The Black Train (20 page)

The case contained five stout cigars, an ink pen studded with diamonds, and $500 in cash.

My God…

It was a fortune, added to the lofty salary he was already being paid.
When this is over, I’m going to be a very rich man, and I owe it all to…Mr. Gast.

He climbed back on his horse and headed back to the site.

It’s the night for it, I can tell,
Gast’s words came back to him.

A mile or so down, the horse stopped for no reason. “What’s the matter? Come on, I got a train to catch.” he said. But then he realized exactly where he was.

He was looking to the left, into a little clearing in the side brush.

That’s where Morris took the Injun girl…

Something compelled him to dismount, and he never even considered what it might be. Next, he was walking into the clearing, his oil lamp raised.

Morris must have already left; Poltrock could hear nothing within. When he entered farther, he stopped and stared.

He wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first. It was the girl, he could tell, but…

Something didn’t seem right.

The girl lay naked. He could see the backs of her legs, the bottoms of her bare feet, as well as her buttocks, which Morris had fussed about so.

But…Poltrock could also see her breasts…

He stepped closer. His cognizant mind shut off when he leaned over to see what had been done. Indeed, the well-endowed Indian girl lay on her belly. He need only lift her shoulder to realize exactly what Morris had used that fancy bayonet for.

She’d been skinned from collarbones to pubis, and it was an intricate job. Morris had managed to slough off her breasts and belly skin in one clean sheet, after which he’d flipped her over and laid the sheet across her back.

So he could sodomize her and look at her bosom at the same time…

Poltrock stared at the strange corpse for untold minutes, and as he held the lamp higher, he noticed several more dead Indian women deeper in the clearing.

He couldn’t think for the loud drone in his head that suddenly threatened to push his skull apart from the inside out.
My God…

He was staring at the dead girl…

My God,
he thought again.
What am I…

The roar in Poltrock’s head began to abate when he
realized he was unfastening his belt and lowering his trousers.

As Poltrock was stepping onto the train car, he noticed Morris sitting in the very first seat, the long brass-handled knife and scabbard hanging off his belt. “Mr. Poltrock! Now we know why no whiskey was delivered tonight!”

“Yes…”

“They say we’ll be back to town by noon tomorrow.” Morris winked as Poltrock passed.

He mentioned nothing of what he’d found in the clearing, nor what he’d done afterward. He preferred to fantasize that it was all a bad dream—of course it was. Since the moment he’d signed on with Mr. Gast, in fact, his
life
was a bad dream.

He followed the aisle down to the last block of seats, which were reserved for Mr. Gast and himself.

Bones creaked when he sat. Yes, it had been a hard week; moreover, it had been a hard four years. Poltrock suspected that once they got back to Gast, he’d spend most of the respite sleeping, while everyone else made revel. He sighed at the fancily cushioned seat and footrest, let himself sink.

Bad dream…

Through the window, he could see strong-armers with lanterns walking along the cars; only a few would stay behind to guard the work site and its heaps of construction materials. The lanterns cast misshaped yellow circles to and fro in the darkness. Poltrock squinted. When one of the strong-armers glanced up at him, his eyes looked a sickly yellow.

Poltrock pulled down the curtain.

Next, he looked across the aisle and saw Mr. Gast fast asleep in his seat. Minutes later, the whistle blew, and the train chugged off. Far enough away now, he reopened
the curtain and stared into the nightscape sliding by. An oblong moon followed him, tingeing the countryside. When he found himself scrutinizing his reflection in the glass…

Did his own eyes look yellow?

The train clattered gently over the newly lain track; Poltrock could feel their speed. He could hear the Negroes singing from the last car, while the white men in the remaining cars sat in edgy silence. Poltrock slept in jags and fits, each time wakened by an impossibly sharp image: his own lips desperately sucking the nipples of a pair of severed breasts. Each time his eyes snapped open, he was terrified to look to his side, expecting to find the skinned Indian sitting next to him, holding his hand like a lover.

Later, he dreamed inexplicably of a great blast furnace…

The train chugged on, deep into the night. Many behind him were asleep now, too.
Maybe I’m the only one awake,
he considered.

“Yes!”

Poltrock’s eyes darted right.

It was Mr. Gast. He’d remained asleep as well, and had sleep-whispered the word.

“Yes!” Mr. Gast muttered again. “Tonight!”

When Poltrock got off the train the next day at noon—that’s when they all learned that Fort Sumter had been besieged two days ago by Confederate forces in South Carolina. The fort’s commander had surrendered last night.

At last, the war had begun.

I

Collier had passed out in his bed the minute he’d returned to the inn, and when his alarm went off at six o’clock, his brain felt like a lump of garbage.
Shiiiiiiiiit,
he thought. Bad judgment was one thing, but now he was truly beginning to suspect he might be a serious alcoholic.
I got trashed in a gay bar,
he remembered.
And I have a date tonight…

The shower shocked him awake. He was still half drunk and half hungover when he struggled into his clothes. The memories crept back…

Jiff turning tricks at the bar, and…

Those two little girls with the dog…

Mary and Cricket; he remembered their names. As he brushed his teeth and gargled he tried to convince himself it was all a dream he’d had when he’d passed out but he knew he’d only be lying to himself. No doubt they were two sisters from a poor family.

They had to be.

Collier spat foam into the toilet; several more gargles couldn’t dispel the hangover taste. Next he stuck his mouth directly under the faucet and filled his belly with water.

Then he remembered that little dog—the feisty mutt—and what he thought he’d seen it doing as he left…

Collier shoved it from his head and left his room but before he could take his first step down the hall, he stopped.

Sniffed the air…

Is it my imagination,
he wondered sourly,
or do I smell urine?
He frowned and walked away.

Sluggish steps took him down. No sign of anyone in the lobby, but then he recalled that Jiff and the rest of his family lived in the rear wing.

Where am I going?

Two hallways branched off the east side of the lobby but both appeared to be rental rooms. Instead he slipped out an exit door into the backyard. He looked down a line of sliding-glass doors, hoping for a clue. If he saw guests, then he’d know it was the wrong wing. He took an adjacent footpath that allowed him to get a look through each glass door without appearing conspicuous. A large spiny bush sat at the end of the wing, and as he was about to pass it, to the next wing, he heard:

“Shit! Come on, girl!”

Jiff’s voice, for sure, but where was it coming from?

“Hold still, Lottie—Jesus!”

Collier turned back and noticed the last unit’s door was opened all the way, while the screen door was closed, and a quick glance into the room showed him…

A face. A big face.

Collier rubbed his eyes.
It looks like…George Clooney.
He frowned till his vision sharpened and then realized it was indeed the face of the Hollywood star.
A poster,
he realized. It was tacked to the wall. Clooney’s big smile and big white teeth shot through the screen door larger than life.
What the hell’s a poster of George Clooney doing in there?

“Tighter…” Jiff’s voice again. It was coming from the room.

This must be the family’s wing after all. At first he
thought that he was likely looking into Lottie’s room, and that she was a Clooney fan but if so, why Jiff’s voice?

Collier took one step to the side, which increased his vantage point. The shock of what he saw so suddenly almost knocked him into the bush.

No, no, no, no, no,
he thought.

Lottie had her shorts off, her bare legs spread in a V as she stood bent over at the waist. Was she wearing a man’s shirt? Jiff, also nude from the waist down, stood right behind her, his hands on her hips. His tight, muscled buttocks slowly pumped.

“Shit, Lottie, you could at least have some hair on your ass—”

Collier thought he’d seen
everything
when he’d witnessed one of Jiff’s tricks at the bar. He was wrong.

“Damn, cain’t you make your butthole tighter?”

No, no, no, no, no,
Collier thought again. More than the jolt of incest was the mere ludicrousness of the scene. Now he understood that it was Jiff’s room, and he’d positioned his sister quite deliberately: so that he could gaze at the Clooney poster while he sodomized her.

Next, Jiff muttered, “Yeah…”

Collier’s brain told him to walk quietly away, but how could he? He’d been quite the Peeping Tom of late. He continued to watch, peering just around the bush.

“Tighter—yeah…”

Jiff’s stokes slowed, then stopped.

“Thanks, Lottie. Shit, I needed that. Them johns at the bar got me
all
gunned up. Turned me three tricks today.”

The outrageous scene was over quite nonchalantly.
I do not believe it,
Collier thought. Jiff perfunctorily pulled his pants back on, then got to tying up his bootlaces, while Lottie threw the shirt into a laundry hamper and redonned her shorts. Collier saw now that she wore a tight, nipple-revealing Tennessee Titans T-shirt. She sat down on the bed, brushing her hair back.

Jiff disappeared for a few moments, apparently to wash his hands, then strutted back into view. “Aw, dang, that’s right, I forget to tell ya. After I got done doin’ Richard in the lounge, I come out to get myself a beer, and guess who I see sittin’ right up at the bar? Mr. Collier hisself.”

Lottie’s eyes shot wide, and she mouthed
No!

“Ain’t kiddin’. Like ta shit my pants when I saw that. The Prince’a Beer throwin’ ’em back with Buster, Barry, Donny, and the rest of ’em. I snuck out the back so’s he wouldn’t see. But I never would’a thunk in a coon’s age that he was gay.”

Lottie burst into a round of silent giggles, all the while shaking her head.

“What? You sayin’ he ain’t? Then what’s he doin’ drinkin’ at the Spike? He’s
gotta
be queer.”

Lottie just kept shaking her head, mouthing
No he’s not, no he’s not!

Jiff gave her a stern look. “Don’t tell me
you
got it on with him!”

Lottie kept smiling, then grabbed a piece of candy off Jiff’s dresser and began to unwrap it.

“Hey! That’s my Chunky!”

Lottie gave him the finger, then opened her hand.

“Oh, right. Here.” Jiff gave her a five-dollar bill. “Thanks.”

Five bucks!
Collier outraged.
What a rip-off!

It just kept getting nuttier.
This really is a different world.
Collier slipped away and went back into the inn. His watch told him he only had fifteen minutes.
I can’t ask Jiff to borrow his car when he just got done having anal sex with his SISTER,
he lamented. Back in the lobby, Mrs. Butler’s old face beamed up.

“Got’cher self a hot date, huh, Mr. Collier?”

Unbelievable.
“Actually, yes.”

“Well I hope ya have a wonderful time.” Mrs. Butler
was clearly braless again, this time beneath a sleeveless snap-front blouse that shined iridescent pink.

“Thanks, Mrs. Butler.”

Her pose at the desk proffered a wedge of creamy cleavage. Unbidden, Collier’s brain put a younger woman’s head on her shoulders. “Oh, I did want to ask. Are there any other towns nearby?”

“Oh, sure. Roan’s not ten miles west, and they got some nice restaurants there—”

“No, I meant—well, are there any
poor
towns nearby. Run-down, low-income areas? The reason I ask is because when I was coming back earlier, I saw these two young girls in the woods, and they simply struck me as not from around here. Like girls from a ghetto or something.”

Mrs. Butler looked perplexed. An unconscious finger traced the edge of her blouse top. “None too many poor folk ’cos here. Mostly just old money and ritzy tourist places.”

“No trailer parks or anything like that, low-income housing?”

“No, you’d have to get out a speck for that…Two girls you say?”

“Yes. Sisters. They were playing by a ravine on the hill out here.” The more Collier explained, the sillier he felt.
What’s my point, anyway?
“And, well, they had a dog—a little mutt—that looked like the one I asked you about earlier.”

“I had Lottie’n Jiff look high’n low for any dogs that might’a snuck in but they didn’t find none,” she said. “None’a the other guests seen it either.”

When Collier thought of mentioning the other oddity—the sisters’ reference to the finger clips—he suddenly determined:
Forget it!
“Never mind. It was just sort of odd. I was wondering something else, though. Do you…have a car I could borrow for a few hours?”

In the parking lot, Collier winced like someone who’d just discovered their fly open. Mrs. Butler’s “car” was a dented Chevy pickup truck that couldn’t have rolled off the production line after 1955. Rust riddled the flat-black paint like eczema.
It looks like that hunk of shit on the
Beverly Hillbillies…He glanced, next, to the lime-sherbet Bug, sighed, and got into the truck anyway.

The dashboard had holes where most of the gauges should be.
I asked for it, I got it,
he reminded himself. He jammed the wobbly three-speed shifter, backed out of the lot, and headed for Cusher’s.

Whenever he looked in the rearview, he saw a sheen of blue smoke following him. Nothing happened when he turned on the radio.
Another smart move by me.
But at least on the main drag he got fewer looks of hilarity than his airport rental.

At the intersection, a tap on the glass startled him; then the passenger door was creaking open.

Dominique slid in.

“Hi! Right on time…” She assayed the vehicle’s interior. “Isn’t this the truck Mrs. Butler’s father bought to celebrate Eisenhower’s election?”

“I’m sure it is,” Collier groaned. When he looked at her, though, he felt like someone in an inner tube floating at a sudden swell in the surf.
Oh my God she’s so beautiful…

Dominique wore a white satin summer skirt with rosette accents and a lacy white bra-cami. The top ran down to just an inch above the skirt’s hem, providing a gap from which her navel could peek. She couldn’t have looked more classily casual. Just below the hollow of her throat, the silver cross flashed.

Collier attempted an explanation. “My rental car looks—”

“Yeah, I heard. Some funky green thing like in a cartoon.” She tossed her head, the predusk sunlight shining orange off each separate strand of hair. “But it’s actually
kind of fun riding in a car this old. A whole lot of butts have sat on this seat.”

Collier chuckled. “I never thought of it that way. Posterity measured by posteriors.”

“So how was your day?” she asked, and seemed to be examining her nail polish.

Collier drove through town, frowning each time the truck hiccupped smoke. “Great,” he lied.

“Get much work done on your book?”

“Oh, yeah,” he lied again. What could he say?
I got drunk in a gay bar, passed out in the woods, then watched an act of incest.
“The book’s nearly done, and I’m happy to say I’ll make the deadline. Speaking of which…”

At the next light, he extracted the permission form from his wallet. “All I need is you to sign this release. It gives me your permission to comment on your beer.”

She signed it without even reading most of it. “This is wonderful. Now more people will know about it than these yokels—Oh, where are we going for dinner?”

Good question. “Since I’m new in town, how about you make the choice?”

“Do you like Korean?”

“Love it.” Collier hated Korean cuisine. It always sat in his belly like a corrosive.

“Good. There’s a great little Korean joint at the edge of town. You’d think you were eating in Seoul it’s so authentic.”

Don’t they eat dog in Seoul?
Collier didn’t care—he was with her. They chatted about beer as he followed her instructions to a tiny restaurant squeezed between a hardware store and—Collier raised a brow—a dog salon. An aroma strong as a stench greeted them once they entered: spiced cabbage and lemon grass. But Collier knew it was a good sign that every other patron in the place was Asian. “The
bulgogi
is terrific,” Dominique enthused at their booth, “but so is the
bibimbop.
I can never decide which to order.”

“I happen to love both of those, too,” Collier lied, “so why don’t we order both and split them?”

“You’re so accommodating!”

“And since we’re both beer snobs,” he continued, “I guess it’s OB.”

“I like OB with Korean food. It’s probably my favorite Asian beer that’s not brewed here on a license,” she was quick to add. “Oh, and it’s great with rice.”

You’re great with rice,
Collier dopily thought. He couldn’t believe he’d been given this opportunity. As one of the most credible beer writers in the country, Collier never needed to be told that genuine brewmasters knew more about beer than anyone, including him. He gauged her plain but vibrant beauty as she perused the menu for appetizers.
Why couldn’t I have met her ten years ago?
he scorned himself.
Why couldn’t I have NEVER met Evelyn and met Dominique instead? We’d be the perfect match. We have everything in common…

The glittering cross around her neck suggested otherwise.

When the waitress arrived with their beers, Dominique said, “Here comes my one beer of the day.”

Collier sulked within himself. How many had
he
had today?
Jesus
…“I’ll have to try your method some time,” he said. “That is
if
I have the willpower. That’s never been my strong suit.”

“It wasn’t mine, either, until…” She half smiled and half smirked. “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

Collier didn’t get it. “What?”

“You’ll think I’m Holy Rolling you again.”

“Go ahead and Holy Roll me.”

“Okay.” She took a sip of beer. “Nobody has willpower, not on their own. God knows we have weaknesses that are destructive, so that’s why he gives us an out. I’m not just talking about salvation, I’m talking about the shit we’ve got to bear while we’re here—”

I love it when she says shit,
Collier mused.

“Half the apostles were probably alcoholics and whoremongers before they met Jesus. So what did they do?”

“I…don’t know.”

“They gave their burdens to God,” she said very casually, “and were freed. That’s what I did.”

Collier unwrapped his chopsticks. “How do you give away a weakness?”

“Ask God, that’s all. And he’ll answer.” She shook her head. “You should’ve seen me in college. I was an asshole, I was a tramp. I couldn’t tell you how many scumbag guys I had sex with. Every night was a party: beer, booze, dope, and sex.”