William S. Burroughs (17 page)

We are showing that
an organization and a very effective organization can run without
boss-man dog-eat-dog fear.

After such
knowledge, what forgiveness?

William Seward
Hall
...
he was a corridor, a hall, leading
to many doors. He remembered the long fugitive years after the fall
of Waghdas, the knowledge inside him like a sickness. The
migrations, the danger, the constant alertness
...
the
furtive encounters with others who had some piece of the
knowledge, the vast picture puzzle slowly falling into place.

Time to be up and
gone. You are not paid off to be quiet about what you know; you are
paid not to find it out. And in his case it was too late. If he lived
long enough he couldn't help finding it out, because that was the
purpose of his life
...
a guardian of the
knowledge and of those who could use it. And a guardian must be
ruthless in defense of what he guards.

And he developed new
ways of imparting the knowledge to others. The old method of handing
it down by word of mouth, from master to initiate, is now much too
slow and too precarious (Death reduces the College). So he concealed
and revealed the knowledge in fictional form. Only those for whom the
knowledge is intended will find it.

William Seward Hall,
the man of many faces and many pen names, of many times and
places
...
how dull it is to pause, to make a
rest, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use
...
pilgrim
of adversity and danger, shame and sorrow. The Traveler, the Scribe,
most hunted and fugitive of men, since the knowledge unfolding in his
being spells ruin to our enemies. He will soon be in a position to
play the deadliest trick of them all
...
The
Piper Pulled Down the Sky.
His hand will not hesitate.

He has known capture
and torture, abject fear and shame, and humiliations that burn like
acid. His hand will not hesitate to use the sword he is forging, an
antimagnetic artifact that cuts word and image to fragments
...
the
Council of Transmigrants in Waghdas had attained such skill in the
art of prophecy that they were able to chart a life from birth to
death, and so can he unplot, and unwrite. Oh, it may take a few
hundred years before some people find out they have been unwritten
and unplotted into random chaos...

Meanwhile, he has
every contract on the planet out on him. The slow, grinding contract
of age, and emptiness
...
the sharp vicious
contract of spiteful hate
...
heavy corporate
contracts..."The most dangerous man in the world."

And to what extent
did he succeed? Even to envisage success on this scale is a
victory. A victory from which others may envision further.

There
is not a breathing of the common wind

that
will forget thee;

Thy
friends are exaltations, agonies and love,

and
man's inconquerable mind.

Hall's face and body
were not what one expects in a sedentary middle-aged man. The
face was alert and youthful, accustomed to danger and at the
same time tired. The danger has gone on so long it has become
routine. Yet his actual life was comparatively uneventful. The scene
of battle was within, a continual desperate war for territorial
advantage, with long periods of stalemate
...
a
war played out on the chessboard of his writings, as bulletins
came back from the front lines, which constantly altered
position and intensity. Yesterday's position desperately held is
today's laundromat and supermarket. Time and banality hit the hardest
blows.

The absence of any
immediate danger masks the deadliest attack. "It is always war,"
Hall had been told by a lady disciple of Sri Aurobindo, whose last
words were: "It is all over." She meant quite simply that
Planet Earth is by its nature and function a battlefield.
Happiness is a by-product of function in a battle context: hence
the fatal error of Utopians.

(I didn't ask for
this fight, Kim reflects, or maybe I did. Just like Hassan i Sabbah
asked for the expeditions sent out against him just because he wanted
to occupy a mountain and train a few adepts. There is nothing more
provocative than minding your own business.)

At a house outside
Boulder, Old Man Bickford confers with his Director of Security, Mike
Chase...

"They is
knockin' the wops down like ducks in a shooting gallery. What is
wrong, Mike
...?"

Mike shrugs..."Well,
the wops are not all that good
...
seems like
all the old-time shootists is gone."

"So where does
Carsons get his talent? I'll tell you. He
trains
them."
Old Man Bickford smiles. "You know what, Mike, I think maybe you
and Kim is going to shoot it out Old Western-style...
"
He guffaws loudly and Mike joins him, not liking it at all, feeling
the cold clutch of fear in his guts.

Old Man Bickford
there, smelling his fear and smiling. They both know that Mike will
have a training program laid out and ready for Bickford's approval
8:00
a.m. the following day.

"How about a
few hands of poker, Mike?" he drawls with narrowed eyes. His
smile widens.

This is a sanction
imposed by the Old Man on a subordinate the night before he has
to give a report at a very crucial meeting. The Old Man keeps the
young man up till five in the morning, filling his glass (the Old Man
seems to have some constitutional immunity to the effects of
bourbon) and winning from him a sum exactly proportional to the
trespass. "There Is No Excuse for Failure" is the
Bickford motto.

Five hours later,
his head spinning,
$20,000
poorer, Mike
stumbles off to bed. Sharp smell of weeds
...
Old
Man Bickford smiles and claps Mr. Hart on the back. Mr. Hart hates
being slapped on the back. He turns angrily, but Bickford says, "You
know what, Bill?"

Mr. Hart's glare
goes dim and timorous as he sees the horse and takes in Bickford's
guns.

"For the first
time in a thousand years we got an all-out range war on our hands.
Time to saddle up, Billy."

Mr. Hart hates being
called "Billy."

"Ka,
Egyptians called it
...
soul,
whatever. Well I got news for
Ka.
It
isn't invulnerable and it isn't immortal." Bickford draws
his gun, and fondles it. "It's a magnetic field
...
it
can be dispersed. POOF, no more Billy."

Mr. Hart's lips
tighten in waspish irritation.

The Bickford guns
agree to a truce. Fights are getting too deadly. Many of them
are glad enough to get out from under Bickford's horrible smile,
his all-night poker games, his cruel and evil presence.

Bickford is losing
his grip. He is going security-mad. Every day it's some new
electrical device or some outstandingly vicious breed of guard dog.

Kim sees his life as
a legend and it is very much Moses in the bullrushes, the Prince
deprived of his birthright and therefore hated and feared by the
usurpers.

I shall be off with
the wild geese in the stale smell of morning.

Time to be up and be
gone. Time to settle his account with Mike Chase.

Kim breaks camp and
rides into El Rito. He knows that Mike is in Santa Fe and he sends
along a message through his Mexican contacts.

to
confirm appointment for september
17, 4:30
p.m. at

the
cemetery, boulder, colorado.

kim carsons, m.d.

Kim knows that Mike
will not meet him on equal footing. Well two can play at that.

(More
than
two.)

Raton Pass: This
must be, Kim decided, one of the more desolate spots on the
globe. A cold wind whistles around the station. No one lives there
except railroad personnel and their families, all of whom have a
slightly demented look and walk about with scarves tied over their
faces.

Why would anyone
choose to live in such a place? Chance seems to have tossed them here
like driftwood.

Black Hawk: The
hotel was full and Kim had to stay overnight in a miners'
boardinghouse that reeked of stale sweat and corned beef and cabbage.
Kim thought Black Hawk a vile place. A sepia haze of gaseous gold
covers the town, farted up from the bowels of the earth, and you
expect at any moment to plummet down into a mineshaft.

Kim stopped into a
saloon, half hoping that someone would start trouble, but nobody did.
There was an aura of menace and death about him palpable as a haze.
The miners made way for him at the bar and Kim was as always
scrupulously polite and well behaved. Back in his horrible room he
took a morphine injection and set his mind to wake up at
5:00
a.m. the following morning to take the train for Denver.

Denver: Kim owned a
rooming house in Denver but it could be staked out, so he checked
into the Palace Hotel. He studied the well-dressed patrons with
voices full of money. How, he asked himself, could he ever have been
impressed by the self-confidence of the rich? It was simply
based on their limitations. All they can think about is money money
and more money. They are no better than
animals.

He saw them as
shadows parading through conservatories, drawing rooms, and formal
gardens and marble arcades frozen in the studied postures of old
photos. They are already
dead
and preserved in money. He
noticed how the
very rich
have an embalmed look and
remembered that in ancient Egypt only the rich were considered
immortal because they could afford to mummify themselves.

Kim retired to his
room and studied a number of photos of Mike Chase and Joe Kaposi in
the Polish slums of Chicago's West Side...Joe had come a long way.
Kim noted the petulant, discontented look. Anyone with that look
is sure to get rich. Money will simply accrete itself around him. It
was a strong face, high cheekbones, brown eyes well apart, full lips,
and slightly protruding teeth. Yes, a face that could even be
president if he played his cards right.

He knew Old Man
Bickford was grooming Mike for a career in politics...

"Ah well, the
best laid plans of lice and men gang aft agley...
"

September
16, 1899...
Kim took the stage to Boulder
...
Overlook
Hotel
...
uneasy
deja vu
...
flash
of resentment on a whispering south wind
...
BANG!

Phantom gun
...
empty
grab
...
too heavy
...
too
fast
...
t
oo
easy
...
Three witnesses ejaculating, Kim
took the stage back to Denver...Back to the rod-riding, hop-smoking
underworld
...
back to the rooming
houses and pawnshops
...
the hobo jungles and
opium dens
...
back to the Johnson Family.

Kim bought a thin
gold pocket watch. Coming out of the jewelry store he ran into the
Sanctimonious Kid, who was casing the store in a halfhearted way.

"Don't try it,"
Kim told him.

"Wasn't going
to...
"

Kim noted the frayed
cuffs, the cracked shoes. "It gets harder all the time."

The Kid was always
soft-spoken and sententious, known for his tiresome aphorisms.

"It's a crooked
game, Kid, but you have to think straight."

"Be as positive
yourself as you like but no positive clothes."

The Kid was
considered tops as a second-story cat burglar and he had made some
good smash-and-grabs. Kim sensed something basically wrong about the
Kid and never wanted anything to do with him. Under pressure he
could blow up and perpetrate some totally mindless and stupid
act. Now in the afternoon sunlight Kim could see it plain as day:
hemp marks around the Kid's neck.

The Sanctimonious
Kid was later hanged for the murder of a police constable in
Australia. It gave Kim a terrible desolate feeling when he heard
about it years later
...
the bleak
courtroom
...
the gallows
...
the
coffin. "See you at the Silver Dollar."