Читать книгу The Hawkline Monster - Richard Brautigan - Страница 21

· 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.