting naked on a pink satin stool. On the left
side my hairdo is
18th-century,
tied back
in a bun at the nape of the neck.

I sit there with a
hard-on. I am naked except for knee-high stockings in pink silk and
pink pumps, covering a cowering Inquisitor with my
double-barreled flintlock in left hand, the flint an exquisite
arrowhead, the whole artifact built by a Swiss watchmaker with a
little music box that plays on after the shot, the bullets greased
with ambergris and musk.

"Really
exquisite with the black powder scent, Father."

On the right side,
wearing nothing but boots, I cover a nigger-killing sheriff with my
44
Russian. This split gives me a tingly wet dream feeling
like the packing dream, where I keep finding more things to go into
my suitcases which are already overflowing and the boat is whistling
in the harbor and another drawer all full of things I need...A
50-caliber ball crashes through the priest's chest. The music box
plays a minuet as I shoot the sheriff right in the Adam's apple.
I call it "making him do the Turkey."

Kim walks over to
the old railroad. There is a slope leading up to the rusty weed-grown
tracks. He sets up his targets against the slope. He can feel the
guns as extensions of his arm. He knows just what every little part
is doing. He whirls and spins around, trying crazy shots. He postures
obscenely, dancing sideways with his ass sticking out and a
street-boy grin. He does an insolent bump as he drills the sheriff
right in the heart, and then just for jolly a quick shot to the head,
which being a can of tomatoes with the top rusted through
explodes in a splash of red. Now Kim rubs his crotch, looking down at
the dead law.

"You're dead
and you stink."

He turns to walk
away and makes the "vulgar whorish gesture of lifting his
foot and showing the whole sole in contempt."

A frog-faced deputy
sidles out of a doorway. Kim drops his pants and shoots between his
legs. Wheeeeee...he hits the solar plexus, ranging upward.

He straightens up
and sees a face looking at him which seems at first part of the
bushes, like those faces in picture puzzles, you can win a trip
to Niagara Falls if you find them all in the trees and clouds...

(Soft slow dogs
crusted with the smell of all humanity eyes forever searching for
that long past lover whose breath will never warm you more.)

It's a fawn face
with pointed ears and yellow eyes and tawny yellow curls like
bronze wire. He is dressed in shirt and pants of dappled green. Kim
feels a slackness, a drifting floating sensation as the picture
moves. Steady on. Take it easy. The boy rubs his crotch and grins a
slow wolfish smile, showing sharp animal teeth. Kim stands there,
pants around his ankles with a hard-on, his face blank as if wiped by
the summer sky and drifting clouds.

(It was the same now
when I was a baby kangaroo in Sister Howe's pouch nothing was
disgusting not even the tears the hot meaty rush of a nosebleed.)

The boy advances. He
is wearing soft yellow boots to the knees. A heavy revolver which Kim
recognizes as the new Colt
45
double-action
is at his belt. On the other side in a leather sheath is a silver
flute.

(Darkness is
gathering behind me, thickening in puddles of ink. We began to take
huge bites out of our rolls
...
their rich
breath filled my head, a little tingle of excitement ran through me.)

"I'm Carl
Piper."

"I'm Kim
Carsons."

"I want to pump
you, Kim."

Standing by the
ruined railway on the sandy bank of a deep pool Carl wraps his hips
around Kim with his right arm around Kim's waist holding him up the
flute is in his left hand playing right into Kim's left ear phantom
train whistles from lonely sidings boy cries from trestles and
pools thin ghostly fading into the inky blackness of space Kim hooks
his hands around Carl's buttocks pumping him in his blank face
turned to the sky the hot meaty rush of a nosebleed down his chest
spatters his spurting cock with blood.