TORNADO ALLEY

By

William S. Burroughs

Illustrations by

S. Clay Wilson

Cherry Valley Editions 1989

© 1989 by William S. Burroughs

© 1989 by S. Clay Wilson for illustrations

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. First edition.

Tornadoes by Don Williams

Cover designed by Robert Brannaman

Portrait by Mary Beach

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burroughs, William S., 1914-

Tornado alley / William S. Burroughs

ISBN 0-916156-85-0. ISBN 0-91615684-2

(lim. ed.) ISBM 0-916156-83-4 (pbk.)
       Title.

PS3552.U75T67 1989

813'54—dcl9 88-10100

CIP

For John Dillinger In hope he is still alive

Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts—

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison—

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger—

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot—

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes-thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through—

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces—

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers—

thanks for laboratory AIDS—

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs—

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business—

thanks for a nation of finks—yes, thanks for all the memories ... all right, let's see your arms ... you always were a headache and you always were a bore—

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Jerry and the stockbroker

Jerry Ellisor, the retarded boy from next door, went on to harrass timid WASPs from Hew Yorker cartoons, the type of person who doesn't want to get mixed up in things, a passerby on the other side ... here's a girl with both arms cut off, trying to flag him down, he just swerves around something like that and keeps going. (I refer to the case of the 15-year-old girl who had both arms cut off by a rapist, rushed onto a highway, and three cars passed her by before one stopped and took her to a hospital.)

He is also a very ineffectual person. On his West Indian vacation, he hopes the Calypso singers will go away if he just ignores them.

"Don't pay any attention to them, darling."

So here is this youngish exec WASP in a health-food store after a diet lunch of watercress salad and carrot juice. And a youth sits down right at his table, though it's three o'clock and the place is nearly empty. The WASP becomes aware of a horrible odor—like ferrets, only more piercing—that makes his eyes water and his stomach turn. The boy smiles, showing yellow buck teeth.

"I always smell like this, just before ... you know." The boy passes him a card on which is typed in red letters:

"Hi. I'm Jerry. These are my instructions: When it starts to happen, stay calm. Sit down, wherever you are, and quietly inform the helpful person nearest to you that you are going to have a fit—(in my own words).

"When it starts, you will wrap a handkerchief, towel or napkin around your finger and insert it in my mouth to keep me from biting my tongue off. With the other hand you will be loosening my collar, belt and shoes and opening up my fly to relieve pressure on the groin. Erections frequently occur during my spells. It's a fact of nature. (If I have shatted in my breeches, wash me down with soap and warm water and provide a change of clothing.)

"Be careful during my recovery, as I sometimes lash out at people or leap for your throat like a wild animal. God will reward you for your kind act.

"Your humble servant, Jerry Ellison"

Without more ado, the WASP threw some money on the table and ran for his life. But he was too late. With a low, throaty cry the boy threw himself in the WASP's path, tripping him up, then wrapped around his legs like a python. There was a sudden reek of urine and excrement as Jerry voided in his pants. The appalled WASP, seeing a policeman at the door, screamed for help.

"What are you doing with that kid, you filthy pervert."

A night-stick crashed against his skull. Five hours later, trembling and near collapse, he was released from jail after his lawyer called a CIA cousin in Washington.

In the course of a fit, Jerry would sometimes shriek out prophecies, which mostly came true. On Red Tuesday, he rushed into the stock market, eyes glowing, the hair standing up on his head, tore off his clothes and stood there naked in front of the petrified financiers, his body brick-red and steaming off the stink of a hundred polecats. He collapsed on the floor, flopping around and showing his awful yellow teeth as he ejaculated:

"Sell! Sell! Sell!"

It was the worst crash since '29, dazed brokers and speculators later reported.

"It was a voice full of money. You had to believe it."

to talk for Joe the Dead

Doctor Fisher read the article carefully, his face formed into an appraising mask.

"Double slaying ... 32 revolver ... since the woman's purse and the man's wallet were missing ... robbery ... a witness reported seeing a Very tall Figure fleeing from the scene.'"

The witness, Uriah Grunt, who is con-Fined to a wheelchair, explained that he amuses himself by surveying the city with his telescope. "I can read a paper over someone's shoulders twenty blocks away," he boasted.

"I'm right snoopy," he added, smugly, "nothing else to do, 'cept observe what other folks is doing. Don't mind saying I've seen some strange things."

When pressed for a description: "Ah yes," he said, "the fleeing felon, alleged felon at least, or do you call them perps? Well this presumed perp was very tall. Had his coat collar turned up. Couldn't see the face but I did catch a flash of his hands: white, slender, agile, young. He wasn't wearing an overcoat just a windbreaker. Likes cold weather, I guess."

Uriah Grunt is a real scene-stealer, the doctor surmised. Well of course, ... other tall youths around . . . even in the coldest weather his patient never wore an overcoat. Hmmm. Should he call the police without more ado? The therapist's oath? And suppose there was no proof? Then he would be in the middle.

He opened a drawer and took out his Η & Κ Ρ-7 9mm squeeze-cock, cycled the action and eased a round into the chamber. He strapped it to his right hip under his coat.

Unprofessionally, he hated his patient, young Guy Worth —a typical sociopath. The world owed him everything. A natural-born fuck-up, FUs the doctor called them. He hated FUs, and he knew he was wasting him time with them. Once a FU, always a pain in the ass.

In fact, he was disenchanted with the whole profession of psychiatry. He had about decided to quit and get a job as ship's doctor, or maybe a nice practice with the American colony in Tangier, Athens, Beirut, Lima ... general medicine, with a bit of laying on of hands. It could be a nice thing. The doctor was young, slender, handsome, and gay as a carnival.

Fuck working with referral cases, or fuck going to Hew York and building up a Madison Avenue ad exec and publisher practice. One day he would say, "You know something, Mr. Qranfield? There's nothing wrong with you but self-indulgence and an inflated ego. You think your fucking ME is the most important thing in the universe. Well, believe me, who knows: it's boring beyond belief. Besides which you are basically stupid and ill-intentioned. Besides which I hate your stinking guts."

This, Doctor Fisher decided, looking at his watch, would be his last psychiatric interview—with a murderer, there was no real doubt in his mind, and a murderer who had come to kill him. It was all there in his notes and on the hidden tape recorder. All right, let it come down.

The bell rang. He looked out. There was the insufferable twerp, his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker, a crooked smile on his face. The gun wasn't in the windbreaker pocket—probably in his waistband.

"Hello, Guy. Come in. I've been expecting you."

The youth stepped in. He looked insolently at the doctor, who looked back stone-hard.

"This way."

He opened the door to his consulting room. (His receptionist had quit a week ago: "Well, doctor. Frankly your practice is a joke. And jokes don't last.")

The youth walked in and pivoted. He was chewing gum.

"Sit down, Guy."

The boy sat down and spread his legs.

"And how is your good health?"

The boy looked startled. The doctor had never said anything like this before. The doctor leaned forward with a lewd leer.

"Had any good dreams lately?"

"Well yes, as a matter of fact, I have. I've been dreaming about you, Doctor Fisher."

"How exciting. And what did you dream?"

"This." He dropped his hand on the gun butt.

Give him time to get his prints on it, the doctor thought. The boy whipped the gun out. A rain of bullets threw him back in his chair, blood spurting from his mouth. A look of utter disbelief on his face, he slumped from the chair, dead. The doctor reached for the phone...

The bullets matched. The doctor was even a local hero, but not to the clinic administrators. An Old West shoot-out, in his consulting room ... killed a patient ... unthinkable. They were more than prepared to accept his immediate resignation.

Doctor Fisher felt good.

dead-end reeking street

"I want to prepare you, Doctor. Well, you see, they have grown something in him. It's alive, it's—"

"Enough of that rot. Where is his tent? You wait outside."

A few seconds later the doctor tottered out, looking like he had just been kicked in the crotch.

"So you've seen it?"

He nodded, shuddering. "Something between a centipede and a plant, growing in his intestines, spreading its roots."

"We could poison it, maybe? With an injection?"

"Ticklish business. It's tapped into Reggie's bloodstream, poor chap. Well, it's either that, or—"

We looked at each other and understood. Luckily, we had some rotenone. The doctor filled his syringe and we went in. The stench was enough to knock a man flat on his ass, it got into your throat and your lungs and gagged you.

Oh God, now we can see it, moving around under his skin. We give him a knock-out dose of morphine and largactil.

A quick slash and a grab with pliers, and he has the horrible red head—the creature was stirring and writhing and roots and heads sticking up everywhere. He shoved the syringe in and drove it home, then the needle was torn from his hand and he leaped back.

"Get out of here, it's spitting eggs!"— and larvae and in fact Reggie lost all human semblance as the heads and roots protruded from every inch of his body, spurting out larvae with transparent needle teeth.

I paused only to shoot Reggie in the head. Then we ran for our lives, but we were too late, we were covered with the larvae, digging into our eyes and nose and every orifice eating their way in...

But we were survivors. We bathed in kerosene which serendipitously was to hand. Like any mutant organism, this was incredibly susceptible to biologic and chemical agents, being without immunity—a whiff of kerosene and my nose is clean. The tent and the ground around it we converted into a pool of cleansing fire. Unthinkable to make camp here.

We walk until fatigue and darkness call a halt. After a dinner of tinned meat, Wilson lights his pipe.

"He must have stumbled onto something."

"You mean that hell-creature was conceived in a laboratory?"

"Afraid so, old thing."

"Then none of us are safe!"

"Afraid not, old bean. You know what makes a jumping bean jump? It's the jumping bug inside it."

"What do you propose?"

"We will find the laboratory and destroy it."

"What with? Three handguns and a shotgun?"

"This complete Shakespeare is impregnated with state-of-the-art implosion agents. Much more destructive than the extroverted, out-going formulations."

"How activated?"

"In several ways. If captured and facing ... you have but to say: Out! Out! brief candle, or the book can be activated by remote telepathic control."

"Do you know where the laboratory is located?"

"Of course. I have my orders, and the co-ordinates."

"Well, let's go."

We set out at dawn. End of a dead-end street—that is what we are looking for.

1) Three leads. High walls. A sort of face on a bladder.

2) A museum. I was in a room with exhibits—no exits. Look down to my right and I see an open space ahead, and a sunlit wall about one hundred feet away. Something wrong about the wall. It is a painting. A painted wall. It is not really ouside the museum.

3) The dead-end reeking street, stinking of rotten time and light.

the FUs

The old householder is awakened by someone beating on his door.

"Oh God," he moans, "another drunken Indian." He slips on his army jacket and drops a snub-nosed Charter Arms revolver—the one that killed Lennon—in the side pocket. He leans against the wall for a moment, feeling a sharp pain in his left arm and shoulder.

"Go away. I'll call the police."

"Won't get here in time to do any good. You ruined my daughter."

"We'll be there right away, sir." The door is about to give way. The householder stands about eight feet away from the door, gun leveled. Sirens approaching.

The door gives way. The Indian rushes in with a baseball bat, his eyes wild, like an enraged horse. The squad car screeches to a stop outside. The householder shoots the Indian in the leg. The Indian falls, groaning, and rolls on his side.

Door bursts open and wild-eyed cops rush in, guns drawn. Seeing a man in an army-type jacket Officer Mike assumes it is the intruder. He doesn't waste time. Pumps three shots in. Householder clutches his chest and falls. Mike turns away, grimly holstering his gun.

"We got him."

"Are you badly hurt, sir?"

He puts a solicitous hand on the Indian's back. It's good P.R. Slowly the Indian turns toward them, his face blank with pain and shock. They start back in horror. "Oh God," they moan in unison. Marv, the older partner, gives the agreed-upon sign. Ambulance siren in the distance.

"Let me handle this; just back me up."

They help the Indian into a chair.

"You're a hero!"

"He was a communist."

"Good thing you shot him, and we are deputizing you."

The cop shoves the gun into his hand. Sirens getting closer. The Indian looks down at the gun with stupid incredulity. Cops helping me into a chair? Handing me a gun? Ambulance turns the corner, two houses away. Slugs rip into the Indian's chest. Πο time for finesse. They kick over tables, pull over a bookcase. One tosses a chair through a window as the ambulance screeches to a stop.

"It was hairy, Boss, real hairy. The Injun went bonkers, grabbed Mike's gun and shot the householder. As God's my witness, he had the strength of twenty men. I warned him that we were police officers, but he leveled the gun at us and I was forced to shoot."

"The Chief will see you guys now."

"Is this your report?"

"Yes Chief, that's it."

"Stinks like buzzard puke."

"What's wrong with it, Chief?"

"Well for starters, nobody could have done what you say happened. Bullet angles are all wrong."

"Aw, Chief

"Besides, the householder didn't die."

"Didn't—" He caught himself in time. "Well, that's marvelous," he said with a horrible smile. "Guy shot in the chest like that could get things all twisted around."

"He was wearing a bullet-proof vest. He had a heart attack, but he's all right now and screaming for your blood: 'Not only do I have to protect myself from drunken Indians but also from insane fuck-up cops—fucking FUs!'"

"Chief, I swear to fucking Christ I saw a drunken Indian standing there with a gun in his hand, clear as I'm seeing you now."

"And what else did you see? The gates of heaven? Jesus fucking Christ awarding you the Golden Prick for bravery? Well, you two clowns have had it this time. You're nothing but FUs, the both of you."

"Well Chief," says Marv, smiling and wriggling to ingratiate himself, "sure we're FUs; that's why we got on the force in the First place. A gun and a badge can cover a lot of FUs."

"All right, boys. I'm going to give you a chance to square yourselves."

"We'll do anything, Chief, anything."

"It's hairy, boys. One big drug bust. On this one, it's shoot first and remember, dead men tell no lies. Ketch?"

"Running with it, Chief."

"You can pick up what you need at the arsenal. I suggest Ithaca pumps with number four shot."

The FUs exit. The Chief smiles. He is taking out a columnist who's been riding his ass, and a roomful of liberal bleeding-hearts, vocals by Joan Baez.

Will the FUs get a third chance? Will the FUs strike again?

Book of Shadows

Doctor Hill picked up a slip of paper and cleared his throat.

"You don't have to beat around the sagebrush with me, Doc. It's cancer, isn't it?"

Afternoon sunlight through Venetian blinds fell on the speaker, like prison bars ... a slender, elderly man in a shabby gray suit, a heavy cojoba-wood cane between his thin knees, a senior citizen like you see sitting on park benches or playing shuffle-board. But the eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles glittered with disquieting gaiety, with a remote, chilling happiness. The man smiled.

"After all, Doctor, we have known each other for a long time."

A long time. Doctor Hill was perhaps the only man in Boulder who knew that the man sitting across from him had once been the best shootist in the West. Not the fastest gun, but the surest.

"Yes, it's cancer. Of course it might be operable . . . have to go in to make sure, but—"

"You doubt it."

"If it was my stomach, I'd say no."

"These surgeons are knife-happy ... worse than Mexicans."

The doctor knew that Lee Ice was well-read—in fact, a learned man. But it amused him sometimes to talk like an illiterate redneck.

"Well, how much time would you say? I mean, how much time in which I can get around?"

A spasm of pain twisted the man's body, and he leaned forward onto his cane.

The doctor shrugged. "A month, perhaps two ... I'll give you a prescription. You know how to use a hypodermic?"

The man nodded, remembering the barn loft, the boards curling apart to show the blue sky, and Tom with a gambler's .32 slug in his stomach. That doctor had been an old Chinese, unhurried and nothing caring. He gave Tom an injection of morphine and matter-of-factly took one himself. He squatted down, looking at Tom's lean stomach.

"Hold, please."

Quickly he leaned forward with a long, pronged instrument and inserted it into the wound. Tom screamed, and it was all Lee could do to hold him down. The doctor held up the forceps with the bloody lead bullet. The morphine was taking effect. Tom's body relaxed and his face went slack. The doctor explained how to change the dressing, and left a bottle of morphine pills with a syringe and some spare needles. He showed Lee how to use the syringe. "How often?"

"When need. Hundred dollar, my flee."

Lee paid him. He knew the Chinese would not betray them. He had shown the doctor a letter of introduction from Chinese in St. Louis; such letters are not given lightly. Tom needed morphine for a week, and Lee took the shots with him. It was boring to sit there all day, and he could not risk leaving the hiding place. Yes, he knew how to use a syringe.

A month ago when the pain started, he went to Denver to buy morphine or heroin. Hone of the old-timers he used to know were around any more. A Black junky with a sincere, untrustworthy face promised Lee he would score and be right back.

"I can't take you in to the Man." He spread his hands in a disarming gesture as his hand shot forward, the knife glittering in streetlights. There was a sound like a metallic cough. The Black froze, knife in one hand, a tiny blue hole in the middle of his forehead. Lee Ice holstered his silencered .22 and walked away.

Then he had remembered Doc Hill in Boulder.

"You can cash this at the pharmacy on the hill. Generally a quarter-grain is enough. That's one pill. But you will know what you need."

A half-hour later, Lee pulled down his sleeve and looked out into the garden from his room at the back of the house. He had just injected a half-grain into his upper arm. The pain in his stomach was disappearing in throbs of warm comfort. He opened a drawer and took out a little black book.

My grimoire. My Book of Shadows. A few

calls to make, a few scores to settle----

Nobody ever did him a favor or an injury without being fully repaid.

That was Sulla's epitaph. It would do for Lee Ice as well.

Where he was going

Farm kitchen, blinds drawn, guns propped in corners. Plates and glasses have been shoved aside to make room for road maps.

Four men lean over the maps. There is a basic sameness in the faces. Kerosene lamps cast a flickering light of death on cheekbones and lips, on the tired, alert eyes.

"Sure to have roadblocks here, and here..."

Ishmael pours a generous portion of whisky into a dirty glass.

"Couldn't we just hole up here?"

"Uh uh. They don't rumble us movin' out, they will close in for a house-to-house search."

"Makes sense."

"Let's try it here."

And suddenly it occurred to him that he was going to die. not "sooner or later"— he knew that of course, they all did—but tonight. It came in a puff, like wind that makes a candle flicker, and sick, hollow fear hit him like a kick in the stomach. He doubled slightly forward, supporting himself on the back of a chair.

It's always like this, he tells himself: the fear, and then a rush of courage and the clean sweet feeling of being born. He read that somewhere, in an old western ... but the fear can go on and on until you can't stand it, it's going to break you, and that's when the fear breaks—you hope.

"Let's go," he croaks.

He wonders if they are all as scared as he is—his gun seems clumsy and heavy in his hands, alien, malignant—sure they are, but you don't talk about it. Click of hammers and breeches.

They are in the car now, shutting the door. He is sitting by the car door on the right side. The road is full of holes and water in the holes and deep ruts. Please God we don't get stuck—seeing themselves stumbling around in the woods with the bloodhounds closing in.

"STOP! Douse the light!"

Chug chug ... another car coming this way. Closer, the light coming around a corner of the narrow road, between heavy timber.

Ishmael gets out slow, his feet like blocks of wood, and stands in the middle of the road, his hands up. The old car sputters to a stop. Old gray man behind the wheel. He walks over slow and shows the old man the wallet.

"FBI."

Ishmael's lips are numb. This is no pawn-shop badge; it's a perfect replica of the real thing, with cards to go with it. Made up by a forger in Toronto. Cost $150. Flashed him out of some tight spots.

The old man sits there with his face blank.

"We're looking for some bank robbers. Holed up around here. You live here long?"

"Forty years."

"Must know the area."

He brings out a road map. "Mow we've got roadblocks up here, and here, and here. Is there any other way they could get out?"

"Yep. Old wagon road cuts in right here. Bit rough, but they could make it. Comes out here on County Road 52. Yep, they could get clean away."

"If your information checks out, you'll be eligible for a reward of $500." He hands the old man a card. "Just call the office in Tulsa."

"I'll do that I surely will." The old man drives on.

The driver studies the map under the dashboard lights: "Make it exactly five and three tenths to the turn-off."

Old man on the phone: "That's right, posing as a G-man."

Ishmael remembers old Doc Benway saying, "You face death all the time, and for that time you are immortal."

A raccoon crosses the road, its eyes bright green in the headlights, not hurrying, slipping along—and it came with a rush, a sudden, evil-smelling emptiness and the raccoon was slipping lightly along the edge of it: "Get away to Mexico ... I've been there ... only way to live ... got five G's in a money belt... go a long way down there

The fear is back around his chest, like a soft vise squeezing the air out, the gun heavy in his hand, he knows he couldn't lift it. All the strength is running out of him in waves of searing pain.

They pull around a corner and light jabs into his eyes and his brain explodes in a white flash and he is freeee, throwing the door open, jumping out in the air as the windshield explodes glinting yellow shards and Tom throws a hand in front of his face.

Very light on his feet, the tommy-gun light in his hands like a dream gun, when a sincere young agent—religious son of a bitch too—leaps to his feet, rifle levelled. He hasn't made his dog meat yeat, as they call it —"Animals!" his fellow agents tell him that's what they are, animals! and don't you forget it—

"Get down for chrissakes!" bellows the D.S.

And Ish stitches three .45's across the boy's lean young chest, an inch apart. He has the touch.

"It's an instrument" Machine Gun Kelly told him. "Play it!"

He must have dozed off in the car. Another shoot-out dream. He knows they have been driving all night, home safe now, coming down into a valley. Warm wind and a smell of water.

"Thomas and Charlie."

"What?"

"Mame of this town." Ish remembers Thomas and Charlie. From here you climb ten thousand feet to the pass. Remembers Mexico City and his first grifa cigarette. Went crazy on it, wonderful crazy, wandering down Mifio Perdido and everywhere he sees sugar skulls and fireworks, kids biting into the skulls.

"Dia de los Muertos," a boy tells him and smiles, showing white teeth and red gums. Very white. Very red. Whiter and redder than life, and he thought, Why not? I done it in the reform school.

The boy has a gardenia behind his ear. He wears a white spotless cotton shirt and pants to the ankle with sandals. He smells of vanilla—Ish used to drink it in reform school. The boy understands. He knows un lugar. They stop to watch two pinwheels spinning in opposite directions ... he remembers the queasy, floating feeling he got watching it, like being in a fast elevator.

The boy is smiling now and pointing to the black space between the pinwheels as they sputter out and the blackness spreads wide as all the world and then he knew that was where he was going...

Ishmael died when they picked up the stretcher.

The manuscript was prepared on a Mac in Word and typeset in Benguiat Book from a computer disk by Delmas Typesetting of Ann Arbor, Michigan.