The Black Train (21 page)

Her candid talk astounded him…and the gutter that was his mind tried to picture the scenario. It was thrillingly crude.

“I was so hungover in college,” she admitted, “I don’t know how I ever graduated. Don’t know how I managed to not get pregnant, either. I’d read things about myself on bathroom walls, and the worst part was”—she shot him a cunning look—“they were all true.”

Collier felt impacted and aroused at the same time.

“Then one day it occurred to me that I was letting my weaknesses destroy a child of God. So I asked God to relieve me of my burdens so that I could one day find salvation, and he did.”

“Is it that simple?” Collier asked, then noticed that his own beer was half drained already. He knew he was only listening in part, but trying to act like she had his full attention.

“It’s not like rubbing a magic lamp and then the genie grants your wish, no. Look at it this way. God’s forgiveness is a million times bigger than our sins, so we’re covered. You just have to do some stuff in return.”

Collier wanted to make out with her under the table, on the floor.
In my case,
he thought,
God’s forgiveness would have to be TWO million times bigger than my sins.
Suddenly his falseness seemed as solid as the chair he sat on. If human beings really did have auras, he knew that his was black with lust.
Say something, you moron
…“Stuff in return? What kind of stuff? Go to church? Give to charity?”

“No, no. Deeper than that,” she said. She crunched on some spicy bamboo shoots and pickled radishes. “That’s between you and God. But it’s like charging on your credit card. You have to pay for it someday. And declaring bankruptcy doesn’t cut it.”

Her analogies were interesting. He wanted to be engaging, he wanted to be involved with what enlivened her, but his lust nagged at him. And that’s when the truth hit him, rearranging her own words:
My lust is a million times bigger than my desire to be forgiven…

Every time he looked at her bosom, his eyes were repelled by the cross, like a vampire.

“But enough of that,” she said, beaming. “Here comes our dinner.”

The waitress set down fragrant, steaming entrees. They’d also ordered a dish of squid flanks in scarlet hot sauce. “Be careful with that.” She pointed a chopstick to the latter. “It’ll torch you up.”

Collier was already torched up, by the lust boiling over in his psyche, which only made him feel more fake, more despicable.
She could pick a phony like me out in a crowd,
he knew.
The worst thing I can do is pretend
…He tried a piece of some kind of sweet barbecued beef. “Great
bibimbop.
”

“That’s
bulgogi.
”

“Ah, of course. It’s been a while for me.” The
bibimbop
looked like a hodgepodge of greens and meat submerged in broth, with a half-cooked egg on top. He tried some squid instead, which was tender, delicious, and—

“Wow, that’s really—” He chugged his entire glass of water.

“I told you it was hot. It’s better to eat it with some rice.”

Collier followed her lead with the food, eating it in the same way.

“So how was your lunch with the venerable J.G. Sute?”

“Do I detect sarcasm in your tone?” he asked after his mouth cooled.

“Just a tad,” she laughed. “He’s a legend in his own time—just ask him. Actually he’s quite a nice man, and he does know more than anyone about this area’s importance during the Civil War.”

“Well, his knowledge of regional history seems very detailed,” Collier said. “But I wasn’t asking him as much about the war as I was—”

“About the house,” she guessed. “And the legends. The cursed fields, the murdered slaves. The mansion of evil, and Harwood Gast and his railroad to hell.”

“Sute told me it was built privately by Gast, with his own funds.”

“Funds that were never depleted, by the way,” she added.

Collier remembered. “Oh, yes, he talked about that, too. So what did he pay his men with? They weren’t all slaves.”

“No. The white workers on his crew were paid a small fortune, and the slaves were well clothed, well equipped, and well fed—all thanks to Gast’s money.”

“So how did he buy the materials? All that track and railroad ties, spikes, tools, supply cars?”

“Nobody knows.” Dominique smiled. “Some say Gast sold his soul to the devil.”

The word flagged him. “And you said that there really is a devil.”

“Um-hmm.”

“So if there
really
is a devil, maybe people
really do
sell their souls to him.”

“People sell their souls to the devil every day, for a whole lot less.”

Collier found that if he ate the food without looking at it, it was much less radical. When Dominique excused herself for the restroom, his gaze covered the back of her body as effectively as a paint roller. He ordered another beer from the waitress and had her take the other bottle after draining it, then drank the new bottle down to the first bottle’s level.
Yeah, that’ll fool her, all right…

When he saw Dominique coming back, he dug his fingernails hard into his leg.
Don’t look at her boobs anymore, you sexist pile of shit!
Instead, he sensed her breasts riding ever so slightly in the clinging cami-top.

“What were we talking about?” she asked. “Oh, yeah. Deals with the devil.”

But the idea seemed to taint the power of the legend. Could it really be that bland? “Satanism, then. The Gast myth is just a painted-up version of that?”

“Probably. Inventing stories is part of our nature, I guess—as the highest animal. Detractors of religion say the same thing about Christianity. It’s just a caveman legend: the savior comes and plucks the good people out of their hellhole existence and takes them to paradise.”

“A fair point, for people who consider religion objectively.”

“Of course it is. But seeing is believing. Those detractors never get a chance to really
see,
because they don’t believe in anything strong enough to ask to be
shown.
They believe in concrete and steel and Ford and Mercedes. They believe in Starbucks and Blockbuster and Super Bowl Sunday and reality TV. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are all the saviors they need. And their paychecks, of course. All that shit in their lives prevents them from seeing anything everlasting.”

“Money and fashion is the new god?”

“The new golden calf,” she said. When she crossed
her ankles under the table, her toes brushed his leg. “Sorry. Wasn’t trying to kick you.”

Baby, you can kick me anytime you want…and I’d LIKE it…
“So with your caveman analogy, and objectively speaking, we create ghost stories because we’ve always been intrigued by them—”

“Not just intrigued. We need them,” she said. A squid tentacle slipped between her lips into her mouth. “Cavemen
wanted
to believe there were ghosts, because the idea reinforced ancient myths of the afterlife.”

Collier’s brow furrowed.

“Not only are ghosts proof of an afterlife, but they’re also proof of a netherworld—or hell. If the caveman really believes there are ghosts haunting the woods, what else can they be but unsaved spirits? And if there are
unsaved
spirits, then surely there must be saved spirits, too. Follow the code and you go to heaven. Don’t follow the code, and you’re a ghost prowling the woods at night.”

Collier tried to make more observations without being the devil’s advocate. “So…
not
objectively speaking?”

“I don’t worry about it because I see the reality of God every day.”

“What does that look like, exactly?”

“You have to ask God to
see,
Justin,” she nearly exclaimed. “It’s personal. It’s between God and the individual. If I say anything more, I’ll only sound like a Holy Roller again. I don’t have to explain why I believe that Christ is my Savior—”

“No, no, I wasn’t asking you to do that,” Collier hastened. “I understand that it
is
personal.” He feared the conversation was growing too touchy. If he touted any serious Christian ideals himself, Dominique would smell him out as a fake. “I believe in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and all that. My problem is following them. Back to what we were talking about earlier. Weakness.”

She just looked at him and nodded. “Humans aren’t strong—not since Eve bit the apple. That’s why God gives us an out. We either find it or we don’t.”

He tried to assimilate. “Then what did Harwood Gast find? You say that you know there’s a God because you’ve seen evidence of him in your life—”

“Sure. A bunch of times.”

“So if you know there’s a God, then you know there’s a heaven, and if you know there’s a heaven, then you know there’s a hell?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

“So then maybe all those cotton fields
are
cursed. Maybe the Gast House really is haunted, and maybe Harwood Gast genuinely made a pact with the devil, or, well, a demon, which is what Sute suggested. Maybe all those stories are
true.
”

She shrugged. “I agree with the possibility.”

“So what about you? I believe you when you say you’ve seen evidence of God in your life. Have you ever seen any evidence of anything else?”

Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. “As in what?”

“At lunch, didn’t you imply that you
had
seen something at the inn? I just want to know if you’ve ever witnessed anything around here that might suggest it’s not all a bunch of—”

“Bullshit? Well, in all honesty I can say…maybe. But I won’t say what it was.”

Collier sighed.

Now she was grinning. “I know. I hate it when people do that, too. But I don’t want to say anything ’cos then you really will think I’m a crackpot.”

“I swear I won’t,” he about pleaded. Collier was getting the same jive from everyone around here. “There’s no way I’ll think you’re a crackpot.”

“Well…” Her gaze darted up to the waitress. “Oh, here’s the check. This is Dutch treat—”

“I’m not Dutch.” Collier gave the waitress cash, with a big tip. Then he leaned into the table. “Tell me.”

Her reluctance was genuine. “All right, but not here. You paid for dinner, so I’ll get dessert…”

A hot fudge sundae on top of…squid,
Collier thought in disbelief. He opted for a large shortbread cookie and followed Dominique out of the corner ice-cream parlor. They sat on a bench facing a semicircular half wall of old brick and mortar, which highlighted a large cannon. The cannon had no wheels but sat on a round track and swivel; a pyramid of fat shells rested beside it. Collier half noticed one of the omnipresent historical plaques:
LONG-RANGE ARTILLERY BARBETTE BUNKER AND MODEL
1861 6.4-
INCH PINTLE-MOUNTED CANNON
.
A world of hurt,
Collier thought. Beyond them, tourists seemed to emerge from the settling dusk.

Dominique dug into the sundae as if ravenous. As each spoonful was savored, Collier saw the wet shine of her lips and tongue-tip in a Daliesque clarity; nightfall hovered around the radiant face and the gem-shine of her eyes. “I’m such a pig, but this is so good,” she reveled. “You sure you don’t want some?”

“No, thanks, I’m stuffed.” When he imagined his stomach’s reaction to ice cream mixing with Korean spices and squid, beef, and half-cooked egg—plus all the beer he’d had today—he shivered. In all, he had to force himself to eat the cookie.

Then he imagined something else: when she raised the next spoonful to her parted lips, she froze. Suddenly she was topless and sitting spread-legged on the bench, the quirky Christian reverting to her college-tramp roots…

Her mouth sucked the ice cream off the spoon, where it sat on her tongue till it melted, and then her lips expelled it. The slew of white cream marbled with hot
fudge began to run a slow line down her chin, over the hollow of her throat, and between her breasts. It stopped to pool in her belly button, and that’s when the fantasy put Collier on his knees licking it out. His hands molded her hips and slid up her ribs as his tongue followed the track in reverse. He evacuated the adorable navel, then sucked upward over a quivering stomach. His mouth could feel excited blood beating in vessels beneath succulent, perfect flesh. No thoughts formed in his own mind, just the carnal craving. She had become his own ice-cream sundae. When his tongue laved her cleavage, her breasts vised his cheeks.

When his tongue slathered over the fudge-covered cross, he recoiled—

It burned like a tiny branding iron.

“—and, see? Those are some of the very first tracks, right there.”

Collier’s head surfaced from the dirty delusion like a bubble breaking sewer water. She’d been talking but he hadn’t heard any of it.

“What’s that?”

She pointed past the cannon, to the brick-paved street. Two parallel lines crossed the quaint lane, and the lines seemed sunken beneath the bricks.

“Oh, railroad tracks,” he finally recognized. “Gast’s railroad, I presume.”

“Right. See that plaque there?”

Another old brick wall sported the plaque:
ORIGINAL SITE OF DEPOT NUMBER ONE, OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY
—1857.

Collier looked at the strangely rustless rails. “So the original track still exists?”

“Oh, no. Most of it was taken up after the war—for reparations. But they left these here, and there are a few more sections around the town, even with the original ties. But this site, right here where we’re sitting, is where
the madness of Harwood Gast officially began in 1857. It ended less than five years later in an area in Georgia called Maxon.”

“Maxon,” Collier uttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the place.”

“That’s because it doesn’t exist anymore. The Union army razed the entire area. There’s nothing there now except scrub.”

Collier thought back. “Mr. Sute told me that Gast actually built the railroad to take prisoners to some sort of concentration camp. Was that this Maxon place?”

“Yes,” Dominique grimly replied. “And the prisoners weren’t captured Union soldiers, they were—”

“Civilians. I remember him telling me that, too. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, from a military standpoint, I mean.”