William S. Burroughs (20 page)

"No," Kim
cuts in, "and I don't aim to hear about it now. Where are those
dogs?"

The dogs are tied to
a tree. Big scrawny hounds, they begin to cringe and bristle at the
sight of Kim and Boy, showing their yellow teeth, whimpering and
snarling and cowering away to the end of their ropes.

"I think they
know us," Boy says, dropping a hand on his gun butt.

"Please don't
do it here," Gilly moans. "All right. Get them in the
buckboard."

"Please, Mister
Kim...They never done nothing like this before...
"

"When a dog
turns stock-killer he doesn't stop. You know that yourself...
"

"I'll keep them
chained up."

"They'll get
loose one day and a neighbor loses his cow. This is stock country,
Gilly. I got an obligation."

Kim stands there all
square-jawed and stern and noble like the Virginian getting set to
hang his best friend for rustling the sacred cows on which the West
is built.

If I had any shame I
would gag on a speech like that, Kim thinks
...
"Who
cares about fucking cows
...
MOOO MOOO
MOOO...
"

The whining snapping
dogs are finally dragged and shoved into the buckboard and tied to
the backseat.

"Get a shovel,"
Kim tells Gilly. "We'll drop it off on the way back."

They start off down
the road, looking for a good place. A smell of fear is coming off
them dogs, you can
see
it, like heat waves...

Kim draws the fear
smell deep into his lungs. "Nice smell, eh? They
know
...
"
Boy sniffs appreciatively and flashes his dazzling smile.
"It's
keen."

"Stop here."
The driver pulls up and Kim and Boy get out. Boy has a double-barrel
twelve-gauge loaded with number-four shot. The driver levers a shell
into his
30-30.

"Cut 'em
loose," Kim tells the driver. The driver leans down with a knife
and the dogs leap out running.

Boy gets one from
behind with the shotgun. The driver nails another with a spine shot.
They are crawling around screaming and dragging their broken
hindquarters. But the third dog doubles right back and leaps for
Kim's throat. Kim throws up his left arm and the dog grabs him just
below the wrist and Kim blasts the stock-killing beast with his
44
an inch from the left side, singeing off a patch of hair,
blowing dog heart out the other side with scrambled lungs and
spareribs. Just as the dog spirit is on the way out, the dog clamps
down hard for a fraction of a second before he drops off stone dead.

Kim massages his
arm.

"Fucker nearly
broke my wrist."

"It was a brave
dog.
Un perro bravo.
"

"It was."

One of the dogs is
turning around in circles, screaming and snapping at his intestines
as they spill out. Kim nudges Boy, pointing with his left hand.

"This is
tasty."

He walks over slow
and stands in front of the animal, smiling.

"Nice doggie."

The dog snarls up at
him.

"Bad dooog."

Kapow!

Kim's bullet, aimed
a little off center, has sheared off half of the dog's skull, brains
spilling out. Kim hands the gun to Boy.

"You take the
other one and get a taste of this gun
..."

Other dog is ten
feet away, howling and shrieking and trying to get up with his
spine shattered. Boy hefts the gun and steps toward the dog, looking
down straight into his eyes.

"See if you
can't get him to lick your hand."

Kim smiles
...
"That
would be keen."

"He simply
isn't in the mood."

Kapow!

Boy tilts the gun up
in front of his face, sniffing the smoke.

"What a
guuuuuuun."

His bullet has torn
a hole bigger than a silver dollar through the dog's head.

"And handles
sweet as a
22."

The driver is
digging.

"Don't forget
to put a cross on it."

"Here lies
three bad dogs which eated the bag offen a cow and had to be shat."

"My dear, it's
quite folkloric."

On the way back they
drop off the shovel. Gilly is moaning and wringing his dirty old
hands
...

"
Lord
Lord,
I don't even feel like a human with my cow dead and my dogs gone...
"

"Here's
something to make you feel better."

Kim hands him a
bottle of Doctor White's Heroin Cold Cure.

"Silly old
coot
..."
Boy says when they are out of
earshot.

"He's harmless
and that counts for something...Would you believe it, his father
before him was borned and died in that filthy hovel...
"

"You been
inside?"

"In my
professional capacity. It stinks like three generations of
Gillys."

Kim had passed the
board exams with a thousand-dollar "special tutoring fee"
for one of the examiners. "Special tutoring" is simply
knowing what questions the examiners will ask...

"Doc White
taught me everything I know about medicine. Read the books and forget
them. They are less accurate than cookbooks. Try to make even a plate
of fudge by the book...It isn't 'cook for twelve minutes,' it's 'cook
until the bubbles get the same look as oatmeal when it's ready,
little craters...
'
It's the same with
medicine
...
book says a quarter-grain of
morphine for most traumatic accidents will be sufficient...The
hell it will
...
So put the books away and
start looking at patients. One patient needs a quarter-grain,
another is going into shock on a quarter-grain
...
so
throw in a half, three-quarters, whatever he needs. The heavier the
pain the more morphine a patient can tolerate."

Kim remembers a case
of third-degree burns from the neck down. The intern is a plump
Indian with yellow liverish eyes reflecting no more sympathy for
the patient's pain than two puddles of piss.

"How much
morphine are you giving this patient, Doctor?"

"Ten milligrams
every six hours. He isn't due another shot for three and a half
hours."

Kim slaps the intern
across the face with his stethoscope and administers three-quarters
of a grain. The patient stops screaming.

"Hi, Doc,"
he says. "Now that was a shot." The intern dabs at his
split lip with an aggrieved expression.

"This is
battery assault. I will make a charge."

Kim draws half a
grain of morphine into the syringe, shoves it into the intern's
stomach, and pushes home the plunger.

"What have you
done?" the intern gasps.

Kim points an
accusing finger
...
"I have suspected
this for some time, Doctor Kundalini. You are a morphine addict."

Kim calls the
orderly, a tough old Johnson.

"Wring a urine
specimen out of this cow-loving cocksucker."

"Yes, I'm a
good doctor. Always had a feel for it and taught by one of the best
in the industry
...
That's why it's my stick.
You should start thinking about a stick, Boy."

Many criminals find
it expedient to train themselves for some alternative job, trade,
profession, in which they are professionally competent. This is
the outlaw's stick
...
you need a stick to
ride out a spell of bad luck
...
when you're
too hot to operate
...
lost your
nerve
...
getting old, can't do no more
time
...
all kinds of sticks
...
lots
of short-order cooks' and waiters' jobs you can get anywhere, no
questions asked
...
and some of them wind up
running a restaurant
...
con men make good
salesmen...safecrackers gravitate to welding, locksmith-ing,
blasting...

The stick
corresponds to the secret agent's cover...Few Johnsons can boast such
a classy stick as Kim Hall Carsons, M.D.

"Well,"
Boy says, "I could be a song-and-dance man
..."

Pick
up your stick

You
little prick

And
pick it up quick

Before
you get a whack

From
someone else's stick
...

"Entertainment
is full of good sticks
...
and the Merchant
Marine
...
You can rise to be captain and go
down with the ship...
"

Back at the hotel
Kim takes a bath to wash the dog-fear stink off him.

They all get
together for drinks on the upstairs porch, which is screened in the
summer and glassed in when it starts to get cold.

Bill Anderson sips
his bourbon toddy with sugar, lemon, and angostura.
..

"Right good
whiskey you make."

"That's been
setting in charred barrels for six years...
"

Kim figures sooner
or later there will be laws against liquor, so he is stockpiling
whiskey turned out by the moonshiners. (Johnson actors, of
course, got up in black Stetsons.)

"What happened
with the squatters...
?"

"Well I seen
right away they is religious sons of bitches, got these two pale
washed-out Bible-fed kids. And I tell them this is no place to bring
up a family...Godless folk hereabouts...moonshiners
...
outlaws...Now
there's some mighty fine land down in Dead Coon County not sixty
miles from here, wide open for settlers...I'll have someone give you
a hand hauling your stuff to the depot."

"You didn't
tell them why it's wide open, did you?"

"You mean the
tick fever? No, I didn't see any point in bringing that up...And this
old witch grandmother of the family grabs my hand and
says
...
'You're a good man, sheriff...
'

"
I
try to be, ma'am,' I tell her. 'But it
isn't always easy.'

"
'It
sure isn't.'
...
Just wish they were all as
easy as that one...
"

There is a pause.
They will have to think about future policy. Reputations have to
keep up with the times. They wear out like clothes if you don't watch
it, leave your bare ass sticking out. The moonshiner-outlaw look
is wearing thin and they know it.

The sun is setting
across the river, red and smoky..."A real Turner," Kim
says. He addresses himself to Boy and Marbles. "Used to be
a town over there name of Jehovah and you could have seen their
fucking church sticking up from here spoiling our sunsets
...
then
one day 'The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast. And he
breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.' Then we all felt a lot
better."

Plans are under way
to buy land in the Mound Builder area of Illinois across the river
from Saint Louis to found a new town. Johnsonville will serve as a
communications center and clearinghouse for intelligence
reports. The tone will be flatly ordinary. "We'll bore people
out of it."

Kim spends several
days writing up a scenario for Johnsonville.

Towns like
Johnsonville can only exist with strict security and control of a
buffer area to prevent infiltration. We can hardly get away with
stocking a whole town with female impersonators. However, the
basic concept is sound: a town that looks like any other town to the
outsider. The same formula can be applied even more successfully to a
neighborhood in a big city, where people are less curious.