Salt Chunk Mary - William S. Burroughs

This is a Place of Dead Roads.

Rod riding yanks and peat men and cat burglars,

black bindle stiffs and hobo jungles.

Here is salt chunk Mary the fence in her

red brick house down by the tracks in Portobello, Idaho

Mary keeps an iron pot of pork and beans always on the fire, you eat first and

talk business later, watches and rings slap down on the kitchen table

She names a price, she doesn’t name another

Mary can say 'no' quicker than any women I ever knew, and none of her 'no's'

ever meant yes

She kept the money in a cookie jar, but nobody though about that.

Her cold grey eyes would have seen a thought.

And maybe something goes wrong

on the next day.

John Law just happens by.

Or a citizen comes up with a load of

double zero buckshot in your soft and tenders

Like Mr. Hart, Kim has a dark side to his character.

Unlike Mr. Hart,

Kim is not afraid to hear the word death.

Or take his bloody chances in a

shoot out.

Saturday maybe somebody from across the river comes in the Uncle

Tesla’s Saloon lookin' for trouble.

He won’t have to look far

'The short barrel, double action .44 tonight', Kim decides.

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 grey eyes.

Loose lipped smile, showing his awful yellow teeth

'Now I don’t like drinkin' in the same room with a fairy.

Do you Clem?'

'Can't says I do, Cash'

Yeah, they want to bat it around a while, but Kim doesn’t…

'Are you gentlemen referring to me?'

Kim’s hand sweeps down to his belt and up smooth and casual like he was giving

Clem his visiting card.

As Clem clears his holster with a .45, Kim shoots him

in the stomach.

Clem doubles forward and his false teeth fly out.

His.

45 ploughs a hole in the floor

Kim pivots and shoots Cash in the hollow of the throat.

The bullet goes through

and spatters the wall with slivers of white bone.

Cash buckles and his.

45 chunks back in the holster.

Clem is weaving around tryin' to re-cock his.

45 with numb fingers.

Taking his time Kim shoots him in the forehead.

Both assholes are dead before they hit the floor!

As Kim looks down at the two bodies crumpled there, spilling blood and brains

on the floor — he experiences a rush of pure joy

Two enemies will never bother him again.

Two lousy sons of bitches melded into

error and gun smoke.

Like a prisoner who’s killed his guards, he steps lightly

though an open door