The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (4 page)

I joined them just as they were finishing dinner. Bonney seemed relaxed, his left heel resting on his right knee. He ate corn, drank coffee, used a fork and knife alternately—always with his right hand. The three days we were together and at other times in our lives when we saw each other, he never used his left hand for anything except of course to shoot. He wouldn’t even pick up a mug of coffee. I saw the hand, it was virgin white. Later when we talked about it, I explained about how a hand or muscle unused for much work would atrophy, grow small. He said he did fingers exercises subconsciously, on the average
12
hours a day. And it was true. From then on I noticed his left hand churning within itself, each finger circling alternately like a train wheel. Curling into balls, pouring like waves across a tablecloth. It was the most hypnotising thing I ever saw.

He jumped up, and introduced himself informally to me, not waiting for Chisum to, and pointed out Angie. She was a good
6"
taller than him, a very big woman, not fat, but big bones. She moved like some fluid competent animal.

Bonney was that weekend, and always was, charming. He must, I thought, have seduced Angie by his imagination which was usually pointless and never in control. I had expected him to be the taciturn pale wretch—the image of the sallow punk that was usually attached to him by others. The rather cruel smile, when seen close, turned out to be intricate and witty. You could never tell how he meant a phrase, whether he was serious or joking. From his eyes you could tell nothing at all. In general he had a quick, quiet humour. His only affectation was his outfit of black clothes speckled with silver buttons and silver belt lock. Also his long black hair was pulled back and tied in a knot of leather.

It was impossible to study the relationship he had with the large tall Angie. After dinner they sat in their chairs. He would usually be hooked in ridiculous positions, feet locked in the chair’s arms, or lying on the floor with his feet up. He could never remain in one position more than five minutes. Angie alternatively never moved violently like Billy. Only now and then she shifted that thick body, tucked her legs under those vast thighs that spread like bags of wheat, perfectly proportioned.

After an evening of considerable drinking we all retreated to our rooms. And the next morning, Billy and Angie who had been planning to leave, decided to stay. I was glad as I didnt understand either of them and wanted to see how
they understood each other. At breakfast a strange thing happened that explained some things.

Sallie had had a cat named Ferns who was very old and had somehow got pains in its shoulders during the last two days. I looked at it after breakfast and saw it had been bitten by a snake. It was in fact poisoned and could not live. It already had gone half blind. John decided then to kill it and lifted the half paralysed body to take it outside. However, once out, the cat made a frantic leap, knowing what was going to happen, fell, and pulled itself by two feet under the floor boards of the house. The whole of the Chisum house was built in such a way that the house stood on a base which was
9"
off the ground. The cat was heard shifting underneath those floors and then there was silence. We all looked under the boards from the side of the house, seeing into the dark, but we couldnt see Ferns and couldnt crawl under to get him. After a good hour, from the odd thrashing, we knew the cat was still alive and in pain. It would I theorised probably live for a day and then die. We sat around on the verandah for a while and then Billy said, do you want me to kill it. Sallie without asking how said yes.

He stood up and took off his boots and socks, went to his room, returned, he had washed his hands. He asked us to go into the living room and sit still. Then he changed his mind and asked us to go out of the house and onto the verandah and keep still and quiet, not to talk. He began to walk over the kitchen floor, the living room area, almost bent in two, his face about a foot from the pine floorboards. He had the gun out now. And for about half an hour he walked around like this, sniffing away it seemed to me. Twice he stopped in the same place but continued on. He went all over the house. Finally he came back to a
spot near the sofa in the living room. We could see him through the window, all of us. Billy bent quietly onto his knees and sniffed carefully at the two square feet of floor. He listened for a while, then sniffed again. Then he fired twice into the floorboards. Jumped up and walked out to us. He’s dead now Sallie, dont worry.

Our faces must have been interesting to see then. John and Sallie were thankful, almost proud of him. I had a look I suppose of incredible admiration for him too. But when I looked at Angie, leaning against the rail of the verandah, her face was terrified. Simply terrified.

*

Down the street was a dog. Some mutt spaniel, black and white. One dog, Garrett and two friends, stud looking, came down the street to the house, to me.

Again.

Down the street was a dog. Some mutt spaniel, black and white. One dog, Garrett and two friends came down the street to the house, to me.

Garrett takes off his hat and leaves it outside the door. The others laugh. Garrett smiles, pokes his gun towards the door. The others melt and surround.

All this I would have seen if I was on the roof looking.

*

You know hunters
are the gentlest
anywhere in the world

they halt caterpillars
from path dangers
lift a drowning moth from a bowl
remarkable in peace

in the same way assassins
come to chaos neutral

*

Snow outside. Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh, and me. No windows, the door open so we could see. Four horses outside. Garrett aimed and shot to sever the horse reins. He did that for
3
of them so they got away and
3
of us couldnt escape. He tried for
5
minutes to get the reins on the last horse but kept missing. So he shot the horse. We came out. No guns.

*

One morning woke up
Charlie was cooking
and we ate not talking
but sniffing
wind wind so fine
it was like drinking ether

we sat hands round knees
heads leaned back taking lover wind
in us sniffing and sniffing
getting high on the way
it crashed into our nostrils

*

This is Tom O’Folliard’s story, the time I met him, eating red dirt to keep the pain away, off his body, out there like a melting shape in the sun. Sitting, his legs dangling like tails off the wall. Out of his skull.

What made me notice him was his neck. Whenever he breathed the neck and cheek filled out vast as if holding a bag of trapped air. I introduced myself. Later he gave me red dirt. Said want to hear a story and he told me. I was thinking of a photograph someone had taken of me, the only one I had then. I was standing on a wall, at my feet there was this bucket and in the bucket was a pump and I was pumping water out over the wall. Only now, with the red dirt, water started dripping out of the photo. This is his story.

At fifteen he took a job with an outfit shooting wild horses. They were given a quarter a head for each one dead. These horses grazed wild, ate up good grass. The desert then had no towns every fifty miles. He sucked the clear milk out of a chopped cactus, drank piss at times. Once, blind thirsty, O’Folliard who was then seventeen killed the horse he sat on and covered himself in the only liquid he could find. Blood caked on his hair, arms, shoulders, everywhere. Two days later he stumbled into a camp.

Then half a year ago he had his big accident. He was alone on the Carrizoza, north of here; the gun blew up on him. He didnt remember anything after he saw horses moving in single file and he put the gun to his shoulder. Pulling the trigger the gun blew to pieces. He was out about two days. When he woke up, he did because he was vomiting. His face
was out to here. From that moment, his horse gone, he lived for four days in the desert without food or water. Because he had passed out and eaten nothing he survived, at least a doctor told him that. Finding water finally, he drank and it poured out of his ear. He felt sleepy all the time. Every two hours he stopped walking and fell asleep placing his boots into an arrow in the direction he was going. Then he would get up, put boots on and move on. He said he would have cut off his left hand with a knife to have something to eat, but he realised he had lost too much blood already.

He killed lizards when he got onto rock desert. Then a couple of days later the shrubs started appearing with him following them, still sleeping every two hours. First village he came to was Mexican. José Chavez y Chavez, blacksmith. The last thing O’Folliard noticed was Chavez sandbagging him in the stomach. O’Folliard going out cold. When he woke José had him in a bed, his arms trapped down.

Chavez had knocked out Tom as he had gone to throw himself in water which would have got rid of his thirst but killed him too. Chavez gave it to him drop by drop. A week later he let Tom have his first complete glass of water. Tom would have killed Chavez for water during that week. When he finally got to a doctor he found all the muscles on the left side of his face had collapsed. When he breathed, he couldnt control where the air went and it took new channels according to its fancy and formed thin balloons down the side of his cheek and neck. These fresh passages of air ricocheted pain across his face every time he breathed. The left side of his face looked as though it had melted by getting close to fire. So he chewed red dirt constantly, his pockets were full of it. But his mind was still sharp, the
pain took all the drug. The rest of him was flawless, perfect. He was better than me with rifles. His feet danced with energy. On a horse he did tricks all the time, somersaulting, lying back. He was riddled with energy. He walked, both arms crooked over a rifle at the elbows. Legs always swinging extra.

I was sitting in the living room
when word was brought he had arrived.
I felt in a panic. I pictured him
in all the evil ugliness
of a bloodthirsty ogre.
I half expected he would slit my throat
if he didnt like my looks.

I heard John saying with a wave of his hand,
Sallie, this is my friend, Billy the Kid.
A good looking, clear-eyed boy stood there
with his hat in his hand, smiling at me.
I stretched out my hand automatically to him,
and he grasped it in a hand as small as my own

*

Crouching in the
5
minute dark
can smell him smell that mule sweat
that stink need a shotgun
for a searchlight to his corner

Garrett? I aint love-worn
torn aint blue I’m waiting
smelling you across the room
to kill you Garrett going
to take you from the knee up
leave me   my dark   
AMATEUR!

*

A motive? some reasoning we can give to explain all this violence. Was there a source for all this? yup—

“Hill leaped from his horse and, sticking a rifle to the back of Tunstall’s head blew out his brains. Half drunk with whisky and mad with the taste of blood, the savages turned the murder of the defenceless man into an orgy. Pantillon Gallegos, a Bonito Cañon Mexican, hammered in his head with a jagged rock. They killed Tunstall’s horse, stretched Tunstall’s body beside the dead animal, face to the sky, arms folded across his breast, feet together. Under the man’s head they placed his hat and under the horse’s head his coat carefully folded by way of pillows. So murdered man and dead horse suggested they had crawled into bed and gone to sleep together. This was their devil’s mockery, their joke—ghastly, meaningless. Then they rode back to Lincoln, roaring drunken songs along the way.

“Lucky for Billy the Kid and Brewer that they had gone hunting wild turkeys, else they would have shared Tunstall’s fate. From a distant hillside they witnessed the murder.”

*

To be near flowers in the rain
all that pollen stink buds
bloated split
leaves their juices
bursting the white drop of
spend out into the air at
you the smell of things dying
flamboyant smell stuffing up your
nose and up like wet cotton in the brain
can hardly breathe nothing
nothing thick sugar death

*

In Mexico the flowers
like brain the blood drained
out packed with all the liquor perfume
sweat like lilac urine smell
getting to me from across a room

if you cut the stalk
your face near it
you feel the puff of air escape
the flower gets small smells sane
deteriorates in a hand

*

When Charlie Bowdre married Manuela, we carried them on our shoulders, us on horses. Took them to the Shea Hotel,
8
rooms. Jack Shea at the desk said Charlie—everythings on the house, we’ll give you the Bridal. No no, says Charlie, dont bother, I’ll hang onto her ears until I get used to it.

HAWHAWHAW

*

White walls neon on the eye
1880
   November
23
   my birthday