William S. Burroughs (7 page)

There are of course
those who just barely squeeze through. Their mummies are not in a
good sound condition. These second-class souls are relegated to
third-rate transient hotels just beyond the last checkpoint, where
they can smell the charnel-house disposal ovens from their skimpy
balconies. "You see that sign?" the bartender snarls.

maggotty
mummies will not be served here

"Might as well
face facts
...
my mummy is going downhill.
Cheap job to begin with
...
gawd, maggots is
crawling all over it...the way that demon guard sniffed at me this
morning...
"
Transient
hotels
...

And here you are in
your luxury condo, deep in the Western Lands
...
you
got no security. Some disgruntled former employee sneaks into
your tomb and throws acid on your mummy. Or sloshes gasoline all over
it and burns the shit out of it. "OH...someone is fucking with
my mummy...
"

Mummies are sitting
ducks. No matter who you are, what can happen to your mummy is a
pharaoh's nightmare: the dreaded mummy bashers and grave
robbers, scavengers, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes. Perhaps a
mummy's best friend is an Egyptologist: sealed in a glass case, kept
at a constant temperature
...
but your
mummy isn't even safe in a museum.
Air-raid sirens, it's the
blitz!

"For Ra's sake,
get us into the vaults," scream the mummies, without a
throat, without a tongue.

Anybody buy in on a
deal like that should have his mummy examined.

No mistaking that
gray shadow moving up the face as the gray lips move.

"Stay out of
churches, son. And don't ever let a priest near you when you're
dying. All they got a key to is the shit house. And swear to me
you'll never wear a lawman's badge."

Last words of
Mortimer Carsons, father of Kim Carsons. As it turned out the house
on Olive Street in Saint Louis was heavily mortgaged and nobody
came forward with help or advice. His father had not been popular
around town and Kim was even less so. He wrote poetry and when a
sonnet to another boy was intercepted he found himself
ostracized by his schoolmates and with his father's permission
withdrew from the school. He had no intention of remaining in
Saint Louis. His entire legacy amounted to about
$2,000
and a farmhouse near Saint Albans.

Here is Kim in his
father's study. He is trying to decide what to do. He could go to New
York. He knew from a brief liaison with an antiques dealer on a
buying trip that there was a place for "people like you and me"
in the big city. Why he might become a famous artist or go on the
stage. His father's words came back to him:

"When you have
a decision to make, get all the factors in front of you and
look
at the situation as a whole. Just look. Don't try to decide. The
answer will come to you."

Running away and
living on sufferance in a ghetto? And always somebody to spit in his
face and call him what the boys called him at school? And the
others
...
Colonel and Mrs. Greenfield and
Judge Farris
...

Rotten
killing corpse

stinks
like a polecat.

Kim decides to go
west and become a shootist. If anyone doesn't like the way Kim looks
and acts and smells, he can fill his grubby peasant paw.

Train whistle
...
Kim
gets off at Saint Albans junction. The town of Saint Albans is a
cluster of red brick buildings along a stream, a little postcard town
five miles from the train station.

Kim alights from a
buckboard in front of the general store, carrying an alligator-skin
Gladstone. He makes an arrangement to rent the buckboard to take him
out to the farmhouse with the gear and supplies he will need.

"Right here at
six tomorrow."

He stands for a
moment looking up and down the street. Nothing has changed
...
a
secret place that time forgot...He smiles, noting and savoring the
difference between Saint Albans and any other small town. It isn't
the tree-shaded streets, the clear stream and the stone bridges, the
gardens and vines and the fields, all so perfect it is like a picture
on a calendar. There is something missing here. An absence that Kim
breathes deep into his lungs: no church steeples. No churches.

Mr. Scranton shakes
hands and glances at his bag. "Sorry to hear about your
father...
"

"Thank
you...I'll be spending the summer out at the farm...Be needing quite
a few items...
"

He walks around
pointing
...
broom, mop, bucket,
disinfectant, tools, kerosene stove, kerosene, lamps, candles,
canned goods, bacon lard
...

"Here's
something you can use." Mr. Scranton points to sulfur candles.
"Scorpions and black widows is bad to get in empty houses...And
outhouses they dig special. The Farris boy got stung on the ass and
he was bedfast for three days...Good line of fishing gear here."

Kim selects fishing
poles, line, hooks and plugs and a fish trap...He looks around.

"Where are the
guns?"

"Sold off my
stock to a gunsmith name of Anderson. Got his shop just past the
hotel and over the bridge.
.."

Kim walks slowly
past the hotel. Two old men in rockers on the porch wave to him.
Looking down from the bridge he can see perch and bass in a deep
pool.

william
anderson
...
guns and gunsmithing

The shop is back
from a tree-lined street. A man behind a counter looks at him with
eyes the color of a faded gray-flannel shirt.

"Like to see
some guns."

"You come to
the right place, son. What kind of guns you have in mind?"

"Handguns."

The old man is
looking down across his case of handguns...

"Now a handgun
is good for one thing and that's killing at close range. Other folks,
mostly. Worst form of varmint. Quite a choice here...Now this gun"
—
he
brings out a Colt Frontier 45-caliber, seven-and-a-half-inch
barrel
—
"a best seller...Throws a
big slug...But it isn't throwing the biggest slug that counts, it's
hitting something with the slug you throw. I'd rather hit someone
with a
22
than miss him with a
45...
Now this little
22
here
...
hammerless, two-inch barrel,
double-action smooth and light
...
a good
holdout gun you can stash in your boot, down in your crotch, up your
sleeve...I knew this Mexican gun, El Sombrero, with a holster in
his hat. Dressed all in black like an undertaker...'Ah
senor,
I
am so sorry for you.' Then he'd sweep his hat off like he was
standing over a coffin, and blast right through the hat
...
You'll
be wanting something heavier of course."

He brings out a Colt
Frontier with a four-inch barrel. "This load is sweet-shooting
and heavy enough
...32-20...
Winchester
chambers a rifle for that load and some folk wants a rifle and
handgun shooting the same load. Well, a rifle and a handgun are not
made for the same purpose
...
the
32-20
is a good pistol load, accurate and hard-hitting, but
it's a piss-poor load for a rifle
...
Too
heavy for rabbit and squirrel, too light for deer, just enough to
aggravate a bear. There's no good rifle load between a
22
and a
30-30.
Here's a double-action
38
with three-inch barrel. I done some work on that gun,
lightening up the double-action trigger pull, close to a hair
trigger. You can keep it right on target for six shots...Let me show
you a trick with a double-action gun...
"
He puts a glove on his left hand. "Now you hold the gun with
your left hand above and below the cylinder...You can spray six
shots right into a silver dollar at thirty feet...Don't ever try
it without the glove...

"And here's a
custom-made beauty...Smith and Wesson tip-up
...
built
like a watch. Chambered for the
44
Russian,
a target load for trick shooting. You can put out a candle with this
gun at twenty feet. It will teach you how to shoot...And this"
—
he
brings out a Smith and Wesson
44
special
double-action with three-and-a-half-inch barrel
—
"is
for business. I can see you have the makings of a real shootist and
that's why I'm talking to you...A real shootist don't start trouble.
He just don't want nobody to start trouble with him. These punks go
around picking gunfights to get a reputation are no fucking good from
the day they're born to the day they die...You'll be meeting plenty
of their type. When they come in here I just sell them the
worst-shooting gun I got in the shop and I got some real lemons,
Annie Oakley couldn't shoot with
..."

Kim is making a
selection of holsters..."Don't ever use a shoulder
holster
...
awkward movement, and it can't
mean anything except reaching for a gun. The less movement the
better. For the
22
or the
38,
if you want to carry it concealed, use the Mexican style:
holster clips over the belt and goes down inside the waistband. Just
open your coat and drop your hand to your waistband like you was
hitching up your belt or scratching your crotch, and come up
shooting...Drawing your gun should be an easy flowing casual
movement, like handing someone a pen, passing the salt, conveying a
benediction...

"I knew this
gun called the Priest who would go into a gunfight giving absolution
to his opponent...Lots of ways to create a distraction and
discombobulate your opponent just so long and long enough. This one
gun kept a tarantula in a spring box at his belt. He could push out
his gut in some key way and the tarantula flew right in the face of
his adversary...Don't pay to get too smart. They lynched him for a
spider-throwing varmint
..."

Kim packs his
purchases. On his way back to the hotel he stops off at the
drugstore. An Old Chinese behind the counter nods at each item.
Bandages, tincture of iodine, snakebite kit, two ounces of laudanum,
medicine glass, and eye dropper
...

"Do you have
hashish extract?"

"Velly good.
Velly stlong."

Unhurried and old,
with no wasted movements he assembles the items, writing out
dosages for the medicine bottles, packing everything into a wooden
box. As Kim opens the door to go out of the druggist's shop someone
comes in with a puff of fog and cold air. Boy about eighteen, angular
English face, blue eyes, red scarf. Rather like the younger De
Quincey, Kim thought. The boy's eyes widened in startled recognition.

"Good evening."

Kim's greeting came
back like a muffled echo.

The hotel clerk
looks up through hooded gray eyes. He looks a lot like the gunsmith,
Kim thinks, and a little chill rustles up his spine. He hands Kim a
key with a heavy brass tab. "Room eighteen on the top
floor, Mr. Carsons."

He takes a gold
watch from his vest pocket and flips open the lid. "We'll be
serving dinner in about thirty minutes. Wild turkey tonight."

Kim walks up three
flights to his room. It looks familiar but he can't remember when or
where he may have seen such a room and once again he feels the chill
as he looks around at the red-carpeted floor, the rose wallpaper, the
copper-luster basin, the brass bedstead, a picture of Stonewall
Jackson on the wall. He unpacks the
38
and
loads it and slips it into an inside belt holster. He buttons his
coat and combs his hair in a mirror with a gilt frame that reflects
the bed behind him.

At seventeen, Kim is
quite handsome at first glance: tall, slim, with yellow hair and blue
eyes. On closer inspection there is something feral and furtive in
this face, a mixture of shyness and cunning. It's a face a lot of
people don't like on close inspection. He doesn't care who
dislikes it tonight. The gun feels so good, a warm glow just below
his liver. He rubs his crotch and grins at his reflection. He adjusts
his tie, gives his hair a final pat and down the red-carpeted stairs
and into the bar, where he orders a dry martini.

There are two
drummers at the bar drinking beer. The one nearest to Kim is a heavy
florid-faced man with a black mustache. He seems on the point of
making some rude remark. Kim polishes his nails on his coat lapel and
looks at the drummer steadily, feeling the gun, and the man feels it
too. He turns away and coughs. Kim finishes his drink and walks past
them into the dining room. The room is almost empty. He sees the
buckboard driver and the hotel clerk, and a man he recognizes as the
doctor. Kim orders wine and gives attention to the turkey,
gravy, stuffing, hot biscuits, creamed onions, asparagus, and turnip
greens. He glances up between mouthfuls and is gratified to notice
that the drummers do not come into the dining room. Apple pie and
coffee. Still no sign of the drummers.