The Place of Dead Roads

by William S. Burroughs

  The boy was still sleeping on his back, his chest rising and falling in the gray light. He slipped back into bed. There was a cobweb in one corner of the window where the screen was slightly rusted and the raindrops shone iridescent in the dawn light. He lay there on his back, his breathing slowly synchronizing with the other. He felt his cock slowly distend and press against the covers. There was a smell of unwashed bedding. The boy turned toward him and an arm almost fell across his chest. The boy shivered, snuggling against him as he turned sideways. Now the boy's eyes flew open and they looked into each other's faces. He could feel the boy's cock throbbing against his stomach. They kissed and seemed to melt together in a gush of sperm. Suddenly they were both dressed and going down the stairs with yellow oak banisters and into the kitchen. Smell of coffee and eggs and bacon. He ate hungrily. So far they had not exchanged a word.

  Belches...Taste of eggs and bacon...Outside the rain had almost stopped and watery sunlight crossed the kitchen table.

  They stepped out onto the back porch. The mist was lifting from the field beyond the backyard, and the tire swing moved gently in a slight breeze. Under the porch they found fishing rods and a can with dirt. They picked up several night crawlers in the flower beds and then through a gate and down the fields through the wet grass and came to the edge of the pond. It was fairly large, a small lake actually. There was a little pier to which was moored a rowboat. They got in and the boy rowed out toward the middle of the lake...He shipped the oars. They baited their hooks with the squirming red purple worms and dropped them over the side. In a few minutes they were pulling in bass and perch and one three-pound walleye. Cleaned the fish and back to the house.

  The sky was clouded over again, the fish on top of the ice. The day passed in a mindless trance. They sat at the kitchen table. They walked through the garden. "Everything must appear normal," the boy said. After sundown they went up to the bedroom in the stale smell of unwashed sheets and made each other again.

  Suddenly we are both awake. It's time. We go to the study, there is a secret drawer and two odd-looking pistols with thick barrels but very light. And I know it is a built-in silencer low velocity nine-millimeter with mercury bullets and we have a job to do...So we go down and get into our vintage Moon. And now I see we are on the outskirts of East Saint Louis, a shabby rural slum, houses with limestone foundations. Well we got this job to do. There it is right ahead. The roadhouse gambling joint. We ease into the parking lot. He should be along any minute now. A car pulls up. This is it. A man, two bodyguards, we swing out of the car sput sput sput. Good clean job.

  If there's going to be trouble on a job it always comes before the job. If you can't clear up that trouble before the job, better forget the job. Oh it may not be much. Just a fumble, something dropped on the floor, the wrong thing said...you leave a nickel instead of a quarter for a newspaper.

  "Where you been for twenty years, Mister?"

  Everything is OK on this one. Just a routine Mafia containment job...the guns perform superbly:

  Sput Sput Sput

  A spectral arm...blue arc lights...streets half buried in sand smell of the tidal river he settles gently onto a mattress just an impression, a human fossil form traced on the blankets slow cold breath in his lungs someone breathing beside him gray shadows out through the boards at the window floating out like heat waves up into the treetops lighter lighter blowing away across the sky millions of old photos of Tom, making tea in the kitchen, laughing, dressing, undressing, leaving a tunnel of Tom behind him and tunnels of Kim coming, writing, walking, shooting, caving in, running together in little silver flashes and puffs of violet smoke.

  A whiff of Saint Louis, he is standing on a back porch looking down toward the river. He is drinking rum and Coca-Cola. His mind is curiously empty, waiting. He has long fine black hair like a Japanese or an Indian. He is wearing a fur vest. You can smell the river from here. Now he is sitting in an armchair of yellow oak. There is a strange pistol in a holster at his belt the handle is springy feeling the whole gun very light like a toy. Fifteen nine-millimeter rounds Mercury bullets. He gets up and walks across the porch and into the kitchen closing the screen door behind him. Tom is sitting at a worn wooden table with a glass of beer doing a crossword puzzle. Kim fills his glass with Coca-Cola and adds some white rum. Tom looks up..."What is noxious in four letters beginning with..."

  5

  Colonel Sutton-Smith was a well-to-do amateur archeologist who was attempting to establish a link between the hieroglyphic writing of Egypt and the Mayan hieroglyphs. He had published several books and a number of articles. He was also a highly placed operative of British Intelligence. He was in America to study links between the mound-building people of Illinois and the Aztec and Mayan civilizations. This necessitated several weeks of research in the library of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which was an ideal drop for intelligence reports. He circulated in Washington society, sounding out just where America would stand in the event of a war in Europe and what military potential it possessed. He chose as a base for his fieldwork a small town in western Illinois called Johnsonville.

  The following are coded entries from the Colonel's diary.

  September 17, 1908...Fine clear weather with a crisp touch of autumn in the air, the leaves just beginning to change. I have rarely seen a more beautiful countryside, heavily wooded with an abundance of streams and ponds. The town itself and the townspeople seem archetypical for middle American towns of this size. Two barefoot boys with battered straw hats passed me on the street this morning singing:

  "Old sow got caught in the fence last spring..."

  Charming and quelles derrieres mon cher. At noon I went into the hotel for a drink. The bartender was telling a joke about a farmer who put some whiskey in a glass of milk for his sick wife. Well she takes a long drink and says..."Arch, don't you ever get rid of that cow." And everybody laughed heartily. Perhaps a bit too heartily. In the late afternoon the townspeople stroll up and down...

  "Howdy, Doc. How many you kill today?"

  "Evening, Parson."

  Frog-croaking and hog calls drift in from the surrounding countryside. Women on porches call to the menfolks...

  "Hurry up, your dinner's getting cold..."

  Back to the hotel for a cocktail before dinner. The bartender is telling the same joke and everybody laughs just as loud, though several of the patrons were here at noon. Am I imagining things or is there something just a bit too typical about Johnsonville? And why do the women all have big feet? Tomorrow I will try to recruit some local lads for my digs. And what smashers they are. Have to be careful in a small place like this.

  September 18, 1908...Not much luck recruiting labor. Harvest time, you know. But I have met a local farmer who showed me some artifacts he found in his fields near a mound. What an old bore but every now and again he asks a sharp question. Hummmmmm. He said he'd be glad to send one of his sons along to show me the site.

  The boy is about seventeen with a pimply face and a wide smile. He showed me places in the fields where he had found arrowheads and we climbed to the top of a mound. I brought out some sandwiches which we shared and two bottles of beer. It soon be came evident that he was offering himself, rubbing his crotch and grinning. When I unbuttoned his pants it sprang out pearling like an oyster yum yum yum. Who would expect such amenities in the wilds of America? I gave him a silver dollar, with which he seemed delighted. I will see him again tomorrow.

  Back to town. Bartender telling the same joke. It goes round and round in my head. Don't ever get rid of that cow. Old sow got caught in the fence last spring. How many you kill today, Doc? Hurry, dinner's getting cold. There is something odd here. Can't shake the feeling of being watched. Of course any stranger in a small town is an object of curiosity. But this is something more. A cool appraisal at the margin of vision as if their faces changed completely as soon as they were no longer observed. Perhaps I am just professionally suspicious but I've been in this busine
ss long enough to know when somebody is seeing me.

  September 19, 1908...Today John was waiting when I reached the farmhouse, which is about a mile outside the town. He was wearing blue denim Levi's, soft leather boots that looked handmade, a blue shirt and a carryall bag slung from a strap over his shoulder. There was a revolver in a holster at his belt and a knife. I noticed that the pistol handle of polished walnut had been cut to fit his hand.

  "Might find us a squirrel or two..."

  He led the way to another mound about two miles away...The country is hardwood forest through which wind streams and rivers, I could see bass and pike and catfish in the clear blue pools.

  "I think I know a place to dig," he told me.

  About halfway up the mound was an open place and it did indeed look like a burial site. We took turns digging and about five feet down the shovel went through rotten wood and there was a skull looking up at us and gold teeth winking in the sun.

  "Holy shit, it's Aunt Sarah!" he exclaimed. "I can tell by the teeth."

  We shoveled the dirt back. He patted the earth down with the shovel and wrote with a stick:

  please do not disturb

  He turned to me, opened his mouth, sticking his teeth out and squashing his nose in a hideously realistic imitation of the skeleton face. It was irresistibly comic and we both had a good laugh.

  "Let's go on up to the top. There's a flat stone there may have been some kinda altar. Human sacrifices, feller say."

  The altar was composed of large blocks of limestone fitted together. The stone had been pushed aside by a giant oak that shaded it, giving the place a dark and sinister aspect.

  At the same time I was seized with uncontrollable excitement and we both stripped off our clothes. This time it was oriental embroidery, my dear...[The Colonel's term for buggery.] He took out a compass and placed me on the altar facing north. I could see he was up to magic of some sort. Not since that Nubian guide on top of the Great Pyramid have I experienced such consummate expertise. I spurted rocks and stones and trees. On the way back in the late afternoon he stopped me with one hand, looking up into the branches of a persimmon tree. I couldn't see anything. Then the pistol slid into his hand. He crouched with both hands on the gun and fired. A squirrel fell down from branch to branch and landed at his feet, blood oozing from a head shot. I studied his face in the moment of firing. There was a tightening, a feral sharpening of the features, as if something much older and harder had peeped out for a second...He was skinning and cleaning the squirrel expertly as he hummed: "Old sow got caught in the fence last spring."

  He took a muslin cloth from his bag and wrapped the quartered squirrel, the liver and heart in the cloth. Then he sat down on another stump and removed his boots and socks. He stood up and took off his shirt, hanging it over a low tree limb. He slid down his pants and shorts and stepped out naked, his phallus half erect. He rubbed it hard, looking at the squirrel on the stump, then he took out a harmonica and capered around the stump playing a little tune. It was an old tune, wild and sad, phallic shadows in animal skins on a distant wall...I remember a desolate windswept slope in Patagonia and the graves with phallic markers and the feeling of sadness and loneliness that closed around me. It was all there in the music, twenty thousand years...The boy was putting on his clothes.

  He explained that he had made a magic should be worth two more squirrels. We hadn't gone more than a hundred yards when he shot another squirrel running on the ground. And a third squirrel from the top of an oak tree—a truly remarkable shot. I had brought along a Colt 38 Lightning in my pack but did not wish to compete with such phenomenal marks-manship. His gun is a 22 with a special load. Back at the farmhouse I met another of the sons. He is a few years older than John but enough like him to be a twin. Mr. Brown asked me to dinner and I gladly accepted, not wanting to hear the cow joke again, but over whiskey Brown told it...Don't ever get rid of that cow. The boys laughed heartily, then quite suddenly stopped laughing and their expressions hardened. The squirrel with greens and potatoes and fried apples was excellent.

  Mr. Brown glanced at John and some signal passed between them. Mr. Brown turned to me..."You do digs in Arabia, John tells me...Well that must be right interesting. I hear them Ayrabs got some right strange ways."

  No doubt about it, he knew. And John had told him without a word.

  On the way back to town, as I passed the red brick school building, I could see that there were lights on in what I assumed to be the assembly hall. Drawing closer I could see a number of townspeople parading around in a large empty hall. "Don't ever get rid of that cow...Howdy, Doc, how many you kill today...Nice sermon, Parson...Hurry up, dinner's getting cold...and laughing and vying with each other. .. .

  The whole town is a fraud, a monstrous parody of small towns...and what does this travesty cover?

  September 20, 1908...I woke this morning with a fever and splitting headache. No doubt an attack of malaria. I dressed, shivering and burning.

  I stumbled out to a drugstore for quinine and laudanum, returned to my room, and took a good stiff dose of both. I lay down and felt relief throbbing through my head. I finally fell asleep. I was awakened by a knock at the door...I put on my dressing gown and opened the door. It was the Sheriff.

  "Howdy, Doc, can I talk to you for a minute...?"

  "Certainly." I felt somewhat better and sat down and waited.

  "Well now, I thought maybe I could help you out doing, well, whatever it is you're doing, feller say. Must be nice traveling around and seeing different places...Like to travel myself but this old star keeps me pinned right down...Now being Sheriff is more of a job than it might seem at first. Seems peaceful here, don't it? Well maybe a sow gets caught in the fence next spring. Well we aims to keep it peaceful...Now you got yourself a peaceful place, what could make it unpeaceful?"

  "Well I suppose some force or person from outside..."

  "Exactly, Colonel, and that's my job."

  "We call it security."

  "That's right, so it's only logical to check anyone out comes in from outside, wouldn't you say so?"

  "I suppose so. But why do you assume an outsider is ill-intentioned?"

  "We don't. I said check out. Mostly I can check out a visitor in a few seconds. Drummer selling barbed wire, poor product, loudmouthed son of a bitch. Stay not to be encouraged. We have the means to discourage a stay that can only prove shall we say unproductive..."

  He was gradually shedding his country accent.

  "Now you take the case of someone who passes himself off as a drummer, whereas his actual business is something else...Being a drummer is his cover story, as archeology is yours...Atlantis."

  [Atlantis is the Colonel's service name.]

  I looked around. No doubt about it, the room had been searched in my absence. Expertly searched. Nothing was removed, but I could feel the recent presence of someone in the room. It's a knack you get in this business if you want to stay alive.

  "You searched the room while I was out."

  He nodded. "And read your diary. Code wasn't hard to crack. And you've been under twenty-four-hour surveillance since your arrival." He passed the Colonel an envelope. The Colonel pulled out two photos.

  I kept my face impassive...

  "Old sow got caught in the fence eh, mon colonel...und zwar in einer ekelhafte Position. And indeed in a disgusting position."

  "I think my superiors would be amused by these pictures..."

  "Very likely. I wasn't attempting blackmail. Just letting you know plenty more where those came from. And by the way the little charade you observed in the assembly hall was of course arranged for your benefit."

  "Like everything else here."

  "Exactly. Johnsonville is one big cover. And when someone from outside penetrates that cover...well it can be uh, 'awkward' I believe is the word."

  "You mean to kill me?"

  "You are more use to us alive. That is..."

  "If I cooperate?"

  "Exa
ctly."

  "And exactly who would I be cooperating with?"

  "We represent Potential America. P.A. we call it. And don't take us for dumber than we look."

  Is it good for the Johnsons? That's what Johnson Intelligence is for—to protect and further Johnson objectives, the realization of our biologic and spiritual destiny in space. If it isn't good for the Johnsons, how can it be neutralized or removed?

  You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. Somebody throws your change on a morphine script back at you and his name goes down on a list. We have observed that most of the trouble in this world is caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business because they have no business of their own to mind any more than a smallpox virus. Now your virus is an obligate cellular parasite, and my contention is that what we call evil is quite literally a virus parasite occupying a certain brain area which we may term the RIGHT center. The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right. And right here we must make a diagnostic distinction between a hardcore virus-occupied shit and a plain ordinary mean no-good son of bitch. Some of these sons of bitches don't cause any trouble at all, just want to be left alone. Others cause minor trouble, like barroom fights and bank robberies. To put it country simple—former narcotics commissioner Harry J. Anslinger diseased was an obligate shit. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Dillinger, were just sons of bitches.

  Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. Those individuals who cannot or will not mind their business cling to the victimless-crime concept, equating drug use and private sexual behavior with robbery and murder. If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit position is untenable and Hell hath no more vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.