The Place of Dead Roads Read online

  "Is it true that he was a fairy?"

  "I never saw that side of him. Figured it was none of my business..."

  "Is it true you run him out of Dodge City?"

  "No. I just asked him to leave as a personal favor..."

  "Where'd he go?"

  "Lots of places, I reckon. I'd hear from time to time..."

  Kim is standing with his back to the bar. There is a life-sized female nude behind him. A thin-faced blond kid, his eyes spinning in concentric circles, backs away, hand vibrating over his gun. The boy's hair stands up and pimples burst on his face as he goes for his gun and fans off a shot that hits the nude right in the cunt, above Kim's head. With a smooth movement Kim draws, both hands on the gun, and shoots the kid in the stomach just below the belt buckle. The slug slams him back like a fist and he falls across a cardtable, scattering chips, cards and glasses on the floor. The cardplayers stand up and raise their hands. They are looking at something behind Kim: the bartender is holding a sawed-off shotgun six inches from Kim's back, his florid face smug as he winks at the cardplayers. His eyes flutter coquettishly. He slumps forward across the bar. The shotgun slides to the floor, overturning a spittoon. A meat cleaver is buried in the back of the bartender's head. Framed in the service panel between the bar and the kitchen a Chinese youth grins impishly. He makes a riding motion with his hands and points to the side door. Kim backs out slowly. One of the cardplayers, with an arrogant hawk face and pale gray eyes, still has his cigar in a raised hand. As Kim disappears through the door he slowly puts the cigar in his mouth. It is Pat Garrett. The two boys ride out together, crisscrossing streams, keeping to rocky ground but still leaving a trail that a posse can follow.

  They rein up, take saddles and bridles off the horses. Kim looks at his horse. The horse lays its ears back and shows its horrible yellow teeth. Kim cuts it sharply across the rump with his quirt and both horses gallop off, Kim's horse in the lead. Carrying the saddles they carefully wipe their footprints away with a pine branch as the Chinese boy hums a little tune. They come to a deserted hogan.

  The boys are naked, kneeling side by side as they draw a map in the soft red-sand floor. Kim's tongue sticks out the side of his mouth as he concentrates tracing the route his horse must take and the other horse must follow. From time to time the Chinese boy corrects the map. The map is finished. The Chinese boy grins sideways into Kim's face.

  "Me flucky asshole?"

  Kim straddles the map on all fours.

  The Chinese boy twists a finger up his rectum.

  "This Tiger Balm. Velly good velly hot. Make horsey run..."

  He slides his thin hard cock in. Kim rears backward, making hooves with his hands and pawing the air. Then he pretends to gallop as the boy fucks him with a riding motion, jogging Kim's shoulders with his hands.

  Kim bares his teeth. Strawberry hives break out on his neck, back and nipples. A reek of horseflesh fills the hogan as Kim comes in a shuddering screaming whinny. His horse streaks ahead of a distant posse.

  Cut back to Bat Masterson..."Yep he'd killed Old Man Bickford's kid, and Bickford had thirty guns on his payroll. Had to keep moving after that."

  Wetting a pencil with his lips Kim writes in his diary:

  "What I have learned today...Never turn your back on the bartender. He will side with the locals every time since that's where his money is. Best thing is shoot him straightaway. Only fools do those villains pity who are punished before they have done their mischief."

  Horse whinnies softly outside. Kim pulls on his pants and boots. They decide to split up and meet at Clear Creek in one month.

  Kim stands in the doorway of a saloon. Bearded man at the bar goes for his gun as the bartender reaches under the bar for his sawed-off. Kim draws and shoots the bartender in the chest. The other man's shot whistles past him and slams into the belly of a horse at the hitching rail outside...

  Before the man can recock his single-action 45 Kim kills him with two quick shots in the stomach.

  "Just as you know before you shoot when you are going to miss, you know when someone else is going to miss. I knew the beard's shot was a miss so I took care of the bartender and his shotgun first.

  "Always take care of a shotgun first."

  When Kim and Red Dog walk into the Nugget Saloon, everybody stops talking. The bartender is halfway down the bar, going through an elaborate pantomime of looking for a special bottle to serve a special customer. Kim stops behind the bartender and leans on the bar, facing the door, after making sure there is no one behind him.

  "Two beers here, barkeep."

  "You say something?" the bartender asks without turning around.

  "You heard me. Two beers chop chop right away pronto cold sabe? Fresca..."

  The bartender has found what he was looking for—a bottle of Southern Comfort. He starts back up the bar with the bottle in his hand.

  "We don't serve Injuns here and we don't serve Injun lovers...Now I'm going to serve a gentleman."

  "You'll serve us first."

  The bartender is pouring with his left hand as his right hand snakes under the bar for his sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun. Red Dog's 32-20 mercury bullet tears through the bartender's fingers, shatters the bottle and lodges just below the ribs. The bartender reels back, clutching broken glass with a reek of peach brandy.

  Five men are fanned out blocking the door. Kim picks the one who hadn't turned a hair when Red Dog shot the bartender, narrow-shouldered man with pale eyes, wearing a deputy's badge. His gun is coming up fast. Kim pivots sideways and the slug grazes his belt buckle.

  "Ole!" screams Red Dog.

  Kim shoots the lawman in the solar plexus. He doubles forward with a grunt, spitting red flashes of hate from dying eyes. Kim shoots another turkey in the neck. He falls, screaming blood through his shattered windpipe. A bearded man falls slowly forward with a dreamy Christlike expression, a blue hole between his eyes from Red Dog's 32-20, brains spattering out the back of his head like scrambled eggs.

  Killing can become an addiction. Kim wakes up thin. He's gotta get it one way or another. Small town, not many candidates. But that pimply-faced ugly-looking kid has potential. Gotta be careful not to start it. Don't give him the eye. The kid walks over and leans on the bar, looking at Kim with his insolent piggish little eyes.

  "I hear you're quite a bad hombre."

  "I never said so."

  Kim is shivering slightly. A raw musky ferret smell reeks off him. Killer's fever, that's what it is, but the kid is too dumb to read the signs. The kid backs away, reaching.

  YESSSSSSSS, Kim's 44 Russian leaps into his hand. He can feel his way into the kid's stomach with the slug and the kid grunts doubling forward, a grunt you can feel. Is it goooood.

  Now the kid slumps to the floor in a delicious heap.

  I saw him in a gunfight once. Wasn't much of a fight. Just a punk looking for a reputation: he killed Kim Carsons. Not so young. About thirty. Kim never cut notches, he said it ruined the gun butt, and his were all special-made to his hand in ebony, ironwood, rosewood, teak and thin metal, copper, silver and gold.

  We are coming out of the general store, got a porch, two wood steps down to the street. Kim must have seen the punk out there because just as he walks out the door he says..."Mind carrying these," and hands me a bag of groceries. (We is sharing a room at the time.) We walk out and there is this fat-faced slob just beyond the porch.

  Kim stands there, eyes watchful, perceiving, indifferent hands limp at his sides, waiting. Don't know why it didn't occur to me to take cover, like we are on the stage and my part is to stand there with a brown paper bag in my hands and then I felt it. A sudden icy cold that froze the sweat on my shirt, it was a hot June day, above ninety...

  "You fucking fairy!" the man bellows, snatches out his gun and gets off two shots, broke the store window two feet above Kim's head. Kim pays no attention, just sweeps his gun up to eye level and shoots the man where his stomach hangs over his belt...The man doubles for
ward retching, and Kim shoots him in the forehead and turns to me.

  "From humanitarian considerations..."

  He drops his gun back into its holster and brushes a shard of glass off his shoulder.

  He wasn't at all that fast..."I never shoot until I'm sure of a hit," he told me. "There's a certain length of time in which you can draw aim fire and hit. That's your time. If someone else's time is faster, you've had it."

  Some shooters are perfect on the range, can't hit in a gunfight. Kim wasn't a good range shooter at all. Just average. He said it didn't interest him, like checkers. He didn't like any games, never gambled.

  9

  Kim got off the stage at Cottonwood Junction. The stage was going west and he wanted to head north. Sometimes he decided which way to go by the signs, or his legs would pull him in a certain direction. Or maybe he'd hear about some country he wanted to see. Or he might just be avoiding towns where folks was known to be religious. That morning before he took the stage he had consulted the Oracle, which was a sort of Ouija board that had belonged to his mother. She'd been into table-tapping and crystal balls and had her spirit guides. One that Kim liked especially was an Indian boy called Little Rivers.

  Once when she was out Kim put on one of her dresses and made up his face like a whore and called Little Rivers and next thing the dress was torn off him oh he did it of course but the hands weren't his and then he was squirming and moaning while Little Rivers fucked him with his legs up and he blacked out in a flash of silver light.

  The Oracle told him that Little Rivers was near. He should keep his eyes open and he would know what to do, so when he saw a sign pointing north—clear creek 20 miles—he decided to leave the stage, standing there in the street with his "alligator."

  The town was built in a grove of cottonwoods at a river junction. He could hear running water and the rustle of leaves in the afternoon wind. He passed a cart with a strawberry roan. On the side, tom d. dark, traveling photographer. He went into a saloon, dropped his "alligator" on the floor and ordered a beer, noting a youth sitting at the end of the bar. He took a long swallow, looking out into the shaded street. The boy was at his elbow. He hadn't heard him move.

  "You're Kim Carsons, aren't you?"

  The youth was about twenty, tall and lean, with red hair, a thin face with a few pimples growing in the smooth red flesh, his eyes gray-blue with dark shadows.

  "Yes, I'm Carsons."

  "I'm Tom Dark. That's my cart outside."

  They shook hands. As their hands parted Tom stroked Kim's palm with one finger lightly. Kim felt the blood rush to his crotch.

  "Going north?"

  "Yes."

  "Like to ride with me in the wagon?"

  "Sure."

  A Mexican kid is sitting in the driver's seat of Tom's cart.

  "Kim Carsons, this is my assistant. Pecos Bridge Juanito."

  The boy has a knowing smile. The road winds along a stream, trees overhead...bits of quartz glitter in the road, which isn't used often, you can tell by the weeds. Looks like the road out of Saint Albans. They cross an old stone bridge.

  "This is Pecos Bridge...We'll stop here...be dark in another hour."

  Juanito guides the wagon off the road into a clearing by the stream, which is slow and deep at this point. He unhitches the horse and starts pulling tripods and cameras out of the wagon.

  "My specialty is erotics," Tom explains, "rich collectors. Paris...New York...London. I've been looking for you on commission. Got a client wants sex pictures of a real gunman."

  "I hope you don't mean the naked-except-for-cowboy-boots-gun-belt-and-sombrero sort of thing."

  "Look, I'm an artist."

  "And I'm a shootist, not a gunman. The gun doesn't own me. I own the gun."

  "Well, are you interested?"

  Kim puts a finger on the cleft below his nose, runs the finger down his body and under the crotch to the perineum. He holds out his open hand.

  "Right down the middle."

  "Fair enough."

  Kim brings a bottle of sour-mash bourbon from his "alligator" and they toast their fucking future.

  "They hanged a Mexican kid from that branch." Tom points to a Cottonwood branch a few feet above the wagon. "You can still see the rope marks...Yep hanged him offen the cay-use he went and stealed but he hadn't stoled that horse. He'd boughten it. Only the posse didn't find that out until after they'd hanged the kid.

  "You may have read about it...made quite a stir...federal antilynching bill in Congress and the Abolitionists took some northern states...All the papers wanted a picture of the hanging and I gave them one...fake, of course...How did I get away with it? Well there isn't any limit to what you can get away with in this business. Faked pictures are more convincing than real pictures because you can set them up to look real. Understand this: All pictures are faked. As soon as you have the concept of a picture there is no limit to falsification. Now here's a picture in the paper shows a flood in China. So how do you know it's a picture of a flood in China? How do you know he didn't take it in his bathtub? How do you even know there was a flood in China? Because you read it in the papers. So it has to be true, if not, other reporters other photographers...sure you gotta cover yourself or cut other reporters and photographers in so they get together on the story...

  "Two years ago I was doing portrait photos in Saint Louis and I ran into this old lady I knew from England who is a very rich Abolitionist on a lecture tour. And the idea comes to me. I tell her what is needed to put some teeth into the Abolition movement is an incident and she puts up some front money and most of that goes to pay off the sheriff who would investigate the hanging and the doctor who would sign the death certificate, which turned out to be the birth certificate of Pecos Bridge Juanito, a fabrication out of whole paper. And I had the whole scoop...picture of the boy...interviews with his mother, who died years before he was born...even pictures of the posses repenting and getting born again in Jesus...Not that some reporters weren't suspicious...They can smell a fake story but they couldn't prove anything. We even had a body in the coffin just in case; young Mexican died of scarlet fever...the picture was the easiest part...Lots of ways to fake a hanging picture or any picture, for that matter...Easiest is you don't show the feet and they are standing on something...I did my shot with an elastic rope they use in carny hanging acts." He points to the horse..."There's the only actor didn't get paid...I call him Centaur. How about a dip and a swill?"

  Sex scenes in the diary were in coded symbols like Japanese forget-me-nots flowering in the medium of memory: June 3, 1883...Met Τ at Cottonwood Junction...(sexual attraction and reason to believe reciprocated)...& (naked)...(erection)...(sodomy)...(ejaculation).

  Sunset through black clouds...red glow on naked bodies. Kim carefully wraps his revolver in a towel and places it under some weeds at the water's edge. He puts his foot in the water and gasps. At this moment Tom streaks by him, floating above the ground in a series of still pictures, the muscles of his thigh and buttock outlined like an anatomical drawing as he runs straight into the water, silver drops fanning out from his legs.

  Kim follows, holding his breath, then swimming rapidly up and down. He treads water, breathing in gasps as the sky darkens and the water stretches black and sinister as if some monster might rise from its depths...In knee-deep water, soaping themselves and looking at each other serene as dogs, their genitals crinkled from the icy water...drying themselves on a sandbank, wiping the sand from his feet...following Tom's lean red buttocks back to the wagon. He stations Kim at the end of the wagon..."Stand right there," facing the setting sun. Tom pulls a black cloth out of the air with a flourish, bowing to an audience. He stands behind the camera with the black cloth over his head..."Look at the camera...hands at your sides."

  Kim could feel the phantom touch of the lens on his body, light as a breath of wind. Tom is standing naked behind the camera.

  "I want to bottle you, mate," Tom says. Kim has never heard this expression b
ut he immediately understands it. And he glimpses a hidden meaning, a forgotten language, sniggering half-heard words of tenderness and doom from lips spotted with decay that send the blood racing to his crotch and singing in his ears as his penis stretches, sways, and stiffens and naked lust surfaces in his face from the dark depths of human origins.

  Tom is getting hard too. The shaft is pink and smooth, no veins protruding. Now fully erect, the tip almost touches the delineated muscles of his lean red-brown stomach. At the crown of his cock, on top, is an indentation, as if the creator had left his thumbprint there in damp clay. Held in a film medium, like soft glass, they are both motionless except for the throbbing of tumescent flesh...

  "Hold it!"...CLICK...For six seconds the sun seems to stand still in the sky.

  Up early to make Clear Creek before dark...

  "I'm meeting a friend in Clear Creek," Kim says..."You been there?"

  "Yes. There's an old whorehouse and hotel...Good sets for special pictures."

  "Anybody live there?"

  "Some Chinese used to work on the railroad. Surveyor decided on another route...a few Indians..."

  At six they come to Fort Johnson, a few miles from the town. A coyote lopes out the open gate, showing his teeth in a knowing smile. Kim never shoots wolves or coyotes. He doesn't give a fuck how many sheep and cattle they kill.

  They get out to look at the fort and Tom takes a few pictures. Gate needs fixing, aside from that...

  "This could be my Alamut..." Kim says.