The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

by Richard Brautigan

  They heard half-a-dozen more gunshots back off in the hills while they were finishing their coffee. All the shots were methodical, aimed and well-placed. It was the same gun firing and it sounded like a 30:30. Whoever was firing that gun really thought about it every time they pulled the trigger.

  And Ma Smith

  Ma Smith, a cantankerous old woman, looked up from a steak she was frying for a cowboy. She was a big woman with a very red face and shoes that were much too small for her feet. She considered herself big enough every place else without having to have big feet, so she stuffed her feet into shoes that were much too small for them, which caused her to be in considerable pain most of her walking hours and led her to having a very short temper.

  Her clothes were very sweaty and stuck to her as she moved around the big wooden stove that she was cooking over on a night that was already hot enough by itself.

  Cameron counted the gunshots in his mind.

  1…

  2…

  3…

  4…

  5…

  6…

  Cameron waited to count the seventh shot, but then there was silence. The shooting was over.

  Ma Smith was angrily fussing around with the steak on the stove. It looked like the last steak she was going to have to cook that night and she was very glad for that. She’d had enough for the day.

  “I bet they’re killing somebody out there,” the cowboy said whose steak was being cooked. “I’ve been waiting for the killing to work its way down here. It’s just a matter of time. That’s all. Well, I don’t care who kills who as long as they don’t kill me.”

  “You won’t get killed down here,” an old miner said.

  “Jack Williams will make sure of that.”

  Ma Smith took the steak and put it on a big white platter and brought it over to the cowboy who didn’t want to get killed.

  “How does this look?” she said.

  “Better put some more fire under it,” the cowboy said.

  “Next time you come in here I’ll just cook you up a big plate of ashes,” she said. “And sprinkle some God-damn cow hair on it.”

  Pill’s Last Love

  They slept that night in Pills’ barn. Pills got them a big armload of blankets.

  “I guess I won’t be seeing you tomorrow morning,” Pills said. “You’ll be off at daybreak, huh?”

  “Yes,” Magic Child said.

  “If you change your mind or you want some breakfast or coffee or anything, just wake me up or come in the house and fix it yourself. Everything’s in the cupboard,” Pills said.

  He liked Magic Child.

  “Thank you, Pills. You’re a kind man. If we change our minds, we’ll come in and rob your cupboard,” Magic Child said.

  ‘“Good,” Pills said. “I guess you’ll work out the sleeping arrangements OK.” That was his sense of humor after a few buckets of beer.

  Magic Child had a reputation in town for being generous with her favors. Once she had even laid Pills which made him very happy because he was sixty-one years old and didn’t think he’d ever do it again. His last lover had been a widow woman in 1894. She moved to Corvallis and that was the end of his love life.

  Then one evening, out of the clear blue, Magic Child said to him, “When was the last time you fucked a woman?” There had been a long pause after that while Pills stared at Magic Child. He knew that he wasn’t that drunk.

  “Years.”

  “Do you think you can get it up?”

  “I’d like to try.”

  Magic Child put her arms around the sixty-one-year-old bald-headed, paunchy, half-drunk keeper of strange horses and kissed him on the mouth.

  “I think I can do it.”

  In the Barn

  Greer carried a lantern and Cameron carried the blankets and Magic Child trailed after them into the barn. She was very excited by the hard lean curve of their asses.

  “Where’s the best place to sleep here?” Cameron said.

  “Up in the loft,” Magic Child said. “There’s an old bed up there. Pills keeps it for travellers to sleep in. That bed is the only hotel in town.” Her voice was dry and suddenly nervous. She could just barely keep her hands off them.

  Greer noticed it. He looked over at her. Her eyes darted like excited jade into his eyes and then out of them and he smiled softly. She didn’t smile at all.

  They carefully climbed the ladder up to the loft. It smelled sweetly of hay and there was an old brass bed beside the hay. The bed looked very comfortable after two days of travel. It shined like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  “Fuck me,” Magic Child said.

  “What?” Cameron said. He had been thinking about something else. He had been thinking about the six gunshots off in the hills during dinner.

  “I want you both,” Magic Child said and passion broke her voice like an Aphrodite twig.

  Then she took her clothes off. Greer and Cameron stood there watching. Her body was slender and long with high firm breasts that had small nipples. And she had a good ass.

  Greer blew the lantern out and she fucked Greer first.

  Cameron sat on a dark bale of hay while Magic Child and Greer fucked. The brass bed sounded alive as it echoed the motion of their passion.

  After while the bed stopped moving and everything was quiet except for the voice of Magic Child saying thank you, thank you, over and over again to Greer.

  Cameron counted how many times she said thank you. She said thank you eleven times. He waited for her to say thank you a twelfth time but she didn’t say it again.

  Then Cameron took his turn with Magic Child. Greer didn’t bother to get out of bed. He just lay there beside them while they fucked. Greer felt too good to move.

  After another while the bed fell silent. There wasn’t a sound for a couple of moments and then Magic Child said, “Cameron.” She said it once. That’s all she said it. Cameron waited for her to say his name again or to say something else but she didn’t say his name again and she didn’t say anything else.

  She just lay there affectionately stroking his ass like a kitten.

  The Drum

  The slamming of screen doors and dogs barking and the rattling of breakfast pots and pans and roosters crowing and people coughing and grumbling and stirring about: getting ready to start their day beat like a drum in Billy.

  It was a silver early-in-the-morning drum that would lead to the various events that would comprise July 13, 1902. The town drunk was lying facedown in the middle of the Main Street of town. He was passed out and at peace with the summer dust. His eyes were closed. There was a smile on the side of his face. A big yellow dog was sniffing at his boots and a big black dog was sniffing at the yellow dog. They were happy dogs. Both of their tails were wagging.

  A screen door slammed and a man shouted so loudly that the dogs stopped their sniffing and wagging, “Where in the hell is my God-damn hat!”

  “On your head, you idiot!” was the female reply.

  The dogs thought about this for a moment and then they started barking at the town drunk and woke him up.

  Welcome to the Dead Hills

  They woke up at dawn the next morning and rode out on three sad horses into the Dead Hills. Their name was perfect. They looked as if an undertaker had designed them from leftover funeral scraps. It was a three-hour ride to Miss Hawkline’s house. The road was very bleak, wandering like the handwriting of a dying person over the hills.

  There were no houses, no barns, no fences, no signs that human life had ever made its way this far except for the road which was barely legible. The only comforting thing was the early morning sweet smell of juniper brush.

  Cameron had the trunk full of guns strapped onto the back of his horse. He thought it remarkable that the animal could still move. He had to think back a ways to remember a horse that had been in such bad shape.

  “Sure is stark,” Greer said.

  Cameron had been counting the hills as they rode
along. He got to fifty-seven. Then he gave up. It was just too boring.

  “57,” he said.

  Then he didn’t say anything else. Actually, “57” had been the only thing that he’d said since they left Billy a few hours before.

  Magic Child waited for Cameron to explain why he’d said “57” but he didn’t. He didn’t say anything more.

  “Miss Hawkline lives out here,” Greer said.

  “Yes,” Magic Child said. “She loves it.”

  Something Human

  Finally they came across something human. It was a grave. The grave was right beside the road. It was simply a pile of bleak rocks covered with vulture shit. There was a wooden cross at one end of the rocks. The grave was so close to the road that you almost had to ride around it.

  “Well, at last we’ve got some company,” Greer said.

  There were a bunch of bullet holes in the cross. The grave had been used for target practice.

  “9,” Cameron said.

  “What was that?” Magic Child said.

  “He said there are nine bullet holes in the cross,” Greer said.

  Magic Child looked over at Cameron. She looked at him about ten seconds longer than she should have looked at him.

  “Don’t mind Cameron,” Greer said. “He just likes to count things. You’ll get used to it.”

  The Coat

  They rode farther and farther into the Dead Hills which disappeared behind them instantly to reappear again in front of them and everything was the same and everything was very still.

  At one time Greer thought he saw something different but he was mistaken. What he saw was exactly the same as what he had been seeing. He thought that it was smaller but then he realized that it was exactly the same size as everything else.

  He slowly shook his head.

  “Where does Pills get these horses?” Cameron said to Magic Child.

  “That’s what everybody wants to know,” Magic Child said.

  After while Cameron felt like counting again but because everything was the same it was difficult to find anything to count, so Cameron counted the footsteps of his horse, carrying him deeper and deeper into the Dead Hills and Miss Hawkline standing on the front porch of a gigantic yellow house, shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand and staring out into the Dead Hills. She was wearing a heavy winter coat.

  The Doctor

  Magic Child was very glad to be home and she considered these hills to be home. You couldn’t tell, though, that she was happy because she wore a constant expression on her face that had nothing to do with happiness. It was an anxious, slightly abstract look. It had been on her face since they had awakened in the barn.

  Greer and Cameron had wanted another go at her but she hadn’t been interested. She had told them that it was very important they get out to Miss Hawkline’s place.

  “911,” Cameron said.

  “What are you counting now?” Magic Child said, in a voice that sounded very intelligent. She was smart, too. She had graduated at the head of her class at Radcliffe and had attended the Sorbonne. Then she had studied to be a doctor at Johns Hopkins.

  She was a member of a prominent New England family that dated back to the Mayflower. Her family had been one of the contributing lights that led to the flowering of New England society and culture.

  Surgery was her specialty.

  “Hoofsteps,” Cameron said.

  The Bridge

  Suddenly a rattlesnake appeared, crawling rapidly across the road. The horses reacted to the snake: by whinnying and jumping about. Then the snake was gone. It took a few moments to calm the horses down.

  After the horses had been returned to “normal” Greer said, “That was a big God-damn rattler. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one that big before. You ever see a rattler that big before, Cameron?”

  “Not any bigger,” Cameron said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Greer said.

  Magic Child was directing her attention to something else.

  “What is it, Magic Child?” Greer said.

  “We’re almost home,” she said, now breaking out into a big smile.

  Hawkline Manor

  The road turned slightly, then went up over the horizon of a dead hill and from the top of the hill you could see a huge three-story yellow house about a quarter of a mile away in the center of a small meadow that was the same color as the house except for close to the house where it was white like snow.

  There were no fences or outbuildings or anything human or trees near the house. It just stood there alone in the center of the meadow with white stuff piled close in around it and more white stuff on the ground around it.

  There wasn’t even a barn. Two horses grazed a hundred yards or so from the house and there was a huge flock of red chickens the same distance away on the road that ended at the front porch of the house.

  The road stopped like a dying man’s signature on a last-minute will.

  There was a gigantic mound of coal beside the house which was a classic Victorian with great gables and stained glass across the tops of the windows and turrets and balconies and red brick fireplaces and a huge porch all around the house. There were twenty-one rooms in the house, including ten bedrooms and five parlors.

  Just a quick glance at the house and you knew that it did not belong out there in the Dead Hills surrounded by nothing. The house belonged in Saint Louis or San Francisco or Chicago or anyplace other than where it was now. Even Billy would have been a more understandable place for the house but out here there was no reason for it to exist, so the house looked like a fugitive from a dream.

  Heavy black smoke was pouring out of three brick chimneys. The temperature was over ninety on the hill top. Greer and Cameron wondered why there were fires burning in the house.

  They sat there on their horses for a few moments on the horizon, staring down at the house. Magic Child continued smiling. She was very happy.

  “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Greer said.

  “Don’t forget Hawaii,” Cameron said.

  Book 2

  MISS HAWKLINE

  Miss Hawkline

  As they rode slowly down the hill toward the house the front door opened and a woman stepped outside onto the porch. The woman was Miss Hawkline. She was wearing a heavy long white coat. The woman stood there watching them as they rode down closer and closer to the house.

  It seemed peculiar to Greer and Cameron that she should be wearing a coat on a hot July morning.

  She was tall and slender and had long black hair. The coat flowed like a waterfall down her body to end at a pair of pointed high-top shoes. The shoes were made of patent leather and sparkled like pieces of coal. They could easily have come from the huge mound of coal beside the house.

  She just stood there on the porch watching them approach. She made no motion toward them. She didn’t move. She just stood there watching them as they came down the hill.

  She was not the only one watching them. They were also being observed from an upstairs window.

  When they were a hundred yards away from the house, the air suddenly turned cold. The temperature dropped about forty degrees. The drop was as sudden as the motion of a knife.

  It was like journeying from summer into winter by blinking your eyes. The two horses and the huge flock of red chickens stood there in the heat watching them as they rode into the cold a few feet away.

  Magic Child slowly raised her arm and affectionately waved at the woman who returned the gesture with an equal amount of affection.

  When they were about fifty yards away from the house, there was frost on the ground. The woman took a step forward. She had an incredibly beautiful face. Her features were clean and sharp like the ringing of a church bell on a full moon night.

  When they were twenty-five yards away from the house, she moved to the top of the stairs which went down eight steps to the yellow grass which was frozen hard like strange silverware. The grass w
ent right up to the stairs and almost up to the house. The only thing that stopped the grass from directly touching the house were drifts of snow that were piled against the house. If it hadn’t been for the snow, the frozen yellow grass would have been a logical extension of the house or a rug too big to bring inside.

  The grass had been frozen for centuries.

  Then Magic Child started laughing. The woman started laughing, too, such a beautiful sound, the sound of them together laughing with white steam coming out of their mouths in the cold air.

  Greer and Cameron were freezing.

  The woman ran down the stairs to Magic Child who slipped like a grape peeling off her horse and into the arms of the woman. They stood there for a moment with their arms around each other: still laughing. They were the same height and had the same color hair and the same build and the same features and they were the same woman.

  Magic Child and Miss Hawkline were twins.

  They stood there with their arms around each other: laughing. They were two beautiful and unreal women.

  “I found them,” Magic Child said. “They’re perfect,” with snow piled up around the house on a hot July morning.

  The Meeting

  Greer and Cameron got down off their horses. Miss Hawkline and Magic Child had exhausted their very affectionate greeting and now Miss Hawkline had turned toward them and was ready to meet them.

  “This is Miss Hawkline.” Magic Child said, standing there and looking exactly like Miss Hawkline except that she was wearing Indian clothes and Miss Hawkline was turned out in a very proper New England winter wardrobe. “Greer, Miss Hawkline,” Magic Child said.