Progressive Education

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."