Edward Lee - The Black Train

The grayish cake was the size of a hockey puck. “How was it made?”

“They throwed a bunch of animal fat in a barrel of boiling water. Horse fat, mostly. Never pork or beef ’cos them was good for eatin’. So they boil the fat and slowly add ashes—any kind: leaves, grass, plants. Boil some more, then add more ashes, boil some more, then add more ashes, like that all day long. By the time the water’s all cooked off, the fat’s broken down and mixed with the ashes. That’s when you cut your cakes and set ’em out to dry.” Her old finger tapped the glass. “Works as good as anything they make today in fancy factories. It’s rough but gets you cleaner than a whistle. See, people didn’t wash much back then, only every Saturday before the Sabbath, and not much at all during the winter—back then a bath could give you pneumonia. Ladies would clean themselves a bit more than fellas, though, with hip baths.”

“Hip baths?”

“Just a little tub with leg cutouts. You lower your privates into it. We’ve got one here—upstairs right next to your room’s a matter of fact. I’ll show it to ya.”

Collier couldn’t wait to see the hip bath.

“So much about the old days folks just got the wrong idea about. About the South in general.”

The next objects in the case seemed bizarre: six-inch-long metal implements with coiled springs on the end. NAUGHTY GIRL CLIPS—1841. “What on earth are these? They look like clothespins.”

Mrs. Butler smiled, and reached for the cabinet.

Collier’s eyes widened as she leaned forward. He just couldn’t keep his gaze off her bosom…

“Stick your finger out, Mr. Collier,” she instructed.

“What?”

“Go on. Stick it out.”

Collier chuckled and did so.

The tines squeezed down and began to hurt at once.

“See, when little girls were naughty, their daddies put one’a these on their finger.”

Only five seconds had passed and Collier was wincing.

“How long the clip’d stay on depended on how bad the little girl was, see? Say she didn’t do her mornin’ chores, for example; then she’d likely get the clip on for fifteen seconds.” The old lady’s eyes smiled. “Hurt yet, Mr. Collier?”

“Uh, yeah,” he admitted. It felt like pliers on his finger.

“Or say she stole a piece of rock candy from the general store; then she’d probably get a minute…”

Collier’s finger was throbbing in pain, and he’d only done twenty seconds so far.

“And if she ever dared talk back to her momma or daddy—two minutes at least.”

Collier chewed his lip a few seconds more, then insisted, “Take it off!”

Mrs. Butler complied, clearly amused. Collier’s crimped finger was red above the joint. “Aw, but you barely done thirty seconds, Mr. Collier.”

He wagged his hand. “That hurt like hell…”

“I’ll bet’cha it did. That’s why little girls didn’t act up much in the good old days. A couple minutes with the clip was all the discipline they needed. Wasn’t uncommon for a little girl to wear it five minutes for usin’ profanity, or gettin’ sent home from the schoolhouse.”

“Five minutes?” Collier objected. “In this day and age, they’d call that child torture.”

“Um-hmm. But I dare say, if our teachers used these clips in the schools today, we wouldn’t be havin’ all these problems we see on the news.” She put the bizarre clip back in the case. “I’m sure you agree.”

Collier couldn’t dredge a reply. “But those clips were only used on girls?”

“That’s right.”

“What about the boys?”

A self-assured snicker. “When boys misbehaved, their daddy’d simply take ’em out to the woodshed for a thrashin’.”

“Ah. Of course.” Collier rubbed his finger. He was a bit pissed by the history lesson. That hurt like hell! he wished he could bark at her. But her next gesture deleted the incident.

She unfastened her top button, then vigorously fanned the V of her blouse—which only revealed more of the awesome bosom.

“I keep forgettin’ to turn the a/c up higher this time of day,” she said. The sun was beating in through the high front windows. “Are you hot, Mr. Collier?”

Only below the belt, he thought. The image of the flesh of her bosom and the deep cleavage stoked him. “A little, now that you mention it.”

“I’ll take care of that presently.” She kept puffing the blouse; Collier could see a mist of sweat frosting the skin within.

Something else caught his eye in the last case: a pale gray slip of paper that looked like an old bank check. He squinted.

RECEIVED OF: Mr. N. P. Poltrock, AGENT OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY, Fifty DOLLARS.

“Wow,” Collier remarked when he noted the check’s handwritten date. Sept. 16, 1862. “What an old document, and it looks in perfect shape.”

Mrs. Butler stopped puffing air through her cleavage. Her expression soured. “A paycheck from Gast’s damned railroad. But, yes, it is quite old.”

Gast again. The very mention of anything related to him corrupted her disposition.

“It’s just terribly interesting, isn’t it?”

“What’s that, Mr. Collier?”

“A piece of paper signed by someone during the Civil War.”

“We prefer to call it the War of Northern Aggression,” she insisted.

“But wasn’t it Southern aggression that actually started the war?” Collier said and immediately thought better of it. “It was the Confederacy that bombarded Fort Sumter.”

“But it was the North, Mr. Collier, who begged for it by charging high tariffs on cotton exports,” she snapped.

“I see…” Collier looked at the check again, imagining it being signed nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, when the solidity of the nation was dangling by a thread.

“Where is that silly child with your bags?” she asked, frowning at the door.

“I better go help her. They’re pretty heavy—”

“No, no, please. Believe me, it’s a thrill for the poor thing. It’ll tickle her pink to carry a celebrity’s bags.”

Collier frowned when she wasn’t looking. I was a minor celebrity at best, and now I’m a has-been celebrity. He didn’t have the fortitude to tell her his show was being canceled. Then the myth would be shattered, and all I got is the myth…

The bell at the desk rang. Collier noticed two guests—a couple in their thirties. Tourists, he discerned. A camera slung around the man’s neck. He was nondescript in a tasteless striped short-sleeve shirt and beige Dockers strained at the waist. He held a finger up to Mrs. Butler.

“Oh, the Wisconsin folks,” she muttered. “They must want a tour brochure. I’ll be right back, Mr. Collier.”

“Sure.”

Some unknown force commanded Collier’s eyes to fix on her rump as she hurried to the desk. If she only had a face that wasn’t quite so…OLD! He felt prickly sweat at his brow…

He pretended to survey more oddments in the case: a hand-scraped burl bowl from the early 1700s, a debarking iron from a century later. The next item looked intimidating: a brass-hilted knife that had to be a foot and a half long. GEORGIA ARMORY SABER BAYONET—CIRCA 1860—OWNED BY MR. BEAUREGARD MORRIS OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY. The sheer size of the blade gave Collier a twinge. The blade looked almost new and didn’t show a speck of rust. I wonder if anyone was ever killed by that thing? the question blared into his mind.

He scanned more items as Mrs. Butler’s charming drawl engaged the new couple. She was passing them some local tour brochures…Now Collier was eyeing the tourist woman. A plain Jane with a little paunch but still shapely. Wide hips stretched her own beige slacks—also too tight, like the husband’s—and Collier’s vision focused at the bosom, and then an image barraged his mind: Collier pulling her top off and pressing his face between her breasts…