Edward Lee: The Black Train

Maybe I’m just getting old, he considered. But forty-four wasn’t old, was it?

Damn…

The only thing Hertz had to rent at the airport was this awkward VW Bug. It looks like a kiddie car, was the first simile that came to mind when the clerk gave him the keys. Worse was the color: sherbet green. Yeah, I can see me driving THIS on the 405. The inside was aggravatingly cramped, but he could still see Lookout Mountain, site of a famous Civil War battle that had put the final nail in Confederate pomp. The image soothed him, not that the mountain signified a wartime slaughter, but the assurance it brought that he was nowhere near L.A.

More miles passed behind him. When he’d run a Map-Quest for Gast, Tennessee, he kept getting that PAGE EXPIRED message. He’d found it on a 7-Eleven map but the convolution of minor roads had turned into a maddening webwork. How hard could it be to find a town with such an unlikely name? It took another hour before he came upon a sign: GAST, TENNESSEE—TOWN LINE. A CIVIL WAR HISTORICAL SITE.

Finally!

The town stood bright in its reincarnated anachronism: fine clapboard buildings lining a cobblestone main drag called NUMBER 1 STREET. Normal-looking middleclassers walked to and fro on immaculate sidewalks, past the expected antique shops, bistros, and collector’s warrens. MINIE BULLETS! one sign boasted. BATTLEFIELD MAPS!

At the corner, two elderly ladies strolled by and smiled. Collier smiled back—“Good afternoon, ladies”—but then it appeared they were chuckling. It’s this eyesore on wheels! he realized. The oddball car stuck out here like a sore thumb. Hurry up and turn green! he thought of the traffic light. More pedestrians, now, stopped to eye the car with furtive smiles. That’s definitely making an entrance …He turned aimlessly, just to get away from the passersby but immediately spotted the sign and arrow: LODGING.

Collier bisected roads similarly marked—NUMBER 2 STREET, NUMBER 3 STREET, etc.—but noted the road he was on: PENELOPE STREET. Collier peered ahead. The road side-wound up plush green hills, atop which sat a splendid antebellum house. Could it be a hotel?

Some joint. Collier wasn’t much into architecture but when he pulled round the center court, he couldn’t help but be impressed. An elaborate two-story veranda formed the main structure’s face, propped by Doric columns chiseled with intricate fluting. The center edifice was octagonal and walled by handmade red bricks, while four more one-story wings flanked outward. White clapboard comprised these wings, and each possessed a deep wraparound porch. Out front a granite boy in Confederate dress blew water from a flute into a mortar-and-stone pond beside which grew a gnarled oak tree more massive than any Collier could remember. He parked and got out. The shadow of the central building cooled him.

Lush weeping willows, fifty feet high, fronted the estate, while some even older oak trees seemed to circle the immediate property.

Collier approached. Streams of ivy crawled up the octagon’s eroded brick walls. He noticed several cars parked in a side lot, and hoped they belonged to guests, not just staff; in spite of the building’s old splendor, Collier didn’t want to be the lone lodger. Though he couldn’t be sure, he believed he might’ve seen a face peering at him from a narrow window on the closest addition. The face looked inquisitive, or warped by old glass.

WELCOME TO THE BRANCH LANDING INN, the high stone entablature read. A low brick next to the door had been crudely engraved: MAIN HOUSE, 1850.

White granite blocks framed a massive front door. Since this was obviously a rooming house, he didn’t feel the need to knock in spite of the presence of a peculiar knocker: a face of brass bearing wide, empty eyes but no nose or mouth. For some reason, the knocker caused an odd sensation; then he reached for the brass doorknob and noticed that it, too, had been imprinted with the featureless face.

Collier almost shouted—

An unseen hand opened flat on the small of his back, while another hand opened the door for him.

“Jesus!”

A short woman in her early thirties had come up behind him without making a sound. Collier looked at her after the start she’d given him: short, petite, and shapely. She was barefoot and dressed in a shoddy denim frock. Couldn’t be a guest, he thought, but then he spotted a name tag: HELLO! MY NAME IS LOTTIE.

Collier brought a hand to his chest. “Wow, you really scared me. I didn’t see you.”

She smiled and remained holding the door for him.

“So you work here?”

She nodded.

Now that the scare had receded he noticed that her body was exceptional but her face was less than comely, and her eyes seemed dull, even crooked. She smiled again. A shag of unkempt muddy brown hair had been cropped at the middle of her neck.

The moment seemed disarrayed. She simply stood there without saying a word, holding the door.

“Thank you.”

He entered a small but ornate vestibule which fronted another set of doors, only these were angled plate glass. The thick oval throw rug beneath their feet appeared handwoven.

“So, Lottie. Do you have any rooms available?”

She nodded again.

Not exactly a chatterbox.

A pleasant chime pealed when the next door came fully open. They stepped into an enormous entrance salon, whose thirty-foot-high ceiling dragged Collier’s gaze upward. Very large oil paintings hung high behind the service counter, and higher than those stretched a long stair hall. More patterned throw rugs covered the hardwood floor, these much more refined than the thick vestibule rug. Antique sitting tables surrounded by high-back chairs were arranged about the great open space, and glass-faced book and display cases lined the walls.

Impressive, Collier thought.

Semicircular stairwells swept up on either side of the long mahogany service counter, and behind the counter a wall of stained oak pilasters touted hand-carved flower designs.

“This really is a beautiful place,” Collier mentioned to the girl.

She nodded.

It was twenty feet to the check-in counter; behind it, an old woman’s face looked up and smiled through wrinkles. Midsixties, probably. A storm cloud-gray perm of curls, very short, crawled around her head—the kind of hairstyle that only women close to nursing-home age thought looked good. Even at a distance, Collier could detect the deepness of the wrinkles, and bags under her eyes, and the face seemed almost masculine with its slab cheeks and heavy jaw. Collier immediately thought, If Jack Palance had a twin sister…I’m looking at her.

“We’ll I’ll be!” her peppy twang rang out. “I say it must be celebrity month!”

“Pardon me?”

“I swear I seen you on the TV!”

Collier hated to be “recognized.”

The elderly eyes glittered between puffy lids. “Couple weeks ago we had some fella from the New York Yankees check in, and now we got the Prince of Beer!”

“Hi,” Collier said, depressed already. Now he had to put up the front. “Justin Collier,” he said and extended his hand.

“I’m Mrs. Helen Butler, and welcome to the Branch Landing Inn. That short little thing standin’ next to you’s my daughter, Lottie. I run the place, she keeps it spick-and-span.”

Collier nodded to Lottie, who nodded eagerly back.

“Lottie don’t talk,” Mrs. Butler explained. “Never could for some reason. She tried when she was a tot but could just never get it, so one day she quit tryin’.”

Lottie splayed her hands and shrugged.

Mrs. Butler jabbered on. “Why, I saw ya on the TV just last night.”