The Wild Boys (7 page)

Cold stars splash the empty house faraway toys. Sad whispering
spirits
melt into coachmen and animals of dreams, mist from the lake, faded family photos.

Museum bas-relief of the
God
Amen with erection. A thin boy in prep school clothes stands in the presence of the God. The boy in museum toilet takes down his pants phallic shadow on a distant wall.

All the
Gods
of Egypt

The
God
Amen the boy teeth bare gasping

Clear light touching marble porticos and fountains … the
Gods
of Greece … Mercury, Apollo, Pan

Light drains into the red walls of Marrakech

April 3, 1989 Marrakech … Unlighted streets carriages with carbide lamps. It looks like an 1890 print from some explorer’s travel book. Wild boys in the streets whole packs of them vicious as famished dogs. There is almost no police force in operation and everyone who can afford it has private guards. My Marrakech contact has kindly lent me two good Nubians and found me suitable quarters.

Waves of decoration and architecture have left a series of strata-like exposed geologic formations. There isn’t a place in the world you can’t find a piece of it in Marrakech, a St Louis street, a Mexican cantina, that house straight from England, Alpine huts in the mountains, a vast film set where the props are continually shifting. The city has spread in all directions up into the Atlas
mountains to the east, south to the Sahara, westward to the coastal cities, up into the industrial reservations of the north. There are fantastic parties, vast estates and luxury such as we read about in the annals of the Roman Empire.

The chic thing is to dress in expensive tailor-made rags and all the queens are camping about in wild-boy drag. There are Bowery suits that appear to be stained with urine and vomit which on closer inspection turn out to be intricate embroideries of fine gold thread. There are
clochard
suits of the finest linen, shabby-gentility suits, Graham Greene outfits for seedy agents who are bad Catholics on a mission they don’t really believe in, felt hats seasoned by old junkies, dungarees faded on farm boys, coolie clothes of yellow pongee silk, loud cheap pimp suits that turn out to be not so cheap the loudness is a subtle harmony of colors only the very best Poor Boy Shops can turn out tailored to your way of walking sitting down bending over the color of your hair and eyes your house and backdrop. It is the double take and many carry it much further to as many as six takes. Looks like an expensive suit trying rather crudely to look cheap humm the cheapness is rather carefully planned on closer inspection suits that shift changing color and texture before your eyes he is standing in what looks like a rented dress suit now the Billy Graham look no it is 120 dollar knocked down to 69.23 FBI agent suit or it could be a smooth Mexican ‘pocho’ beyond the Glen Plaid stage on the other hand something of an uncomfortable young cop first day in plain clothes the collar too tight the sleeves too short. All these suits were full of gimmicks, retractable sleeves, invisible pockets and not a few of the looners keep
some concealed pet about their person a rat, a mongoose, a cobra, a nest of scorpions that can be suddenly released to enliven a social gathering. He appears say in a raccoon-skin coat from which leaps a live raccoon to kill Bubbles de Cocuera’s six prize Chihuahuas. And Reggie in a blue mutation mongoose cape killed every cobra in the Djemalfna. Funny at first but they run it into the ground. “My God here comes Reggie in a tiger suit! Run for your lives chaps!” They will put on armor or protect themselves some way and dump almost anything into your lap. You learn to stay away from fat citizens in python suits, any swelling or protuberance is something to avoid and pregnant women have the street to themselves. Everyone has reversible linings and concealed pockets and a way to pass a pet from one pocket to the other thus foiling the searches which are now routine at the door of any gathering. The next step is skin suits and men are hunted like animals for their pelts. Then synthetics hit the market. Think of it termite-proof moth-proof age-proof in sixteen tasteful shades furniture and walls to match. People start buying anything they want a red-haired ass a Mexican crotch a Chinese stomach folks is going piebald thin black arms cracker farm boy smile then horns and goat hooves wolf boys lizard boys some frantic character got arms smooth and red as terra cotta ending in lobster claws.

There is almost no petroleum left and gasoline engines are a rarity. Steam cars and electrics are coming back. The silent electric dirigibles of the rich sail majestically across the evening sky the cabin an open-air restaurant wafting a scent of wet lawns and golf courses calm happy voices 1920 music. Le gran luxe flourishes as
never before in history on the vast estates of the rich. The foremost advocate and practitioner of luxury is A.J. who owns a private steam railroad which he stocks with 1890 drummers and bankers, 1920 prep school boys on vacation, 1918 card sharps and con men according to his whim, anyone wishing to travel A.J. is required to report to casting.

“I maintain my railroads for the train whistles at lonely sidings, the smell of worn leather, steam, soot, hot iron and good cigar smoke, for the glass-covered stations and the red-brick station hotels.”

He contributes lavishly to the guerrilla units, maintains a vast training center and hires fugitive scientists to develop new weapons in his laboratories and factories. He thinks nothing of spending millions of dollars to put a single dish on his table. His annual party collapses currencies and bankrupts nations.

“I want a dinner of fresh hog’s liver, fried squirrel, wild asparagrass, turnip greens, hominy grits, corn on the cob and blackberries. The hog must be an Ozark razor-back fed on acorns, peanuts, mulberries and Missouri apples. My hog must be kept under discreet observation round the clock to insure that it does not eat anything unclean like bullshit, baby rabbits or dead frogs the surveillance being unobtrusive so as not to render the animal self-conscious.”

“When you want this by, boss? A year from now?”

“Next Sunday at the latest.”

“But boss how in the hell…?”

“Go to Hell if need be but find me such a hog.”

“Yes boss.”

“Once found he must be brought here. As you know hog’s liver that has been on ice for even a few hours is
quite unfit to eat. The hog must be butchered in my kitchens and the twitching liver conveyed immediately to the skillet to be cooked in the bacon grease of another such hog.”

“Well sure boss … We could crate the hog up and jet it out here.”

“Are you mad? My hog would be terrorized and this would surely have an adverse effect on its liver.”

“Well boss we could take over an ocean liner fix it up like an Ozark range and …”

“Are you trying to poison me? The hog would become seasick and I would lose my dinner. Obviously the hog must be gently wafted here on a raft slung between two giant zeppelins, a raft lifted bodily from the Ozark Mountains. My squirrels, blackberries and wild asparagrass will of course accompany the hog and send a farm boy with it a thin boy with freckles. He will tend my hog during the trip. He will shoot and dress my squirrels. Then he will make himself useful in other ways.” “Boss the hog is here.”

A.J. steps onto his balcony and there in the sky suspended between two vast blue zeppelins is a piece of Missouri trailing the smoke of hardwood forests …

“I want a dinner of walleyed pike, yellow perch and channel catfish from clear cold spring-fed rivers.”

“Right boss I’ll have a jet plane lined with aluminum and filled with water.”

“Did you say
a
jet plane?”

“Sure boss.”

“Mindless idiot the pike would eat the perch and the catfish would eat everything. When the plane landed there would be nothing but one gorged sluggish catfish
quite unfit for my inhuman consumption. Three planes must be outfitted.”

“Sorry boss but the catfish crashed. All that water slopping around and the boulders come loose.”

“Praise be to Allah it was not the pike that crashed.”

As a piquant offset to all this luxury there is hunger and fear and danger in the street. A man’s best friends are his Colt and his Nubs experts with their staves jabbing with both ends blocking out teeth with a straight-thrust stave held level.

It is a day like any other. Breakfast in the patio served by my Malay boy. The patio is a miniature oasis with a pool, palms, a cobra, a sand fox, and some big orange lizards mean and snappy which eat melon rinds. So after breakfast I set out for the Djemalfna to meet Reggie. We are going to plan our route to A.J.’s annual party which is tomorrow it will be the do of the season. We call ourselves the “Invited” and we all have punch card invitations around our necks like dog tags that will punch us through A.J.’s electric gates. So I am cutting through the noon market sun helmet Colt cartridge belt the lot flanked by my magnificant Nubs when we run into a pack of twenty wild boys. At sight of us their eyes light up inside like a cat’s will and the hair stands up straight on their heads spitting snarling they are all around us slashing at my Nubs. The leader has a patch over one eye and a hog castrator screwed into a wood and leather stump where his right hand used to be. Quick as a weasel he darts under the Nub’s staff his hand flashes in and up you can feel cold steel cut intestines like spaghetti. Now it is very unchic to lose your head and use the gun for trouble the Nubs should handle like say a pack of diseased beggars. You have to decide and decide quick is this or isn’t it
a Colt case. I decide it is definitely a Colt case get my eyes converged on the leader’s skinny stomach and fire. The heavy forty-four slug knocks him ten feet. I shift and fire shift and fire gun empty reach for my snub-nosed thirty-eight in a special leather-lined inside breast pocket when they scatter and fade out like ghosts. Taking inventory I count seven wild boys dead or dying. The priest darts out of a potato bin and starts giving unction. I saw two wild boys spit at him with their last spark of life. The Nub’s eyes are glazing over, intestines steam in the noon sun drawing flies. A policeman approaches reluctantly and I give him some orders in crisp Arabic. I find Reggie on the square sipping a pink gin shaded by a screen of beggars. An old spastic woman twitches and spatters Reggie’s delicate skin with sunlight. “Uncontrolled slut!” he screams. He turns to his henchman. “Give this worthless hag a crust of stale bread and find me a sturdy shade beggar.”