William S. Burroughs (26 page)

He turns to a
switchboard, muttering: "So we start faking it...using up film
stock that isn't being renewed...You take a real disaster and you get
a pig of IT. You can underwrite the next one. But if the first one is
a fake you got nothing. You can't underwrite. You start
borrowing everything in sight
...
every
fire
...
every earthquake
...
every
riot
...
every car crash...Then the bottom
falk out and you start springing leaks in the Master Film...like this
Carsons thing...Boss wants to hit him. I film it. Carsons and his
boys kill the hit men
...
and every time he
slides out from under, he cuts the film
...
fucking
moguls don't even know what buttons to push
...
fuck
him and his hurricane...
"
The
Technician pushes a button marked Rain...

THE
MANHATTAN AMBUSH

Rain:::Rain:::Rain:::

We get out of wet
saddles in wet clothes, tie the horses so they can graze in a circle,
can't risk hobbles and bells sit down to peppers and jerky, can't
risk night fires or shots. Boy made a throwing stick and he brings
down an occasional prairie chicken, but not often. In this rain the
fish won't bite and any animals we could prey on stay under cover.

There are thirteen
in the party now, was twelve until Kim's old friend from Saint
Albans, Denton Brady, showed up cool under the leveled guns.

"Denny!
"

"Kim!"

Guns lowered...Denny
rode with the James boys and he was a child prodigy under
Quantrill...Little Tombstone Denny, he could kill in his sleep,
came as natural to him as breathing. At the same time he is a
redheaded, freckle-face American kid with a wide sunlight grin...

Swapping stories
about Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson and the legendary Captain
Gray, who was sent up to Missouri to organize the Irregulars. He
brought along a wagonload of Confederate uniforms to lend us
credibility and some of us wore uniforms from both armies. Denny
wore a Confederate coat and Union pants, said it was getting those
liberators of Wall Street down where they belong
—
covering
assholes. Black-powder percussion days and with those
cap-and-ball wheel guns you have to be mighty careful of multiple
discharge when all six cylinders go up at once. Only way to keep this
from happening is to coat every bullet with heavy grease so
sparks don't fly out and set off the other cylinders. Goose grease we
used mostly, but any grease will do in a squeeze. Recollect when we
had to raid a whore house, the girls is all set to be raped, was
mighty put out when the captain says:

"Madame, all we
want is your fucking cold cream."

"Whose been
fucking with my goose grease?" the Captain roars, holding up the
empty tin.

"TENSHUN!"
Captain Gray walks up and down the line of sullen ragged soldiers.

"All right, you
brown artists
...
if I don't get a confession
I'll by God confiscate all the fucking grease in this
platoon
...
Well?"

"I cannot tell
a lie, Captain, I doned it with my little wanger." The boy
smiles insolently.

"Why don't you
use spit, for shit sake? Haven't you got any sense of social
responsibility?"

"I'm sorry,
Captain, I was carried away."

"Give me your
wheel."

"But
Captain...
"

"Shut up and
hand it over."

Sullenly the boy
takes out his revolver and hands it to the Captain. The Captain hands
him a fifty-caliber single-shot pistol...

"You don't need
grease for this...
"
The Indian
tracker, Screeching Cat, pulls up and gets off his sweating horse.

"Union patrol,
sir
...
five miles north and heading this
way...

"How many?"

"About fifty."

Captain Gray surveys
his platoon...Thirty men, the oldest under twenty...One boy has
his arm in a sling. "Get ready to ride out."

They ride out,
Screeching Cat leading the way.

He got that name
from screeching like a berserk tomcat when he rides into battle,
slashing with a cavalry saber cut down to twenty inches.

Rain:::Rain:::Rain:::

Huddled against each
other in our soggy blankets under a tarpaulin
...
drip
drip drip
...
and the horses keep getting
tangled in the ropessomebody has to get up and see to it, and
the morphine is running low
...
four addicts
in the party, they have to ration it/out, quarter-grain twice a day.
You have to be really hurting before they turn loose of any
...
kid
with a sprained ankle
...
Kim tells him
to think beautiful thoughts. Kim keeps dreaming about the sugar but
it always spills, the syringe breaks, his opium turns to dirt.

And Tom makes a
scene about Denny:

"Your phantom
lover from beyond the tomb, isn't it
...?
Or
some such rot...You and your occult junk."

"Now Tom, let
up aggravating me."

"Go conjure up
an abomination. I'm giving up on you."

What holds us
together is we are all agreed on where we are going and why. We are
riding south for Mexico because we all have eagles on our heads, some
more than others, most of it put up by Old Man Bickford and Mr. Hart
the newspaper tycoon who can't hear the word
death
pronounced
in his presence, says we are "tainting the lifeblood of America
and corrupting credulous youth." We are on the Richy Shit
List. So we play Robin Hood to the poor Mexican farmers, our
lifeblood with jerky and peppers, information and silence.

We are weak from
hunger, wet and miserable, running out of everything. We have to make
a run to town.

"So you're
running out of junk and we have to make a run to town, is that it?"
Tom snaps. "What town?"

"The nearest
town. We'll put it to a vote."

Everyone says "aye"
except Tom, who finally shrugs out a sulky

"Aye."

They know the risks
and make preparations. Sneaky Pete, a ferret-faced kid from Brooklyn,
is our demolitions expert. He has fragmentation bombs in saddlebags,
all he has to do is light up and drop them. Everybody gets his guns
in place. Kim and Boy are both carrying two double-barreled
twenty-gauge shotgun pistols slung on either side of the saddle horn.
Other boys are carrying
410
smoothbore
revolvers loaded with BB shot and two others have twelve-gauge
sawed-offs where they can reach them quick under their coats, and a
skinny Mexican kid called 10G with dead agate eyes has in a harness
under his poncho a double 10-gauge with a spring mechanism to absorb
recoil.

Red Dog, guide and
tracker, scouts the area and plots an escape route in case we run
into trouble and need a place to hole up
—
a
ruined farm three miles from the city limits. They always figure you
to be getting as far away as possible. Not likely to look that close.
Besides Red Dog has put the "blinding sign" on the path.
There it is, about five hundred yards ahead:

manhattan
new mexico

In cottonwoods by a
swollen muddy river. Kim scans it through field glasses
...
buckboards,
people walking up and down...Saturday afternoon in New York. Kim
passes the glasses.

"I don't like
it," he says.

"Why not?"

"Because I seen
the same face five times in different places...walking around on a
treadmill."

"Well, small
town, you know."

"Something
wrong with this one. What do you think, Tom?"

Tom shrugs
irritably: "Well, it's you junkies who
have
to ride
in
...
why don't you decide?"

"Don't be an
old woman, Kim."

"The signs
ain't right."

"Maybe you
should take it up with your spirit guide...
"

"All right.
Let's go."

Maybe it is all
right, Kim thinks, and I'm just jumpy. He's been having centipede
nightmares, wakes up kicking and screaming and once he woke up with
tears streaming down his face or was it rain?

Manhattan, so of
course the main street is Broadway. They are riding down Broadway
spaced out. Denny is behind Kim to the left/ Kim is riding side by
side with Tom. For the first time in weeks the sun comes out. The
townspeople walk up and down, tipping hats, exchanging greetings.

You can see them
every day

Strolling up and
down Broadway

Silly to think
anything is wrong

Boasting of the
wonders they can do

"How many you
kill today, Doc?"

vertigo
...
smell
of ether
.. .

They'll tell you of
trips
...

passing a
buckboard
...
an old gray horse dozes in its

traces...Two boys
frisk by, singing.

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

The townspeople are
ducking into doorways, up alleys
...
a whiff
of brimstone and decay...Kim snaps awake and reins up. Denny rides up
beside him.

"AMBU
—
"
A shotgun blast catches Denny in the side of the neck, nearly blowing
his head off, he is falling against Kim's horse streaking blood down
the saddle, dead before he hits the street. A pellet nicks Kim's ear.

"
—
SH!
RIDE OUT!"

Kim is turning his
horse and drawing his shotgun pistol. He shoots a man on a roof under
the chin, snapping his head back. They are shooting from windows and
roofs on both sides of the street. 10G takes out a window, framing a
faceless man in jagged broken glass. Kim can see three of his boys
down, riddled with bullets and shotgun slugs. He can feel a
bullet hit Tom and gets an arm around him as they ride out, Red Dog
in the lead.

There are three
others wounded besides Tom, one in the shoulder, one in the
leg...Another boy picked up some number-four shot in the back.
You have to dig them out one at a time.

Meanwhile there is
consternation in Manhattan. The unexpected shotguns have taken a
heavy toll: two dead, one with an arm torn off, another who will
write an inspirational article for a Unitarian magazine,
entitled "My Eyes Have a Cold Nose." Mike Chase, who has
set up the ambush, makes a hasty examination of the dead. The three
he most wanted, Kim, Boy, and Marbles, are missing.

"Sheeit!"

Still there is
better than five thousand eagles lying there in the bloody street.

"Well what are
we waiting for?"

Cautious as always,
Mike points out that they may be part of a much larger force.
.. .

"Not
likely
...
take a look."

He hands Mike the
field glasses.

"Slow down,"
Kim calls. "A few more of you boys pretend like you're wounded,
holding each other up."

The boys camp
around.

"Tell me
grandmother they got me, old pal."

Another sings, "I'm
a-headin' for the last roundup."

Tom watches with an
enigmatic smile.

"It isn't far,
Tom."

"The Western
Lands?"

"They're
falling off their horses! Let's go!"

The posse thunders
out. Mike brings up the rear. He hasn't lived this long riding out in
front.

"Look, they're
throwing away their saddlebags...
"

The posse lets out a
wild rebel yell and spurs forward right over the saddlebags.

BLOOM BLOOM BLOOM