The Place of Dead Roads Read online

  "THROW THE COUNTESS OUT," he bellows lustily. So he and the handsome footman just make it back to the castle.

  Now the 32-20 with the holster tied down. He goes into a sheriff act.

  "Fill your hand, you stage-robbing sidewinder!"

  Draw aim fire, just above the belt buckle...A little off, trigger pulls hard. Needs some custom work, but the load feels good. He does a good workmanlike job with this gun, but it doesn't seem to have the élan of the others. No doubt about it, double-action is better not only for speed but because gun stays on target whereas the act of cocking throws gun off target. Still the 44 Russian has a balletic sort of grace with stylized movements, the hand snaking out, whole body lining up...he sees himself in pink tights with a disdainful nonchalant hard-on. Perhaps he will wear a skeleton suit for his gunfights, or a codpiece with a skull on it. He tries the 38, wearing a glove on his left hand. He clasps the frame above and below the cylinder—what a grouping, you just point and squirt the bullets out like a hose.

  He packs away the guns except for the 38, which he wears, and picks up the bag, the four canvases, a double-barreled shotgun, and the huge Gray's Anatomy. Carrying this rather awkward load he starts down the path thinking about Denny, getting a hard-on and not looking where he is going, he jams his right foot between two rocks and his body pitches forward, bag, guns, canvases and Gray's flying ahead of him and skidding down the path. He gets his foot out using both hands and grimacing with pain. He can't walk on the right foot. Using the shotgun as a cane he drags himself down to the riverfront and into the boathouse.

  He strips off his boot and sock, the ankle is swollen and turning blue. He puts on a pot of hot water to clean the guns and soak his ankle. The throbbing pain is getting worse by the minute. He hobbles to the night table and takes out the bottle of laudanum. Dose: fifteen to thirty drops every six hours for pain. Kim measures out thirty-five drops into the medicine glass and washes it down with a little warm water. Bitter and aromatic, with a taste of cinnamon. He makes a cup of tea and sits down at the table, his foot in hot water and Epsom salts.

  In a few minutes the hot throbs of pain from his ankle turn to cool blue waves of pleasure and comfort that hit the back of his neck and spread down the back of his thighs. What a feeling. He squirms like a contented alligator. He dries his foot and rubs his ankle with camphorated liniment.

  From Kim's Diary

  Always take time enough to be sure of your shot. Always give the impression that you have plenty of time. This will fluster and hurry your opponent.

  The 22 is the easiest pistol to shoot. Light weight and light load. The lighter the pistol the better. Avoid heavy pistols with a lot of weight in the barrel.

  General procedure for the heavier calibers is to aim an inch above the belt buckle. Drawing from a low tied-down holster when the arm is extended and ready to fire you line up on this target. However, if the draw is from belt level, the lineup is on the solar-plexus shot which has an even surer knockdown, breathtaking shock and in many cases will go through and shatter the spine. (He can see the shiny lead bullet embedded in white coral.)

  There are various shooting positions. Lining the gun up using both hands from the one-point position. Holding gun forward at eye level, steadied with both hands. One-hand position, arm extended, leaning slightly forward to sight the shot from above. Gun held above and below cylinder by gloved hand.

  Quick unexpected body movements can produce a crucial miss on the first shot. Simplest of these for a thin person is the sudden turn sideways. Or drop to one knee. As you reach for the gun, smile. The generous gesture: "Here is something I want to give you."

  Identify yourself with your gun. Take it apart and finger every piece of it. Think of the muzzle as a steel eye feeling for your opponent's vitals with a searching movement. Move forward in time and see the bullet hitting the target as an accomplished fact.

  If an opponent is looking for trouble it is always well to seem to be avoiding the encounter. He is leaning further and further into your space. He is more and more off his home base.

  He studies Gray's Anatomy, plotting path and trajectory of the bullet in body. What is between solar plexus and spine? Where are the veins and arteries?

  As the cave painters often depicted animals with the heart or other vital organs visible, so it is well to take an X-ray view of your adversary. Identify yourself with death. See yourself as death to your opponent.

  On the fourth day Kim wakes up with very little pain in his ankle. He can get around quite easily on a heavy hickory cane he has cut and smoothed down with sandpaper. He takes a dose of the hashish extract instead of laudanum, and writes...

  I am learning to dissociate gun, arm, and eye, letting them do it on their own, so draw aim and fire will become a reflex. I must learn to dissociate one hand from the other and turn myself into Siamese twins. I see myself sitting naked on a pink satin stool. On the left side my hairdo is 18th-century, tied back in a bun at the nape of the neck.

  I sit there with a hard-on. I am naked except for knee-high stockings in pink silk and pink pumps, covering a cowering Inquisitor with my double-barreled flintlock in left hand, the flint an exquisite arrowhead, the whole artifact built by a Swiss watchmaker with a little music box that plays on after the shot, the bullets greased with ambergris and musk.

  "Really exquisite with the black powder scent, Father."

  On the right side, wearing nothing but boots, I cover a nigger-killing sheriff with my 44 Russian. This split gives me a tingly wet dream feeling like the packing dream, where I keep finding more things to go into my suitcases which are already overflowing and the boat is whistling in the harbor and another drawer all full of things I need...A 50-caliber ball crashes through the priest's chest. The music box plays a minuet as I shoot the sheriff right in the Adam's apple. I call it "making him do the Turkey."

  Kim walks over to the old railroad. There is a slope leading up to the rusty weed-grown tracks. He sets up his targets against the slope. He can feel the guns as extensions of his arm. He knows just what every little part is doing. He whirls and spins around, trying crazy shots. He postures obscenely, dancing sideways with his ass sticking out and a street-boy grin. He does an insolent bump as he drills the sheriff right in the heart, and then just for jolly a quick shot to the head, which being a can of tomatoes with the top rusted through explodes in a splash of red. Now Kim rubs his crotch, looking down at the dead law.

  "You're dead and you stink."

  He turns to walk away and makes the "vulgar whorish gesture of lifting his foot and showing the whole sole in contempt."

  A frog-faced deputy sidles out of a doorway. Kim drops his pants and shoots between his legs. Wheeeeee...he hits the solar plexus, ranging upward.

  He straightens up and sees a face looking at him which seems at first part of the bushes, like those faces in picture puzzles, you can win a trip to Niagara Falls if you find them all in the trees and clouds...

  (Soft slow dogs crusted with the smell of all humanity eyes forever searching for that long past lover whose breath will never warm you more.)

  It's a fawn face with pointed ears and yellow eyes and tawny yellow curls like bronze wire. He is dressed in shirt and pants of dappled green. Kim feels a slackness, a drifting floating sensation as the picture moves. Steady on. Take it easy. The boy rubs his crotch and grins a slow wolfish smile, showing sharp animal teeth. Kim stands there, pants around his ankles with a hard-on, his face blank as if wiped by the summer sky and drifting clouds.

  (It was the same now when I was a baby kangaroo in Sister Howe's pouch nothing was disgusting not even the tears the hot meaty rush of a nosebleed.)

  The boy advances. He is wearing soft yellow boots to the knees. A heavy revolver which Kim recognizes as the new Colt 45 double-action is at his belt. On the other side in a leather sheath is a silver flute.

  (Darkness is gathering behind me, thickening in puddles of ink. We began to take huge bites out of our rolls...their rich
breath filled my head, a little tingle of excitement ran through me.)

  "I'm Carl Piper."

  "I'm Kim Carsons."

  "I want to pump you, Kim."

  Standing by the ruined railway on the sandy bank of a deep pool Carl wraps his hips around Kim with his right arm around Kim's waist holding him up the flute is in his left hand playing right into Kim's left ear phantom train whistles from lonely sidings boy cries from trestles and pools thin ghostly fading into the inky blackness of space Kim hooks his hands around Carl's buttocks pumping him in his blank face turned to the sky the hot meaty rush of a nosebleed down his chest spatters his spurting cock with blood.

  He straightens up and sees a face not tears at first...part of the bushes...boy advances...you can see the heavy revolver crusted with the smells of all humanity at his belt...searching for that long past love is a thin silver flute...a fawn face thickening in puddles of ink...Kim, our roles, their rich breath...a pressure...excitement ran through me floating sensation...the ruined railway dappled green shirt and pants...lost lonely boy cries with a hard-on his face fading into the inky clouds hot meaty rush pulling him in picture puzzles recognizes the soft slow dog on the other side eyes arching forever...darkness was gathering behind me whose breath will never warm you more...pointed ears and yellow eyes filled my head a tingling slackness...

  "I want to pump you, Kim."

  Standing on the sandy bank of a stream moves Kim with his right hand around...

  "Steady on...Take it easy."

  Left ear phantom train whistles boy rubs his crotch from trestles and pools...this animal teeth...Kim stands there wiped by the summer sky.

  Kim is sitting on a yellow toilet seat, his cock pulsing and lubricating in sunlight that glitters through iced twigs making them tingle and glow. The sky is pale blue and the snow has a thick cake crust...In moonlight he eats a melting white peppermint. The moon catches it and makes it sparkle and there is a runny green center that drips onto his shoulder and a boy with huge vacant blue eyes is licking it off...Early morning rosebud on his tray like a cannon mouth the crimson hole goes right to its heart. A boy with rose-colored genitals on an empty beach makes a jackoff gesture.

  Carl and Kim leap and snort and gambol, Kim soars up and parts his buttocks..."I'm a cloud. Seed me." He seems to float down and Carl is fucking him on all fours in a rank goatish smell Kim writhes feeling the horns burst through his head splitting open he screams and whinnies as blood spurts from his nose...

  "Show you something."

  Carl straps on his 45 and proffers a bandanna.

  "Blindfold me." He faces the targets which are six cardboard boxes each with a circle drawn in the middle. He makes a motion and little click of the tongue and the gun leaps into his hand, six shots all in the inner circles.

  "Now you try."

  Kim tries to memorize the target positions and keep them in his mind's eye. Carl, standing behind him with his hands on Kim's hips, gently guides him. One direct hit in front of him, two others outside the circle but in the box.

  "With more than one player you need to know exactly where everyone is. Practice naked, practice at night." He picks up his clothes. "Now I must go."

  "Can't I come with you?"

  "Not now. Later."

  He walks down the tracks toward the big thicket in the setting sun where the tracks seem to melt together. In the distance he turns and waves and smiles, fading into the trees and the sky.

  Kim drops by Kes's occasionally to buy fresh eggs milk and marijuana and meets an Indian boy named Red Dog, who helps around the place from time to time. Red Dog is about Kim's age or a little older, very tall and straight with jet-black hair and a smooth red-brown skin and one eye is slate-gray and the other brown. Kim is very much taken but Red Dog is aloof in a friendly way.

  Kim starts dropping by the saloon in the evening for a few drinks before dinner. Mostly the saloon is empty. Kes carries on a trade with the people of the Big Thicket, exchanging supplies for gold and certain herbs and woods. But the thicket people, little men with flaring ears, drink only milk, and hastily fade away as soon as their business is done.

  One night Kim is in the bar looking at Red Dog, who is bending to lift a beer keg. Kim is getting a hard-on and the ruttish smell is drifting off him, an underwater smell it is, and suddenly he is aware of being watched by hostile and alien eyes. A man sitting in one corner with a beer, strange Kim hadn't noticed him...sort of a smoke screen there...As soon as the man feels that Kim has spotted him he coughs, covering his face with a handkerchief, puts a coin on the table and slides out. Kes watches him go and points across the river.

  Saturday night and maybe somebody from across the river comes into Uncle Kes's saloon looking for trouble. He won't have to look far...the short-barreled double-action 44 tonight, Kim decides, and his 22 backup in a boot holster. This would entail going into a graceful fluid crouch. Kim rehearses in front of a mirror.

  As soon as Kim walks through the swinging door, he knows this is it. Two men at the bar by the door. One is tall and thin, with a dead, sour, wooden face; the other tall and fattish and loose-lipped, with lead-gray eyes. They fan out, blocking the door. Loose-Lips smiles, showing his awful yellow teeth.

  "Now I don't like drinkin' in the same room with a fairy— do you, Clem?"

  "Can't say as I do, Cash."

  They want to bat it around for a while. Kim doesn't.

  "I don't want any trouble with you gentlemen...let me buy you a drink."

  Kim is still talking as his hand sweeps down to his belt and up, smooth and casual, as if he is handing Clem a visiting card, and shoots him in the stomach. Clem doubles forward and his false teeth fly out, snapping in the air. Clem's 45, barely clear of the holster, plows a hole in the floor. Kim pivots, both hands on the gun, and shoots Cash in the hollow of the throat. The heavy slug tears through and spatters the wall with slivers of bloody bone. Cash's gun chunks back into its holster. Clem is weaving around, trying to recock his 45 with numb fingers. Taking his time, Kim shoots him in the forehead. Both assholes are dead before they hit the floor.

  Kim's arduous training has paid off in hard currency. As Kim looks down at the two bodies crumpled there, spilling blood and brains on the floor, he feels good—safer. Two enemies will never bother him again. Two lousy sons of bitches, melted into air and powder smoke.

  Kim remembers his first adolescent experiment with biologic warfare. Smallpox was the instrument, the town of Jehovah across the river, his target. Their horrid church absolutely spoiled his sunsets, with its gilded spire sticking up like an unwanted erection, and Kim vowed he would see it leveled.

  It was dead easy. The townspeople were antivaccinationists..."polluting the blood of Christ," they called it. Around the turn of the century there were a number of these antivaccination cults, a self-limiting phenomenon since all the cultists contracted smallpox sooner or later.

  So Kim simply jogged the arm of destiny, you might say, by distributing free illustrated Bibles impregnated with smallpox virus to the townspeople of Jehovah. The survivors moved out. Kim bought the land and used the church to test his homemade flamethrower. He found the plan in Boy's Life...a weed killer, they called it. Well, rotten weeds, you know...

  8

  Train whistle...Clickety clickety clack...Kim is swaying and jolting on a train seat...

  dodge city

  A sketch done in black green and sepia India ink exudes the somber brooding menace of El Greco's View of Toledo...transparent horses and riders, phantom buckboards and buildings, dead streets of an old film set.

  lee yen chinese restaurant

  Kim walks to the back of the restaurant and pirouettes gracefully, checking the booths along one side of the room. A fat drummer with a red face and black mustache, napkin tucked into his collar, looks up at him over a bowl of chop suey with surprise and fear and hatred, as if Kim is the last person he expects to see and the last person he wants to see. Kim raises his eyebrows, looking back until
the man drops his eyes, coughs, and dips into his chop suey. Kim sits down facing the door with his back to the man who is shuffling around and moving the booth. Kim glances over his shoulder with a petulant expression. His eyes snap back to the door and he goes for his gun in a slanting cross-body holster he uses when sitting down. A bullet spangs into the booth behind him. The drummer coughs, spitting blood down his napkin, and falls forward his face in the bowl of chop suey.

  Scene shifts to Bat Masterson's office. Bat is a calm gray presence. He lights a cigar and studies Kim through the smoke.

  "Who were they?" Kim asks...

  Bat picks up a file..."Guns. Hired guns. Plenty more where those came from."

  "Meaning I should move on?"

  "Big country, small towns. Talk will catch up with you sooner or later. You want to get lost, go east. Chicago...Boston...New York...Now, I could use a deputy..."

  "No thanks. I promised my father on his deathbed I'd never wear a lawman's badge."

  "In this life you have to fit in somewhere. There's some safety in a badge. Some safety in working for one of the big ranchers..."

  "Taking care of sodbusters?"

  Bat shrugs. "You gotta fit in somewhere. You're not even an outlaw...At least not yet..."

  Bat, years older, is talking to a reporter in New York City..."Fast? Well he didn't seem fast. Took his time. Always used two hands on the gun and he didn't miss. He had some special guns too, double-action with a light smooth trigger-pull and dumdums that would mushroom to the size of a half-dollar...And he had a smoothbore 44-caliber that shot six buckshot in each load...Something else: he never telegraphed his draw. Didn't bat an eye and there wasn't any movement of his hand before the draw..."