William S. Burroughs (19 page)

Joe had indeed
brought back strange powers and knowledge from the grave, but
without the one thing he had not brought back, his knowledge was of
little use.

Of course, Kim
thought. When you save someone's life, you cheat Death, and he has to
even the score. Kim was aware of the danger from Joe the Dead, but he
chose to ignore it. Joe never left the Cemetery, and Kim was an
infrequent visitor there. Besides, vigilance was the medium in which
Kim lived. The sensors at the back of his neck would warn him of
a hand reaching for a knife, or other weapon.

Joe's only
diversions were checkers and tinkering. He was a natural mechanic,
and Kim worked with him on a number of weapons models which Kim
conceived, leaving the details to Joe. Oh yes, leave the details to
Joe. That's right, just point your finger and say: "Bang, you're
dead"
—
and leave the details to
Joe.

Saint Louis
Return...

Union
Station
...
smell of iron and steam and
soot
...
Kim walks through clouds of steam
flanked by Marbles and Boy, a safari of porters behind him. They
check into the Station Hotel, change clothes, and select suitably
inconspicuous weapons. Then Kim hires a carriage and directs the
driver to his old homesite on Olive Street. Kim sets up a camera and
takes a few pictures. The owner rushes out and asks him what he is
doing.

"I used to live
here...Sentimental considerations, you understand...Hope you don't
mind.
.."

The man looks at Kim
and Marbles and Boy and decides he doesn't mind. Kim packs the
camera, puts it back in the carriage and they drive away...

"Where to now?"

"Tony Faustus's
Restaurant...
"

They are all
impeccably dressed in dark expensive suits. Kim has a large opal set
in gold on the ring finger of his left hand. Opals are bad luck,
someone told him. Kim raised an eyebrow and said, "Really?
Whose?"

"Do you have a
reservation, sir?"

"Certainly."

With an expert
palm-down gesture Boy slips the headwaiter a ten-dollar bill and the
man bows them to a table.

You've come a long
way from Saint Louis, Kim tells himself as he settles into a
padded chair with mahogany armrests.

He orders dry
martinis all around and studies the menu...

"Oysters?"

"Not for me,"
Boy says...

"An acquired
taste...You'll grow into it...
"

Kim orders walleyed
pike, perhaps the most toothsome freshwater fish in the world...Far
better than trout. Venison steak and wood pigeon...The waiter brings
the wine list...Kim selects a dry white wine for the fish and
oysters, a heavy Burgundy for the venison...They finish with baked
Alaska, champagne, and Napoleon brandy...

"My God,
there's Jed Farris with a fat gut at thirty...
"

"Should auld
acquaintance be forgot
..."

In many cases,
yes...

"That's a bad
neighborhood, sir...
"

"Oh I think
we'll manage...
"

The driver shrugs.

The old Chinese puts
on gold-rimmed bifocals and studies the letter Kim hands him. He
nods, folds the letter, and hands it back, and they pass through a
heavy padded door. Thieves and sharpers lounge about smoking opium,
exchanging jokes and stories in a relaxed, quietly convivial
ambiance.

After six pipes on
top of the heavy meal they feel comfortably drowsy and take a
carriage back to the hotel.

Saint Albans
...
Village of Illusion
...

The depot is five
miles from Saint Albans and Kim aims to keep it that way. He now owns
six thousand acres along the river and inland as far as the town.

As soon as Kim
started organizing the Johnson Family, he realized how basically
subversive such an organization would appear to the people who
run America. So the Johnson Family must not appear to these people as
an organized unit. The Johnson Family must go underground. If
you wish to conceal something it is simply necessary to create
disinterest in the area where it is hidden. He planned towns, areas,
communities, owned and occupied by Johnsons, that would appear to
outsiders as boringly ordinary or disagreeable, that would leave no
questions unanswered. Each place would be carefully camouflaged
and provided with a particular reputation. Saint Albans was largely
rural. Reputation: Moonshiner country. Good place to stay out of and
no reason for anyone going there.

In some of our towns
the folks is so nice and so dull you just can't stand it. Not for
long. Towns and areas stocked with Johnson actors, accommodations
reciprocal. Ten actors leave Saint Albans for New York, leaving ten
vacancies in the Saint Albans Hotel.

Saint Albans is used
as a rest home and hideout for agents who have been on difficult
missions. It is a permanent home for old retainers and a training
ground for young initiates. The houses and loading sheds along the
river have been converted into comfortable living places.

Fish and game are
plentiful. The local cannabis is of a high quality owing to the long
hot summers. The retainers and trainees pay off in work and
produce and surveillance. You have to be on the alert for
infiltrators, especially journalists. In any case there was nothing
to see on the surface.

Bill Anderson, who
runs the gun store, is now Sheriff. Arch Ellisor is the Mayor and Doc
White is the Coroner.

Johnsons in good
standing, rod-riding yeggs and thieves know they can stop off at
Saint Albans. They also know that it is very unhealthy to abuse Saint
Albans hospitality. Troublemakers and bullies get short shrift
here. We get them out of Saint Albans is all. In one piece, if they
are lucky. If not, Doc White signs a death certificate. Authority is
swift, informal and incisive.

October's
Bright Blue Weather

When
the frost is on the pumpkin

And
the corn is in the shock

And
you leave the house bare-headed

And
go out to feed the stock

(Someone else can
feed the fuckers.)

October's bright
blue weather is at its best in the Ozarks. The road from the depot
winds through heavy woods. It's like driving into an impressionist
painting, splashes of sepia and red and russet and orange peeling off
and blowing away, dead leaves swirling around their feet. They are
sitting on benches in an open buckboard. As they draw near the town
they get a whiff of burning leaves.

Saint Albans is
built along a river crisscrossed by stone bridges. The outskirts of
the town present the dilapidated appearance of a stranded
carnival, or military encampment, with tents and covered wagons and
improvised dwellings. There is a large open market surrounded by
baths and lodging houses, bars, restaurants, opium dens, anything you
want, Meester. In the market, besides game fish and produce, weapons
of all description are for sale. Here is a lead weight on a
heavy elastic
...

"It looks
dangerous," Kim decides.

Boy, who has been a
circus juggler, is into these weapons that require prestidigitational
dexterity, like Ku Budo, the nunchaku, chains with weights on both
ends and this elastic monster, Kim could just feel it jumping
back and hitting him right on the bridge of the nose.

Moving on to an
older part of the town, solid houses of brick and stone with gardens.
The hotel stands back from the street in a grove of oak and maple, a
red brick four-story building with the ornate brickwork and
recessed windows of the 1880s. Kim shakes hands with some old hands.
None of that Lord of the Manor shit. Kim is just another Johnson. He
introduces himself to some new kids on staff duty.

The kitchen staff is
drawn from those who feel some affinity for cooking and serving
food. They can go on from there in any direction. Our educational
system is: find what someone can do and give him an opportunity to do
it. Not many are competent on a policy level.

Bill Anderson knows
more about guns and weapons than any three experts. He is a superb
technician. His grasp of the overall picture of conflict and the
basic nature of weapons qualifies him O.P. (on policy). Doc
White was a ship's doctor, has been all over the world. Here is that
rarity
—
a doctor who thinks. He can
see what is wrong in any given situation whether it be a human body
or a societal structure...

He was one of the
first to see the virus as an alien life form, highly intelligent from
its virus point of view. ("Gentlemen, the human cell can only
divide and reproduce itself fifty thousand times. This is known as
the Hayflick Limit. But a virus can do it any number of times. The
virus is immune to the deadly factor of repetition. Your virus is
never bored.")

And Arch Ellisor the
Mayor is a brilliant economist who predicted the eventual collapse of
money as a means of exchange..."Any purely quantitative
factor must, by its nature and function, devaluate in time. Just like
a joke. Marvelous. Nice. Cut off his head. And what are we to do with
a screaming headless eagle throwing bloody gobs of panic through
stock exchanges of the world? The terrible moment has arrived
when no amount of money will buy anything. The economic machine
grinds to a splintering halt."

Kim saw that the
whole power of the Mafia is the power of life and death and set out
to produce an elite of expert Johnson Assassins, J.A. Plenty of
openings in the J.A. department and we get plenty of applicants.
Tough sharp kids. It takes some screening to weed out the nut
cases.

Bill Anderson the
Sheriff is waiting in the lobby. They go into the gun and briefing
room. The Sheriff gives Kim a heavy double-action
44
special with rosewood handle and a bead sight. Kim hefts
the gun lovingly, falling in love with the gun. It's something every
gun lover knows and it drives gun haters to hysteria.

"Any trouble,
Bill?" Kim asks.

"Some squatters
has moved in here"
—
Bill points
to a map on the wall
—
"without
asking, and I'm going to check it out
...
and
Old Mother Gilly is screaming for help again. His horrible hound
dogs, half starved likely, is tore the bag off his cow, and Gilly
can't bring himself to do what needs to be done. You know how he
is...
"

Gilly is a harmless
defeated old critter, always complaining and calling on the neighbors
for help.

"Me and Boy
will take care of the dogs," Kim says.

"I'll go along
with Bill and check out the squatters
..."
Marbles says. He is perfect backup, cool and alert, never
loses control.

"Don't take any
chances."

"We won't."

As they drive out to
Gilly's place in the buckboard, Kim fills Boy in.

"Always
something like this
...
a horse fell in his
well, he tried to raise bees and nearly got stung to death, his hawgs
et the poison he put out for the raccoons and polecats was killing
his chickens...Then he got the idea of raising them chickens that
don't never touch the ground...

"Had his
chickens on chicken wire about two feet up but raccoons got in under
the wire, reached up and pulled chicken legs down through the mesh,
and et off the drumsticks. So when Gilly goes out in the morning Lord
Lord his chickens is flopping around with their legs et off...He
gives folks something to talk about
...
turn
in here...
"

When Boy and Kim
drive up in the buckboard, one of the new kids as driver, old Gilly
comes running out of his dirty little house, broken windows stuffed
with rags.

"Lord Lord, I
just can't understand what got into them dogs."

"Maybe it was
just what didn't get into them," Boy says.

"As God is my
witness them dogs is fed good as me
...
"

Things have been
hard
...
don't mind telling you
...
had
a bad year with my hogs
...
guess you heard
about it
—
"