The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

by Richard Brautigan

On the Way to a Butler Possibility

  As they started downstairs to take care of the butler which meant guiding him to his eternal resting place, a hole in the ground, they passed the open door of a room that had a pool table in it. It was a beautiful table with a crystal chandelier hanging above it.

  The door had been closed when Greer and Cameron came upstairs to fuck the Hawkline women.

  “Look, a pool table,” Cameron said, carrying a shotgun. He stopped momentarily to admire the pool table. “Sure is 1 fine-looking table. Maybe we can play some pool after we bury the butler and kill the monster.”

  “Yeah, some pool would be nice after we finish our work,” Greer said, with a 30:40 Krag slung over his shoulder and an automatic pistol in his belt.

  “That’s a pretty lamp, too,” Cameron said, looking at the chandelier.

  The room was illuminated by sunlight coming in the windows. Light from the windows gathered in the chandelier which reflected delicate green flowers from the pool table.

  But there was also another light in the flowery pieces of glass that hung like a complicated garden above the table. The light moved very subtly through the pieces of glass and it was followed by a trailing, bumbling child-like shadow.

  Greer, for a second, thought he saw something moving in the chandelier. He looked up from the pool table to stare at the chandelier and sure enough there was a light moving across the pieces of crystal. The light was followed by an awkward dark motion.

  He wondered what could cause the light to move in the chandelier. None of the pieces of crystal were moving. They were absolutely still.

  “There’s a light moving in the chandelier,” he said, walking into the room to investigate. “It must be reflecting off something outside.”

  He went over to a window and looked out. He saw the frost around the house circling out for a hundred yards and then stopping as summer took over the grass and the Dead Hills beyond.

  Greer could see nothing moving outside that could cause a light to reflect in the chandelier. He turned back around and the light was gone.

  “It’s gone now,” he said. “That’s funny. There was nothing outside to start it.”

  “Why all this attention to a reflection?” Miss Hawkline said. “We have a dead butler lying in the hall. Let’s do something about that.”

  “Just curiosity,” Greer said. “The only reason that I’m still alive is because I’m a very curious person. It pays to keep on your toes.”

  He looked again at the chandelier but the strange light was gone. He did not know that the light was hiding on the pool table, near a side pocket, and there was a shadow hiding there, too.

  “That light seemed familiar,” Greer said. “I’ve seen it someplace before.”

  The light and the shadow held their breath, waiting for Greer to leave the room.

  A Surprise

  As they descended the spiral staircase to the main floor of the house, Miss Hawkline said to her sister, “The funniest thing happened a little while ago.”

  “What was that?”

  “It’s really strange,” she said.

  “Well, what was it?”

  Greer and Cameron were trailing behind the Hawkline sisters. They moved so gracefully that Greer and Cameron were almost spellbound. The sisters moved without making a sound on the stairs. They moved in the same manner as two birds gliding slowly on the wind.

  Their voices delicately punctuated the air like the invisible movement of peacock fans.

  “l found some Indian clothes hanging in my closet. I didn’t put them there,” Miss Hawkline said. “Do you have any idea where they came from?”

  “No.” her sister said. “I’ve never seen any Indian clothes around here.”

  “It’s really strange,” Miss Hawkline said. “They’re our size.”

  “I wonder where they came from,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

  “A lot of very strange things have been happening around here.” Miss Hawkline answered.

  Greer and Cameron looked at each other and they had something more to think about.

  The Butler Conclusion

  When they finally arrived at the body of the dead butler, they really had a surprise waiting for them. One of the Hawkline women put her hand up to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. The other Miss Hawkline turned white as a ghost. Greer sighed. Cameron put his finger in his ear and scratched it. “What the fuck next?” he said.

  Then they just stood there staring at the butler’s body. They stared at it for a long time.

  “Well,” Greer said, finally. “It’s going to make burying him a lot easier.”

  Lying on the floor in front of them was the body of the butler but it was only thirty-one inches long and weighed less than fifty pounds. The dead body of the giant butler had been changed into the body of a dwarf. It was almost lost in folds of giant clothes. The pant legs were barely occupied and the coat was like a tent wrapped around the corpse of the butler.

  At the end of a huge pile of clothes, there was a small head sticking out of a shirt. The collar of the shirt surrounded the head like a hoop.

  The expression, which was of quiet repose, gone to meet his Maker, as they say, on the butler’s face had remained unaltered in his transformation from a giant into a dwarf but of course the expression was much smaller.

  Mr. Morgan, Requiescat in Pace

  It did make burying the butler simpler. While Greer dug a small grave outside the house, just beyond the influence of frost, Miss Hawkline went upstairs and got a suitcase.

  Prints

  After the funeral with appropriate words of bereavement over a very small grave and a little cross, everybody went back into the house and gathered in a front parlor.

  Greer and Cameron no longer had their guns with them. They had put them away in the long narrow trunk which was back beside the elephant foot umbrella stand. They only carried a gun when they were going to use one. The rest of the time the guns stayed in the trunk.

  Cameron put some coal on the fire.

  The two Miss Hawklines were sitting next to each other on a love seat. Greer sat across from them in a huge easy chair with a bear’s head carved on the end of each armrest.

  Cameron stood beside the fire, after having helped it out, facing the room and the troubled eyes of his contemporaries. He looked over at a table that had some cut-crystal decanters of liquor and fine long-stemmed crystal glasses that were keeping company on a silver platter.

  “I think we need something to drink,” he said.

  Miss Hawkline got up from the love seat and went over to the table and poured them all glasses of sherry which they were momentarily sipping.

  She returned to the side of her sister on the love seat and everybody was exactly as they were before Cameron made the suggestion except they had glasses in their hands. It had been a delicately choreographed event like making different prints of a photograph except that one of the prints had glasses of sherry in it.

  Magic Child Revisited

  “I’d like to ask you girls a question,” Greer said, but first he took a sip from his glass of sherry. Everybody in the room watched him carefully take his.sip. He held the liquor in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed it. “Have either of you ever heard of somebody called Magic Child?” he said.

  “No,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “The name’s not familiar,” the other Miss Hawkline replied. “It’s a funny name, though. Sounds like an Indian name.”

  They both looked puzzled.

  “That’s what I thought,” Greer said, looking over at Cameron standing beside the fireplace. The coal burned silently and smoke journeyed upward in departure from this huge yellow house standing in a field of frost at the early part of this century.

  Greer as he looked over at Cameron suddenly noticed that part of the fire was not burning and part of the smoke just beyond it was not moving upward but was just hovering above flames of a slightly different color that did not burn.

 
; He thought about the strange reflection in the pool-room chandelier. The fire that did not burn resembled that reflection.

  He looked away from Cameron and back to the Hawkline women sitting primly beside each other on the love seat. “Who is Magic Child and what does she have to do with us?” Miss Hawkline said.

  “Nothing,” Greer said.

  Return to the Monster

  “I guess we should think about killing the monster down there in the basement. Cameron said and the Hawkline women didn’t say anything. “We’ve been here all day and we haven’t gotten around to that yet. So many things have been happening. I’d like to get that God-damn monster out of the picture, so we can get onto something else because there sure as hell seems to be something else here to get onto. What do you think, Greer? Time for a little monster killing?”

  Greer looked casually over at Cameron but at the same time his vision took in the fireplace. The fire that did not burn and the smoke that did not move were gone. It was a normal fire now. He looked back at the Hawkline women and casually but carefully around the room.

  “Did you hear me?” Cameron said.

  “Yeah, I heard you,” Greer said.

  “Well, what do you think? A little monster killing?”

  The Hawkline sisters were both wearing identical pearl necklaces. The necklaces floated gracefully about their necks.

  But some of the pearls were glowing more brightly than the other pearls and some locks of hair hanging long about their necks seemed slightly darker than the rest of their hair. “Yes, we should get around to killing the monster,” Greer said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s what we should do,” Cameron said. “And then find out what’s causing all these crazy things to happen around here. I never saw a man buried in a suitcase before.”

  Questions Near Sunset

  The house was by now casting long shadows out across the frost as the sun was nearing its departure from the Dead Hills and Eastern Oregon and all the rest of Western America while Greer was asking the Hawkline women some last minute questions.

  “And you’ve never seen the monster?” Greer said to Miss Hawkline.

  “No, we’ve just heard it screaming down in the caves and we’ve heard it banging on the iron door that locks the caves off from the laboratory. It’s very strong and can shake the door. The door’s thick, too. Iron.”

  “But you’ve never seen it?”

  “No, we haven’t.”

  “And the door’s been locked ever since your father disappeared?”

  “Yes,” Miss Hawkline said.

  The pearls about the Hawkline sisters’ throats had grown a little more intense in light, almost approaching a diamond-like quality. Greer saw a motion in the darkness of their hair. It was as if their hair had moved but it hadn’t moved. Something had shifted in their hair. Greer thought for a second. Then he realized that it was the color of their hair that had moved.

  “And sometimes you hear screams?”

  “Yes, we can hear them all over the house and we can hear the banging on the iron door, too,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “How often?”

  “Every day or so,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “We haven’t heard anything,” Greer said.

  “Sometimes it’s like that,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “Why all these questions? We’ve already told you everything that we know and now we’re telling it to you again.”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said. “I want to get that monster out of the God-damn way.”

  “OK,” Greer said. “Let’s kill the monster,” while letting his vision casually brush past the necklaces about the Hawkline sisters’ throats.

  The necklaces were staring back.

  What Counts

  But now the sun was down and early twilight had substituted itself on the landscape and though everybody was ready to kill the monster, they were also very hungry and soon their hunger got the best of them and killing the monster was put off until after supper which the Hawkline women returned to the kitchen to prepare while Greer and Cameron stayed on in the parlor.

  When the Hawkline sisters departed, the strange light stayed on the pearls and the moving dark color remained in their hair and they unknowingly transported them to the kitchen which was fine with Greer because he wanted to talk about them with Cameron.

  Greer started to tell Cameron what he had seen but Cameron interrupted him by saying, “I know. I’ve been watching them. I saw them in the hall by the butler’s body after it got changed into a dwarf person. They were on the shovel while you were digging the grave and I saw them when I was putting my clothes on after fucking one of those Hawkline women.”

  “Did you see them in the chandelier above the pool table?” Greer said.

  “Oh, yeah. But I wish you hadn’t been so obvious about going in there and looking for them. I don’t want to make them nervous and know that we know about them.”

  “You saw them here in the room?” Greer said.

  “Sure. In the fire. Why do you think I was standing over there? because I wanted a hot ass? I wanted a closer look. They’re gone now with the Hawkline women, so what do you think? I know what I think. I don’t think we have to go down in the ice caves to find that fucking monster. I think we only have to go as far as the basement and those fucking chemicals that their crazy father was working on.” Greer smiled at Cameron.

  “Sometimes you surprise me,” Greer said. “I didn’t know that you were picking up on it.”

  “I count a lot of things that there’s no need to count,” Cameron said. “Just because that’s the way I am. But I count all the things that need to be counted.”

  But Supper First, Then the Hawkline Monster

  Greer and Cameron decided to have supper first before they dealt with The Chemicals in the laboratory and search out what they thought would lead them to the Hawkline Monster.

  “We’ll just play like we’re going down into the ice caves and blast out whatever, but when we get down to the basement we’ll come up with some excuse to linger around down there and if we come across something interesting, maybe like The Chemicals, we’ll shoot it,” Cameron said. “But first let’s enjoy a good supper and not let on at all that we know about that light and its shadow sidekick.”

  “OK,” Greer said. “You’ve got it all pegged.”

  Then the Hawkline sisters came into the room. They had changed their dresses. They were now wearing dresses with very low necklines that accentuated beautiful young breasts. They both had tiny waists and the dresses showed them to advantage.

  “Supper’s ready, you hungry monster killers!”

  The Hawkline women smiled at Greer and Cameron.

  “You need energy if you’re going to kill a monster.”

  Greer and Cameron smiled back.

  The same necklaces were still about the Hawkline sisters’ throats and the light and the shadow were still there. The light looked comfortable in the necklaces and the shadowy dark color that could move was at rest in their long flowing hair.

  At least the Hawkline Monster has good taste, Greer thought.

  Counting the Hawkline Monster

  During supper Greer and Cameron casually watched the Hawkline Monster about the throats and in the hair of the Hawkline sisters.

  The monster was very informal during the meal. Its light diminished in the necklaces and the shadowy moving color in the sisters’ hair was motionless, fading almost into the natural color of their hair.

  The meal was steaks and potatoes and biscuits and gravy. It was a typical Eastern Oregon meal and eaten with a lot of gusto by Greer and Cameron.

  Greer sat there thinking about the monster and thinking about how this was still the same day they had awakened in a barn in Billy. He thought about all the events that had so far transpired.

  It really had been a long day with the prospects of much more to follow: Events that would lead him and Cameron to attempt to deprive the Hawkline Mons
ter of its existence and the strange powers that it possessed sitting across the table from them, staring out of two necklaces about the throats of two beautiful women who were completely unsuspecting, at faith with their jewelry.

  Cameron counted random things in the room. He counted the things on the table: dishes, silverware, plates, etc… 28, 29, 30, etc.

  It was something to do.

  Then he counted the pearls that the Hawkline Monster was hiding in: … 5, 6, etc.

  The Hawkline Monster in the Gravy

  Toward the end of supper the Hawkline Monster left the necklaces and got onto the table. It condensed itself into the space of a serving spoon that was in a large bowl of gravy on the table. The shadow of the monster lay on top of the gravy pretending that it was gravy.

  It was very difficult for the shadow to pretend that it was gravy but it worked hard at the performance and sort of pulled it off.

  Cameron was amused by the monster getting on the table and he understood how difficult it was for the shadow to pretend that it was gravy.

  “Sure is good gravy,” Greer said to Cameron.

  “Yeah,” Cameron said, looking over at Greer.

  “You hoys want some more gravy?” Miss Hawkline said.

  “It sure is good,” Greer said. “What about you, Cameron, more gravy?”

  The shadow of the Hawkline Monster was lying as flat as it could on top of the gravy. The monster itself was slightly uncomfortable in the spoon that had a little more reflection to it than it should have had.

  “l don’t know. I’m pretty full now. But…” Cameron pun his hand on the spoon. He was now touching the Hawkline Monster. The spoon, though it was in a bowl of hot gravy, was cold.