uh progressive education when kim was fifteen his father allowed him to withdraw from the school because he was so unhappy there and so much disliked by the other boys and their parents i don t want that boy in the house again said colonel greenfield he looks like a sheep killing dog it is a walking corpse said a st louis matron poisonously and years later came a settled bank account when bored to very death he said it isn t every corpse that can walk hers can t the boy is rotten clear through and he stinks like a polecat judge ferris pontificated but this was uh more or less true uh when angered aroused or excited kim flushed bright red and steamed off a rank a ruddish animal smell the child is not wholesome said mr kindheart with his usual restraint kim was the most unpopular boy in the school if not in the town of st louis eh they ve got nothing to teach you anyways his father said why the headmaster s a fucking priest uh the summers they spent at the farm and kim loved squirrel hunting in the early morning and usually went hunting with jerry ellisor who lived next door because jerry had a slinky black hound dog and everybody knows you can t find any squirrels without a dog to bark up the tree where the squirrel is kim remembers a friend of his father s an unobtrusively wealthy man who travelled all over the world studying unusual methods of hand to hand fighting and he wrote a book about it kim remembers him as looking very safe and happy he could kill anyone in sight and he knew it and that was a good feeling the book was fascinating chinese practitioners who can kill with a soft twisting blow just in the right place and at the right time the soft touch it is called kim hummed a funeral march happily and a magnificent silky old indian who specialized in a lightning blow to the testicles the golden target he called it he was the most unpleasant man i have ever met the writer reports after a scant quarter hour in his company i was impotent for a full week and so the writer he tries to impress this old midas by breaking a stack of bricks with his karate chop and the indian sets up an equal stack and he adds one brick and he does it he lightly thumps the stack and the writer points a finger at the top brick which is undamaged the old practitioner lifts the top brick all the bricks under it had been shattered as if hit by a sledgehammer and a bartender in paris had fashioned a weapon from his breath by taking certain herbs he had developed a breath so pestiferous that when standing six feet away breathed on me words cannot convey the vertiginous retching horror that enveloped me as i lost consciousness and for days after i shuddered at the memory of that awesome breath well he beats the skunk at his own game but generally speaking when it comes down to hand to teeth claw poison uh quail shot fighting animals beat humans in any direction so kim had of course thought of living weapons but the only animal that s been taught to attack reliably on command is the dog though many other animals would be vastly more efficient as fighting machines the bobcat the lynx the incomparable wolverine that can drive a bear from its kill kim looked in distain at jerry s dog rover a skulking cowardly inefficient animal kim usually spotted the squirrel before rover could sniff it out when jerry wasn t around kim would corner rover and transfix him with his witch stares and intone bad dog and rover begins to cower and cringe and whimper and finally desperate to ingratiate himself he rolls on his back and pisses all over himself while kim enjoyed this spectacle it was not enough to compensate for the continuous proximity of this filthy fawning vicious shit eating beast ah but then who am i to be critical kim thought philosophically kim had just read a juicy story about african medicine men who capture hyenas and blind them with red hot needles and burn out their vocal cords as they intone certain spells binding the tortured animals to their will to fashion a silent dedicated instrument of death kim looked speculatively at rover and licks his lips rover creeps whimpering behind jerry s legs colonel felzi s pipe they attacked at dawn like gray shadows i saw a boy go down hamstrung next thing his throat is ripped out i couldn t see what was doing it it was like a ghost attack but the boys knew and the cry went up schmoon schmoon that s the native word for hyenas blinded by their beastly medicine men we intended to capture a male gorilla in the mountains species there are somewhat smaller than the lowland breeds so we had a cage just so big and big enough and i managed to nip into it and lock the door i ll never forget my boys pleading to be let in as the hyenas tore them apart ah that sight will haunt me to my dying day couldn t chance it you know uh one boy wedging the door and that would ve been it mm and they re a blind animal panicked they couldn t understand my position they scream curses at me well kim put it what can you expect from people with no breeding oh yes of course exactly uh kipling you know the writer chap uh speaks to the lesser breed without the law awfully depressing all that 