The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan Canons

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way,” he said.

      Everybody in the stagecoach looked out the windows and then got out as the driver climbed down from his seat. They stretched and tried to unwind the coils of travel while they watched the vultures eating sheep down below in the meadow.

      Fortunately, the wind was blowing in an opposite manner so as not to bring them the smell of death. They could watch death while not having to be intimate with it.

      “Those sheepshooters really know how to shoot sheep,” the driver said.

      “All you need is a gun,” Cameron said.

      · Billy ·

      They crossed the Shadow Creek bridge at suppertime. There’s nobody hanging from this bridge: Cameron thought as the stagecoach drove into Billy.

      There was an expression of pleasure on Magic Child’s face. She was happy to be home. She had been gone for months, doing what Miss Hawkline had sent her to do, and they sat beside her. She looked forward to seeing Miss Hawkline. They would have many things to talk about. She would tell Miss Hawkline about Portland.

      Magic Child’s breathing had noticeably changed in sexual anticipation for the bodies of Greer and Cameron. They of course didn’t know that Magic Child would soon be fucking them.

      They could see that her breathing had changed but they didn’t know what it meant. They thought she was happy to be home or something.

      Billy was noisy because it was suppertime. The smell of meat and potatoes was heavy on the wind. All the doors and windows in Billy were open. It had been a very hot day and you could hear people eating and talking.

      Billy was about sixty or seventy houses, buildings and shacks built on both sides of a creek that flowed through a canyon whose slopes were covered with juniper brush that gave a sweet fresh smell to things.

      Billy had three bars, a cafe, a big mercantile store, a blacksmith, and a church. It didn’t have a hotel, a bank or a doctor.

      There was a town marshal but there wasn’t a jail. He didn’t need one. His name was Jack Williams and he could be a mean motherfucker. He thought putting somebody in jail was a waste of time. If you caused any trouble in Billy, he’d punch you in the mouth and throw you in the creek. The rest of the time he ran a very friendly saloon, The Jack Williams House, and would buy a drink every morning for the town drunk.

      There was a graveyard behind the church and the minister, a Fredrick Calms, was always trying to raise enough money to put a fence around the graveyard because the deer got in there and ate the flowers and stuff off the graves.

      For some strange reason, it made the minister mad whenever he saw some deer among the graves and he’d start cursing up a storm, but nobody ever took putting a fence up around the graveyard very seriously.

      The people just didn’t give a shit.

      “So a few deer get in there. That’s no big thing. The minister is kind of crazy, anyway,” was their general reaction to putting a fence around the graveyard in Billy.

      · The Governor of Oregon ·

      Greer, Cameron and Magic Child went over to the blacksmith’s shop to get some horses for the ride out to Miss Hawkline’s in the morning. They wanted to make sure the horses would be ready when they left at dawn.

      The blacksmith had a collection of strange horses that he would rent out sometimes if he knew you or liked your looks. He’d had a bucket of beer along with his dinner that evening, so he was very friendly.

      “Magic Child,” he said. “Ain’t seen you around for a while. You been someplace? Hear they’re killing people over Gompville way. My name is Pills,” holding out his beer-friendly hand to Greer and Cameron. “I take care of the horses around here.”

      “We need some horses in the morning,” Magic Child said. “We’re going out to Miss Hawkline’s.”

      “I think I can do you up with some horses. Maybe one of them will get that far: if you’re lucky.”

      Pills liked to joke about his horses. He was famous in those parts for having the worst bunch of horses ever assembled in a corral.

      He had a horse that was so swaybacked that it looked like an October quarter moon. He called that horse Cairo. “This is an Egyptian horse,” he used to tell people.

      He had another horse that didn’t have any ears. A drunken cowboy had bitten them off for a fifty-cent bet.

      “I bet you fifty cents I’m so drunk I’d bite a horse’s ears off!”

      “God-damn, I don’t think you’re that drunk!”

      And he had another horse that actually drank whiskey. They’d put a quart of whiskey in his bucket and he’d drink it all down and then he’d fall over on his side and everybody would laugh.

      But the prize of his collection was a horse that had a wooden foot. The horse was born without a right rear foot, so somebody had carved him a wooden one, but the person had gotten confused in his carving, he wasn’t really right in the head, anyway, and the wooden foot looked more like a duck’s foot than a horse’s foot. It really looked strange to see that horse walking around with a wooden duck foot.

      A politician once came all the way from La Grande to look at those horses. It was even rumored that the governor of Oregon had heard about them.

      · Jack Williams ·

      On their way over to Ma Smith’s Cafe to have some dinner, Jack Williams, the town marshal, strolled out of his saloon. He was going someplace else but when he saw Magic Child, whom he liked a lot, and two strange men with her, he walked over to Magic Child and her friends to say hello and find out what was happening.

      “Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

      He could tell that the two men did not work for a living and in appearance there was nothing about them that one would ever remember. They both looked about the same except they had different features and different builds. It was the way they handled themselves that was memorable.

      One of them was taller than the other one but once you turned your back on them you wouldn’t be able to remember which one it was.

      Jack Williams had seen men similar to these before. Instinctively, without even bothering with an intellectual process, he knew that these men could mean trouble. One of them was carrying a long narrow trunk on his shoulder. He carried the trunk easily as if it were part of his shoulder.

      Jack Williams was a big man: over six feet tall and weighed in excess of two hundred pounds. His toughness was legendary in that part of Eastern Oregon. Men with evil thoughts on their minds generally stayed clear of Billy.

      Jack Williams wore a shoulder holster with a big shiny .38 in it. He didn’t like to wear a regular gun belt around his waist. He always joked that he didn’t like to have all that iron hanging so close to his cock.

      He was forty-one years old and in the prime of health.

      “Magic Child! God-damn!” he said and threw his arms around her and gave her a big hug.

      “Jack,” she said. “You big man!”

      “I’ve missed you, Magic Child,” he said. He and Magic Child had fucked a few times and he had a tremendous respect for her quick lean body.

      He liked her a lot but sometimes he was a little awestruck and disturbed by how much she looked like Miss Hawkline. They looked so much alike that they could have been twins. Everybody in town noticed it but there was nothing they could do about it, so they just let it be.

      “These are my friends,” she said, making the introductions. “I want you to meet them. This is Greer and this is Cameron. I want you to meet Jack Williams. He’s the town marshal.”

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