The Black Train (2 page)
Morris shouted out, “As yawl know, ’round here this is what happens to nigrahs who commit crimes. Yawl have been guaranteed your freedom once this railroad’s finished, so’s ya need to think real hard before you do somethin’ stupid. This slave here molested a white woman who shall remain nameless”—Morris grabbed the head and looked at it—“and this is the price he pays. Mr. Gast is a fair and generous man, but we don’t tolerate insubordination or crime. This poor, stupid slave will never be a free man, but you all most certainly will if ya work hard, stay in line, and keep your hands off what they ought not be touchin’.”
Wide white eyes blazed in fear from the long row of black faces along the track line. Other strong-armers stood back, holding repeater pistols and blunderbuss shotguns that could drop a row of men with one squeeze of the trigger.
Shit,
Cutton thought. The slave they’d executed was one he knew—called Meti. Gast let all the slaves take African names. They were well clothed, well fed, and well housed, and with the promise of freedom when the final rail was spiked in Maxon, they all listened well. Meti had been one of the strongest spike-drivers of them all. It was bad to lose a good worker. He’d been stripped of his valuable working clothes and boots. Now he’d been reduced to a headless, naked body.
Poor bastard should’a kept it in his pants. Probably raped one’a the town girls.
But when Cutton peered farther down the line, he thought
Shit!
again. Perched atop the familiar white steed was Mr. Gast, spectating. Gast nodded to Morris when eye contact was made.
“Bring up the sledges!” he ordered. “Yawl know the drill.”
Four assigned slaves stepped forward with twenty-pound sledgehammers.
“I’m sorry you fellas have to do this to one of your own—that’s the way it is. But it ain’t just a lesson to yawl, it’s a lesson to white men, too. We’se doin’ serious work for our country buildin’ this railroad. The Yankees got close to thirty thousand miles of train track but the South ain’t got but nine. Mr. Gast’s railroad is important for the future. We all have to keep our minds on the task.” Morris paused, perhaps only for effect. “Pound him.”
The sledgehammers rose and fell, landing great sickening thuds. The headless body was pummeled, and in a minute it was crushed, every bone in the dead man’s body fractured.
“Axes!” Morris ordered.
Four more slaves stepped up, just as grim-faced as the first. In unison their axes blurred down in scarlet arcs, like a diabolical camshaft. In moments the pulverized body was chopped up into pulp.
“Shovels and hoes!”
The finality now. The slaves hoed the pulp into the soil.
Morris bellowed, “We’re stronger by losin’ this one, and now his useless criminal body will finally do some good, by fertilizin’ this good land which puts food in our bellies! Mr. Gast just done got back from a long trip to Virginia to bring us more rail and ties, so let’s make him proud, and lay a quarter mile plus! Right, men?”
The hundred slaves snapped out of their gloom and cheered.
“Remember, your freedom’s at the end of this track! Right?”
More cheers, more rallying.
“Now take twenty! Then we’re back to work!”
Cutton remained speechless as the ritual ended: the two strong-armers in the field placed Meti’s severed head on a high stake and sunk it in the ground.
Good Jesus…
Morris came down to the track line. “Hey, Cutton. Sorry, I didn’t know you were the squeamish type.” He pronounced the word “type” as “tap.” “But you shouldn’t’ve bailed last night. I dropped five in the whore-mother’s hand’n she forgot
all about
what I done to that little mulatto girl. And she got me two more girls! I had me plenty of fun.”
Cutton tried to banish the image. “Meti was a fine worker, Morris. What exactly he do? Force himself on a town girl?”
Morris bit off some tobacco. “Between you’n me?”
“Sure.”
“Gave Mrs. Gast’s ass a squeeze, he did.”
Cutton’s gut shimmied.
If they cut off his head and tilled his corpse into the field for grabbin’ her ass…what would they do to me?
“Wouldn’t be surprised if she asked for it, though. And
that’s
between you’n me, too.”
Cutton yearned to change subjects. His eyes flicked to the prominent, long-coated man on the white horse. “I thought Mr. Gast wasn’t comin’ back till tonight.”
Morris shrugged. He glanced up at the severed head on the stake but seemed unaffected. “Got back this mornin’. And he brought four flat cars stacked high with track segments.”
“Iron from Tredegar, I heard.”
“That’s right.”
“A damn sight better than Yankee iron. Costs more, too.”
“Well, Mr. Gast wants only the best for his railroad.” Another glance to the field showed normality returning, even with the staked head looking down at them. Female slaves in cool cotton dresses began to walk back to the soybean rows with their wicker baskets. Morris looked one more time at the head.
Did he smile?
Cutton shuddered.
A sudden shadow crossed them. Cutton looked up…and nearly froze.
“Mornin’, Mr. Gast,” Morris greeted.
The stern-faced man nodded. Salt-and-pepper muttonchops bristled his face. “Morris. It’s a shame about the slave, but you talked it up just right, as always.”
“Thank you, sir. Like you taught me, don’t put ’em down, even when we gotta discipline ’em.”
“Mornin’, Mr. Gast,” Cutton said over his unease.
Holy shit, why do I got a feelin’ he knows I fucked his wife?
“Mornin’, Mr. Cutton. How have the track inspections looked in my absence?”
“‘Bout as perfect as I ever seen, Mr. Gast.” His struggled to talk through the dryness of his throat. His heart was pounding. “Gauge is dead-on. We’ve done close to five miles already, and we ain’t even been goin’ two weeks. And the coupling work is perfect.”
“Good, good.” Gast turned his darkened face up to the sun. “My wife mentioned that she spoke with you yesterday.”
Cutton’s heart felt like a rock that had just slid down into his stomach. “I—Why, yes, sir, I did tip my hat to her, yes, sir.”
“She tells me you’re a courteous gentlemen—”
“That’s, uh, right kind of her—”
“—even though you’re from Delaware.”
The moment turned rigid. Then Gast and Morris broke out in laughter.
Cutton almost pissed his canvas trousers, but eventually he got it and laughed, too, however nervously.
“I’m just havin’ some fun with ya, Mr. Cutton,” Gast assured. He looked down at them both. “You men are doin’ damn fine work. Keep it up.”
“Yes, sir,” Morris said.
Cutton added, “We surely will.”
Gast took his horse off, back down the track line where the flat cars laden with rail and ties sat.
But Cutton couldn’t help but notice…
Gast’s eyes.
Just before he’d ridden away, when he’d looked down—the whites of the man’s eyes seemed stained, off-yellow, like maybe jaundice.
“Is Mr. Gast under the weather?” Cutton mentioned.
“Not that I know of. Why?”
Cutton chewed his lips. “Thought his eyes looked a little funny.”
“Looked fine to me, Cutton, and I got a burr in my ass now.”
“Why’s that?”
“He calls me Morris but he calls you
Mr. Cutton.
Shee-it.”
Does he?
“bet’choo suck his willy ever nat, huh?” Morris bellowed a laugh and slapped Cutton hard on the back. “Let’s go to the whorehouse again tonight. Have us some fun.”
Cutton easily remembered Morris’s idea of fun. He was drenched in nervous sweat. “Maybe. I’ll see how I feel after we’re done with work.”
Cutton looked one more time at the staked head. No one noticed, no one cared in the least. Just another killing of a rowdy slave. He shook his head when Morris offered him a chew.
And noticed something.
Ain’t that the damnedest…
The whites of Morris’s eyes looked a bit sickly. Tinged a pale yellow.
Just like Gast.
He shook his head.
Must be the light or somethin’,
he dismissed.
“You two!” Morris shouted to the two strong-arms in the field. “Get these slaves back on the line. Time to get back to work.” He slapped Cutton hard on the back again, billowing dust. “See ya tonight, buddy.”
Morris got back to his business. The slaves began to branch off into their assigned groups, and soon tools could be heard clanging.
Cutton mounted his horse but held up a moment. His gaze still hung on the severed head and its yawning dead face.
Is this really justice?
he wondered. Then the most unbidden inclination told him it was more than that.
HAPTER
O
NE
I
“So you just leave, just like that?” the voice whined. “That’s so
you,
Justin. When there’s a problem, all you do is get on a plane and fly away.”
Collier felt cramped in the rental car, and annoyed that the squawking phone call was diverting him from the scenery. “Evelyn, dear, I wouldn’t define a divorce as a
problem.
It’s merely an event. The problem is the notion that you and I ever thought we could be compatible marital partners…but that’s a moot point by now.”
The tiny cell phone seemed to vibrate when she objected, “What’s that supposed to mean!”
“Look, Evelyn, I have to finish this book. The deadline is next week. If I miss my deadline, then there’s the theoretical possibility that my publisher would cancel the contract in which case I’d have to
pay back
the fifty-thousand-dollar advance. Now, put your little thinking cap on and consider
those
ramifications, since you’ll likely get
half
of that advance in the divorce settlement.”
Silence. Then, “Oh.”
“Yes, my love. Oh. Along with
half
—and I repeat: HALF. Of everything else I’ve earned.”
Another rail: “Hey, I work, too!”
“Honey. Caterers in L.A. are like old people in Florida, i.e.
too many.
”
Collier knew he shouldn’t have referred to her failed business endeavor. He knew what she would say even before she said it:
“I’m glad your stupid show’s getting kicked off the air, you pompous asshole!”
Ahh, the good life,
Collier thought.
True love and domestic bliss.
“Evelyn, let’s not fight. I’ll be back in a week to sign the papers, okay? I’m not
evading
the issue, if that’s what you think. But I have to do this.”
“What do you have to go to
Tennessee
for? You write books about beer.”
“I only have one more entry before the book’s done, and I think I may have found it here. I need it to be unique. I can’t just throw in some run-of-the-mill microbrew.”
“Well…fine.” She simmered down.
“I’ve got to go now. I left the airport four hours ago, and I’m still lost. Tell you what, I’ll call you midweek to see how you’re doing.”
“Okay. ‘Bye.”
click
Collier felt as though a large animal had just climbed off his back. He banged his elbow when he put the cell phone away.
Why’d I ever get married? All my married friends told me not to. When married people tell you to NEVER get married? That’s like the chef coming out of the kitchen and telling you the food sucks. Pretty qualified advice.
Evelyn was beautiful, of course, but quite a few other men in L.A. seemed to think so, too.
It’s the way of the modern world. You have great sex; then you get married; then you get divorced. And the man gives the woman HALF.
Great sex wasn’t worth it. By now, in fact, he’d forgotten what great sex was.
Deliriously green pastures and farmland swept by on
either side. Collier loved the view, especially after four years in L.A. It wasn’t a city, it was a city-
state.
Hollywood! Spago! Venice Beach! Rodeo Drive!
They can have it,
he thought. Had the town lost its charm, or was it something else? He found that the older he got, the less interested he was in
things.
His Food Network TV show,
Justin Collier: Prince of Beer
, paid enormous money for the first three seasons but now they were giving his slot to some hotshot chef from San Francisco.
Seafood Psycho
, they were calling it. Just as well. Collier hated L.A., and the show—though it had turned him into a semicelebrity—was wearing him down. At forty-four, most of his hair was gray now, and he felt like a ninny having some makeup girl at the studio dye it for him. His books on craft-made beer always did well enough to make him a solid living, and that’s what he yearned to go back to.
Maybe I’m just getting old,
he considered. But forty-four wasn’t
old,
was it?
Damn…
The only thing Hertz had to rent at the airport was this awkward VW Bug.
It looks like a kiddie car,
was the first simile that came to mind when the clerk gave him the keys. Worse was the color: sherbet green.
Yeah, I can see me driving THIS on the 405.
The inside was aggravatingly cramped, but he could still see Lookout Mountain, site of a famous Civil War battle that had put the final nail in Confederate pomp. The image soothed him, not that the mountain signified a wartime slaughter, but the assurance it brought that he was nowhere near L.A.
More miles passed behind him. When he’d run a Map-Quest for Gast, Tennessee, he kept getting that PAGE EXPIRED message. He’d found it on a 7-Eleven map but the convolution of minor roads had turned into a maddening webwork. How hard could it be to find a town with such an unlikely name? It took another hour before he came upon a sign:
GAST, TENNESSEE—TOWN LINE. A CIVIL WAR HISTORICAL SITE
.
Finally!
The town stood bright in its reincarnated anachronism: fine clapboard buildings lining a cobblestone main drag called
NUMBER
1
STREET
. Normal-looking middleclassers walked to and fro on immaculate sidewalks, past the expected antique shops, bistros, and collector’s warrens.
MINIE BULLETS!
one sign boasted.
BATTLEFIELD MAPS!
At the corner, two elderly ladies strolled by and smiled. Collier smiled back—“Good afternoon, ladies”—but then it appeared they were chuckling.
It’s this eyesore on wheels!
he realized. The oddball car stuck out here like a sore thumb.
Hurry up and turn green!
he thought of the traffic light. More pedestrians, now, stopped to eye the car with furtive smiles.
That’s definitely making an entrance
…He turned aimlessly, just to get away from the passersby but immediately spotted the sign and arrow:
LODGING
.
Collier bisected roads similarly marked—
NUMBER
2
STREET, NUMBER
3
STREET
, etc.—but noted the road he was on:
PENELOPE STREET
. Collier peered ahead. The road side-wound up plush green hills, atop which sat a splendid antebellum house. Could it be a hotel?
Some joint.
Collier wasn’t much into architecture but when he pulled round the center court, he couldn’t help but be impressed. An elaborate two-story veranda formed the main structure’s face, propped by Doric columns chiseled with intricate fluting. The center edifice was octagonal and walled by handmade red bricks, while four more one-story wings flanked outward. White clapboard comprised these wings, and each possessed a deep wraparound porch. Out front a granite boy in Confederate dress blew water from a flute into a mortar-and-stone pond beside which grew a gnarled oak tree more massive than any Collier could remember. He parked and got out. The shadow of the central building cooled him.
Lush weeping willows, fifty feet high, fronted the estate, while some even older oak trees seemed to circle the immediate property.
Collier approached. Streams of ivy crawled up the octagon’s eroded brick walls. He noticed several cars parked in a side lot, and hoped they belonged to guests, not just staff; in spite of the building’s old splendor, Collier didn’t want to be the lone lodger. Though he couldn’t be sure, he believed he might’ve seen a face peering at him from a narrow window on the closest addition. The face looked inquisitive, or warped by old glass.
WELCOME TO THE BRANCH LANDING INN
, the high stone entablature read. A low brick next to the door had been crudely engraved:
MAIN HOUSE
, 1850.
White granite blocks framed a massive front door. Since this was obviously a rooming house, he didn’t feel the need to knock in spite of the presence of a peculiar knocker: a face of brass bearing wide, empty eyes but no nose or mouth. For some reason, the knocker caused an odd sensation; then he reached for the brass doorknob and noticed that it, too, had been imprinted with the featureless face.
Collier almost shouted—
An unseen hand opened flat on the small of his back, while another hand opened the door for him.
“Jesus!”
A short woman in her early thirties had come up behind him without making a sound. Collier looked at her after the start she’d given him: short, petite, and shapely. She was barefoot and dressed in a shoddy denim frock.
Couldn’t be a guest,
he thought, but then he spotted a name tag:
HELLO! MY NAME IS LOTTIE
.
Collier brought a hand to his chest. “Wow, you really scared me. I didn’t see you.”
She smiled and remained holding the door for him.
“So you work here?”
She nodded.
Now that the scare had receded he noticed that her body was exceptional but her face was less than comely, and her eyes seemed dull, even crooked. She smiled again. A shag of unkempt muddy brown hair had been cropped at the middle of her neck.
The moment seemed disarrayed. She simply stood there without saying a word, holding the door.
“Thank you.”
He entered a small but ornate vestibule which fronted another set of doors, only these were angled plate glass. The thick oval throw rug beneath their feet appeared handwoven.
“So, Lottie. Do you have any rooms available?”
She nodded again.
Not exactly a chatterbox.
A pleasant chime pealed when the next door came fully open. They stepped into an enormous entrance salon, whose thirty-foot-high ceiling dragged Collier’s gaze upward. Very large oil paintings hung high behind the service counter, and higher than those stretched a long stair hall. More patterned throw rugs covered the hardwood floor, these much more refined than the thick vestibule rug. Antique sitting tables surrounded by high-back chairs were arranged about the great open space, and glass-faced book and display cases lined the walls.
Impressive,
Collier thought.
Semicircular stairwells swept up on either side of the long mahogany service counter, and behind the counter a wall of stained oak pilasters touted hand-carved flower designs.
“This really is a beautiful place,” Collier mentioned to the girl.
She nodded.
It was twenty feet to the check-in counter; behind it, an old woman’s face looked up and smiled through wrin
kles. Midsixties, probably. A storm cloud-gray perm of curls, very short, crawled around her head—the kind of hairstyle that only women close to nursing-home age thought looked good. Even at a distance, Collier could detect the deepness of the wrinkles, and bags under her eyes, and the face seemed almost masculine with its slab cheeks and heavy jaw. Collier immediately thought,
If Jack Palance had a twin sister…I’m looking at her.
“We’ll I’ll be!” her peppy twang rang out. “I say it must be celebrity month!”
“Pardon me?”
“I
swear
I seen you on the TV!”
Collier hated to be “recognized.”
The elderly eyes glittered between puffy lids. “Couple weeks ago we had some fella from the New York Yankees check in, and now we got the Prince of Beer!”
“Hi,” Collier said, depressed already. Now he had to put up the front. “Justin Collier,” he said and extended his hand.
“I’m Mrs. Helen Butler, and welcome to the Branch Landing Inn. That short little thing standin’ next to you’s my daughter, Lottie. I run the place, she keeps it spick-and-span.”
Collier nodded to Lottie, who nodded eagerly back.
“Lottie don’t talk,” Mrs. Butler explained. “Never could for some reason. She tried when she was a tot but could just never get it, so one day she quit tryin’.”
Lottie splayed her hands and shrugged.
Mrs. Butler jabbered on. “Why, I saw ya on the TV just last night.”
“Oh, so you’re a beer connoisseur, Mrs. Butler?”
“Actually, no—I won’t lie to ya. I’se always watch the show comes on after yours,
Savannah Sammy’s Sassy Smokehouse.
” She added rather dreamily, “I just adore that man, Savannah Sammy.”
That dick!
Collier’s pride rebelled. The comment challenged him.
First of all, he’s not even from Savannah, he’s
from fucking Jersey, and he doesn’t even write his own shows!
Collier felt wounded, but what could he say? “Yes, ma’am, Sammy’s a great guy.”
“But don’t get me wrong, your show’s terrific, too. In fact, my son watches it all the time, raves about it.” She leaned forward, lowered her voice. “Say…do you know Emeril?”
“Oh, sure. Great guy, too.” Actually, Collier had never met the man.
“Oh, please, Mr. Collier,” she gushed next. “Please tell me that you’ll be stayin’ with us a spell.”
“Yes, I’d like to stay for at least a few days.”
“That’s
wonderful!
And it just so happens that the room with the best view is available.”
Collier was about to thank her but instantly fell to speechlessness when the old lady stood up and rushed to the key cabinet.
I don’t believe this…
Mrs. Butler wore a simple orchid-hued button-front blouse and matching knee skirt. But it wasn’t the attire that stunned Collier, it was the body.
Brick shit-house,
he had to think.
Her plain clothes clung to a proverbial hourglass physique. Wide-hipped but tiny-waisted; strong, toned legs like a female swimmer, and a burgeoning bust, heavy but high—and Collier didn’t detect a bra line.
This broad’s got the wrong head on her shoulders,
he thought.
The bosom rode with each vigorous step back to the counter. She handed him a brass key, like the old-style keys that fed into a large circle-atop-a-flange keyhole. But the woman’s physique continued to waylay him.
How could a woman with a face that old and haggard have a body like THAT?
“Room three, it’s our best, Mr. Collier,” her drawl assured. “Best view, I’m tellin’ ya—the
best.
”
“I appreciate that.” But he thought,
The view of your rack is pretty damn good, too.
His sexism made him feel
unrefined and juvenile but the bizarre sexuality seemed to reflect off her like sunlight off a mirror. “Let me go grab my bags and I’ll be right b—”