William S. Burroughs (8 page)

People I don't like
should stay out of my way, he thinks with a contented belch. As Kim
walked out into the sunlight carrying his "alligator," as
he called his Gladstone bag, he saw himself as a mysterious world
traveler, travel-stained and even the stains unfamiliar
—
"for he on honey-dew hath fed/And drunk the milk of
Paradise."

Ah there was the
buckboard ahead, in front of Scranton's Store. A lithe youthful shape
was bending over to pick up a crate, the lean buttocks tightly
outlined under blue denim in the morning sunlight that seemed to
dissolve the cloth, and Kim was looking at parted buttocks and the
red-brown rectum. He licked his lips, lust naked on his face.

The boy straightened
up, swinging the crate into the buckboard, and turned in a smear of
red. A casque of bright red hair, the face a dead shiny white with
here and there a sepia stain, like rust on marble. The eyes of
stagnant slate-green color took in Kim's crotch and he smiled a slow
enigmatic smile of the dead, an ambiguous invitation from beyond the
tomb. A phantom buckboard
...
old photo
with a flickering silver caption
...
as Kim
held out his hand he caught a whiff of brimstone and decay.

"I'm Denton
Brady...Your driver."

"I'm Kim
Carsons."

The boy laughed,
showing teeth smooth and white as ivory.

"I know who you
are
...
all loaded and ready to go."

He swung himself up
onto the buckboard seat with a smooth lithe movement that was
curiously inhuman without being exactly animal. Eggs, bacon, hot
biscuits into the buckboard. Kim swung up beside him, putting his bag
under the seat. The boy jerked the reins and clicked his tongue and
the horse ambled down a red clay road that wound along the bank
of the stream through oaks and elms, maple, and persimmon.

Flint chips glint in
the sun. Kim takes off his jacket and folds it across a crate. He
takes his belt holster and a box of shells out of the Gladstone. The
holster slants slightly backward. While Kim transfers the gun the boy
does not seem to notice. He sits relaxed on the buckboard seat, his
eyes fanning out to both sides. He seems to have no need of talking.
Kim finds the silence and the proximity at once exciting and
unreal, rather like a phantom hard-on, he thinks. The boy reins up
the horse, swings down, and comes back with a beautifully chipped
arrowhead in pink flint. He passes it to Kim without comment. They
crest a little rise from which they can see the valley and the stream
stretching down to the river. The boy points to the farther bank,
which is still shrouded in morning mist.

"When the fog
lifts you can see their fucking church sticking up...The cutoff
to the farmhouse is just ahead, but I guess you'll want to go to the
place on the riverfront."

"You know it?"

"Of course."

The farm was about a
quarter-mile from the river on higher ground and the property line
stretched down to the riverfront. This had been cotton country but
had reverted to subsistence farming. Kim and his father had converted
an old loading shed on the pier to use during the summer since it was
a lot cooler there over the water.

The stream is
widening out. There are marshy ponds on both sides of the road and a
sound of frogs croaking, smell of stagnant water. Flat ground, the
river just ahead. Long low building with a galvanized iron roof:
brady's store. An old man sits on the porch.

"Uncle Kes,
this is Kim Carsons."

The old man speaks
in a dead, dry whisper: "Your hand and your eyes know a lot more
about shootin' than you do. Just learn to stand out of the way."
Now his eyes, old, unbluffed, unreadable, rest on Kim, as if
tracing his outline in the air. "City boy, did you ever see a
dog roll in carrion?"

"Yes sir, I was
tempted to join him, sir."

"Did you ever
see a black snake pretend to be a rattlesnake?"

"Yes sir, he
coiled himself and vibrated the tip of his tail in dry leaves:
brrrrrp."

"Kim, if you
had your choice, would you rather be a poisonous snake or a
nonpoisonous snake?"

"Poisonous,
sir, like a green mamba or a spitting cobra."

"Why?"

"I'd feel
safer, sir."

"And that's
your idea of heaven, feeling safer?"

"Yes sir."

"Is a poisonous
snake really safer?"

"Not really in
the long run, but who cares about that? He ust feel real good after
he bites someone."

"Safer?"

"Yes sir. Dead
people are less frightening than live ones, t's a step in the right
direction."

"Young man, I
think you're an assassin."

Along the riverfront
the road is overgrown with weeds and rush that scrape against the
bottom of the buckboard. And there is the shed at the end of the
pier, gleaming white in the sun like a moored ship. Kim opens a heavy
brass padlock. Inside, the shed is paneled in oak and painted
white like a ship's
c
abin. Two narrow
bunks, side by side to the right of the door, a long bench that runs
along the north wall with a hinged top segmented for storage space. A
table, three stools, a two-burner kerosene stove with shelves above
it and a cabinet under it. A sink with a faucet from a fifty-gallon
drum on the porch. The shed as two doors, one facing the shore, the
other facing the river, and a screened porch. On the south side of
the shed by the porch is a privy with a hinged cover that also serves
as a haman in the Arab style, consisting simply of a bucket and drain
in the floor. The water is supplied by another fifty-gallon drum on
the porch that can be heated with a kerosene burner. There is an
evaporation icebox on the porch, covered with burlap sacking, a rum
above it that drips water on the burlap.

They look around
silently, deciding exactly where everything will go
...
moving
now with speed and precision as every object slides into its assigned
space
...
canned goods and cooking utensils
on the shelves above the stove and the cabinet under it
...
buckets
over the side filling the drums and the drip for the icebox, towels,
soap, paper in the bath cubicle, double seats of smooth waxed oak
over the green water, wooden pegs in the wall for clothes.

The currents of
movement have carried them to a quiet eddy, sitting opposite each
other on the bunks, knees touching as they examine the contents of
the medicine box, having selected a drawer of the night table
between the bunks as the ordained place for these items. Denny looks
at the laudanum.

"Good to have
around. I was bitten by a copperhead once...
"

He looks at the
bottle of hashish tincture and lays out a rolled cigarette on the
table.

"This is the
same thing. Uncle Kes grows it."

He picks up a jar of
dry-skin cream. He looks at Kim, his eyes drooping, his head on one
side.

"You have dry
skin, Kimmy?"

Kim blushes,
remembering the time he used the cream to stick a candle up his ass.
"Uh sometimes."

"We'll leave it
out in case."

Kim picks up a
bottle of chigger lotion and shakes it. He looks at Denny and licks
his lips.

"We'll have to
rub this all over ourselves to go anywhere."

Den nods, slipping
off his boots and socks. He takes off his pants and shorts and tosses
them onto the bench. Kim has imitated his movements as if he
were sitting in front of a mirror.

"Let's smoke
this first." Den lights the cigarette, inhales deeply three
times, and passes it to Kim. Kim inhales the smoke and feels his nuts
crinkle and tingle; mouth open, breathing heavily, he looks down.
It's happening. Den grins and brings his finger up in three jerks. He
is getting hard too. Kim watches Den's cock grow from the bright red
pubic hairs like some exotic flower and the ruttish red smell fills
the room mixing in layers with the smell of new boots, sweat and
feet. Kim feels his flesh melting and flowing off his bones into Den,
a choking red tide of lust pulling him forward. Den grins and spreads
his thighs, dropping a folded blanket between his legs as Kim kneels
between his spread thighs his heart pounding his fingers on Denny's
crinkled red nuts feeling the velvet ache running his fingers up the
pink shaft to the translucent red purple head like a ripe cherry the
slit parted as pearly lubricant oozes out now he is sucking the head
up and down the still hot red smell filling him feeling Denny's toes
in his crotch a gush of sweet metal taste in his mouth that burns
down to his crotch. He is ejaculating on Den's feet and calves,
semen dripping down the glittering red hairs.

A choking red tide
of lust and sweat socks. He smiled an ambiguous invitation
travel-stained by a phantom buckboard a crumpled figure general
store. Lithe youthful flickering silver bending over to pick up the
crate.

Kim could see a pool
of black blood reflected in a dusty storefront. As Kim drew closer
the lean buttocks outlined a whiff of brimstone and morning sunlight.
Looking at the parted buttocks Kim felt his breath quicken and
the boy laughed.

"I know you."

In a dream they get
up and rub on the chigger lotion. There are other people in the room,
a whole family, and Kim gets an erection but he and Den seem to be
behind an invisible barrier. He is packing the sulfur candles and the
guns and shells into a backpack and out into bright sunlight that is
somehow dark like an old photo with the silver darkness of
underexposed film so he can see only a few feet in front of him.

They are walking up
a steep path between raspberry and blackberry vines. A whiff of empty
house, smell of nothing and nobody there.

Kim is lighting the
sulfur candles, a tray for each bedroom, two trays for the living
room, dining room, kitchen, one small tray for the outhouse, musty
smell of shit turning back to the soil. Blue smoke curls from the
cracks. He plants blue morning-glory seeds from a packet and
watches the flowers grow from the smoke. In the barn they lay out the
guns on an old millstone and set up targets.

Kim dances around
the stone, rubbing the gun in his crotch. He greases his ass and rubs
the grease on the gun handle.

"Racooo-ooo-ooo-ooon?"

He stands up, moving
his hips in fluid gyrations
...
black powder
smoke and the musky zoo smell. A chorus of frogs croaking...

"Frog you,
Kim?"

Kim gasps and his
legs pull apart spasmodically as he squirms rectum exposed legs
kicking in the air throat swelling. They are both croaking like frogs
in a green underwater sperm smell.

Was he awake looking
at Den's face ghostly and transparent in the dim light? Den says
something about seeing to the horse. Then he was gone. Kim slept.

Now he stands facing
the target, the gun in both hands pulsing to his heartbeats while Den
dances around him beating the tambourine and singing a little tune in
a high-pitched voice childlike and evil, gypsy music with a smell of
circuses, animals jump through hoops to that music he slides in
behind Kim who is leaning forward, his lean naked buttocks parted.

"I want to pump
you, Kimmy."

One hand on Kim's
flat stomach, the other shakes the tambourine above his head.
With a fluid grind of his smooth white hips like moving marble he
flows into Kim, shaking the tambourine as he sings in Kim's ear.

Kim feels a tight
smile baring his teeth and a wet dream tingle in his crotch and
suddenly there is a smell of black powder and semen in the hot
still air of the barn as the bullets group within a two-inch circle
over the heart. He wakes up just before ejaculating with a sweet ache
in his crotch, Den's hand on his chest. Late afternoon shadows in the
room. He must have slept all day. He squirms under Denny's hand and
shows his teeth.

Denny stands up and
shakes his tambourine. Smell of circus animals. "Shall we
camel?"

He gets down on all
fours on the other bunk with a phantom Kim under him. Kim can
feel the dry heat outside, the drawn blinds, the smell of hashish and
rectal mucus. Somewhere a voice is singing a desert riding song...

"Shall we
alligator?"

He lies on his
stomach with a slow wallowing motion, his teeth bared in a depraved
reptilian smile. A reek of swamp mud.