The Collected Works of Billy the Kid Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 facewas 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