The Black Train Page 10

  Cheek to floor, he lay for many moments, eyes wide in the dark, heart racing down. Impulse urged him to get up and watch the last of Mrs. Butler’s private antics but he simply couldn’t move.

  Paralyzed…

  When he put his hand down to push himself up, it landed on a damp spot. Oh, sure, Collier, go ahead and jerk off on the rug. It was only handwoven in the 1850s and should probably be in the fucking Smithsonian.

  When he got back to his knees, he looked in the peephole but found it dark. He fumbled to his feet, turned on the bed lamp, and took some tissues to feebly daub up what semen he could.

  The residue of his sperm left damp marks that could’ve been a gorilla’s handprint. It’ll dry up, he hoped.

  Then, for some reason, he looked back at the hole.

  Questions occurred to him now. Like: Who drilled it?

  Some kink who’d rented this room before me…

  And now that he thought of it, the hole had obviously been drilled with some thought behind it. A perfect deadeye view of the hip tub, he reasoned. The hole had even been angled down, to maximize the tub’s position and ensure that the woman’s crotch, belly, and breasts all fit into the circumference. I guess you call that Pervert’s Craftsmanship.

  He inadvertently touched the hole and found it splintery.

  Hmm.

  His ruminations started to tick, and he quickly redressed, left his room, and went to the bath closet’s door. He knew Mrs. Butler wasn’t in there anymore because he’d seen the light was off. The stair hall, both ways, stood empty. Collier entered the bath closet.

  Warm air touched his face, and he smelled an expected soapy fragrance. His finger clicked the lights on.

  The hip tub remained in place but had been emptied. The wall next to the window hosted a large sink and an old-fashioned wooden toilet seat with a chamber pot in a compartment beneath, the latter obviously for display only. There was also a large—and modern—janitorialtype sink.

  On the other wall stood an identical vase cabinet, which seemed exactly opposite of the one in his room, and a yard to the left of that…

  Collier leaned over and found the hole. He rubbed his finger against it and found it—

  Smooth…

  No splinters. I was right, he deduced. The hole was drilled on this side, not mine.

  But what did it matter?

  He squinted at his thoughts. A former guest realized that Mrs. Butler takes hip baths, so one day he came in here, drilled the hole for the perfect view, and just waited till she did it again. An unpleasing thought traced his imagination now: that Collier likely wasn’t the first man to masturbate while peeping through the hole.

  He shrugged, switched off the light, and slipped back to his room. When he climbed into bed, a weirder notion nagged at him.

  What…is it?

  Something Jiff had said…

  …whenever a single fella checks in that she’s got a twinkle for, she gives him room three. Your room.

  Jiff had said that at the bar, hadn’t he? Embellishing the offbeat remark about Mrs. Butler having some sort of crush on Collier.

  Yes. He was sure of it.

  But he’d said something else, too.

  It’s ’cos of the view. Bet she even told ya that, huh? That room three’s got the best view?

  Collier couldn’t believe what he was considering. Room three’s got the best view, all right. The best view of Mrs. Butler’s bare boobs and butt!

  But, no. That was ridiculous.

  He couldn’t possibly suspect that it was Mrs. Butler herself who’d drilled that hole, could he?

  He shook his head against the pillow, aggravated now. Eventually, he let it all go and fell into a deep slumber…

  …and had this dream:

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  The eye of the dream, like the eye of a camera…

  Pitchforks flop piles of steaming brown matter to the ground. Female slaves rake the matter until it lays carpet-like. The bright, high sun beats down on it.

  Why?

  And what is it?

  You look out farther and see that this odd brown layer of stuff covers roughly a quarter acre of land…

  Slaves roll wheelbarrows of more of the stuff out from an old barn behind you. It’s a constant process. The wheelbarrows come out, slaves with pitchforks empty the barrows, and then the barrows are wheeled back in.

  “Rake it out nice and thin!” a Confederate soldier barks.

  Then you know. Whatever this brown stuff is, they’re raking it out under the sun, so that it will dry.

  You follow the wheelbarrow trail back to the barn. More soldiers in drab gray guard the entrances, rifles—mostly Model 1842 Harpers Ferry muskets—shouldered. You hear some shouts, and the clop of hooves. Around the other side of the barn is a dirt road, which winds down the hill to a train depot. Soldiers surround the depot, and a whitewashed sign reads GAST TERMINAL, MAXON, GEORGIA—C.S.A. From the depot, wagons are departing.

  It looks like a lot of wagons.

  You assume that some raw material for the war effort is being transferred from the train cars to the wagons—the mysterious steaming brown stuff.

  It is peat? You scarcely know what peat is, just a crude fuel source that comes from bog marshes. Did they use it during the Civil War?

  It occurs to you then that you don’t really know much about anything. Nevertheless, you decide that the stuff drying out in the field must be peat, and that it is being delivered here by train.

  Your eyes widen as you watch. Lines of horse-drawn wagons approach the barn.

  You expect to see peat piled high in the wagons, but as they get closer you know you’re wrong. The wagons are full of people.

  Women, children, and old men.

  They are naked, their wrists bound in front of them. They stand shoulder to shoulder in caged wagons that look medieval. Eventually the line of wagons stops at a barn entrance. You watch, appalled yet intensely curious. Soldiers wield bayoneted muskets and off-load the prisoners from the first wagon and file them into the barn. “Move it, Yankee bitches and grandpas!” one solider yells. “Single file!” another shouts. “Any of yous don’t do as yer tolt, you’re dead!”

  When the wagon is empty, it turns and wheels over to an exit door at the other end of the building.

  So where’s the peat? you wonder.

  There is no peat.

  A Confederate major and two enlisted men on horseback approach the barn. They look weary and blanched by dust, but as they slow their horses, they stare at the barn.

  “Halt and state your business, sir!” a sentry calls out.

  The major dismounts and salutes. “I am Major Tuckton, First North Carolina Infantry, Sergeant. You may stand at ease as I present my orders.” He produces a roll of paper and shows it to the sentry, continuing in an enthused accent. “I am passin’ through to the town of Millen to deliver important intelligence to General Martin.”

  The sentry examines the orders and returns them. “Yes, sir!”

  “And I need water for my men and horses, as Millen is still quite a trek and I must be there as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir, we’ll take care of ya right away, sir!”

  “And let me ask you something, Sergeant. Are you ready for some good news?”

  “Yes, sir, you can surely believe that I am…We been hearin’ rumors that the Yankees are fixin’ to take Chattanooga…”

  “Yeah, well that ain’t gonna happen, and you can spread the word because our proud General Braxton Bragg just destroyed the Union division at Chickamauga Creek. Those goddamn bastards are fleein’ north, Sergeant, ’cos they know they can’t take the rail junctions in Chattanooga now, not with ten thousand of their men dead. We’re gonna win this war now, Sergeant. Spread the word…”

  The sergeant shouts in glee. He drops his rifle and runs toward the other sentries. “Get water for the major and his men, and tell everybody that we just crushed the Yankees at Chickamauga!�
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  The news spreads like a virus. Whistles, hoots, and shouts of celebration rock the air.

  When the sergeant returns with a watering detail, the major’s brow rises. “Sergeant, what is goin’ on here?” and he points to the wagons and the naked crowd being filed into the barn.

  The sergeant pauses. “Prisoner processin’, sir.”

  The major removes his hat and brushes his hair back. “But I thought we was sendin’ all Yankee prisoners to that new place just south’a here, Andersonville.”

  “These here are civilian prisoners, sir.”

  “But…I don’t see no prison here, Sergeant. Just that big barn.” The major starts to walk toward the barn. “I’d like to know what’s goin’ on here—”

  “I-I beg your indulgence, sir,” the sergeant interrupts and offers another roll of paper. “But here are my orders for you to examine. See, sir, this area is a restricted perimeter by order of the provisional deputy of engineering operations, a Mr. Harwood Gast.”

  “Who? A civilian issuin’ military orders? I don’t recognize civilian decrees—”

  “Oh, no, sir, it’s a military order, which is countersigned by General Caudill.”

  “Hmm…” The major reads the order, perplexed. “I see…”

  “But thank you for the glorious news about General Bragg, sir! Lincoln’ll surely sign an armistice now, won’t he?”

  The major seems distracted, looking quizzically at the barn. “Oh, yeah, Sergeant, he likely will, now that he knows he can’t get his hands on the Tennessee railheads. Once Europe hears of this great victory, they will surely recognize the C.S.A. They’ll threaten to stop trade with the North if they don’t call a truce and recognize us as an independent nation now…” But he shakes his head, at the barn. “You may carry on, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir!” and the sergeant runs back to the sentry post.

  Now the major is looking—

  At you.

  He walks up and you snap to attention. You do not salute because you are under arms.

  “Good afternoon, sir!”

  “At ease, Private.” Behind him, the major’s men are watering the horses. “Can you tell me what the hell’s goin’ on in that barn?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know.”

  “Strangest thing…” The major squints up. The prisoners previously filed into the barn are now coming out at the farther entrance, and getting back in the wagon. The wagon departs up a hill.

  “And who is this man Harwood Gast? I ain’t never heard of him.”

  “He’s a civilian appointee, I believe, sir,” you say but have no idea where that information came from. “A private financier I’ve heard him called. He built the alternate railroad that comes here from eastern Tennessee.”

  “Oh, yeah, the one out’a that junction in Branch Landing, right?”

  “I believe so, sir. What I heard is he paid for it with his own money, laid five hundred miles’a track, sir.”

  “Hmm, yeah, okay. Just another rich guy in cahoots with the new government. Probably tryin’ to buy his way onto President Davis’s cabinet or somethin’.”

  “Yes, sir, I guess that’s the case.”

  The major seems aggravated, fists on hips as he continues to stare at the barn, where the next wagonload of naked civilians is being off-loaded.

  “Oh, well, orders are orders. Carry on, Private.”

  “Yes, sir!” you snap.

  The major gets back on his horse. One of his men points behind him, to the field…

  “Now what the hell is goin’ on there I wonder?” the major mumbles.

  “Looks like they’re sun-dryin’ peat,” the other rider says.

  “They use peat to make coal easier to light,” says the third rider, “and the barrel works is just up the way.”

  “Yeah, peat,” the major concludes, though without much conviction. “I guess that’s what it is…Come on, men, let’s get out’a here…”

  They ride off.

  You resume your post around the barn. Yes, the wagon is heading up a hill, and behind the hill you see smoke. You look back out to the field and notice slaves raking up some of the dark stuff off the ground and putting it in more wagons…

  On your rounds you overhear other soldiers talking…

  “Seems a waste’a time to me…And where do they go after this?”

  “Other side of the hill it looks like.”

  “The old rifle works?”

  “Ain’t old no more. Been completely rebuilt by that Gast fella. You seen him. I heard it’s now the hottest blast furnace in the country. He was around a lot last month when they was finishin’ the train depot down yonder.”

  “Oh, the guy with muttonchops…”

  “Yeah, and the white horse.”

  “And there must be a big stockade somewhere beyond the works. As for what we’re doin’ here—shee-it, armies been doin’ that for a thousand years. The spoils’a war is what it’s called. Usin’ the enemy’s resources ’cos they sure as hell’d do the same to us. Shit, now that Lincoln won’t exchange prisoners no more, what else can we do? I been hearin’ some ungodly stories ’bout that Yankee prison in Annapolis. Starvin’ our men, beatin’ ’em.”

  “Goddamn Union can go to hell, and we’ll send ’em there. A’course what we’re doin’ here is all right. You heard that, Major. We just kicked the Yankees out of Tennessee. General Lee’s army’ll surely be capturin’ Washington by December.”

  “Yeah, and they got cold winters up there. Our boys need good sleepin’ bags…”

  You still don’t understand yet you march your post via some order beyond your consciousness. They’re drying something in that field, you realize. And it’s NOT peat. It’s something coming from the barn…

  Your perimeter march takes you around the other side. No doorways on this wall but there is a half door, with the top half open.

  Go look inside…

  As you approach, a stench rises. It’s an appalling smell and also an incomprehensible one. These civilian prisoners probably hadn’t washed in months but only part of the stench was body odor. Their clothes had all been stripped, obviously, to reuse the fabric for the war effort, but now that you thought of it, why go to all this trouble to confine and feed women, children, and old men? They were of no military value…

  Then you look into the barn—

  Large wood fires burn in each corner, and over each fire sits a kettle six feet wide. The kettles are boiling, gushing the foul-smelling steam, and each is being stirred by a male slave with a long wooden paddle.

  “Boil it good, boys,” a pistol-bearing officer barks.

  But what are they boiling in the kettles?

  “Gotta kill all that dirty Yankee lice ’fore it’s fit for our men…”

  You still don’t understand…until you look to the center of the barn where there is an incessant snick—snick—snick sound…

  The mostly nude prisoners are standing in a silent line. They’re all very skinny, ribs showing, knees knobby. Some of the women show signs of pregnancy; in fact, so do some of the female children just entering puberty.

  “Next ten! Come on, hurry it up!”

  Ten at a time the prisoners are called to the center of the barn where ten grim-faced Negro women wait, each holding a pair of shears.

  Their duty now is clear. They quickly clip all of the hair off the prisoners’ heads.

  “Arms up!”

  Next, tufts of underarm hair are shorn off to fall to the ground.

  “Feet apart! Hurry!”

  Now each Negro kneels, shears poised. All pubic hair is similarly snipped off. Children too young to have any are merely shorn of their head hair and sent to the second door where they reboard the wagon…

  They’re boiling hair, you realize, wide-eyed. Then it’s dried in the sun and used to stuff mattresses and sleeping bags…

  After several cycles the hair sits in veritable piles. The cutters take a few minutes to scoop up the ha
ir and drop it in the kettles after the previous batch is skimmed out and dropped steaming into a waiting wheelbarrow.

  Hence, the process.

  A farm for human mattress filling.

  On several occasions, you see soldiers throw some women into the kettles, who are left to churn for a minute and are then pulled out. The soldiers stand round guffawing as they watch these unfortunates shriek and shudder, red-skinned, on the floor, their eyes boiled and their faces steaming. You have the distinct impression that the soldiers are doing this simply for amusement.

  You step back gagging, a monstrous taste in your mouth. You stagger backward to see out of the corner of your eye the wagon heading up the hill, only now the forlorn captives are all bald.

  The wave of nausea threatens to keel you over, and from a distance you hear some shouting.

  “Get her!”

  You look out but only see through a shifting vertigo of sickness…

  “Private! Shoot that escaping prisoner right now!”

  You’re still staggering. When your vision clears, you see a bald and very naked little girl running away from the barn.

  “SHOULDER YOUR WEAPON AND FIRE!” a red-faced lieutenant is screaming as he approaches. You raise your weapon and sight the target in the V-notch. Your finger touches the trigger…

  “What are you waitin’ for!”

  “But-but, sir,” you stammer, “it’s just a-a little girl…”

  A pistol barrel touches your temple. “Private, if you do not shoot that escaping prisoner, I will kill you right now and put your hair in with the next batch!”

  I’m not going to do it, you think but nevertheless you take a breath, let half of it out, and squeeze the trigger. The hammer snaps, striking the brass primer cap, and after a split-second delay, the musket tries to leap out of your hand. Black powder blows the .69-caliber smoothbore minié ball out of the muzzle with a deafening boom and a belch of smoke.

  Your eyes were closed when you squeezed the trigger but you hear a faint thwack! and a child’s shriek.

  The lieutenant is fanning gun smoke with his hat. “Fine shot, Private! You hit that kid right in the back even as she was turnin’!”