A Confederate General From Big Sur Dreaming of Babylon and the Hawkline Monster Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  A CONFEDERATE GENERAL FROM BIG SUR

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One

  A Confederate General from Big Sur

  The Tide Teeth of Lee Mellon

  The First Time I Met Lee Mellon

  Augustus Mellon, CSA

  Headquarters

  A Daring Cavalry Attack on PG&E

  Part Two

  The Letters of Arrival and Reply

  Breaking Bread at Big Sur

  Preparing for Ecclesiastes

  The Rivets in Ecclesiastes

  Begging for Their Lives

  The Truck

  In the Midst of Life

  The Extremity of $6.72

  To Gettysburg! To Gettysburg!

  Great Day

  Motorcycle

  A Farewell to Frogs

  The Rites of Tobacco

  Wilderness Again

  The Pork Chop Alligator

  The Wilderness Alligator Haiku

  He Usually Stays Over by the Garden

  That Chopping Sound

  A Short History of America After the War Between the States

  Lee Mellon’s San Jose Sartorious

  The Camp-fires of Big Sur

  The Discovery of Laurel

  Lee Mellon, Roll Away! You Rolling River

  Alligators Minus Pork Chops

  Four Couples: An American Sequence

  Awaken to the Drums!

  Bye Now, Roy Earle, Take Care of Yourself

  Crowned with Laurel and Our Banners Before Us We Descend!

  To a Pomegranate Ending, Then 186,000 Endings Per Second

  DREAMING OF BABYLON

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Good News, Bad News

  Babylon

  Oklahoma

  Cactus Fog

  My Girlfriend

  Sergeant Rink

  The Hall of Justice

  Adolf Hitler

  Mustard

  Bela Lugosi

  1934

  The Blonde

  ‘Eye’

  .38

  The Morning Mail

  The Boss

  The Front Door to Babylon

  President Roosevelt

  A Babylonian Sand Watch

  Nebuchadnezzar

  The 596 B. C. Baseball Season

  First Base Hotel

  A Cowboy in Babylon

  Terry and the Pirates

  Ming the Merciless

  The Magician

  Barcelona

  The Abraham Lincoln Brigade

  Loving Uncle Sam

  Bus Throne

  Drums of Fu Manchu

  Friday’s Grave

  Smith

  Lobotomy

  The Milkmen

  My Day

  Christmas Carols

  A World Renowned Expert on Socks

  Good-bye, Oil Wells in Rhode Island

  Pretty Pictures

  Pedro and His Five Romantics

  Smith Smith

  Roast Turkey and Dressing

  Cinderella of the Airways

  Smith Smith Versus the Shadow Robots

  The Morning Paper

  Beer Tastes on a Champagne Budget

  Earthquake in an Anvil Factory

  The Private Detectives of San Francisco

  Future Practice

  C. Card, Private Investigator

  Chapter 1 / Smith Smith Versus the Shadow Robots

  Quickdraw Artist

  Ghouls

  Cold Heartless Cash

  Time Heals All Wounds

  The Jack Benny Show

  A Strange Cup of Sugar from Oakland

  Warner Brothers

  The Babylon-Orion Express

  Partners in Mayhem

  Today Is My Lucky Day

  The Sahara Desert

  The Edgar Allan Poe Hotfoot

  The Labrador Retriever of Dead People

  Dancing Time

  The Blindman

  Baby

  Stew Meat

  The Lone Eagle

  A Funny Building

  The Five-hundred-dollar Foot

  The Night Is Always Darker

  Smiley’s Genuine Louisiana Barbecue

  Into the Cemetery We Will Go

  The Surprise

  Good-bye, $10,000

  It’s Midnight. Its Dark.

  Good Luck

  THE HAWKLINE MONSTER

  Dedication

  Book 1

  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

  Pills’ Last Love

  In the Barn

  The Drum

  Welcome to the Dead Hills

  Something Human

  The Coat

  The Doctor

  The Bridge

  Hawkline Manor

  Book 2

  Miss Hawkline

  The Meeting

  The Ice Caves

  The Black Umbrellas

  The First Breakfast

  Book 3

  The Death of Magic Child

  The Funeral of Magic Child

  The Hawkline Monster

  Hawaii Revisited

  The Chemicals

  The Dog

  Venice

  Parrot

  The Butler

  Getting Ready to Go to Work

  Journey to the Ice Caves

  The Door

  Thanatopsis Exit

  Thanatopsis Exit #2

  After Making Love Conversation

  Mirror Conversation

  Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Come Home?

  The Hawkline Orchestra

  The Butler Possibilities

  On the Way to a Butler Possibility

  A Surprise

  The Butler Conclusion

  Mr. Morgan, Requiescat in Pace

  Prints

  Magic Child Revisited

  Return to the Monster

  Questions Near Sunset

  What Counts

  But Supper First, Then the Hawkline Monster

  Counting the Hawkline Monster

  The Hawkline Monster in the Gravy

  Parlor Time Again

  Soliloquy of the Shadow

  Meanwhile, Back in the Parlor

  Meanwhile, Back in the Jar

  A Man’s Work Turned to Nothing

  Waking Up

  The Decision

  Upstairs

  Whiskey

  Searching for a Container

  To Kill a Jar

  The Elephant Foot Umbrella Stand

  The Hawkline Monster in 4/4 Beat

  Daddy

  A Harem of Shadows

  Father and Daughters Reunited (Sort of

  Marriage

  Dream Residence

  The Battle

  The Passing of the Hawkline Monster

  The Return of Professor Haw
kline

  The Lazarus Dynamic

  An Early Twentieth-Century Picnic

  The Hawkline Diamonds

  Lake Hawkline

  About the Author

  A Confederate General from Big Sur copyright © 1964 by Richard Brautigan

  Dreaming of Babylon copyright © 1977 by Richard Brautigan

  The Hawkline Monster copyright © 1974 by Richard Brautigan

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Brautigan, Richard.

  {Novels. Selections}

  Richard Brautigan’s A Confederate general from Big Sur, Dreaming of Babylon, and The Hawkline monster: three books in the manner of their original editions,

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-395-54703-2 (paper)

  I. Title. II. Title: Confederate general from Big Sur. III. Title: Dreaming of Babylon. IV. Title: Hawkline monster.

  PS3503 R2736A6 1991 90-20524

  813'.54—dc20 CIP

  Excerpts from Generals in Gray by Ezra J. Warner (in A Confederate General from Big Sur) copyright © 1959 by Ezra J. Warner. Used by permission of Louisiana State University Press.

  Excerpts from “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?” (in The Hawkline Monster) copyright © Edward B. Marks Music Corporation

  Used by permission.

  eISBN 978-0-547-52556-3

  v1.0414

  A CONFEDERATE GENERAL FROM BIG SUR

  to my daughter

  Ianthe

  Prologue

  Attrition’s Old Sweet Song

  “THE RECORDS EXHIBIT that 425 individuals received appointment by the President to one of the four grades of general, of whom 299 were in grade at the end of the war. The attrition is accounted for as follows:

  Killed in action or died of wounds 77

  Resigned 19

  Died by accident or from natural causes 15

  Appointments cancelled 5

  Declined appointment 3

  Killed in “personal encounters” 2

  Assassinated 1

  Committed suicide 1

  Dropped 1

  Retired by reason of wounds 1

  Reverted to rank of colonel 1

  Total 126”

  I Mean, What Do You Do Besides Being a Confederate General?

  “Lawyers, jurists 129

  Professional soldiers 125

  Businessmen (including bankers, manufacturers, and merchants) 55

  Farmers, planters 42

  Politicians 24

  Educators 15

  Civil engineers 13

  Students 6

  Doctors 4

  Ministers 3

  Frontiersmen, peace officers 3

  Indian agents 2

  Naval officers 2

  Editor 1

  Soldier of fortune 1

  Total 425”

  Part One

  A Confederate General from Big Sur

  A Confederate General from Big Sur

  WHEN I FIRST HEARD about Big Sur I didn’t know that it was a member of the Confederate States of America. I had always thought that Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Texas were the Confederacy, and let it go at that. I had no idea that Big Sur was also a member.

  Big Sur the twelfth member of the Confederate States of America? Frankly, it’s hard to believe that those lonely stark mountains and clifflike beaches of California were rebels, that the redwood trees and the ticks and the cormorants waved a rebel flag along that narrow hundred miles of land that lies between Monterey and San Luis Obispo.

  The Santa Lucia Mountains, that thousand-year-old flophouse for mountain lions and lilacs, a hotbed of Secession? The Pacific Ocean along there, that million-year-old skid row for abalone and kelp, sending representatives back to the Confederate Congress in Richmond, Virginia?

  I’ve heard that the population of Big Sur in those Civil War days was mostly just some Digger Indians. I’ve heard that the Digger Indians down there didn’t wear any clothes. They didn’t have any fire or shelter or culture. They didn’t grow anything. They didn’t hunt and they didn’t fish. They didn’t bury their dead or give birth to their children. They lived on roots and limpets and sat pleasantly out in the rain.

  I can imagine the expression on General Robert E. Lee’s face when this gang showed up, bearing strange gifts from the Pacific Ocean.

  It was during the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. A. P. Hill’s brave but exhausted Confederate troops had been hit at daybreak by Union General Hancock’s II Corps of 30,000 men. A. P. Hill’s troops were shattered by the attack and fell back in defeat and confusion along the Orange Plank Road.

  Twenty-eight-year-old Colonel William Poague, the South’s fine artillery man, waited with sixteen guns in one of the few clearings in the Wilderness, Widow Tapp’s farm. Colonel Poague had his guns loaded with antipersonnel ammunition and opened fire as soon as A. P. Hill’s men had barely fled the Orange Plank Road.

  The Union assault funneled itself right into a vision of sculptured artillery fire, and the Union troops suddenly found pieces of flying marble breaking their centers and breaking their edges. At the instant of contact, history transformed their bodies into statues. They didn’t like it, and the assault began to back up along the Orange Plank Road. What a nice name for a road.

  Colonel Poague and his men held their ground alone without any infantry support, and no way out, caring not for the name of the road. They were there forever and General Lee was right behind them in the drifting marble dust of their guns. He was waiting for General Longstreet’s arrival with reinforcements. Longstreet’s men were hours late.

  Then the first of them arrived. Hood’s old Texas Brigade led by John Gregg came on through the shattered forces of A. P. Hill, and these Texans were surprised because A. P. Hill’s men were shock troops of the Confederate Army, and here they were in full rout.

  “What troops are you, my boys?” Lee said.

  “The Texans!” the men yelled and quickly formed into battle lines. There were less than a thousand of them and they started forward toward that abyss of Federal troops.

  Lee was in motion with them, riding his beautiful gray horse, Traveller, a part of the wave. But they stopped him and shouted, “Lee to the rear! Lee to the rear!”

  They turned him around and sent him back to spend the last years of his life quietly as the president of Washington College, later to be called Washington and Lee.

  Then they went forward possessed only by animal fury, without any regard now for their human shadows. It was a little late for things like that.

  The Texans suffered 50 per cent casualties in less than ten minutes, but they contained the Union. It was like putting your finger in the ocean and having it stop, but only briefly because Appomattox Courthouse waited less than a year away, resting now in its gentle anonymity.

  When Lee got to the rear of the lines, there were the 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reporting for duty. The air around them was filled with the smell of roots and limpets. The 8th Big Sur Volunteer Heavy Root Eaters reported like autumn to the Army of Northern Virginia.

  They all gathered around Lee’s horse and stared in amazement, for it was the first time that they had ever seen a horse. One of the Digger Indians offered Traveller a limpet to eat.

  When I first heard about Big Sur I didn’t know that it was part of the defunct Confederate States of America, a country that went out of style like an idea or a lampshade or some kind of food that people don’t cook any more, once the favorite dish in thousands of homes.

  It was only through a Lee-of-another-color, Lee Mellon, that I found out the truth about Big Sur. Lee Mellon who
is the battle flags and the drums of this book. Lee Mellon: a Confederate general in ruins.

  The Tide Teeth of Lee Mellon

  IT IS IMPORTANT before I go any further in this military narrative to talk about the teeth of Lee Mellon. They need talking about. During these five years that I have known Lee Mellon, he has probably had 175 teeth in his mouth.

  This is due to a truly gifted faculty for getting his teeth knocked out. It almost approaches genius. They say that John Stuart Mill could read Greek when he was three years old and had written a history of Rome at the age of six and a half.

  But the amazing thing about Lee Mellon’s teeth is their strange and constantly moving placement in the many and varied dentures those poor teeth briefly get to call home. I would meet him one day on Market Street and he would have just one upper left tooth in his face, and then I’d see him again, months later on Grant Avenue, and he’d have three lower right teeth and one upper right tooth.

  I’d see him again just back from Big Sur, and he’d have four upper front teeth, and two lower left teeth, and then after a few weeks in San Francisco, he’d be wearing the upper plate without any teeth in it at all, wearing the plate just so he would have a head start on gristle, and so that his cheeks wouldn’t collapse in on his mouth.

  I’ve adjusted to this teeth fantasia always happening to him, and so now everytime I see him, I have a good look at his mouth to see how things are going with him, to see if he has been working, what books he has been reading, whether Sara Teasdale or Mein Kampf, and whom he has been sleeping with: blondes or brunettes.

  Lee Mellon told me that once in Modern Times, he’d had all his teeth in his mouth at the same time for a whole day. He was driving a tractor in Kansas, back and forth across a field of wheat, and his brand-new lower plate felt a little funny in his mouth, so he took it out and put it into his shirt pocket. The teeth fell out of his pocket, and he backed the tractor over them.

  Lee Mellon told me rather sadly that after he had discovered that the teeth were gone from his shirt pocket, it took him almost an hour to find them, and when he found them, they weren’t worth finding at all.

  The First Time I Met Lee Mellon

  I MET LEE MELLON five years ago in San Francisco. It was spring. He had just “hitch-hiked” up from Big Sur. Along the way a rich queer stopped and picked Lee Mellon up in a sports car. The rich queer offered Lee Mellon ten dollars to commit an act of oral outrage.