William S. Burroughs (21 page)

Boy is writing stick
songs and lyrics
...

Pick up your stick

And pick it up quick

Before you get a
whack

From someone else's
stick

You're old and sick

Lean on that stick

You wanna die in the
nick?

You can't hack it?

Better pack it

Grab that stick

And grab it quick

You're hot as a
rivet

No room to pivot

Climb up your stick

And turn down the
wick

One more scorer

You want twenty
more?

Reach for your stick
instead

You wanna hole in
your head?

You wanna pick up
some lead?

Reach for your stick
instead

And get that steady
bread

A man's best friend
is his stick

Can't do no more
time

Don't want no more
trouble

Pick up your stick
on the double

Your chick's a
bloody snitch

Ride your stick like
a witch

She'll sing you into
Sing Sing

Unless you sprout a
wing

Fly away on your
stick

And fly away quick

In the kitchen they
are measuring out whiffs of Saint Louis
...
tall
thin lead bottle.

He fades down toward
the river with a soft cold fire

Wearing a sort of
fur I carry my own temperature with the river from here

Around the edge blue
arc lights pick at the cuticle

of sand, smell of
the tidal river on the second-floor porch

A gold smell of
watches, smoke and stale sweat

Strange pistol form
traced on the blanket

someone beside him
breathing

getting light a
balloon at the window

floating up and
walked along the treetops

lighter they are
blowing away

a worn wood table
with millions of old photos

moving dressing
undressing

The old-fashioned
icebox behind him and tunnels of

KIM blowing away in
four-letter words and puffs of

violet smoke.
Standing on a back porch

He is drinking rum
and Coca-Cola

Gray shadows
curiously empty

Just a little
Japanese dust on the floor

Jacket or vest is
balmy but cool

He is waiting. He is
nervous. He is sitting in a

wooden armchair.

There is a fossil
holster at his belt cold breath in the gun

The handle light and
springy mercury bullets

He got out like heat
waves up over the porch and

into the kitchen.
Light wind blowing behind him

Tom was sitting
across the sky

glass of beer
studying in the kitchen

And added some white
rum

"What s noxious
in four silver flashes?"

He woke up to the
sound of rain. He lay there with his eyes closed. Where was he? Who
was he? He opened his eyes and looked up at a ceiling covered in
yellow wallpaper. He could see a window beyond the bed he was lying
in. The window was half open and there was the sound and smell of
rain. He could hear someone breathing in the bed beside him. Slowly
he turned his head. A boy with dark tousled hair and pimples was
sleeping with his mouth open, his teeth showing. Slowly he twisted
out of bed. He looked down. He was naked. His body was thin and the
pubic hairs were bright red. There was a slightly turgid feeling in
his cock which was half hard. He stepped through a doorway...down a
hall to a half-open door. Must be the bathroom. He urinated then
looked around at the towels and the bathtub stained with rust. He
opened the medicine chest. There was a bottle labeled Tincture of
Opium half full of a brown reddish liquid. He made his way back
to the bedroom and stepped to the window and looked out. The rain was
coming down in silver-gray streamers. He could see a muddy backyard
with some bedraggled iris and a little vegetable garden. A swing
made from an old tire hung from the branch of an oak tree. Further on
was a fence and beyond that a pasture and fields. To his left he
could see a large pond. He turned back toward the bed.

The boy was still
sleeping on his back, his chest rising and falling in the gray light.
He slipped back into bed. There was a cobweb in one corner of the
window where the screen was slightly rusted and the raindrops
shone iridescent in the dawn light. He lay there on his back, his
breathing slowly synchronizing with the other. He felt his cock
slowly distend and press against the covers. There was a smell of
unwashed bedding. The boy turned toward him and an arm almost fell
across his chest. The boy shivered, snuggling against him as he
turned sideways. Now the boy's eyes flew open and they looked into
each other's faces. He could feel the boy's cock throbbing against
his stomach. They kissed and seemed to melt together in a gush of
sperm. Suddenly they were both dressed and going down the stairs with
yellow oak banisters and into the kitchen. Smell of coffee and eggs
and bacon. He ate hungrily. So far they had not exchanged a word.

Belches
...
Taste
of eggs and bacon
...
Outside the rain had
almost stopped and watery sunlight crossed the kitchen table.

They stepped out
onto the back porch. The mist was lifting from the field beyond the
backyard, and the tire swing moved gently in a slight breeze. Under
the porch they found fishing rods and a can with dirt. They picked up
several night crawlers in the flower beds and then through a gate and
down the fields through the wet grass and came to the edge of the
pond. It was fairly large, a small lake actually. There was a little
pier to which was moored a rowboat. They got in and the boy rowed out
toward the middle of the lake...He shipped the oars. They baited
their hooks with the squirming red purple worms and dropped them over
the side. In a few minutes they were pulling in bass and perch and
one three-pound walleye. Cleaned the fish and back to the house.

The sky was clouded
over again, the fish on top of the ice. The day passed in a mindless
trance. They sat at the kitchen table. They walked through the
garden. "Everything must appear normal," the boy said.
After sundown they went up to the bedroom in the stale smell of
unwashed sheets and made each other again.

Suddenly we are both
awake. It's time. We go to the study, there is a secret drawer and
two odd-looking pistols with thick barrels but very light. And I know
it is a built-in silencer low velocity nine-millimeter with
mercury bullets and we have a job to do...So we go down and get into
our vintage Moon. And now I see we are on the outskirts of East Saint
Louis, a shabby rural slum, houses with limestone foundations. Well
we got this job to do. There it is right ahead. The roadhouse
gambling joint. We ease into the parking lot. He should be along any
minute now. A car pulls up. This is it. A man, two bodyguards, we
swing out of the car sput sput sput. Good clean job.

If there's going to
be trouble on a job it always comes
before
the job. If you
can't clear up that trouble before the job, better forget the job. Oh
it may not be much. Just a fumble, something dropped on the floor,
the wrong thing said
...
you leave a nickel
instead of a quarter for a newspaper.

"Where you been
for twenty years, Mister?"

Everything is OK on
this one. Just a routine Mafia containment job
...
the
guns perform superbly:

Sput Sput Sput

A spectral
arm
...
blue arc lights
...
streets
half buried in sand smell of the tidal river he settles gently onto a
mattress just an impression, a human fossil form traced on the
blankets slow cold breath in his lungs someone breathing beside him
gray shadows out through the boards at the window floating out like
heat waves up into the treetops lighter lighter blowing away across
the sky millions of old photos of Tom, making tea in the kitchen,
laughing, dressing, undressing, leaving a tunnel of Tom behind him
and tunnels of Kim coming, writing, walking, shooting, caving
in, running together in little silver flashes and puffs of violet
smoke.

A whiff of Saint
Louis, he is standing on a back porch looking down toward the
river. He is drinking rum and Coca-Cola. His mind is curiously empty,
waiting. He has long fine black hair like a Japanese or an Indian. He
is wearing a fur vest. You can smell the river from here. Now he is
sitting in an armchair of yellow oak. There is a strange pistol in a
holster at his belt the handle is springy feeling the whole gun very
light like a toy. Fifteen nine-millimeter rounds Mercury
bullets. He gets up and walks across the porch and into the kitchen
closing the screen door behind him. Tom is sitting at a worn wooden
table with a glass of beer doing a crossword puzzle. Kim fills his
glass with Coca-Cola and adds some white rum. Tom looks up..."What
is noxious in four letters beginning with
..."

Colonel Sutton-Smith
was a well-to-do amateur archeologist who was attempting to establish
a link between the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt and the Mayan
hieroglyphs. He had published several books and a number of articles.
He was also a highly placed operative of British Intelligence. He was
in America to study links between the mound-building people of
Illinois and the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. This necessitated
several weeks of research in the library of the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, which was an ideal drop for intelligence
reports. He circulated in Washington society, sounding out just where
America would stand in the event of a war in Europe and what military
potential it possessed. He chose as a base for his fieldwork a small
town in western Illinois called Johnsonville.

The following are
coded entries from the Colonel's diary.

September
17, 1908...
Fine clear
weather with a crisp touch of autumn in the air, the leaves just
beginning to change. I have rarely seen a more beautiful
countryside, heavily wooded with an abundance of streams and ponds.
The town itself and the townspeople seem archetypical for middle
American towns of this size. Two barefoot boys with battered straw
hats passed me on the street this morning singing:

"Old sow got
caught in the fence last spring...
"

Charming and
quelles
derrieres mon cher.
At noon I went into the hotel for a drink.
The bartender was telling a joke about a farmer who put some whiskey
in a glass of milk for his sick wife. Well she takes a long drink and
says
...
"Arch, don't you ever get rid
of that cow." And everybody laughed heartily. Perhaps a bit too
heartily. In the late afternoon the townspeople stroll up and down...

"Howdy, Doc.
How many you kill today?"

"Evening,
Parson."

Frog-croaking and
hog calls drift in from the surrounding countryside. Women on
porches call to the menfolks...

"Hurry up, your
dinner's getting cold...
"

Back to the hotel
for a cocktail before dinner. The bartender is telling the same joke
and everybody laughs just as loud, though several of the patrons were
here at noon. Am I imagining things or is there something just a
bit
too typical
about Johnsonville? And why do the women all
have big feet? Tomorrow I will try to recruit some local lads for my
digs. And what smashers they are. Have to be careful in a small place
like this.

September
18, 1908...
Not much luck
recruiting labor. Harvest time, you know. But I have met a local
farmer who showed me some artifacts he found in his fields near a
mound. What an old bore but every now and again he asks a sharp
question. Hummmmmm. He said he'd be glad to send one of his sons
along to show me the site.