Richard Brautigan - The Hawkline Monster - A Gothic Western

The chemical now cried a lot and kept to itself near the bottom of the jar.

There were of course chemicals who were basically evil in nature and glad to be free of the professor’s good-neighbor policy who exulted now in the goofy terror the light, which was the Hawkline Monster, inflicted upon its hosts, the Hawklines, and anybody who came near them.

The light possessed unlimited possibilities and took a special pride in using them. Its shadow was disgusted with the whole business and trailed, dragging its feet reluctantly behind.

Whenever the Hawkline Monster left the laboratory, drifting up the stairs and then slipping like melted butter under the iron door that separated the laboratory from the house, the shadow always felt as if it were going to throw up.

If only the professor were around, if only that terrible fate had not befallen him, he would still be singing:

“Me and Mamie O’Rorke,

Tripped the light fantastic,

On the sidewalks of New York.”

Greer and Cameron and the Hawkline women, who were still mystified by their behavior, returned clothes to their bodies and all joined together in a music room on the same floor as the bedrooms that they had just finished making love in.

Greer and Cameron put their guns down on the top of a piano. Miss Hawkline went downstairs and made some tea and brought it back up on a silver platter and they all sat in the music room surrounded by harpsichords, violins, cellos, pianos, drums, organs, etc. It was a very large music room.

To make tea Miss Hawkline had to step around the body of the giant butler in the hall downstairs.

Greer and Cameron had never had tea before but they decided to try it because what-the-hell with all the things that were going on in this huge yellow house that was so weird that it almost breathed, straddling some ice caves that penetrated like frozen teeth deep into the earth.

Greer and Cameron had wanted to do something with the dead body of the giant butler as soon as they were finished with the living bodies of the Hawkline women, but the women insisted that they all have tea first before getting onto the disposal of the butler who was still sprawled out like an island in the hall.

A freshly-started fire was burning in the music room fireplace.

“Do you like your tea?” Miss Hawkline said. She was sitting beside Greer on a couch next to a harp.

“It’s different,” Greer said.

“What do you think, Cameron?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“It doesn’t taste like coffee,” Cameron said. He counted all the musical instruments in the room: 18. Then he said to the closest Miss Hawkline, “You have enough musical stuff here to start a band.”

“We’ve never thought about it in that way,” the Miss Hawkline said.

“What are we going to do with the butler’s body?” Cameron said.

“That is a problem,” Miss Hawkline said. “We’ll really miss him. He was like an uncle to us. Such a good man. Huge but gentle as a fly.”

“Why don’t we start by moving him out of the hall. It’s hard walking around him,” Cameron said.

“Yes, we should move him,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Why didn’t we do that before we sat down here and started drinking this stuff?” Cameron said, looking disdainfully at his cup of tea. It was very apparent that Cameron was not going to be converted to the geniality of tea drinking. It was, you might say, not his cup of tea.

“I think we should bury him,” Miss Hawkline said, thinking for a few seconds.

“You have to get him out of the hall if you want to put him into the ground,” Cameron said.

“Precisely,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“I think we’ll need a coffin,” Miss Hawkline said.

“2 coffins,” Cameron said.

“Do you gentlemen know how to make a coffin?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Uh-uh,” Greer said. “We don’t make coffins. We fill them.”

“I think it would draw too much attention to us if we were to go into town and have one of the townspeople make us one,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Yes, we don’t want anybody coming out here and investigating into our business,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Definitely not,” Miss Hawkline replied, taking a very lady-like sip of tea.

“Let’s plant him outside,” Greer said. “We’ll just dig a hole, put him in it, cover him up and it’ll all be taken care of.”

“We don’t want to bury him close to the house,” Cameron said. “The ground’s frozen hard around this place and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to dig a hole that big in frozen ground.”

“We’ll dig a hole outside of the frozen ground and then drag him out of the hall and put him into the hole,” Greer said.

“It’s sad to think of our beloved butler Mr. Morgan in these terms,” Miss Hawkline said. “I knew he was getting along in years and that someday he would die because, as we all know, death is inevitable, but I had never thought about what a problem the hugeness of his body would make. It’s just something you don’t think about.”

“You didn’t think he was going to turn into a dwarf when he died, did you?” Cameron said.

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.”