The Place of Dead Roads

by William S. Burroughs

  The kitchen staff is drawn from those who feel some affinity for cooking and serving food. They can go on from there in any direction. Our educational system is: find what someone can do and give him an opportunity to do it. Not many are competent on a policy level.

  Bill Anderson knows more about guns and weapons than any three experts. He is a superb technician. His grasp of the overall picture of conflict and the basic nature of weapons qualifies him O.P. (on policy). Doc White was a ship's doctor, has been all over the world. Here is that rarity—a doctor who thinks. He can see what is wrong in any given situation whether it be a human body or a societal structure...

  He was one of the first to see the virus as an alien life form, highly intelligent from its virus point of view. ("Gentlemen, the human cell can only divide and reproduce itself fifty thousand times. This is known as the Hayflick Limit. But a virus can do it any number of times. The virus is immune to the deadly factor of repetition. Your virus is never bored.")

  And Arch Ellisor the Mayor is a brilliant economist who predicted the eventual collapse of money as a means of exchange..."Any purely quantitative factor must, by its nature and function, devaluate in time. Just like a joke. Marvelous. Nice. Cut off his head. And what are we to do with a screaming headless eagle throwing bloody gobs of panic through stock exchanges of the world? The terrible moment has arrived when no amount of money will buy anything. The economic machine grinds to a splintering halt."

  Kim saw that the whole power of the Mafia is the power of life and death and set out to produce an elite of expert Johnson Assassins, J.A. Plenty of openings in the J.A. department and we get plenty of applicants. Tough sharp kids. It takes some screening to weed out the nut cases.

  Bill Anderson the Sheriff is waiting in the lobby. They go into the gun and briefing room. The Sheriff gives Kim a heavy double-action 44 special with rosewood handle and a bead sight. Kim hefts the gun lovingly, falling in love with the gun. It's something every gun lover knows and it drives gun haters to hysteria.

  "Any trouble, Bill?" Kim asks.

  "Some squatters has moved in here"—Bill points to a map on the wall—"without asking, and I'm going to check it out...and Old Mother Gilly is screaming for help again. His horrible hound dogs, half starved likely, is tore the bag off his cow, and Gilly can't bring himself to do what needs to be done. You know how he is..."

  Gilly is a harmless defeated old critter, always complaining and calling on the neighbors for help.

  "Me and Boy will take care of the dogs," Kim says.

  "I'll go along with Bill and check out the squatters..." Marbles says. He is perfect backup, cool and alert, never loses control.

  "Don't take any chances."

  "We won't."

  As they drive out to Gilly's place in the buckboard, Kim fills Boy in.

  "Always something like this...a horse fell in his well, he tried to raise bees and nearly got stung to death, his hawgs et the poison he put out for the raccoons and polecats was killing his chickens...Then he got the idea of raising them chickens that don't never touch the ground...

  "Had his chickens on chicken wire about two feet up but raccoons got in under the wire, reached up and pulled chicken legs down through the mesh, and et off the drumsticks. So when Gilly goes out in the morning Lord Lord his chickens is flopping around with their legs et off...He gives folks something to talk about...turn in here..."

  When Boy and Kim drive up in the buckboard, one of the new kids as driver, old Gilly comes running out of his dirty little house, broken windows stuffed with rags.

  "Lord Lord, I just can't understand what got into them dogs."

  "Maybe it was just what didn't get into them," Boy says.

  "As God is my witness them dogs is fed good as me..."

  Things have been hard...don't mind telling you...had a bad year with my hogs...guess you heard about it—"

  "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 some
thing 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.

  Boy is writing stick songs and lyrics...

  Pick up your stick

  And pick it up quick

  Before you get a whack

  From someone else's stick

  You're old and sick

  Lean on that stick

  You wanna die in the nick?

  You can't hack it?

  Better pack it

  Grab that stick

  And grab it quick

  You're hot as a rivet

  No room to pivot

  Climb up your stick

  And turn down the wick

  One more scorer

  You want twenty more?

  Reach for your stick instead

  You wanna hole in your head?

  You wanna pick up some lead?

  Reach for your stick instead

  And get that steady bread

  A man's best friend is his stick

  Can't do no more time

  Don't want no more trouble

  Pick up your stick on the double

  Your chick's a bloody snitch

  Ride your stick like a witch

  She'll sing you into Sing Sing

  Unless you sprout a wing

  Fly away on your stick

  And fly away quick

  4

  In the kitchen they are measuring out whiffs of Saint Louis...tall thin lead bottle.

  He fades down toward the river with a soft cold fire

  Wearing a sort of fur I carry my own temperature with the river from here

  Around the edge blue arc lights pick at the cuticle

  of sand, smell of the tidal river on the second-floor porch

  A gold smell of watches, smoke and stale sweat

  Strange pistol form traced on the blanket

&n
bsp; someone beside him breathing

  getting light a balloon at the window

  floating up and walked along the treetops

  lighter they are blowing away

  a worn wood table with millions of old photos

  moving dressing undressing

  The old-fashioned icebox behind him and tunnels of

  KIM blowing away in four-letter words and puffs of

  violet smoke. Standing on a back porch

  He is drinking rum and Coca-Cola

  Gray shadows curiously empty

  Just a little Japanese dust on the floor

  Jacket or vest is balmy but cool

  He is waiting. He is nervous. He is sitting in a

  wooden armchair.

  There is a fossil holster at his belt cold breath in the gun

  The handle light and springy mercury bullets

  He got out like heat waves up over the porch and

  into the kitchen. Light wind blowing behind him

  Tom was sitting across the sky

  glass of beer studying in the kitchen

  And added some white rum

  "What s noxious in four silver flashes?"

  He woke up to the sound of rain. He lay there with his eyes closed. Where was he? Who was he? He opened his eyes and looked up at a ceiling covered in yellow wallpaper. He could see a window beyond the bed he was lying in. The window was half open and there was the sound and smell of rain. He could hear someone breathing in the bed beside him. Slowly he turned his head. A boy with dark tousled hair and pimples was sleeping with his mouth open, his teeth showing. Slowly he twisted out of bed. He looked down. He was naked. His body was thin and the pubic hairs were bright red. There was a slightly turgid feeling in his cock which was half hard. He stepped through a doorway...down a hall to a half-open door. Must be the bathroom. He urinated then looked around at the towels and the bathtub stained with rust. He opened the medicine chest. There was a bottle labeled Tincture of Opium half full of a brown reddish liquid. He made his way back to the bedroom and stepped to the window and looked out. The rain was coming down in silver-gray streamers. He could see a muddy backyard with some bedraggled iris and a little vegetable garden. A swing made from an old tire hung from the branch of an oak tree. Further on was a fence and beyond that a pasture and fields. To his left he could see a large pond. He turned back toward the bed.