Edward Lee - The Black Train

The younger man stepped back in the sun. Poor fucked-up bastard, he thought. He’d made a mess of the fat man’s mustache and Vandyke.

“Game’s over,” the younger man said, hitching up his jeans.

“I-I adore you…”

“Aw, come on now. You know the rules. I gotta go.”

“But—please. Just—”

The gleaming washboard abdomen flexed when the younger man pulled his tight T-shirt back on. “Huh?”

Sheepish, embarrassed. “You know.”

The younger man frowned. “Oh, yeah.” He stepped forward and—

ccccccur-HOCK!

—spat in the fat man’s face.

“Oh, God! Thuh—thank you!”

I HATE turning tricks like this, the younger man thought. Now that he was done, he gazed across the sweeping field. Trace breezes shifted the miles of belthigh rye grass. He’d heard that during the Civil War, Gast’s plantation tracts took up thousands of acres: cotton, soybeans, and corn, mostly. Now it was just green wasteland, and he knew why. But he was not quite complex enough to realize how securely he was standing on a plot of significant American history.

The fat man was still on his knees, crying.

Aw, Jesus! “Why don’t’cha git up now? I need to be gettin’ back.”

Chopped sobs hacked out the words, “But you’re so important to me! I couldn’t live without you!”

Pain in the ass. The younger man only understood a little of this. Usually they pay me to do the sucking, not to GET sucked. Had he been more learned, he’d know that the sexual psychology of some folks was quite skewed. Debasement, like masochism, for instance, served a strange toggle in the mind that had been conditioned for years (since childhood, often) such that what tended to turn most people off—ugliness, abuse, exploitive behavior—lit the fuse of arousal. Oh, well. He didn’t particularly like the overweight bald man, but he similarly didn’t enjoy treating him like sexual garbage. He’d heard somebody talking once about this guy a long time ago named Hitler, who was, like, the king of Germany, and this guy couldn’t even get aroused unless a gal shat on him. The younger man guessed something similar was going on here. Weird, he thought. “Come on now, let’s git. Oh, and where’s my money?”

The quivering, plump hand held it out, a personal check for thirty dollars.

“Thanks,” the younger man said.

“Let’s go to lunch,” came more hacked sobs. “Anywhere you want.”

“Naw. Got business.”

Wet eyes implored him. “At least, at least tell me I do it better than your lover…”

A futile exhalation. “You do fine, that’s for sure,” came the overly generous charity. Actually, it was mediocre work. “But I told you, I ain’t got no lover, and I don’t never get attached in somethin’ like this. You know that. This deal’s gotta be like what we agreed. One thing in exchange for another. Right?”

Dismally, the fat man nodded.

“Here, lemme help ya up,” the younger man offered. He grabbed a fat hand. Ooof! Ya damn near weigh more than a fuckin’ washer’n dryer! Once up, the guy wouldn’t let go of his hand. Ain’t nothin’ worse than a mushy fag. He pulled away.

The fat man stared, tears still streaming. “I’d do anything for you…”

Oh, man! The younger man knew he needed to be careful. After all, this was good money for fast work. “Look, I can tell you’re out’a sorts right now, so I’m gonna take off. I’ll walk back. But just you stay here a while and calm down, git yourself together. You don’t wanna be going back to town all cryin’ like ya are. And wipe that mess off your face.”

A jowly nod, a handkerchief across the eyes, lips, and Vandyke.

“That’s better.” The younger man held up the check. “You call me when ya wanna go again.” And then he turned and walked off.

He strode right out of the clearing into a path between the high grass not even shoulder-wide. Dissolving words faded behind him:

“I love you…”

Shee-it…

He strode faster, to get away. Walking was fine. He liked the fat man’s car—a new Caddy, with some fine a/c—but when he got in these mushy moods, shit—

I’ll walk.

Another step and—

Damn it to hell!

—he stumbled and fell. His knees thunked, and when he arched around to see what he’d tripped on…

His mind quieted.

A brown skull, half buried, looked back at him.

He wasn’t squeamish but then he did believe some of it. He’d seen some things, for sure—out here, and at the house…

A quick chill rippled up his sunbaked back. He knew the skull was very old. He also knew it was likely the skull of a slave, not a soldier killed in the field.

The skulls were actually all over the place.

CHAPTER TWO I

“You’re right,” Collier said to the old woman. He marveled over one of many glass display cases. “Your inn is like a mini-museum.” Below his gaze lay an array of Civil War-era implements. Each one was labeled. MESS PAN—1861, MORTISE TWIVEL—1859, .36-CALIBER SELF-COCKING STARR REVOLVER—1863.

“Just you take a look at the Gast Museum downtown and tell me what we got here ain’t a lot finer’n more interesting,” Mrs. Butler bragged.

The next case sported gloves, belts, and footgear. “Brogen?” he asked of the clunky black shoe.

“That was the standard combat boot back then. They were as important to a fella’s survival on the battlefield as his rifle.” She leaned, pointed to a different styled shoe. The gesture caused Collier to run his gaze across the sweep of her bosom, after which he blinked hard to sideswipe the distraction.

“But this ’un here,” she continued, “was the cream’a the shoe crop. The Jefferson shoe, or bootee as it was called. Mr. Collier, you could put that shoe on right now and it’d fit better than any fancified Gucci you might buy today.”

Collier looked at the high-top leather shoe. Save for a few scuffs, it looked in excellent condition. The label read: FEDERAL PATTERN JEFFERSON BOOTEE—1851—WORN BY MR. TAYLOR CUTTON, RAIL INSPECTOR FOR THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD.

“Everything here was found on this premise at one time or another,” Mrs. Butler said. Now she stood back proudly, crossing her arms under her breasts, which made them appear even larger. “I get a tax break through the state historical commission by displayin’ it all…and by keepin’ that blasted portrait of Gast hangin’ up there.”

The most evil man to ever live here? Collier was amused. It was likely just promotion. “If this man was so evil,” he baited, “I suppose the house is haunted, huh?”

“Only by the memory of that low-down bastard,” came the strange response.

Collier changed the subject, back to the Jefferson shoe and its long-dead owner. “But I’ve never heard of this railroad. Was this prewar?”

“They started in 1857 and finished in 1862,” she said. “It was Gast’s railroad. He put down track from here to the middle’a Georgia, the perfect junction from the main roads that branched into town. He built it with a hundred slaves and fifty white men—not a bad feat for back then. That’s a lotta rail to lay.”

The notion impressed Collier. They had no machines to do it back then, just hard-muscled humans lugging iron rails and driving spikes with hammers. Five years …Collier suspected that the hardest labor he ever did was carrying groceries from the car to the house.

“And this?” he asked.

ASH CAKE—1858

“Ash cake is what they used for soap back then,” Mrs. Collier went on. “Weren’t no Ivory or Irish Spring, you can be sure.”