Read The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western Online
Authors: Richard Brautigan
Tags: #Fiction, #General
So the monster moved… involuntarily… out of curiosity.
Cameron in the interim of artificial excitement moved over to the table where a jar called The Chemicals was residing and he was standing right beside it.
When the Hawkline Monster moved to get a better view of what was happening, the shadow, after having checked all the possibilities of light, had discovered a way that it could shift itself in front of the monster, so that the monster at this crucial time would be blinded by darkness for a few seconds, did so, causing confusion to befall the monster.
This was all that the shadow could do and it hoped that this would give Greer and Cameron the edge they would need to destroy the Hawkline Monster using whatever plan they had come up with, for it seemed that they must have a plan if they were to have any chance at all with the monster and they did not seem like fools.
When Cameron yelled at Greer, the shadow interpreted this as the time to move and did so. It obscured the vision of the Hawkline Monster for a few seconds, knowing full well that if the monster were destroyed it would be destroyed, too, but death was better than going on living like this, being a part of this evil.
The Hawkline Monster raged against the shadow, trying to get it out of the way, so that it could see what was happening.
But the shadow struggled fiercely with the monster. The shadow had a burst of unbelievable physical fury and shadows are not known for their strength.
• The Passing of the Hawkline Monster •
Cameron poured the glass of whiskey into the jar of chemicals. When the whiskey hit The Chemicals they turned blue and started bubbling and sparks began flying from the jar. The sparks were like small birds of fire and flew about burning everything they touched.
“Let’s get out of here!” Cameron yelled at Greer. They both fled up the laboratory stairs to the main floor of the house.
The Hawkline Monster responded to the whiskey being poured into the jar of its energy source by just having enough time to curse its fate
“FUCK IT!”
the monster yelled. It was a classic curse before shattering into a handful of blue diamonds that had no memory of a previous existence.
The Hawkline Monster was nothing now except diamonds. They sparkled like a vision of summer sky. The shadow of the monster had been turned into the shadow of diamonds. It also was without memory of a previous existence, so now its soul was at rest and it had been turned into the shadow of beautiful things.
• The Return of Professor Hawkline •
Greer and Cameron rushed up out of the burning laboratory and down the hall toward the Hawkline sisters. Just then the elephant foot umbrella stand changed into Professor Hawkline. He had been held prisoner in that form by a spell from the just-freshly-defunct Hawkline Monster who would now be at home in a jewelry store window.
Professor Hawkline was stiff and cranky from having spent long months as an umbrella stand. He wasn’t as friendly to his loving daughters as he should have been, for the first words that came from his mouth in direct response to their cooing, “Daddy, Daddy. It’s you. You’re free. Father. Oh, Daddy,” were, “Oh, shit!”
He didn’t have time to say anything else before Greer and Cameron were upon him and his two daughters and hustling them out of the burning house.
• The Lazarus Dynamic •
When they got outside they ran to just beyond the frost that encircled the burning house like a transparent wedding ring.
A few moments later they were all carefully watching the fire when suddenly the ground near them began to rumble and move like a small earthquake.
It was coming from the butler’s grave.
“What the hell!” Greer said.
Then the ground opened up and out popped the butler like a giant mole covered with dirt and there were bits and pieces of a suitcase lying around him.
“Where… Am… I?” rumbled his deep old voice.
He was trying to shake the dirt off his arms and shoulders. He was very confused. He had never been buried before.
“You just came back from the dead,” Cameron said as he turned back to watch the house burning down.
• An Early Twentieth-Century Picnic •
They stood there for a long time watching the house burn down. The flames roared high into the sky. They were so bright that everybody had shadows.
The professor had by now returned to a normal disposition and he had his arms affectionately around his daughters as they watched the house go.
“That was quite a batch of stuff you mixed up there, Professor,” Cameron said.
“Never again,” was the professor’s response.
He had been introduced to Greer and Cameron and he liked them and was very grateful for their having rescued him from the curse of The Chemicals which could also be called the Hawkline Monster.
Eventually they just sat down on the ground and watched the house burn all night long. It kept them warm. The Hawkline sisters changed the loving arms of their father for the arms of Greer and Cameron. The professor sat by himself contemplating the result of all his years of experimenting and how it had led to this conclusion.
From time to time he would shake his head but he was also very glad not to be an elephant foot umbrella stand any more. That was the worst experience he’d ever had in his life.
The butler was sitting there still dumbfounded and brushing the dirt off his clothes. There was a piece of suitcase in his hair.
The way everybody was sitting it looked as if they were at a picnic but the picnic was of course the burning of a house, the death of the Hawkline Monster and the end of a scientific dream. It was barely the Twentieth Century.
• The Hawkline Diamonds •
By the light of the morning sun the house was gone and in its place was a small lake floating with burned things. Everybody got up off the ground and walked down to the shores of the new lake.
The Hawklines looked at the remnants of their previous life floating here and there on the lake. Professor Hawkline saw part of an umbrella and shuddered.
One of the Hawkline women noticed what had disturbed her father and reached over and took his hand. “Look, Susan,” she said to her sister and then pointed at a photograph floating out there.
Greer and Cameron looked at each other.
Susan!
“Yes, Jane,” was the reply.
Jane!
The Hawkline women had first names and another prank of that damn ingenious monster had been dispelled.
Some of the house was still smoldering at the edge of the lake. It looked very strange. It was almost like something out of Hieronymus Bosch if he had been into Western landscapes.
“I’m curious,” Cameron said. “I’m going to dive down into the basement and see if there’s anything left of that fucking monster.”
He took his clothes off down to a pair of shorts and dove into what just a few hours before had been a house. He was a good swimmer and swam easily down into the basement and started looking around for the monster. He remembered where the monster had been hiding before he poured the whiskey into The Chemicals.
He swam over there and found a handful of blue diamonds lying on the floor. The monster was nowhere in sight. The diamonds were very beautiful. He gathered them all together in his hand and swam upward out of the laboratory to the shore of the lake which had once been a front porch.
“Look,” he said, climbing up onto the bank. Everybody gathered around and admired the diamonds. Cameron was holding them in such a way as for there to be a shadow. The shadow of the diamonds was beautiful, too.
“We’re rich,” Cameron said.
“We’re already rich,” Professor Hawkline said. The Hawkline family was a very rich family in its own right.
“Oh,” Cameron said.
“You mean, you’re rich,” Susan Hawkline said, but you still couldn’t tell the difference between her and her sister Jane. So actually the name-stealing curse of the Hawkline Monster really hadn’t made that much difference, anyway.
“What about the monster?” Professor Hawkline said.
“No, it’s destroyed. When I poured that glass of whiskey in The Chemicals, that did it.”
“Yeah, it burned my house down,” Professor Hawkline said, suddenly remembering that he no longer had a house. He liked that house. It had contained the best laboratory he’d ever had and he thought that the ice caves made a good conversation piece.
His voice sounded a little bitter.
“Would you like to be an elephant foot umbrella stand again?” Greer said, checking in with his arm around a Hawkline woman.
“No,” the professor said.
“What are we going to do now?” Susan Hawkline said, surveying the lake that had once been their house.
Cameron counted the diamonds in his hand. There were thirty-five diamonds and they were all that was left of the Hawkline Monster.
“We’ll think of something,” Cameron said.
• Lake Hawkline •
Somehow the burning of the house caused the ice caves to melt even down to their deepest recesses and the site of the former house became a permanent lake.
In 1907 William Langford, a local rancher, purchased the property from Professor Hawkline who had been living back East ever since his strange sojourn in the West.
The professor had given up chemistry and was now devoting his life to stamp collecting.
William Langford used the lake for irrigation and had a nice farm around it, mostly potatoes.
Professor Hawkline had been so glad to get rid of the property that he sold it for half of what it was worth but that didn’t make any difference to him because he was happy to get rid of the place. It had a lot of bad elephant foot umbrella stand memories for him.
He never went West again.
And what happened to everybody else?
Well, it went something like this:
Greer and Jane Hawkline moved to Butte, Montana, where they started a whorehouse. They got married but were divorced in 1906. Jane Hawkline ended up with possession of the whorehouse and ran it until 1911 when she was killed in an automobile accident.
The accident had barely killed her and she was quite beautiful in death. The funeral was enjoyed and remembered by all who attended.
Greer was arrested for auto theft in 1927 and spent four years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary where he developed an interest in the Rosicrucian way of faith.
Cameron and Susan Hawkline were going to get married but they got into a huge argument about Cameron counting things all the time and Susan Hawkline left Portland, Oregon, in a huff and went to Paris, France, where she married a Russian count and moved to Moscow. She was killed by a stray bullet during the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
The diamonds that had formerly been the Hawkline Monster?
Spent long ago. Scattered over the world. Lost.
The shadow of the Hawkline Monster?
With the diamonds and blessedly without memory of previous times.
As for Cameron, he eventually became a successful movie producer in Hollywood, California, during the boom period just before World War I. How he became a movie producer is a long and complicated story that should be saved for another time.
In 1928 William Langford’s heirs sold Lake Hawkline and the surrounding property to the State of Oregon that turned it into a park but being in a fairly remote area of Oregon with very poor roads, the lake never developed into a popular recreational site and doesn’t get many visitors.
Table of Contents
The Riding Lesson
Back to San Francisco
Miss Hawkline
Magic Child
Indian
Gompville
Central County Ways
In the Early Winds of Morning
“Coffee” with the Widow
Cora
Against the Dust
Thoughts of July 12, 1902
Binoculars
Billy
The Governor of Oregon
Jack Williams
Ma Smith’s Cafe
And Ma Smith
Pill’s Last Love
In the Barn
The Drum
Welcome to the Dead Hills
Something Human
The Coat
The Doctor
The Bridge
Hawkline Manor
Miss Hawkline
The Meeting
The Ice Caves
The Black Umbrellas
The First Breakfast