The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western

by Richard Brautigan

  “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Hawkline,” Greer said. He was smiling softly.

  “It pleases me that you’re here,” she said.

  “And Cameron,” Magic Child said.

  “You please me also,” Miss Hawkline said.

  Cameron nodded.

  Then Miss Hawkline walked over to them and held out her hand. They both shook hands with her. Her hand was long and delicate but the grasp was strong. The grasp was so strong that it surprised them. It was another surprise in a day full of surprises. Of course all that had transpired so far to surprise them was just a downpayment on the things that would happen before the day was out.

  “1, 2,” Cameron said, looking at Miss Hawkline and Magic Child.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Hawkline said, waiting for Cameron to finish what he was saying. Cameron didn’t say anything more.

  “That means he’s glad to meet you,” Magic Child said, smiling at Greer.

  The Ice Caves

  “Let’s go inside the house,” Miss Hawkline said. “And I’ll tell you why Magic Child has brought you here and what you have to do to earn your money. Have you had breakfast yet?”

  “We left at dawn,” Magic Child said.

  “It sounds as if breakfast is in order,” Miss Hawkline said.

  Greer and Cameron had noticed that the closer you got to the house, the colder the air became. The house towered above them like a small wooden mountain covered with yellow snow.

  Greer saw something in a second-story window. It floated like a small mirror. Then it was gone. He thought that there was somebody else in the house.

  “You’ve noticed the cold, haven’t you?” Miss Hawkline said as she led the way up the stairs to the porch.

  “Yes,” Greer said.

  “There are ice caves under this house,” Miss Hawkline said. “That’s why it’s cold.”

  The Black Umbrellas

  They went into the house. It was filled with beautiful Victorian furniture and very cold.

  “This way to the kitchen,” Miss Hawkline said. “I’ll cook up some breakfast. You boys look as if you could use some ham and eggs.”

  “I’m going upstairs to change,” Magic Child said. She vanished up a curved mahogany staircase into the upper reaches of the house. Greer and Cameron watched after her until she was gone. Then they followed Miss Hawkline into the kitchen. It was very pleasant trailing after her. She had taken her coat off and she was wearing a long white dress with a high lace collar.

  She had exactly the same kind of body that Magic Child had. Greer and Cameron could imagine her without any clothes on, looking exactly like Magic Child which was a very good way to look.

  “I’ll cook some breakfast and then tell you what we want done. It’s a long trip here from Portland. I’m glad that you came. I think we’ll all turn out to be friends.”

  The kitchen was immense. There was a large window and you could look out and see the snow and the frost on the ground. A hot fire was burning in the stove and it was warm and comfortable in the kitchen.

  Greer and Cameron sat down in chairs at the table and Miss Hawkline poured them cups of strong black coffee from a huge pot on the stove.

  Then she got a ham and sliced off some big pieces and got them cooking on the stove. Some biscuits were made very quickly and put into the oven to bake. Greer and Cameron couldn’t remember anybody making biscuits that fast and getting them into the oven so quickly.

  Miss Hawkline was very skillful with her kitchen as she was with all the things of her life. She didn’t say much as she went about cooking breakfast. Once she asked them if they liked Portland and they said that they did.

  Greer and Cameron watched her very carefully, thinking about her every move, wondering what was going to happen next, knowing that this was all the beginning of some pretty strange adventures.

  They looked casual, relaxed, not in a hurry at all, as if what had happened so far and this strange house perched over some ice caves with frost on the ground in summer were every day occurrences with them.

  Cameron had brought the trunk full of guns into the house with them. He had left the trunk in the front hall next to a large elephant foot full of black umbrellas.

  The First Breakfast

  Just about the time breakfast was ready, Magic Child came into the kitchen. She was wearing exactly the same clothes that Miss Hawkline was wearing. Her hair was also combed the same way and she wore patent leather shoes that shined like coal. You could not tell the difference between Magic Child and Miss Hawkline.

  They were the same person.

  “How do I look?” Magic Child said.

  “Fine,” Greer said.

  “You sure are a pretty girl,” Cameron said.

  “I’m so glad you’re back,” Miss Hawkline said, suddenly stopping breakfast to rush over and throw her arms around Magic Child again.

  Greer and Cameron sat there, staring at these two identical visions of beautiful womanhood.

  Miss Hawkline went back to the few minutes that took care of cooking breakfast and putting the food on the table where soon they were all gathered eating the first of many meals that they would eat together.

  Book 3

  THE HAWKLINE MONSTER

  The Death of Magic Child

  “Is anybody else going to have breakfast with us?” Greer said as he prepared to take his first bite of food. He was thinking about the flash of light he had seen in an upstairs window. He thought that the light was caused by a person.

  “No,” Miss Hawkline said. “There’s nobody else in the house except us.”

  Cameron stared at his fork. It lay beside a plate that had a delicate Chinese pattern on it. He looked over at Greer. Then he picked up his fork and started eating.

  “What do you want done?” Greer said. He had just finished swallowing a big mouthful of carefully chewed ham. Greer was a slow eater. He liked to enjoy his food.

  “5,000,” Cameron said. He still had some food in his mouth, so his words sounded a little bit lumpy.

  “You have to kill a monster that lives under the house in the ice caves.” Miss Hawkline said, looking over at Cameron.

  “A monster?” Greer said.

  “Yes, a monster,” Magic Child said. “The monster lives in the caves. We want him dead. There’s a basement with a laboratory in it above the caves. An iron door separates the laboratory from the caves and there’s another iron door that separates the laboratory from the house. They’re thick doors but we’re afraid someday he’ll break the doors down and get upstairs into the house. We don’t want the monster running around the house.”

  “I can see that,” Greer said. “Nobody likes monsters running around their house.” He was smiling softly.

  “What kind of a monster is this?” Cameron said.

  “We don’t know,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “We’ve never seen him,” Magic Child said.

  Ever since they had arrived at the house, Magic Child’s personality had been changing. She was rapidly becoming more and more like Miss Hawkline. Her voice had been changing and the expressions on her face had been changing. She was growing closer and closer toward Miss Hawkline’s way of talking and moving and doing things.

  “But we can hear him howling in the ice caves and banging on the iron door with what sounds like a tail,” Magic Child said, in a very Miss Hawkline manner.

  Magic Child was becoming Miss Hawkline right in front of Greer and Cameron’s eyes. By the time breakfast was over they were not able to tell the difference between them. Only their places at the table could tell who was Magic Child and who was Miss Hawkline.

  “It’s a terrible sound and we’re afraid,” Magic Child said.

  Greer was thinking that as soon as they both stood up and you took your eyes off them for a second, you would not be able to tell which one was Magic Child and who was Miss Hawkline. He suddenly realized that Magic Child was going to die shortly in that kitchen and a second Miss Hawkline would be born
and then there would be two Miss Hawklines and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them.

  Greer felt a little sad. He liked Magic Child.

  A few moments later, while they were all talking about the monster, both of the women got up and started moving around the kitchen, cleaning up after breakfast.

  Greer kept his eye on the one that was Magic Child. He didn’t want to lose her.

  “We’ve never killed a monster before,” Cameron said.

  Greer took his eyes accidentally off the women to listen to Cameron. Then he realized in horror what he had done and turned instantly back to the women but it was too late. He couldn’t tell the difference between them.

  Magic Child was dead.

  The Funeral of Magic Child

  “Which one of you is Magic Child?” Greer said.

  The Hawkline women stopped their after-breakfast-kitchen-clean-up and turned toward Greer.

  “Magic Child is dead,” one of the women said.

  “Why?” Greer said. “She was a nice person. I liked her.”

  “I liked her, too,” Cameron said. “But that’s the way it goes.” Cameron had the kind of mentality that could accept anything.

  “You die when you’ve lived long enough,” one of the Hawkline women said. “Magic Child lived as long as she was supposed to live. Don’t feel sad. It was a painless and needed death.”

  They were both smiling gently at Greer and Cameron. You could not tell the difference between the women now. Everything about them was the same.

  Greer sighed.

  “What about another name to tell the difference between you?” Greer said.

  “There is no difference between us. We’re the same person,” one of the women said.

  “They’re both Miss Hawkline,” Cameron said, to make it final. “I like Miss Hawkline and now we’ve got 2 of them. Let’s call them both Miss Hawkline. Who gives a fuck in the long run?”

  “That sounds fine,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “Yes. Just call us Miss Hawkline,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “I’m glad that’s taken care of,” Cameron said. “You have 1 monster in the basement. Right? And he needs killing.”

  “Not in the basement,” Miss Hawkline said. “In the ice caves.”

  “That’s the basement,” Cameron said. “Tell us some more about this God-damn creature. Then we’ll go down and blow its fucking head off.”

  The Hawkline Monster

  The two Miss Hawklines sat back down at the table with Greer and Cameron and started telling the story of the Hawkline Monster.

  “Our father built this house,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “He was a scientist teaching at Harvard,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

  “What’s Harvard?” Cameron said.

  “It’s a famous college in the East,” Miss Hawkline said.

  “We’ve never been in the East,” Greer said.

  “Yes, we’ve been there,” Cameron said. “We’ve been to Hawaii.”

  “That’s not East,” Greer said.

  “Don’t Chinamen come from China which is in the East?” Cameron said.

  “It’s not the same,” Greer said. “Saint Louis is in the East and Chicago. Places like that.”

  “You mean that East,” Cameron said.

  “Yeah,” Greer said. “That East.”

  “The monster—” Miss Hawkline said, trying to get back to the original subject which was the monster that dwelled in the ice caves under their house.

  “Yeah,” Greer said. “How in the hell did we get to talking about Hawaii? I hate Hawaii.”

  “I mentioned it,” Cameron said. “Because we were talking about the East. I hate Hawaii, too.”

  “Hawaii’s a dumb thing to bring up in this conversation. These women have a problem,” Greer said. “They paid us their money to take care of it and let’s get on with it and I know you hate Hawaii because I was standing right beside you on the fucking place. I know you remember that because you remember every fucking thing.”

  “The monster—” the other Miss Hawkline said, trying again to get back to the original subject which was the monster that dwelled in the ice caves under their house.

  “I think the problem is this,” Cameron said, totally ignoring Miss Hawkline and the monster. “If Miss Hawkline had said, ‘back East,’ then I would have known right away what East she was talking about. She said, ‘in the East,’ so I thought about Hawaii where we just came from. See, it’s all because she said, ‘in the East,’ instead of ‘back East.’ Every idiot knows that Chicago is back East.”

  This was a very strange conversation that Greer and Cameron were having. They’d never had a conversation like this before. They had never talked to each other this way before either.

  Their conversations always ran along very normally except for the fact that Cameron counted the things that passed through their lives and Greer had gotten used to that. He had to because Cameron was his partner.

  Greer broke the spell of their conversation by suddenly turning his energy away from Cameron which was a very hard thing to do, and saying to Miss Hawkline, “What about your father? How does he figure in with this monster you’ve got hanging around your basement?”

  “It’s not in the basement!” Miss Hawkline said, getting a little mad. “It’s in the ice caves that are underneath the basement. We have no monster in our basement! We just have our laboratory there. “

  She had become infected by the just-finished conversation between Greer and Cameron about the East. “Let’s start all over again,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “Our father built this house…”

  Hawaii Revisited

  “He was teaching chemistry at Harvard and he also had a huge laboratory at home that he used for private experiments,” Miss Hawkline said. “Everything was going along fine until the afternoon that one of the experiments got out of the laboratory and ate our family dog in the back yard. The next door neighbors were having a wedding reception in their garden when this happened. It was at this time that he decided to move to some isolated part of the country where he could have more privacy for his work.

  “He found this location and built this house out here about five years ago with a huge laboratory in the basement and he was working on a new experiment that he called The Chemicals. Everything was going along fine until—”

  “Excuse me,” Greer said. “What about the experiment that ate your dog?”

  “I’m coming to that,” Hiss Hawkline said.

  “I’m sorry,” Greer said. “I was just a little curious. Continue. Let’s hear what happened, but I already think I know what happened. Tell me if I’m wrong: one of the experiments ate your father.”

  “No,” Miss Hawkline said. “The experiment didn’t exactly eat our father.”

  “What exactly did it do?” Greer said.

  Cameron was very carefully listening to everything.

  “We’re getting off on the wrong track again,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “I don’t know what’s happening. This is very easy to explain but suddenly it’s so complicated. I mean, I can’t believe how strange our conversation has turned.”

  “It is sort of weird, isn’t it?” Greer said. “It’s like we can’t say what we mean.”

  “I just forgot what we were talking about,” Miss Hawkline said. She turned to her sister. “Do you remember what we were talking about?”

  “No, I don’t,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “Was it Hawaii?”

  “We were talking about Hawaii a little while ago,” Greer said. “But we were talking about something else. What was it?”

  “Maybe it was Hawaii,” Cameron said. “We were talking about Hawaii. Isn’t it a little bit colder in here now?”

  “It does seem colder, doesn’t it?” Miss Hawkline said.

  “Yes, it’s definitely colder,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “I’ll put some more coal in the stove.”

  She got up and went over to the stove. She
opened the lid on top to find the stove filled with coal because she had put some fresh pieces in just before she had sat down with her sister to talk to Greer and Cameron about the monster.

  “Now, we were talking about Hawaii, right?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

  “That’s right,” Greer said.

  “It’s a miserable place,” Cameron said.

  “I think we’d better go into another room,” Miss Hawkline said. “This fire isn’t warm enough.”

  They left the kitchen and went into one of the front parlors. They didn’t say anything as they walked down the long hall to the parlor.

  As soon as they stepped into the parlor, Greer turned to Miss Hawkline and almost shouted, “We were talking about the fucking monster, not Hawaii!”

  “That’s right,” she almost yelled back and then they stood there staring at each other for a moment before Miss Hawkline said, “Something happened to our minds in the kitchen.”

  “I think you’d better tell us all about that monster right now,” Cameron said. He looked grim. He didn’t like his mind fucked around with by anybody, including monsters.

  The Chemicals

  The parlor was exquisitely furnished in an expensive and tasteful manner. They were all sitting down in beautiful chairs facing each other except for Cameron who was sitting on a couch by himself.

  There was a generous coal fire burning in the fireplace and the room was warm and cozy, far different from the kitchen and they all could remember what they were talking about.

  “Where’s your father?” Greer said.

  “He disappeared into the ice caves,” Miss Hawkline said. “He went down there looking for the monster. He didn’t come back. We think the monster got him.”

  “How do we figure into this?” Greer said. “Why didn’t you go for the marshal and have him come out here and take a look into this? He seems to be a good man and he has a lot of interest in one of you.”