Richard Brautigan - The Hawkline Monster - A Gothic Western

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.”

“There are too many things to explain and we’re sure that our father is dead. That the monster killed him,” Miss Hawkline said.

Cameron listened carefully from the couch. His gray eyes looked almost metallic.

“We were instructed to complete our father’s experiment with The Chemicals,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “He told us that if anything ever happened to him that we were to complete The Chemicals. It was his last important experiment and we are following his instructions.”

“We cannot stand the idea of our father having wasted his life,” Miss Hawkline said. “The Chemicals meant so much to him. We consider it our duty to complete what he started. That’s why we didn’t get the marshal. We don’t want people knowing what we are doing out here. That’s why we got you to help us. We cannot concentrate fully on The Chemicals until the monster is dead. It’s distracting having that thing down there, trying to get out of the ice caves and into the house to kill us. So if you kill it for us, it will make everything a lot simpler.”

“What happened there in the kitchen?” Cameron said. “Why were we talking so strangely to each other? Why did we forget what we were talking about? Has that ever happened here before?”

There was a slight pause while the two Miss Hawklines looked at each other. Then one of them said, “Yes. Things like that have been happening ever since our father added a few more things to The Chemicals and then passed electricity through The Chemicals. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to correct the balance of The Chemicals and complete the experiment. We’ve been following the notes that our father left behind.”

“I like the way you say, ‘behind,’” Greer said. “Behind meaning that some God-damn monster ate him in the basement.”

“Not the basement, the ice caves!” Miss Hawkline said. “The laboratory is in the basement!”

Cameron looked at the two Miss Hawklines. Everybody stopped talking because they could see that Cameron was going to say something.

“You girls don’t seem to have much grief about your father’s disappearance,” Cameron said, finally. “I mean, you’re not exactly in mourning.”

“Our father brought us up a special way. Mother died years ago,” Miss Hawkline said. “Grief doesn’t figure into it that much. We loved our father a great deal and that’s why we are going to finish his experiment with The Chemicals.”

She was a little mad about this time. She wanted to get onto the killing of the monster and away from superfluous conversations about things that she wasn’t really that much interested in: like mortal grief.

“Tell us more about what happened in the kitchen,” Cameron said.

“Things like that happen,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “They’re always strange occurrences and they seldom duplicate themselves. We never know what’s going to happen next.”

“Once we found green feathers in all of our shoes,” Miss Hawkline said. “Another time we were sitting in a parlor upstairs talking about something when suddenly we were nude. Our clothes just disappeared off our bodies. We never saw them again.”

“Yes,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “That made me so fucking mad. I really liked that dress. I bought it in New York City and it was my favorite dress.”

Greer and Cameron had never heard an elegant lady use the word fuck before. They would get used to it, though, because the Hawkline women swore a lot. It was something they had learned from their father who had always been very liberal with his language, to the point of being a legend at Harvard.

Anyway: on with the story…

“Has anything bad ever happened?” Cameron said.

“No, all the things that happen are like children’s pranks except the child has supernatural powers.”

“What does supernatural mean?” Cameron said.

The Miss Hawklines looked at each other. Cameron didn’t like the way they looked at each other. All the fuck they had to do was to tell him what it meant. That was no big deal.

“It means out of the ordinary,” Miss Hawkline said.

“That’s good to know,” Cameron said. He did not say it in a pleasant way.

“Are you ever afraid of what those chemicals might come up with next?” Greer said, taking over the conversation from Cameron and trying to put it on a more comfortable level.

The Miss Hawklines were relieved. They hadn’t meant to hurt Cameron’s feelings with the word supernatural. They knew it was a dumb thing that they had done, looking at each other, wishing they hadn’t done it.

“They’re never evil things,” Miss Hawkline said. She was going to say malicious, but she changed her mind. “Just very annoying sometimes like my favorite dress disappearing off my body.”

“What are those chemicals supposed to do when they’re finished?” Greer said. “And is this the same stuff that ate the dog?”

“We don’t know what it’s supposed to do,” Miss Hawkline said. “Our father told us when The Chemicals were completed that the answer to the ultimate problem facing mankind would be solved.”

“What’s that?” Cameron said.

“He didn’t tell us,” Miss Hawkline said.

“You didn’t answer the question about the dog,” Cameron said.

“No, it wasn’t The Chemicals,” Miss Hawkline said. “They haven’t eaten anything. They’re just mischievous.”

“Then what ate the dog?” Cameron said. He really wanted to know what ate the dog.

“It was an earlier batch of some stuff that Daddy had mixed up,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Did it have anything to do with The Chemicals?” Cameron said. He had just picked up the habit of calling Professor Hawkline’s last experiment The Chemicals.

Miss Hawkline did not want to say what she was about to say. Cameron was watching carefully the expression on her face just before she spoke. She looked like a guilty child about to speak.

“Yes, it was an earlier stage of The Chemicals that ate the dog but Daddy took the stuff and flushed it right down the toilet.”

Miss Hawkline was blushing now and staring down at the floor.

Miss Hawkline got up from the chair she was sitting gravely in like a captured child and went over to the fireplace to poke the coal.

Everybody waited for her to finish and come back to the conversation about The Chemicals, the dog being eaten, etc., and what other topics that might be of interest on July 13, 1902.

While they waited Cameron counted the lamps in the room, 7, the chairs, 6, the pictures on the walls, 5. The pictures were of things that Cameron had never seen before. One of the pictures was of a street lined with buildings. The street was filled with water. There were boats on the water.

Cameron had never seen a street with boats on it instead of horses.

“What in the hell is that?” he said, pointing to the picture.

“Venice,” Miss Hawkline said.

Having finished with the fireplace Miss Hawkline sat back down and the conversation was resumed. Actually, something they had talked about earlier was repeated and then they went onto something else.