William S. Burroughs (22 page)

The boy is about
seventeen with a pimply face and a wide smile. He showed me places in
the fields where he had found arrowheads and we climbed to the top of
a mound. I brought out some sandwiches which we shared and two
bottles of beer. It soon be came evident that he was offering
himself, rubbing his crotch and grinning. When I unbuttoned his pants
it sprang out pearling like an oyster yum yum yum. Who would expect
such amenities in the wilds of America? I gave him a silver dollar,
with which he seemed delighted. I will see him again tomorrow.

Back to town.
Bartender telling the same joke. It goes round and round in my head.
Don't ever get rid of that cow. Old sow got caught in the fence last
spring. How many you kill today, Doc? Hurry, dinner's getting
cold. There
is
something odd here. Can't shake the feeling of
being watched. Of course any stranger in a small town is an object of
curiosity. But this is something more. A cool appraisal at the margin
of vision as if their faces changed completely as soon as they were
no longer observed. Perhaps I am just professionally suspicious but
I've been in this business long enough to know when somebody is
seeing
me.

September
19, 1908...
Today John was
waiting when I reached the farmhouse, which is about a mile outside
the town. He was wearing blue denim Levi's, soft leather boots that
looked handmade, a blue shirt and a carryall bag slung from a strap
over his shoulder. There was a revolver in a holster at his belt and
a knife. I noticed that the pistol handle of polished walnut had
been cut to fit his hand.

"Might find us
a squirrel or two...
"

He led the way to
another mound about two miles away...The country is hardwood forest
through which wind streams and rivers, I could see bass and pike and
catfish in the clear blue pools.

"I think I know
a place to dig," he told me.

About halfway up the
mound was an open place and it did indeed look like a burial site. We
took turns digging and about five feet down the shovel went through
rotten wood and there was a skull looking up at us and gold teeth
winking in the sun.

"Holy shit,
it's Aunt Sarah!" he exclaimed. "I can tell by the teeth."

We shoveled the dirt
back. He patted the earth down with the shovel and wrote with a
stick:

please do not
disturb

He turned to me,
opened his mouth, sticking his teeth out and squashing his nose in a
hideously realistic imitation of the skeleton face. It was
irresistibly comic and we both had a good laugh.

"Let's go on up
to the top. There's a flat stone there may have been some kinda
altar.
Human sacrifices, feller say."

The altar was
composed of large blocks of limestone fitted together. The stone
had been pushed aside by a giant oak that shaded it, giving the place
a dark and sinister aspect.

At the same time I
was seized with uncontrollable excitement and we both stripped
off our clothes. This time it was oriental embroidery, my dear...[The
Colonel's term for buggery.] He took out a compass and placed me
on the altar facing north. I could see he was up to magic of some
sort. Not since that Nubian guide on top of the Great Pyramid have I
experienced such consummate expertise. I spurted rocks and
stones and trees. On the way back in the late afternoon he
stopped me with one hand, looking up into the branches of a persimmon
tree. I couldn't see anything. Then the pistol slid into his
hand. He crouched with both hands on the gun and fired. A squirrel
fell down from branch to branch and landed at his feet, blood oozing
from a head shot. I studied his face in the moment of firing. There
was a tightening, a feral sharpening of the features, as if something
much older and harder had peeped out for a second...He was skinning
and cleaning the squirrel expertly as he hummed: "Old sow got
caught in the fence last spring."

He took a muslin
cloth from his bag and wrapped the quartered squirrel, the liver and
heart in the cloth. Then he sat down on another stump and removed
his boots and socks. He stood up and took off his shirt, hanging it
over a low tree limb. He slid down his pants and shorts and stepped
out naked, his phallus half erect. He rubbed it hard, looking at the
squirrel on the stump, then he took out a harmonica and capered
around the stump playing a little tune. It was an old tune, wild and
sad, phallic shadows in animal skins on a distant wall
...
I
remember a desolate windswept slope in Patagonia and the graves with
phallic markers and the feeling of sadness and loneliness that
closed around me. It was all there in the music, twenty thousand
years...The boy was putting on his clothes.

He explained that he
had made a magic should be worth two more squirrels. We hadn't gone
more than a hundred yards when he shot another squirrel running on
the ground. And a third squirrel from the top of an oak tree
—
a
truly remarkable shot. I had brought along a Colt
38
Lightning in my pack but did not wish to compete with such
phenomenal marks-manship. His gun is a
22
with a special load. Back at the farmhouse I met another of the sons.
He is a few years older than John but enough like him to be a twin.
Mr. Brown asked me to dinner and I gladly accepted, not wanting to
hear the cow joke again, but over whiskey Brown told it...Don't ever
get rid of that cow. The boys laughed heartily, then quite suddenly
stopped laughing and their expressions hardened. The squirrel
with greens and potatoes and fried apples was excellent.

Mr. Brown glanced at
John and some signal passed between them. Mr. Brown turned to
me..."You do digs in Arabia, John tells me...Well that must be
right interesting. I hear them Ayrabs got some right strange ways."

No doubt about it,
he
knew.
And John had told him without a word.

On the way back to
town, as I passed the red brick school building, I could see that
there were lights on in what I assumed to be the assembly hall.
Drawing closer I could see a number of townspeople parading around in
a large empty hall. "Don't ever get rid of that cow...Howdy,
Doc, how many you kill today
...
Nice sermon,
Parson
...
Hurry up, dinner's getting
cold
...
and laughing and vying with each
other.
..
.

The whole town is a
fraud, a monstrous parody of small towns
...
and
what does this travesty cover?

September
20, 1908...
I woke this
morning with a fever and splitting headache. No doubt an attack
of malaria. I dressed, shivering and burning.

I stumbled out to a
drugstore for quinine and laudanum, returned to my room, and took a
good stiff dose of both. I lay down and felt relief throbbing through
my head. I finally fell asleep. I was awakened by a knock at the
door...I put on my dressing gown and opened the door. It was the
Sheriff.

"Howdy, Doc,
can I talk to you for a minute...
?"

"Certainly."
I felt somewhat better and sat down and waited.

"Well now, I
thought maybe I could help you out doing, well, whatever it is you're
doing, feller say. Must be nice traveling around and seeing different
places...Like to travel myself but this old star keeps me pinned
right down...Now being Sheriff is more of a job than it might seem at
first. Seems peaceful here, don't it? Well maybe a sow gets
caught in the fence next spring. Well we aims to keep it
peaceful...Now you got yourself a peaceful place, what could
make it unpeaceful?"

"Well I suppose
some force or person from outside...
"

"Exactly,
Colonel, and that's my job."

"We call it
security."

"That's right,
so it's only logical to check anyone out comes in from outside,
wouldn't you say so?"

"I suppose so.
But why do you assume an outsider is ill-intentioned?"

"We don't. I
said
check out.
Mostly I can check out a visitor in a few
seconds. Drummer selling barbed wire, poor product, loudmouthed son
of a bitch. Stay not to be encouraged. We have the means to
discourage a stay that can only prove shall we say unproductive...
"

He was gradually
shedding his country accent.

"Now you take
the case of someone who passes himself off as a drummer, whereas his
actual business is something else...Being a drummer is his cover
story, as archeology is yours
...
Atlantis."

[Atlantis is the
Colonel's service name.]

I looked around. No
doubt about it, the room had been searched in my absence. Expertly
searched. Nothing was removed, but I could feel the recent presence
of someone in the room. It's a knack you get in this business if you
want to stay alive.

"You searched
the room while I was out."

He nodded. "And
read your diary. Code wasn't hard to crack. And you've been under
twenty-four-hour surveillance since your arrival." He passed the
Colonel an envelope. The Colonel pulled out two photos.

I kept my face
impassive...

"Old sow got
caught in the fence
eh, mon colonel...und zwar in einer ekelhafte
Position.
And indeed in a disgusting position."

"I think my
superiors would be amused by these pictures...
"

"Very likely. I
wasn't attempting blackmail. Just letting you know plenty more where
those came from. And by the way the little charade you observed in
the assembly hall was of course arranged for your benefit."

"Like
everything else here."

"Exactly.
Johnsonville is one big cover. And when someone from outside
penetrates that cover
...
well it can be uh,
'awkward' I believe is the word."

"You mean to
kill me?"

"You are more
use to us alive. That is
..."

"If I
cooperate?"

"Exactly."

"And exactly
who would I be cooperating with?"

"We represent
Potential America. P.A. we call it. And don't take us for dumber than
we look."

Is it good for the
Johnsons? That's what Johnson Intelligence is for
—
to
protect and further Johnson objectives, the realization of our
biologic and spiritual destiny in space. If it isn't good for the
Johnsons, how can it be neutralized or removed?

You are a Shit
Spotter. It's satisfying work. Somebody throws your change on a
morphine script back at you and his name goes down on a list. We have
observed that most of the trouble in this world is caused by ten to
twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business because
they
have
no business of their own to mind any more than
a smallpox virus. Now your virus is an obligate cellular parasite,
and my contention is that what we call evil is quite literally a
virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the
RIGHT center. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be
right.
And right here we must make a diagnostic distinction between a
hardcore virus-occupied shit and a plain ordinary mean no-good
son of bitch. Some of these sons of bitches don't cause any trouble
at all, just want to be left alone. Others cause minor trouble, like
barroom fights and bank robberies. To put it country simple
—
former
narcotics commissioner Harry J. Anslinger
diseased
was an
obligate shit. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Dillinger, were just
sons of bitches.

Victimless crimes
are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing
recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes
should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties.
Those individuals who cannot or will not mind their business cling to
the victimless-crime concept, equating drug use and private
sexual behavior with robbery and murder. If the right to mind
one's own business is recognized, the whole shit position is
untenable and Hell hath no more vociferous fury than an
endangered parasite.

"Drug laws,"
Anslinger said, "must reflect society's disapproval of the
addict." And here is Reverend Braswell in the
Denver
Post:
"Homosexuality is an abomination to God and should
never be recognized as a legal human right any more than robbery
or murder." We seek a Total Solution to the Shit Problem:
Slaughter the shits of the world like cows with the aftosa.