Edward Lee - The Black Train

Cheek to floor, he lay for many moments, eyes wide in the dark, heart racing down. Impulse urged him to get up and watch the last of Mrs. Butler’s private antics but he simply couldn’t move.

Paralyzed…

When he put his hand down to push himself up, it landed on a damp spot. Oh, sure, Collier, go ahead and jerk off on the rug. It was only handwoven in the 1850s and should probably be in the fucking Smithsonian.

When he got back to his knees, he looked in the peephole but found it dark. He fumbled to his feet, turned on the bed lamp, and took some tissues to feebly daub up what semen he could.

The residue of his sperm left damp marks that could’ve been a gorilla’s handprint. It’ll dry up, he hoped.

Then, for some reason, he looked back at the hole.

Questions occurred to him now. Like: Who drilled it?

Some kink who’d rented this room before me…

And now that he thought of it, the hole had obviously been drilled with some thought behind it. A perfect deadeye view of the hip tub, he reasoned. The hole had even been angled down, to maximize the tub’s position and ensure that the woman’s crotch, belly, and breasts all fit into the circumference. I guess you call that Pervert’s Craftsmanship.

He inadvertently touched the hole and found it splintery.

Hmm.

His ruminations started to tick, and he quickly redressed, left his room, and went to the bath closet’s door. He knew Mrs. Butler wasn’t in there anymore because he’d seen the light was off. The stair hall, both ways, stood empty. Collier entered the bath closet.

Warm air touched his face, and he smelled an expected soapy fragrance. His finger clicked the lights on.

The hip tub remained in place but had been emptied. The wall next to the window hosted a large sink and an old-fashioned wooden toilet seat with a chamber pot in a compartment beneath, the latter obviously for display only. There was also a large—and modern—janitorialtype sink.

On the other wall stood an identical vase cabinet, which seemed exactly opposite of the one in his room, and a yard to the left of that…

Collier leaned over and found the hole. He rubbed his finger against it and found it—

Smooth…

No splinters. I was right, he deduced. The hole was drilled on this side, not mine.

But what did it matter?

He squinted at his thoughts. A former guest realized that Mrs. Butler takes hip baths, so one day he came in here, drilled the hole for the perfect view, and just waited till she did it again. An unpleasing thought traced his imagination now: that Collier likely wasn’t the first man to masturbate while peeping through the hole.

He shrugged, switched off the light, and slipped back to his room. When he climbed into bed, a weirder notion nagged at him.

What…is it?

Something Jiff had said…

…whenever a single fella checks in that she’s got a twinkle for, she gives him room three. Your room.

Jiff had said that at the bar, hadn’t he? Embellishing the offbeat remark about Mrs. Butler having some sort of crush on Collier.

Yes. He was sure of it.

But he’d said something else, too.

It’s ’cos of the view. Bet she even told ya that, huh? That room three’s got the best view?

Collier couldn’t believe what he was considering. Room three’s got the best view, all right. The best view of Mrs. Butler’s bare boobs and butt!

But, no. That was ridiculous.

He couldn’t possibly suspect that it was Mrs. Butler herself who’d drilled that hole, could he?

He shook his head against the pillow, aggravated now. Eventually, he let it all go and fell into a deep slumber…

…and had this dream:

CHAPTER SIX I

The eye of the dream, like the eye of a camera…

Pitchforks flop piles of steaming brown matter to the ground. Female slaves rake the matter until it lays carpet-like. The bright, high sun beats down on it.

Why?

And what is it?

You look out farther and see that this odd brown layer of stuff covers roughly a quarter acre of land…

Slaves roll wheelbarrows of more of the stuff out from an old barn behind you. It’s a constant process. The wheelbarrows come out, slaves with pitchforks empty the barrows, and then the barrows are wheeled back in.

“Rake it out nice and thin!” a Confederate soldier barks.

Then you know. Whatever this brown stuff is, they’re raking it out under the sun, so that it will dry.

You follow the wheelbarrow trail back to the barn. More soldiers in drab gray guard the entrances, rifles—mostly Model 1842 Harpers Ferry muskets—shouldered. You hear some shouts, and the clop of hooves. Around the other side of the barn is a dirt road, which winds down the hill to a train depot. Soldiers surround the depot, and a whitewashed sign reads GAST TERMINAL, MAXON, GEORGIA—C.S.A. From the depot, wagons are departing.

It looks like a lot of wagons.

You assume that some raw material for the war effort is being transferred from the train cars to the wagons—the mysterious steaming brown stuff.

It is peat? You scarcely know what peat is, just a crude fuel source that comes from bog marshes. Did they use it during the Civil War?

It occurs to you then that you don’t really know much about anything. Nevertheless, you decide that the stuff drying out in the field must be peat, and that it is being delivered here by train.

Your eyes widen as you watch. Lines of horse-drawn wagons approach the barn.

You expect to see peat piled high in the wagons, but as they get closer you know you’re wrong. The wagons are full of people.

Women, children, and old men.

They are naked, their wrists bound in front of them. They stand shoulder to shoulder in caged wagons that look medieval. Eventually the line of wagons stops at a barn entrance. You watch, appalled yet intensely curious. Soldiers wield bayoneted muskets and off-load the prisoners from the first wagon and file them into the barn. “Move it, Yankee bitches and grandpas!” one solider yells. “Single file!” another shouts. “Any of yous don’t do as yer tolt, you’re dead!”

When the wagon is empty, it turns and wheels over to an exit door at the other end of the building.

So where’s the peat? you wonder.

There is no peat.

A Confederate major and two enlisted men on horseback approach the barn. They look weary and blanched by dust, but as they slow their horses, they stare at the barn.

“Halt and state your business, sir!” a sentry calls out.

The major dismounts and salutes. “I am Major Tuckton, First North Carolina Infantry, Sergeant. You may stand at ease as I present my orders.” He produces a roll of paper and shows it to the sentry, continuing in an enthused accent. “I am passin’ through to the town of Millen to deliver important intelligence to General Martin.”

The sentry examines the orders and returns them. “Yes, sir!”

“And I need water for my men and horses, as Millen is still quite a trek and I must be there as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir, we’ll take care of ya right away, sir!”

“And let me ask you something, Sergeant. Are you ready for some good news?”

“Yes, sir, you can surely believe that I am…We been hearin’ rumors that the Yankees are fixin’ to take Chattanooga…”

“Yeah, well that ain’t gonna happen, and you can spread the word because our proud General Braxton Bragg just destroyed the Union division at Chickamauga Creek. Those goddamn bastards are fleein’ north, Sergeant, ’cos they know they can’t take the rail junctions in Chattanooga now, not with ten thousand of their men dead. We’re gonna win this war now, Sergeant. Spread the word…”