Читать книгу The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan - Страница 10

· Miss Hawkline ·

Even now Miss Hawkline waited for them in that huge very cold yellow house . . . in Eastern Oregon . . . as they were picking up some travelling money in San Francisco’s Chinatown by killing a Chinaman that a bunch of other Chinamen thought needed killing.

He was a real tough Chinaman and they offered Greer and Cameron seventy-five dollars to kill him.

Miss Hawkline sat naked on the floor of a room filled with musical instruments and kerosene lamps that were burning low. She was sitting next to a harpsichord. There was an unusual light on the keys of the harpsichord and there was a shadow to that light.

Coyotes were howling outside.

The lamp-distorted shadows of musical instruments made exotic patterns on her body and there was a large wood fire burning in the fireplace. The fire seemed almost out of proportion but its size was needed because the house was very cold.

There was a knock at the door of the room.

Miss Hawkline turned her head.

“Yes?” she said.

“Dinner will be served in a few moments,” came the voice of an old man through the door. The man did not attempt to come into the room. He stood outside the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” she replied.

Then there was the sound of huge footsteps walking down the hall away from the door and eventually disappearing behind the closing of another door.

The coyotes were close to the house. They sounded as if they were on the front porch.

“We give you seventy-five dollars. You kill,” the head Chinaman said.

There were five or six other Chinaman sitting in the small dark booth with them. The place was filled with the smell of bad Chinese cooking.

When Greer and Cameron heard the price of seventy-five dollars they smiled in that relaxed way they had that usually changed things very rapidly.

“Two hundred dollars,” the head Chinaman said, without changing the expression on his face. He was a smart Chinaman. That’s why he was their leader.

“Two hundred and fifty dollars. Where’s he at?” Greer said.

“Next door,” the head Chinaman said.

Greer and Cameron went next door and killed him. They never did find out how tough the Chinaman was because they didn’t give him a chance. That’s the way they did their work. They didn’t put any lace on their killings.

While they were taking care of the Chinaman, Miss Hawkline continued to wait for them, naked on the floor of a room filled with the shadows of musical instruments. Lamp-aided, the shadows played over her body in that huge house in Eastern Oregon.

There was also something else in that room. It was watching her and took pleasure in her naked body. She did not know that it was there. She also did not know that she was naked. If she had known that she was naked she would have been very shocked. She was a proper young lady except for the colorful language that she had picked up from her father.

Miss Hawkline was thinking about Greer and Cameron, though she had never met them or even heard about them, but she waited eternally for them to come as they were always destined to come, for she was part of their gothic future.

Greer and Cameron caught the train to Portland, Oregon, the next morning. It was a beautiful day. They were happy because they liked riding the train to Portland.

“How many times now?” Greer asked.

“8 times straight through and 6 times we got off,” Cameron said.