The Place of Dead Roads

by William S. Burroughs

  There are thirteen in the party now, was twelve until Kim's old friend from Saint Albans, Denton Brady, showed up cool under the leveled guns.

  "Denny! "

  "Kim!"

  Guns lowered...Denny rode with the James boys and he was a child prodigy under Quantrill...Little Tombstone Denny, he could kill in his sleep, came as natural to him as breathing. At the same time he is a redheaded, freckle-face American kid with a wide sunlight grin...

  Swapping stories about Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson and the legendary Captain Gray, who was sent up to Missouri to organize the Irregulars. He brought along a wagonload of Confederate uniforms to lend us credibility and some of us wore uniforms from both armies. Denny wore a Confederate coat and Union pants, said it was getting those liberators of Wall Street down where they belong—covering assholes. Black-powder percussion days and with those cap-and-ball wheel guns you have to be mighty careful of multiple discharge when all six cylinders go up at once. Only way to keep this from happening is to coat every bullet with heavy grease so sparks don't fly out and set off the other cylinders. Goose grease we used mostly, but any grease will do in a squeeze. Recollect when we had to raid a whore house, the girls is all set to be raped, was mighty put out when the captain says:

  "Madame, all we want is your fucking cold cream."

  "Whose been fucking with my goose grease?" the Captain roars, holding up the empty tin.

  "TENSHUN!" Captain Gray walks up and down the line of sullen ragged soldiers.

  "All right, you brown artists...if I don't get a confession I'll by God confiscate all the fucking grease in this platoon...Well?"

  "I cannot tell a lie, Captain, I doned it with my little wanger." The boy smiles insolently.

  "Why don't you use spit, for shit sake? Haven't you got any sense of social responsibility?"

  "I'm sorry, Captain, I was carried away."

  "Give me your wheel."

  "But Captain..."

  "Shut up and hand it over."

  Sullenly the boy takes out his revolver and hands it to the Captain. The Captain hands him a fifty-caliber single-shot pistol...

  "You don't need grease for this..." The Indian tracker, Screeching Cat, pulls up and gets off his sweating horse.

  "Union patrol, sir...five miles north and heading this way...

  "How many?"

  "About fifty."

  Captain Gray surveys his platoon...Thirty men, the oldest under twenty...One boy has his arm in a sling. "Get ready to ride out."

  They ride out, Screeching Cat leading the way.

  He got that name from screeching like a berserk tomcat when he rides into battle, slashing with a cavalry saber cut down to twenty inches.

  Rain:::Rain:::Rain:::

  Huddled against each other in our soggy blankets under a tarpaulin...drip drip drip...and the horses keep getting tangled in the ropessomebody has to get up and see to it, and the morphine is running low...four addicts in the party, they have to ration it/out, quarter-grain twice a day. You have to be really hurting before they turn loose of any...kid with a sprained ankle...Kim tells him to think beautiful thoughts. Kim keeps dreaming about the sugar but it always spills, the syringe breaks, his opium turns to dirt.

  And Tom makes a scene about Denny:

  "Your phantom lover from beyond the tomb, isn't it...? Or some such rot...You and your occult junk."

  "Now Tom, let up aggravating me."

  "Go conjure up an abomination. I'm giving up on you."

  What holds us together is we are all agreed on where we are going and why. We are riding south for Mexico because we all have eagles on our heads, some more than others, most of it put up by Old Man Bickford and Mr. Hart the newspaper tycoon who can't hear the word death pronounced in his presence, says we are "tainting the lifeblood of America and corrupting credulous youth." We are on the Richy Shit List. So we play Robin Hood to the poor Mexican farmers, our lifeblood with jerky and peppers, information and silence.

  We are weak from hunger, wet and miserable, running out of everything. We have to make a run to town.

  "So you're running out of junk and we have to make a run to town, is that it?" Tom snaps. "What town?"

  "The nearest town. We'll put it to a vote."

  Everyone says "aye" except Tom, who finally shrugs out a sulky

  "Aye."

  They know the risks and make preparations. Sneaky Pete, a ferret-faced kid from Brooklyn, is our demolitions expert. He has fragmentation bombs in saddlebags, all he has to do is light up and drop them. Everybody gets his guns in place. Kim and Boy are both carrying two double-barreled twenty-gauge shotgun pistols slung on either side of the saddle horn. Other boys are carrying 410 smoothbore revolvers loaded with BB shot and two others have twelve-gauge sawed-offs where they can reach them quick under their coats, and a skinny Mexican kid called 10G with dead agate eyes has in a harness under his poncho a double 10-gauge with a spring mechanism to absorb recoil.

  Red Dog, guide and tracker, scouts the area and plots an escape route in case we run into trouble and need a place to hole up—a ruined farm three miles from the city limits. They always figure you to be getting as far away as possible. Not likely to look that close. Besides Red Dog has put the "blinding sign" on the path. There it is, about five hundred yards ahead:

  manhattan new mexico

  In cottonwoods by a swollen muddy river. Kim scans it through field glasses...buckboards, people walking up and down...Saturday afternoon in New York. Kim passes the glasses.

  "I don't like it," he says.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I seen the same face five times in different places...walking around on a treadmill."

  "Well, small town, you know."

  "Something wrong with this one. What do you think, Tom?"

  Tom shrugs irritably: "Well, it's you junkies who have to ride in...why don't you decide?"

  "Don't be an old woman, Kim."

  "The signs ain't right."

  "Maybe you should take it up with your spirit guide..."

  "All right. Let's go."

  Maybe it is all right, Kim thinks, and I'm just jumpy. He's been having centipede nightmares, wakes up kicking and screaming and once he woke up with tears streaming down his face or was it rain?

  Manhattan, so of course the main street is Broadway. They are riding down Broadway spaced out. Denny is behind Kim to the left/ Kim is riding side by side with Tom. For the first time in weeks the sun comes out. The townspeople walk up and down, tipping hats, exchanging greetings.

  You can see them every day

  Strolling up and down Broadway

  Silly to think anything is wrong

  Boasting of the wonders they can do

  "How many you kill today, Doc?"

  vertigo...smell of ether .. .

  They'll tell you of trips...

  passing a buckboard...an old gray horse dozes in its

  traces...Two boys frisk by, singing.

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

  The townspeople are ducking into doorways, up alleys...a whiff of brimstone and decay...Kim snaps awake and reins up. Denny rides up beside him.

  "AMBU—" A shotgun blast catches Denny in the side of the neck, nearly blowing his head off, he is falling against Kim's horse streaking blood down the saddle, dead before he hits the street. A pellet nicks Kim's ear.

  "—SH! RIDE OUT!"

  Kim is turning his horse and drawing his shotgun pistol. He shoots a man on a roof under the chin, snapping his head back. They are shooting from windows and roofs on both sides of the street. 10G takes out a window, framing a faceless man in jagged broken glass. Kim can see three of his boys down, riddled with bullets and shotgun slugs. He can feel a bullet hit Tom and gets an arm around him as they ride out, Red Dog in the lead.

  There are three others wounded besides Tom, one in the shoulder, one in the leg...Another boy picked up some number-four shot in the back. You have to dig them out one at a time.
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  Meanwhile there is consternation in Manhattan. The unexpected shotguns have taken a heavy toll: two dead, one with an arm torn off, another who will write an inspirational article for a Unitarian magazine, entitled "My Eyes Have a Cold Nose." Mike Chase, who has set up the ambush, makes a hasty examination of the dead. The three he most wanted, Kim, Boy, and Marbles, are missing.

  "Sheeit!"

  Still there is better than five thousand eagles lying there in the bloody street.

  "Well what are we waiting for?"

  Cautious as always, Mike points out that they may be part of a much larger force. .. .

  "Not likely...take a look."

  He hands Mike the field glasses.

  "Slow down," Kim calls. "A few more of you boys pretend like you're wounded, holding each other up."

  The boys camp around.

  "Tell me grandmother they got me, old pal."

  Another sings, "I'm a-headin' for the last roundup."

  Tom watches with an enigmatic smile.

  "It isn't far, Tom."

  "The Western Lands?"

  "They're falling off their horses! Let's go!"

  The posse thunders out. Mike brings up the rear. He hasn't lived this long riding out in front.

  "Look, they're throwing away their saddlebags..."

  The posse lets out a wild rebel yell and spurs forward right over the saddlebags.

  BLOOM BLOOM BLOOM

  Men blown out of the saddle, horses disemboweled, trailing entrails, a/rider one foot caught in the stirrup, the other leg blown off at the knee spurting blood in his face. Mike watches impassively. He turns and rides back to town.

  They carry Tom into the barn and lay him down on a bedroll with an army blanket folded under his head. The 30-30 has gone through both lungs, angled from above. Kim starts to prepare a shot of morphine but Tom stops him...a small distant voice...

  "It doesn't hurt, Kim...I'm just cold..."

  Boy covers him with a blanket.

  He's bleeding out and there's nothing I can do about it, Kim thinks. He starts to say, You'll be all right, bursts into tears instead.

  Kim burned it on an oak barrel stave with an old rusty running iron he found in the barn:

  tom dark

  june 3, 1876 april 2, 1894

  QUIEN ES?

  1

  Kim's father had told him something about painting: artists who couldn't sell a canvas during their lifetimes and now their paintings are literally priceless.

  "If you know how to pick them, it's the best investment you can make."

  Kim makes an appointment with an art dealer and takes along a selection of his father's paintings. The man is Middle European, dark and heavyset, with shrewd gray eyes. .. . "So you're Mortimer Carsons's son..." Mr. Blum studies the pictures carefully...One is a portrait of Kim, age fourteen, standing on a balcony, his face radiant with dazzling unearthly joy. He is waving to something beyond...Another picture shows an old steam locomotive pulling floats of The Mary Celeste and The Copenhagen. In the open cab of the locomotive, a black engineer and fireman are pounding each other on the back, smiling and waving...There are a number of landscapes, mostly of the Ozarks in winter, spring and fall...

  "There was another portrait," Kim says. "Several years later...I looked for it and couldn't find it..."

  "It's in Paris," Blum told him, "and so is the dealer for these"—he indicated the paintings. Blum was an ethical man after his lights. This deal belonged to his old friend Bumsell and he knew it...

  Kim decides to make the Grand Tour...

  Kim dislikes England on first contact. The porters are deferring to the signal presented by his clothes and luggage. They don't see him. He infers correctly that the whole place operates on hierarchical categories that determine how everybody treats everybody else, categories carefully designed to make sure no one ever sees anyone else.

  "Well it's convenient, isn't it?"

  "Only in petrified context. Function negative in space conditions."

  The hyphenated names, the old school ties, the clubs, the country weekends. Kim's stomach turns at the thought of an English weekend. He had thought of a large country house or a shooting lodge in Scotland. He decides against it.

  "They would force me into a loathsome Lord of the Manor role...'And how is your wife's cold, Grimsey?' Or get me out altogether. Always think about the tenants when you buy on foreign soil. You are on their turf. They were here before you came. They will be here when you are gone. Which will be soon if you don't play their game."

  Kim took a taxi. He was meeting Tony Outwaite in Hyde Park.

  Kim got out and looked about him with loathing at the brown water, the listless ducks, the warped benches stained with pigeon droppings.

  "There is something here that is just awful," he decided. "A terrible lack...No doubt they are all yacking away to their queen...taking tea with her oh quite at ease you know and taking liberties she will just love like calling her 'love' she'd just love that wouldn't she now?"

  Kim was a few minutes early for his meet with Tony. On operative meets it is always indicated to get there a bit early and check things out...Trade craft, you know.

  Maybe I should feed the fucking pigeons to be less conspicuous or cruise one of the obvious guardsmen in civilian uniform or cheap lumpy blue suits. Most of them look suety and stupid and deeply vulgar with a vulgarity of the spirit that only a class rotten society can mold. No doubt about it, these are the lower classes.

  Someone else is sitting on the designated bench reading The Times where Tony should have been and Kim doesn't like it. He feels slighted. The man is M-5, from his shoes, shined but not glitter-shined, to his gray felt hat neither new nor old. Oh just any old M-5 hack is good enough for me, is that it? He sits down petulantly and belches. This is the password of ERP, the English Republican Party, which, under cover of English eccentricity, is an extremely deadly and dangerous conspiracy. You are expected to belch very discreetly and cover your mouth. Kim belches rather loudly and doesn't cover his mouth. He can feel the man shiver with disapproval.

  "Nice weather we're having isn't it?" the man says out of the corner of his mouth as he folds his paper with the expertise of someone who does a lot of sitting around reading papers. It's like folding a map./lf you don't do it right you have an accordion of recalcitrant papers in your hands.

  "Well," Kim says distinctly. "It won't last."

  "Daresay."

  Kim reluctantly surrenders the satchel containing his plague cloak, sandals, knife, and sheath in accordance with his agreement with Tony, an agreement he is already regretting. He stands up and walks away with a vague uneasy feeling of universal damage and loss...in his pocket a slip of paper...Empress Hotel, 23 Lillie Road near Gloucester Road Station, room reserved name Jerome Wentworth...reserved not paid. Kim finds he has ten pounds left, just enough to buy a cheap suitcase and some toilet articles...No the chemist didn't have a shaving kit, but he did grudgingly sell Kim a razor, shaving soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste.

  "Will that be all, sir?"

  (Gentlemen don't ask for shaving kits.)

  The Empress Hotel is in a rundown shabby area on the edge of a rural slum with shops selling jellied eels and blood pudding.

  A motherly woman greets him at the hotel.

  "Oh yes, Mr. Wentworth .. . gentleman reserved the room and left this package. Our rates are a pound a night with breakfast, five pounds by the week. Breakfast is seven to nine-thirty, seven to ten on Sundays. We appreciate payment in advance."

  Kim gives her a five-pound note. He has nothing left but some change.

  "Here's your key, Mr. Wentworth. Room twenty-nine on the back."

  The room is small but the bed is comfortable. The one window faces a backyard with trees and clotheslines. There is a gas grate that you feed shillings into. Kim opens the package. There is a passport in the name of Jerome Wentworth, student, and a letter of introduction to Professor Gailbraithe at the British Museum which identif
ies him as a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. There is fifteen pounds in notes. This, he gathers, is his weekly allowance after paying for the room.

  He feels like a forgotten agent from some remote planet that winked out light-years ago.

  He assembles himself for a tour of the neighborhood. He feels awkward, vulnerable, conspicuous. He bumps into a woman at a corner.

  "Well you might look where you are going," she snaps.

  "Are you next, sir?" a clerk says insolently.

  Symptoms of acute weapon withdrawal.

  In the days that follow he will learn to stay out of places where he is discourteously treated and he will find enough safe places to make life bearable...just bearable...a change of management or personnel...Kim has fallen from favor at the Prince of Wales Pub. He observes that while good places may change to bad, bad places never change to good ones.

  He establishes a routine. Every morning after breakfast in the hotel dining room he goes to the museum and studies Egyptian texts, making notes. Professor Gailbraithe is helpful in a vague way and Kim even has a tiny office at his disposal. After lunch in the museum cafeteria, he goes back to the Empress, types up and enlarges on his notes.

  Every week he receives twenty pounds by post. He always pays in advance.

  "And how is the back, Mrs. Hardy?"

  "Well sir, I could use one of those pain tablets."

  "Of course, Mrs. Hardy...You keep the other two in the bottle just in case..."

  A perfect gentleman in every sense of the word.

  The Egyptian pantheon is colorful...a demon with the hind legs of a hippopotamus, the front paws of a lion, and the head of a crocodile...a beautiful woman with a scorpion's head...a pig demon who walks erect, seizing violators and squeezing the shit out of them, which he grinds into their mouths and noses until they suffocate.