Squaw Creek Orgy & a letter by Bill Hutton
Squaw Creek Orgy
Ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling,
Ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling, ceiling…..
“Cum in my mouth, ” she said to him, “I want…..”
Soup Can closed his eyes. He did.
Afterwards they laid in bed beside each other. The moonlight came through the window and Soup Can carressed the girl’s leg with his owm. He said, “What does it taste like?”
“What?” asked the girl.
“Sperm.”
“I don’t know.”
“It must taste like something,” said Soup Can.
“It doesn’t taste like anything,” the girl said. “It tastes like plastic.”
It sounded funny to Soup Can that it should taste like plastic but he did not think about it any more. He turned away from the girl and tried to sleep. He couldn’t.
Soup Can was still awake an hour later. He looked at the girl and at the moonlight on her faoe. The girl’s mouth was open and little z’s rushed out of it like notes. Above the girl’s head a buzz saw was running through a log and sheep were jumping a fence.
She was asleep.
Soup Can could not sleep so he hunted around in the dark room for his clothes. He put his clothes on quietly hoping he would not wake the girl. Soup Can left the room and walkod down the back stairway of the building.
He stepped outside into the alley. Soup Can looked down the alley and could see the lights from the street. He walked down the alley and kicked a few stones along the way. He felt pretty good.
Soup Can crossed the street and walked north another block. He turned at the cross street and ran into the Cumberland Gap. Zow. Just like that. Cumberland Gap. Soup Can lookod up at the Cumberland Gap.
‘What the hell are you doing in Detroit?” he asked. “I thought you were from Kentucky. How come you’re in Detroit?”
The Cumberland Gap seemed hurried.
“I’m, I’m here on a gap convention,” said the Cumberland Gap, “and now I’m lost. Where’s the Cobo Hall? A cab driver bamboozled me out here and my bags are back at the Cobo Hall.”
Soup Can told the Cumberland Gap where Cobo Hall was. Then he crossed the street and walked up to an apartment building. He turned around before going inside the building and saw the Cumberland Gap getting into a taxi. He wondered if the Cumberland Gap was a big tipper.
Soup Can walked down to one of the basement apartments in the building. He had to walk down a long corridor. When he reached the apartment he knocked on the door.
“Don’t come in here!” someone yelled inside, “Don’t come in. Wait!”
Soup Can waited outside in the corridor for five minutes. It seemed longer than that. Soup Can looked at the door and wondered what was going on behind it. He knocked again.
“Wait a minute!”
“Jesus Christ,” complained Soup Can. Then he became aware of noises going on inside the apartment. Soup Can leaned closer to the door. It sounded as if people were wrestling inside the apartment. Soup Can became anxious and knocked hard on the door. “Come on and open up in there” he said.
The door opened then. Soup Can jumped. Across the room was a cop, a nun, a doctor, a lawyer and an Indian chief. They were tied and gagged and sat on the floor against the wall, like stuffed toys. All of them wore outfits suit¬able to their professions, including the Indian chief who was wearing buckskins and an elaborately feathered headdross.
Soup Can noticed his friend, Hank, holding the door open. Hank was grinning.
“Hank!” said Soup Can.
“Hello, Soup Can,” Hank said. Hank was dressed in a tee shirt and Levis. In one hand he held a chrome plated Daisy B.B. pistol.
Hank was smoking a joint of marijuana. “I caught these fuckers spying on me,” he said. Hank fired the B.B. pistol and missed the lawyer by about an inch. The B.B. knocked a chip of plaster from the wall. “What do you think I ought to do to them?”
Soup Can walked into the room and Hank shut tho door.
“Maybe you better look it,” Soup Can said.
Hank pulled up a chair for Soup Can and they both sat down. The two chairs were the only pieces of furniture in the room. A light bulb burned from a cord hanging down from the ceiling.
“Shit, I don’t know what to tell you, Hank,” said Soup Can looking at the prisoners.
Hank took a drag from his reefer.
“You should have seen it, man,” he sald. “I was in the bedroom there rolling up a little grass and I look up to find these cocksuckers all staring at me like a bunch of fish. So I grab this pistol here, beat the cop to the draw and tie the sonsabitches all up.” Hank fired the gun again pinging a B.B. off the cop’s badge. The cop’s face grew red under his gag.
“Well what did thay want? What are they here for?” asked Soup Can.
“They were assigned to spy on me.”
“What?”
“That’s what they said. They said the Government sent them all here to spy on me. That’s all they’ll say.”
“Yeah,” said Soup Can, “but an Indian Chief?”
“Well, I’ve decided that the Indian chief is the only straight one in’the bunch. While I was tying him up there he told me the only reason he had come along was that Washington couldn’t break up a set. He said he’s been with the doctor and the lawyer ever since he can remember. Has to go everywhere with them. Poor bastard. All he really wants to do is to go back up to his tribe in northern Michigan.” Hank lighted another joint and passed it to Soup Can. “So there you are,” he said. “Now what do you think I ought to do?”
“I don’t know,” Soup Can said. “Maybe you should take off their gags. It might be interesting to hear what they have to say.” Soup Can took a drag from the joint.
The prisoners were all sweating and looking big eyed at Hank and at Soup Can.
“Take the gags off, eh?” Hank looked at Soup Can. “Might do, might do.”
The nun’s gag came off first. “Oh, please, please, please,” she moaned. “God save us. Ohhhhhh….” The nun cast her eyes up in the air.
“You’re under arrest!” said the cop as his gag came off. “You’re under arrest!”
“Now look here,” said the doctor. Hank and Soup Can had removed the gags and were in their chairs again. “You have to let us go. I have a wife and kids. I have a practice to think about.”
“You’re under arrest for the acid murder of Patsy Johnson!” said the cop.
“What about me,” said the Indian chief. “My only problem be I no can get away from doctor or lawyer.” The Indian looked at Hank. “Let me go and keep them here, uh?”
“Shut up!” said the lawyer. “Stupid Indian bastard. You’ve caused us nothing but grief ever since you’ve been along.”
“Fuck you, lawyer,” said the Indian. He looked pleadingly at Hank. “Come on. Please let me go. I no give you trouble. Untie me and keep them here.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Hank.
The doctor looked at the Indian chief. “Be realistic about it, Chief, for God’s sake. He should let us all go. If you’re unhappy with us why we’ll work something else out.”
“Yeah,” said the lawyer.
Hank stood up and began pacing the floor in front of the prisoners. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I will let you go. All of you. On one condition.”
“Anything,” said the doctor, “anything.”
“You’re under arrest,” said the cop. “For ax murder. You cut up that little Mary Bryant with the ax. You are under arrest.”
“Keep quiet!” said the lawyer in a harsh whisper. “Didn’t you hear him. Jesus….”
“Now,” said Hank rubbing his chin. “You are all to repeat after me the following: I, and then your names, do solemnly swear never again to stay up watching the T.V. or to believe any advertisement or to go to war or the movies or to buy any of the funny products they put out these days. I will shed all garments of respectibility and re evaluate my life.”
“To abet you in this the following conditions will also prevail: you, the nun, will of course become an easy make. You, the cop – and I hope you realize how generous I’m being to you – will become a zealous pacifist, a vegetarian and will find work in a flour mill. You, the doctor, will admit that your schooling was not worth the effort. You will leave your practice and become a goat herder. You, the lawyer, must dedicate the rest of your life to the defense of Lenny Bruce.
“None of the foregoing applies to the Indian chief. You’ll remain an Indian chief and return to your tribe. You’ve gone through enough as it is.”
After Hank had secured signed statements from the prisoners he released them. At once they started stretching and shaking the kinks out of their bodies. Some smiled. It was good to be alive.
The doctor walked over to Hank. “Do I have to be a goat herder?” he asked rubbing his wrists. “Couldn’t I be something else? Maybe have a little drug store or something?”
Hank barked, “Do you want to be tied up again?”
“Oh, I’ll be the goat herder,” sighed the doctor. He lowered his head and walked away.
The lawyer felt jolly and fresh. He straightened out his coat. “Now, who’s this Lenny Bruce?” he asked Hank. “I appreciate your generosity in allowing me to maintain my practise and would like to start to work at once. Bruce, Bruce,” said the lawyer, “hmmm, sounds familiar.”
Soup Can was feeling pretty good. He walked over to shake the Indian chief’s hand. “I really hope things go all right for you now, Chief,” he said.
“Yes, it will.” The Indian held to the lapels of his buckskins and nodded in the direction of the doctor and the lawyer. “Now that there off my back is fine. I go back to Cross Village now. It be all right.”
Hank’s voice arrested Soup Can’s and the Indian’s attention.
“Before any of you leave,” he said standing in the center of the room, “I’d like to give you a little token in appreciation for your cooperation in this matter. Just a little something which I think might disperse any animosities you might still bear against me. Soup Can, if you’d be good enough….” Hank pointed toward the kitchen.
Soup Can returned from the kitchen with a large bowled pipe filled with marijuana. He gave the pipe to Hank. Hank lighted the pipe and it was passed around.
The nun went out at once and tried to put the make on the cop.
“Hey, you’re under arrest,” said the cop. “Watch it. Come on.”
But after a few more tokes on the pipe the cop softened and threw his badge across the room. The nun, with a yell of glee, threw her habit away and followed her lover into the bedroom.
Soup Can, Hank, the doctor, the lawyer and the Indian chief sat on the floor and passed the pipe around.
“A goat herder,” laughed the doctor. “Oh no.” He rocked back and forth on the floor. “Here goat, here goat. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….”
The lawyer got up on his hands and knees and started braying like a goat.
“Where’s a tin can,” he said. “I’m a goat. Us goats eat anything. Where’ s a tin can.”
The doctor climbed astride the lawyer’s back and slapped him on the ass. “Come on you goat. Let’s go find Lenny Bruce. AHAHAHA….”
Soup Can was stoned. He looked at the Indian chief. The Indian sat with his hands and legs folded, a scowl on his face. A beautiful looking Indian chief, thought Soup Can, but his mind was beginning to stand up and he could not think anything any more. He was stoned and there he was going up and up and up …. He saw Will Rogers and Eugene O’Neill playing Ty Cobb and Lee Harvey Oswald in a game of horse shoes.
“Whew,”said Soup Can when he came back down but when he focussed his eyes again he wondered if he had come down. The Cumberland Gap wasin the room. So was the girl he had been with earlier.
“You all right, man?”Hank was shaking him. “You were out for about ten minutes.” Soup Can was aware of Hank’s smile. “We got more guests.”
Everyone was smoking pipeloads of marijuana. The doctor was up on the Cumberland Gap. “Eeeeeeeeya, eeeeeeeya,” he roared. “There’s goats on this gap. There’s goats on the Cumberland Gap.”
The Cumberland Gap looked over at Soup Can and shrugged. “I got bamboozled again,” the Cumberland Gap said. “I’m back here now. The Cobo Hall, this place. One’s as good as the other.”
The girl was sharing a pipe with the Gap. Soup Can tried to get the girl’s attention but the girl had eyes for the Gap. Soup Can’s last thought before he flaked out had to do with the future.
Soup Can woke up in two hours. He awoke startled and could not remember where he was. Then he could. The room was empty, save for the discarded pipes, a few Coke bottles and other litter that was strewn around the floor. Soup Can heard laughter from the kitchen and with some effort he stood up.
Hank was in the kitchen with the nun. The nun looked attractive without her habit, Soup Can thought. The nun was naked, sitting on Hank’s lap.
“Soup Can, me boy,” said Hank. “How’d you sleep?”
Soup Can said, “Rotten. I didn’t sleep, I just flaked out. Where is everyone?”
“The Cumberland Gap left with your girl, and the doctor and the lawyer were on the Cumberland Gap.” The nun was kissingHank’s neck. “The cop’s passed out in the bedroom and the Indian chief’s on his way home.”
“Well, I’m going too,” said Soup Can. “I got to get some sleep for Christ’s sake. I don’t know how you do it, Hank.”
Hank winked.
Soup Can left the apartment and walked home. It was getting light out. Soup Can walked with his hands in his pockets and he did not look at much. He was tired and glad the night was over.
When Soup Can was in his room he decided it might be a good idea if he fixed something to eat. He could not remember when hold eaten last. Soup Can took a can of Campbell’s Barbecue Beans domn to the community kitchen at the end of the hall and put the unopened can in a pan of water. He lighted the gas burner and went back to his room. Soup Can laid on his bed. He fell asleep.
In twenty minutes the beans exploded. “BOW!” went the can of Campbell’s Barbecue Beans, and beans went up to the ceiling and beans stuck to the walls of the kitchen, and to the window, and the beans stuck against the ice box. Campbell’s Barbecue Beans. Those new beans, those tasty beans that please all bean lovers, three different types of beans all in a rich and mild hearty good sauce, the beans for kids and grownups, and grandma and grandpa too, the beans that are good anytime, mealtime, snacktime, any old time, those Campbell’s New Barbecue Beans, the beans that God eats, were all over the fucking room.
Soup Can snapped awake when the beans exploded.
The End.
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Nantucket Island
John me boy,
Vootie! Enchanted fairy land. Me and my old skag watched the sunset last night and thought about you and yours. How’s it in the dust capitol of the world?
Sorry I split vithout a goodbye. Circumstances were frantic then, and when I finally did make it was a mild feeling of persecution, of sadness, of mixed chile con carne emotions, not much relief nor happiness in leaving Detroit, only a nervous anxiety about coming back to this demented land. Hah!
Mac, I am happy to report, is back in Calif. He spent a day out at our place with the old man and I, reconsidered what he had done, called his bird and went back on the old bus. I was glad. I hope things will go all right for him out there now. He needs friends. He needs to know, like most everyone, that people are thinking about him and are interestod in his work. I hope he will get a lot of Pork done out there, and that maybe he will make up his mind to come to Detroit in the fall. If you like the guy, John, drop him a line and sort of invite him back. I know he holds you in the highest esteem.
Things are going well for me up here. I’m staying with some friends, have set up a little study and am finally back to work! About two weeks went by in which I did nothing. I felt like a mushroom. Deirdre was staying here when I arrived. She is moving today to a cottage where she has a very soft job taking care of 300 crippled children. Thirty old cats. Insane people. Used cars and candy bars and the hot taste of a city summer.
We hope you can come out here sometime this summer. I don’t know yet when we are getting hitched. We are waiting word from a friend of Deirdre’s who has a little cottage in Canada. The place is an hour’s drive f rom U of B [SUNYAB], and we have asked him if he will rent the place to us for $50 a month. Deirdre thinks he may go for it. Wow! It’s on Lake Erie, winterized, in the boon docks, and I know I could write my balls off there. Anyway, if we get the place we will probably get married here the last week in August. If not, earlier, since we would then have to give ourself some time to find a place. (Deirdre starts school Sept. 7)
Say hello to everyone down there. I hope you Charles and Robin, Marty, Leni, Rosilin, Sue, Art, Peg, Barb, Alice, Joe, Ed. Pete, Hank, Judy and little Sammy Parumba have a nice trip out west.
Harrumph.
Bill Hutton
-Source: WORK/2, 1965
Tags: Bill Hutton, Short Story, WORK 2