William S. Burroughs (2 page)

Kim's second shot
takes out a grove of trees at the end of the cemetery.

The wind is rising,
ripping blurs and flashes of russet orange red from the trees,
whistling through tombstones.

All the spurious old
father figures rush on stage.

"Stop, my
son!"

"No son of
yours, you worthless old farts."

Kim lifts his gun.

"You're
destroying the universe!"

"What
universe?"

Kim shoots a hole in
the sky. Blackness pours out and darkens the earth. In the last rays
of a painted sun, a Johnson holds up a barbed-wire fence for others
to slip through. The fence has snagged the skyline
...
a
great black rent. Screaming crowds point to the torn sky.

"Off the
track! Off the track!"

"Fix it!"
the Director bellows
...

"What with, a
Band-Aid and chewing gum? Rip in the Master Film.
..
Fix
it yourself, Boss Man."

"Abandon
ship, God damn it...Every man for himself!"

F
or
three days Kim had camped on the mesa top, sweeping the valley with
his binoculars. A cloud of dust headed south told him they figured
him to ride in that direction for Mexico. He had headed north
instead, into a land of sandstone formations, carved by wind and
sand
—
a camel, a tortoise, Cambodian
temples
—
and everywhere caves
pocked into the red rock like bubbles in boiling oatmeal. Some
of the caves had been lived in at one time or another: rusty tin
cans, pottery shards, cartridge cases. Kim found an arrowhead six
inches long, chipped from obsidian, and a smaller arrowhead of
rose-colored flint.

On top of the mesa
were crumbled mounds of earth that had once been houses. Slabs of
stone had been crisscrossed to form an altar.
Homo sapiens
was
here.

Dusk was falling and
blue shadows gathered in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east.
Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ! Rivers of blood! Mountains of
blood! Does Christ never get tired of bleeding? To the west the sun
sets behind thunderclouds over the Jemez Mountains, and Jimenez
straddles the mountains with his boots of rock and trees, a vast
charro
rising into the sky, his head a crystal skull of clouds
as his guns spit from darkening battlements and thunder rattles over
the valley. The evening star shines clear and green
...
"Fair
as a star, when only one/Is shining in the sky." That's
Wordsworth, Kim remembers. It is raining in the Jemez Mountains.

"It is raining,
Anita Huffington." Last words of General Grant, spoken to his
nurse, circuits in his brain flickering out like lightning in gray
clouds.

Kim leaned back
against stone still warm from the sun. A cool wind touched his face
with the smell of rain.

Pottery
shards
...
arrowheads
...
a
crib
...
a rattle
...
a
blue spoon
...
a slingshot, the rubber rotted
through
...
rusting fishhooks
...
tools
...
you
can see there was a cabin here once...a hypodermic syringe glints in
the sun
...
the needle has rusted into the
glass, forming little sparks of brown mica
...
abandoned
artifacts
...

He holds the rose
flint arrowhead in his hand. Here is the arrowhead, lovingly
fashioned for a purpose. Campfires flicker on Indian faces eating the
luscious dark meat of the passenger pigeon. He fondles the obsidian
arrowhead, so fragile
...
did they break
every time they were used, like bee stings, he wonders?

(Bison steaks
roasting on a spit.)

Somebody made this
arrowhead. It had a creator long ago. This arrowhead is the only
proof of his existence. Living things can also be seen as artifacts,
designed for a purpose. So perhaps the human artifact had a creator.
Perhaps a stranded space traveler needed the human vessel to
continue his journey, and he made it for that purpose? He died before
he could use it? He found another escape route? This artifact, shaped
to fill a forgotten need, now has no more meaning or purpose
than this arrowhead without the arrow and the bow, the arm and
the eye. Or perhaps the human artifact was the creator's last card,
played in an old game many light-years ago. Chill of empty space.

Kim gathers wood for
a fire. The stars are coming out. There's the Big Dipper. His father
points to Betelgeuse in the night sky over Saint Louis
...
smell
of flowers in the garden. His father's gray face on a pillow.

Helpless
pieces in the game he plays

On
this checkerboard of nights and days.

He picks up the
obsidian arrowhead, arrow and bow of empty space. You can't see them
anymore without the arm and the eye...the chill
...
so
fragile
...
shivers and gathers wood. Can't
see them anymore. Slave Gods in the firmament. He remembers his
father's last words:

"Stay out of
churches, son. All they got a key to is the shit house. And swear to
me you will never wear a lawman's badge."

Hither
and thither moves, and checks, and slays,

And
one by one back in the Closet lays.

Playthings in an old
game, the little toy soldiers are covered with rust, shaped to
fill a forgotten empty space.

Rusty tin
cans
...
pottery shards
...
cartridge
cases
...
arrowheads
...
a
hypodermic syringe glints in the sun.

The horse is as much
a part of the West as the landscape, but Kim never really made it
with the horse. He tried at first to establish a telepathic bond
with his horse, but the horse hated the relationship and tried to
kill him at every opportunity. It would swell itself up when he put
on the saddle, or it would suddenly scrape against a tree or run
under a low branch. All the old horse tricks.

He did eventually
break one beast, a strawberry roan, down into telepathy with a loaded
quirt and some rather ingenious electronic devices but his
"Strawberry," as he called it, finally turned on him and
Kim swore that he would never again become involved with a horse. He
hated their hysteria, their stubborn malice, and their awful yellow
teeth.

"Shoot-out in
front of the Dead Ass Saloon, still noon heat, dusty street from
nowhere to nowhere, lead flying all over the set, my faithful cayuse
at my side, then he hits me from behind with a front hoof. I roll,
twist, and put a quick shot into his ribs from below. He screams like
a woman spitting blood, bullets clipping all around couldn't hit me
because of the prancing screaming horse, then he bolts right for them
and they are all shooting at the horse and I take them out slow and
easy and greasy. Percussion lock days, had to grease your bullets.
Otherwise sparks fly out between the cylinder and the barrel,
and all six cylinders is subject to go up in your face."

It was his practice
to move on foot and he could cover up to fifty miles a day with his
sorcerer's gait and his specially designed spring-walking boots,
then pick up a horse, keep it for a week or so, and release it. Kim
intended to head into the Jemez Mountains and hide out for a
month...He would need camping equipment, too heavy to carry.
..

The area was mostly
Mexican, and Kim had
family
letters.
..

There are signs that
indicate the presence of a stranger in rural areas. Some are
positive, like the barking of dogs. Other indications are negative,
like the sudden cessation of frogs croaking.

Joe the Dead had
taught Kim how to circumvent this obstacle course. "If you
want to hide something, create disinterest in the area where it is
hidden. Try this on a city street. Don't give anyone any reason to
look at you and no one will see you. You have become invisible. This
is easy in a city, where most people are concerned with their own
business. But in the country you have to get around critters whose
business it is to smell and see and hear you and give notice of your
approach. So you have to give the watchers good reasons not to smell
and see and hear you and give notice of your approach. This amulet is
from the Cat Goddess Bast. All dogs hate and fear it. But you have to
animate its power and make it work for you."

Kim took three dogs
to a remote mountain cabin and got down to the root of their dogness.
The dogs did not survive this psychic dissection. Kim wondered if any
creature can survive the exposure of its basic mechanisms. After
that, Kim had the power to cloud dogs' minds, to blunt their sense of
smell, their hearing, and their sight. And he could make himself part
of his surroundings so that he did not disturb the frogs and
birds and crickets.

He reached a road of
yellow gravel unobserved. He followed the road to a store by a
bridge...sound of running water
...

"Buenos
dias, senor.
"
Kim
stood in front of the counter, an envelope in his right hand. A thin
old man in a gray flannel shirt looked up. It was not often that
anyone reached his store unannounced. Two young men watched from
the back of the store.

"I bring
greetings from Don Bernabe Jurado." Kim passed the envelope over
the counter. The old man read the letter.

"You are
welcome, Mr. Hall. My name is Don Linares." He led the way
through the store to a back room, where a screen door opened onto a
patio
...
fruit trees, a pump, chickens
scratching.

The old man motioned
Kim to a chair and gave him an appraising glance.

"You are
hungry."

Kim nodded
...

Huevos rancheros
with fried beans and blue tortillas and a pot of coffee. Kim ate with
delicate animal voracity, like a hungry raccoon. A cat rubbed against
his leg. It was a handsome brute, a purple-gray tomcat with green
eyes.

Kim enjoyed the
Spanish ritual of talking about everything but the business in hand.
They talked about the weather, the railroad's decision to set up the
terminal in Lamy rather than in Santa Fe itself. Mostly they talked
about mutual friends and acquaintances, Don Linares throwing in a bit
of false data here and there; the letter could be a forgery, and Kim
an impostor.

"Ah? But they
are already married since June."

"Yes, to be
sure. I am forgetful at times."

There was a moment
of silence. Kim knew he was being tested. Well, he wouldn't mind
being reborn as a Mexican.

"How can I be
of service?" the old man finally asked.

"I need a horse
and some supplies and much silence. Sugar, salt, lard, tea, chile,
salt pork, flour, a bag of lemons
..."
Kim
looked over the stock of guns...Ah
there
is something he'd
been looking for: a smoothbore
44,
chambered for shot shells. You have a room full of turkeys to take
care of, this gun could throw a hail of lead three feet wide. Ideal
gun for survival hunting. And the
only
thing for snakes. Kim
paid in gold.

The Jemez Basin,
crater of an extinct volcano, looks as though it were scooped out by
a giant hand. A river winds down the middle of the basin and a
number of spring-fed tributaries feed into the river, so that the
whole basin is crisscrossed by water. Some streams are only two feet
wide at the top but eight feet deep, with an overhanging bank. The
valley is full of frogs, and you can see great yellow tadpoles deep
down in the dark slow-moving water of these swampy streams.

Kim camped on the
south slope, his tent hidden by trees. He baited his hook with a big
purple worm and dropped it into one of the still, narrow streams,
yellow flash of fish side in the dark water.

He held the crisp
fried fish by the head and the tail, eating the meat off the
backbone, washed down with lemonade.

Twilight, fish
jumping, a symphony of frogs. Kim saw a vast frog conducting the
orchestra, and he thought of Rimbaud's "Historic Evening."
—
"A
master's hand awakes the meadow's harpsichord
...
they
are playing cards at the bottom of the pond.
.."