William S. Burroughs Read Free

whose
business it is to smell and see and hear you and give notice of your
approach. So you have to give the watchers good reasons not to smell
and see and hear you and give notice of your approach. This amulet is
from the Cat Goddess Bast. All dogs hate and fear it. But you have to
animate its power and make it work for you."
    Kim took three dogs
to a remote mountain cabin and got down to the root of their dogness.
The dogs did not survive this psychic dissection. Kim wondered if any
creature can survive the exposure of its basic mechanisms. After
that, Kim had the power to cloud dogs' minds, to blunt their sense of
smell, their hearing, and their sight. And he could make himself part
of his surroundings so that he did not disturb the frogs and
birds and crickets.

    He reached a road of
yellow gravel unobserved. He followed the road to a store by a
bridge...sound of running water ...
    "Buenos
dias, senor. " Kim
stood in front of the counter, an envelope in his right hand. A thin
old man in a gray flannel shirt looked up. It was not often that
anyone reached his store unannounced. Two young men watched from
the back of the store.
    "I bring
greetings from Don Bernabe Jurado." Kim passed the envelope over
the counter. The old man read the letter.
    "You are
welcome, Mr. Hall. My name is Don Linares." He led the way
through the store to a back room, where a screen door opened onto a
patio ... fruit trees, a pump, chickens
scratching.
    The old man motioned
Kim to a chair and gave him an appraising glance.
    "You are
hungry."
    Kim nodded ...
    Huevos rancheros
with fried beans and blue tortillas and a pot of coffee. Kim ate with
delicate animal voracity, like a hungry raccoon. A cat rubbed against
his leg. It was a handsome brute, a purple-gray tomcat with green
eyes.
    Kim enjoyed the
Spanish ritual of talking about everything but the business in hand.
They talked about the weather, the railroad's decision to set up the
terminal in Lamy rather than in Santa Fe itself. Mostly they talked
about mutual friends and acquaintances, Don Linares throwing in a bit
of false data here and there; the letter could be a forgery, and Kim
an impostor.
    "Ah? But they
are already married since June."
    "Yes, to be
sure. I am forgetful at times."
    There was a moment
of silence. Kim knew he was being tested. Well, he wouldn't mind
being reborn as a Mexican.
    "How can I be
of service?" the old man finally asked.
    "I need a horse
and some supplies and much silence. Sugar, salt, lard, tea, chile,
salt pork, flour, a bag of lemons ..." Kim
looked over the stock of guns...Ah there is something he'd
been looking for: a smoothbore 44, chambered for shot shells. You have a room full of turkeys to take
care of, this gun could throw a hail of lead three feet wide. Ideal
gun for survival hunting. And the only thing for snakes. Kim
paid in gold.

    The Jemez Basin,
crater of an extinct volcano, looks as though it were scooped out by
a giant hand. A river winds down the middle of the basin and a
number of spring-fed tributaries feed into the river, so that the
whole basin is crisscrossed by water. Some streams are only two feet
wide at the top but eight feet deep, with an overhanging bank. The
valley is full of frogs, and you can see great yellow tadpoles deep
down in the dark slow-moving water of these swampy streams.
    Kim camped on the
south slope, his tent hidden by trees. He baited his hook with a big
purple worm and dropped it into one of the still, narrow streams,
yellow flash of fish side in the dark water.
    He held the crisp
fried fish by the head and the tail, eating the meat off the
backbone, washed down with lemonade.
    Twilight, fish
jumping, a symphony of frogs. Kim saw a vast frog conducting the
orchestra, and he thought of Rimbaud's "Historic Evening." — "A
master's hand awakes the meadow's harpsichord ... they
are playing cards at the bottom of the pond. .."
    The golden grass,
the sinister black water were like the landscape of some forgotten
planet.