Edward Lee - The Black Train

“I’d recommend the pan-fried trout cakes in whiskey cream,” Sute mentioned. “It’s state-of-the-art here, and a Southern delicacy.”

“I’ll try it. Last night Jiff and I just had regular old burgers and they were great.”

Sute’s jowly face seemed to seize up. He looked at Collier in a way that was almost fearful. “You—you know… Jiff? Jiff Butler, Helen’s son?”

More to gauge reaction, Collier said, “Oh, sure, Jiff and I are friends. He helped me check in.” Collier remembered Jiff’s similarly odd reaction last night, to Sute’s name. “We had a few beers here last night. He was the one who told me I could find you at the bookstore.”

The reference seemed to knock Sute off center, from which he struggled to recover. “He’s a…friend of mine as well, and a fine, fine young man. What, uh, what else did Jiff say?”

Yes sir, this place and these people are a hoot. What is going on here? Sute was obviously bothered, so Collier acted as though he didn’t notice. “He had a few stories himself, though I’ll be honest in saying that he was even more reluctant than you telling me them. The most interesting one was something about Harwood Gast hanging himself shortly after his prized railroad was finished.”

“Yes, the tree out front,” Sute acknowledged.

“And how several years later, just when the war was ending, several Union troops hung themselves from the same tree.”

“Quite true, quite true…”

Collier leaned forward on his elbows. “Sure, Mr. Sute. But how does anyone really know that?”

Sute grabbed one of the books Collier had purchased, thumbed to a page, and passed it to him.

Another tintype in the xeroxed photo-plate section. The heading: UNION SOLDIERS SENT TO BURN THE GAST HOUSE HANGED THEMSELVES FROM THIS TREE INSTEAD, ON OCTOBER 31, 1864. HARWOOD GAST HANGED HIMSELF FROM THE SAME TREE TWO YEARS EARLIER.

The stark, tinny image showed several federal troops hanging crook-necked from a stout branch.

“That’s…remarkable,” Collier said. “Every picture really does tell a story.”

“There are quite a few such stories, I’m afraid.” Sute’s forehead was breaking out with an uncomfortable sweat. “Did, uh, did Jiff say anything else? Anything about me? ”

This guy is really sweating bullets, Collier saw. Sute’s reaction to Jiff’s name was as curious as the ghost stories. “Just that he did yard work for you sometimes, and that you were the local expert on the town’s history.” Collier decided to stretch some truth, to see what happened. “And, of course, he mentioned that you were a successful author and quite respected in the community. A local legend, he called you.”

Sute gulped, staring at Collier’s remark. “What a—what a generous compliment. Yes, Jiff truly is a wonderful man.” Sute patted his forehead with a handkerchief, squinting through more unreckonable beguilement. “Say, Mr. Collier? Do you mind if I drink? ”

You look like you need to, buddy. “Go right ahead. I’ll be having a few myself.”

Collier ordered a lager while Sute ordered a Grey Goose martini. He’s so flustered he needs booze. Indeed, the mere mention of the name—Jiff—seemed to pack some hypnotic effect on this man. But Collier was getting sidetracked himself. Whatever odd vibe existed between Sute and Jiff wasn’t the point. Collier burned to hear more about—

“And Penelope Gast, the wife? I believe Jiff mentioned that Gast murdered her. Is that right?”

Sute settled down when his first sip of the top-shelf martini drained a third of the glass. “Yes, he did, the day before he hanged himself. And if you want to talk about a person with amplified sexual desires? Mrs. Gast fits that bill quite nicely, and an interesting accompaniment to the nature of the house itself.”

“Are you saying that the house was the reason for her high sexual state?”

Sute mulled it over, with another sip of his drink. “Perhaps, or perhaps the opposite. Some claim that the house didn’t affect her—she affected the house. The sheer evil of her carnality.”

Collier came close to laughing. “Mr. Sute, it sounds to me like she was just another cheating housewife who had the misfortune of getting caught. Being a floozy doesn’t mean her house is possessed. If that were the case, the real estate market in L.A. would be in big trouble.”

“Just another cheating housewife, or something more? No one will ever be able to say for sure,” Sute calmly remarked. “She was reportedly pregnant, and not by her husband. We know this because the local physician had her name in a ledger in his safe.”

“So? Maybe she had an appointment for an earache.”

“She had an appointment for an abortion. The way they did it back then was—” Sute peered up, mildly pained. “It’s uncomfortable to talk about, Mr. Collier. It’s an ugly, ugly story, and not one you’d want to hear before eating your lunch.”

Collier chuckled. “Mr. Sute, my life is so boring in Los Angeles I can’t even see straight most of the time. This is fascinating stuff; I’m really intrigued by it. And besides, it can’t be any grosser than the crime section of the L.A. Times on any given day.”

“So be it. If you want me to oblige you, I’ll oblige you.” The large man cleared his throat. “The way they aborted pregnancies back then was by injecting a distillation of boiled soapberry flowers into the uterine channel. This compound—very astringent—would cause a drastic PH shift in the womb, and usually result in a miscarriage within three days. The town physician’s ledger—and keep in mind, this was a private ledger, for his private activities—plainly listed Mrs. Gast’s appointment as a meeting for an abortion. And prior to that, Mrs. Gast had had three more appointments for the same procedure—at least three on the record; the ledger went back five years. Of course, she didn’t live long enough to make that fourth appointment. Harwood came home earlier than expected—and killed her.”

“How?”

Another pained look. “With an ax.”

“He axed his own wife to death, when she was pregnant? ”

“Yes, and he did so in the very room she’d committed all of her infidelities. She had a special room for these trysts. It was kept locked for her—by the family maid, a slave named Jessa. I shudder to think of how many other secrets Jessa went to her grave with—though I don’t suppose she ever really had a grave, not a proper one. See, Gast murdered her, too, when he became apprised of her collusions with his wife.”

Collier peeped over his beer. “I almost hate to ask.”

“She was…well, she was left out in the fields for the buzzards and the crows.”

Sute’s pause irked Collier. “Left? You mean Gast killed her and then left her body somewhere?”

Sute finished his martini, ordered another, and stolidly replied, “Gast had her raped to death, by twenty of his most loyal rail workers. Then her body was discarded in the fields behind the house. The mass rape, by the way, took place in the same room that Mrs. Gast would be murdered in later that day—”

Raped to death. Yeah, it’s hard to get grimmer than that.

“—and I might add, since you insist on some of the more morbid details, that Mrs. Gast received similar attentions from Gast’s roughriders, while he watched, of course.”

“I don’t get it. Mrs. Gast was gang-raped to death, too? I thought you said she was killed with an—”

“She wasn’t quite raped to the point of death—this by Gast’s particular order. After a few hours, and when she was just about to give up the ghost, that’s when Gast put the ax to her.”