The Hawkline Monster. Richard Brautigan

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СКАЧАТЬ at the trunk that was beside Cameron, but he never said anything about it.

      He was curious enough, though, about Magic Child to ask her what her name was.

      “Magic Child,” Magic Child said.

      “That’s a pretty name,” he said. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re quite a pretty girl.”

      “Thank you.”

      Then, to be polite, he asked Greer what his name was.

      “Greer,” Greer said.

      “That’s an interesting name,” he said.

      Then he asked Cameron what his name was.

      “Cameron,” Cameron said.

      “Everybody here’s got an interesting name,” he said. “My name is Marvin Cora Jones. You don’t come across many men who’s middle name is Cora. Anyway, I haven’t and I’ve been to a lot of places, including England.”

      “Cora is a different kind of middle name for a man,” Cameron said.

      Magic Child got up and went over to the stove and got some more coffee for Greer and Cameron. She also poured some for the barbed-wire drummer. She was smiling. There was a huge platter of doughnuts on the table and everybody was eating them. Widow Jane was a good cook.

      Like a mirror the house continued to reflect the motion of the bed upstairs.

      Greer and Cameron each had a glass of milk, too, from a beautiful porcelain pitcher on the table. They liked a glass of milk now and then. They also liked the smile on Magic Child’s face. It had been the first time that Magic Child had smiled.

      “They named me Cora for my great-grandmother. I don’t mind. She met George Washington at a party. She said that he was really a nice man but he was a little shorter than what she had expected,” the barbed-wire drummer said. “I meet a lot of interesting people by telling them that my middle name is Cora. It’s something that gets people’s curiosity up. It’s kind of funny, too. I don’t mind people laughing because it is sort of funny for a man to have the name of Cora.”

      · Against the Dust ·

      The driver and the widow came down the stairs with their arms in sweet affection around each other. “It certainly was nice of you to show that to me,” the driver said.

      The widow’s face was twinkling like a star.

      The driver acted mischievously solemn but you could tell that he was just playing around.

      “It’s good to stop and have some coffee,” the driver said to everybody sitting at the table. “It makes travelling a little easier and those doughnuts are a lot better than having a mule kick you in the head.”

      There was no argument there.

      · Thoughts of July 12, 1902 ·

      About noon the stagecoach was rattling through the mountains. It was hot and boring. Cora, the barbed-wire drummer, had dozed off. He looked like a sleeping fence.

      Greer was staring at the graceful billowing of Magic Child’s breasts against her long and simple dress. Cameron was thinking about the man who had been hanging from the bridge. He was thinking that he had once gotten drunk with him in Billings, Montana, at the turn of the century.

      Cameron wasn’t totally certain but the man hanging from the bridge looked an awful lot like the guy he had gotten drunk with in Billings. If he wasn’t that man, he was his twin brother.

      Magic Child was watching Greer stare at her breasts. She was imagining Greer touching them with his casually powerful-looking hands. She was excited and pleased inside of herself, knowing that she would be fucking Greer before the day was gone.

      While Cameron was thinking about the dead man on the bridge, perhaps it was Denver where they had gotten drunk together, Magic Child was thinking about fucking him, too.

      · Binoculars ·

      Suddenly the stagecoach stopped on top of a ridge that had a meadow curving down from it. There was an Old Testament quantity of vultures circling and landing and rising again in the meadow. They were like flesh angels summoned to worship at a large spread-out temple of many small white formerly-living things.

      “Sheep!” the driver yelled. “Thousands of them!”

      He was looking down on the meadow through a pair of binoculars. The driver had once been an officer, a second lieutenant in the cavalry during the Indian Wars, so he carried a pair of binoculars with him when he was driving the stagecoach.

      He had gotten out of the cavalry because he didn’t like to kill Indians.

      “The Morning County Sheepshooters Association has been working out this 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 СКАЧАТЬ