Junky by William S. Burroughs Page B

couldn’t have been anything but Irish .
    The jukebox wasn’t working. I walked over and asked him what was wrong with it. He said he didn’t know. I asked him to have a drink and he ordered Coke. He told me his name was Pat. I told him I had come up recently from the Mexican border.
    He said, “I’d like to get down that way, me. Bring some stuff in from Mexico.”
    â€œThe border is pretty hot,” I said.
    â€œI hope you won’t take offense at what I say,” he began, “but you look like you use stuff yourself.”
    â€œSure I use.”
    â€œDo you want to score?” he asked. “I’m due to score in a few minutes. I’ve been trying to hustle the dough. If you buy me a cap, I can score for you.”
    I said, “O.K.”
    We walked around the corner past the NMU hall.
    â€œWait here a minute,” he said, disappearing into a bar. I half-expected to get beat for my four dollars, but he was back in a few minutes. “O.K.,” he said, “I got it.”
    I asked him to come back to my apartment to take a shot. We went back to my room, and I got out my outfit that hadn’t been used in five months.
    â€œIf you don’t have a habit, you’d better go slow with this stuff,” he cautioned me. “It’s pretty strong.”
    I measured out about two-thirds of a cap.
    â€œHalf is plenty,” he said. “I tell you it’s strong.”
    â€œThis will be all right,” I said. But as soon as I took the needle out of the vein, I knew it wasn’t all right. I felt a soft blow in the heart. Pat’s face began to get black around the edges, the blackness spreading to cover his face as though it were actually changing color . I could feel my eyes roll back in their sockets.
    I came to several hours later. Pat was gone. I was lying on the bed with my collar loosened. I stood up and fell to my knees. I was dizzy and my head ached. Ten dollars were missing from my watch-pocket. I guess he figured I wasn’t going to need it any more.
    Several days later I met Pat in the same bar.
    â€œHoly Jesus,” he said, “I thought you was dying! I loosened your collar and rubbed ice on your neck. You turned all blue. So I says, ‘Holy Jesus, this man is dying! I’m going to get out of here, me! ’ ”
    A week later, I was hooked. I asked Pat about the possibilities of pushing in New Orleans.
    â€œThe town is et up with pigeons,” he said. “It’s really tough.”
    â€¢
    So I drifted along, scoring through Pat. I stopped drinking, stopped going out at night, and fell into a routine schedule: a cap of junk three times per day, and the time in between to be filled somehow. Mostly, I spent my time painting and working around the house. Manual work makes the time pass fast. Of course, it often took me a long time to score.
    When I first hit New Orleans, the main pusher—or “the Man,” as they say there—was a character called Yellow. Yellow was so named because his complexion was yellow and liverish-looking. He was a thin little man with a dragging limp. He operated out of a bar near the NMU hall and occasionally choked down a beer to justify sitting in the bar several hours a day. He was out on bail at the time, and when his case came to trial he drew two years.
    A period of confusion followed, during which it was difficult to find a score. Sometimes I spent six or eight hours riding around in the car with Pat, waiting and looking for different people who might be holding. Finally, Pat ran into a wholesale connection, a dollar-fifty per cap, no less than twenty. This connection was Bob Brandon, one of the few pushers I ever knew who didn’t use the stuff himself.
    Pat and I began pushing in a small way, just enough to keep up our habits. We only took care of people that Pat knew well and was sure of. Dupré was our best customer. He was a dealer in a gambling joint and