Edward Lee - The Black Train

“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.

CHAPTER ONE 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.