The Black Train Page 5

  He’d never met a “TV groupie,” and doubted that any existed for the “Prince of Beer.”

  He shook his head, bewildered to the point of headache.

  Hallucination or not, something’s come over me. I’m hornier than I can ever remember, so what’s the reason?

  But why think so negatively? Just that his sex drive had turned hyper didn’t mean there was necessarily anything wrong with him, did it? A healthy sex drive was…healthy. Something was resurfacing in him: a vigorous response to sexual attraction via the genetic urge to be reproductive…

  That must be it.

  Collier felt a lot better after coming to this conclusion, but in truth it was none of these things that were making him hornier than an ape in rut.

  It was the house.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  1857

  When N.P. Poltrock closed his eyes he saw rotten heads and blood being drunk from goblets. He saw limbs shorn by axes and hewers, and men and women thrown naked and very much alive into the belly of a red-hot coal bed. He saw children being raped in the dirt by faceless soldiers in stiff gray uniforms; others were merely masturbated on and strangled. Horses dragging old men and women by nooses around their necks galloped regularly into the hot, smoky compound; just as regularly great jail wagons rolled in from the nearby depot—wagons so stuffed with the beaten and the starving that the bar frames seemed fit to burst. One soldier skewered a little boy in the eye with his bayonet and flung him into the coal bed, while a little girl, no more than fourteen but hugely pregnant, was flung in behind him.

  These were the visions that poured into the darkness behind Poltrock’s closed eyes. He heard endless screams and smelled the stench of human incineration.

  When he opened his eyes, another stench briefly filled his nostrils: old urine.

  Sick.

  Sick.

  That’s how Poltrock had felt since the first day he signed on with Gast.

  “We will lay one hundred miles of track per year,” Gast had told him that day.

  Not with only a hundred workers you won’t, Poltrock thought but chose not to voice.

  Gast had told him this in the den of the mansion he shared with his wife and children. A beautiful house in the center of town, ringed by trees and full of flowers.

  So why did Poltrock keep smelling piss?

  The whites of Gast’s eyes looked yellow, and Poltrock thought he’d noticed that same look in the other men who’d been hired.

  Just my imagination. I’m under the weather, that’s all. Too much to drink last night after the long ride out…

  Gast himself looked like exactly what he was: a vastly wealthy Southern plantation owner. Tailcoats, linen shirt, bow tie, and pointed leather shoes that shined like oil. He stood tall and lean, and the lines in his face suggested he must be upward of fifty. Trimmed muttonchops didn’t look right in the incised, overserious face. “I have signed on fifty men already, some of the finest rail men in the state,” Gast assured. He’d turned just then, looking out the bow window. “But I need an operations manager. You.”

  Poltrock fought off the repeated distractions. “I appreciate your offer, Mr. Gast,” he said in a distinct Southern accent. “But why me?”

  “Because you built the great railroads in Ohio and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth. I need a man like you to run my construction operation.”

  Poltrock felt dizzy. He kept looking to the splendid furnishings and draperies, the crystal vases filled with blooming flowers, but then thought the strangest thing: It’s all covering something up…The house, indeed, inside and out, looked beautiful but it felt…ugly. Corrupted. A sick person in fine clothes.

  For a moment—just a fraction of a moment—again, he smelled urine. But when the moment passed, so did the haunting stench.

  A black maid ushered in a silver tray with cups of minted tea. She said nothing, simply set the service on the desk, glanced once at Poltrock, and left.

  The glance showed Poltrock eyes full of fear. He closed his own eyes again at a wave of nausea. He could not dispel the image that rose: two strong white hands clamped about the maid’s throat, squeezing until the dark face turned even darker, until veins swelled fat as earthworms and the bones in the neck could be heard cracking. When the hands let go, the dead woman’s mouth fell open to ooze abundant semen.

  Then the image retracted to reveal whose hands they were: Poltrock’s.

  God help me, he thought. Where did that unholy vision come from?

  Poltrock had never thought anything so vile in his life. He was a God-fearing Christian. What had caused such a sight to come into his head?

  Gast turned back around, with his yellow eyes. He must have some liver disorder. “Work for me,” he said and handed Poltrock a check.

  It was a finely printed check on heather gray paper. It read RECEIVED OF: Mr. N. P. Poltrock, AGENT OF THE EAST TENNESSEE AND GEORGIA RAILROAD COMPANY, Fifty DOLLARS.

  The unease of the house hampered Poltrock’s reaction. Movement caused him to look to the doorway. He could see into the foyer, where a dowdy teenage girl in a white dress sat on the stairs’ second step. She was petting a dog—a small, wrangly thing with drab brown fur—and scratching behind its ears. For a moment the girl’s eyes looked at Poltrock. She smiled coyly. Now the dog had its head under her dress.

  Poltrock winced and looked away. He reminded himself of the check he’d just been given. Lord, that’s good money. “Just so I’m sure we understand each other, Mr. Gast, but you aim to lay a hundred miles of track per year with a hundred men?”

  “I have a hundred slaves, plus fifty strong white foremen and rail engineers.”

  “I see. So…like I was saying, sir, a hundred miles of track per year. From where to where?”

  “From Camp Roan, just outside of town, to Maxon.”

  “Maxon, Georgia, Mr. Gast?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “That’s halfway to Atlanta, sir,” Poltrock almost raised his voice. The notion was absurd. “That’s five hundred miles.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Gast turned back to the window, with his tea. The sunlight through the trees seemed to create a dark fog about his head. “I, like many, Mr. Poltrock, believe that a war is coming. It will be a great war that will forge our Southern brotherhood into the strongest nation on earth. I have confidantes who believe such a rail line would be imperative for the South to survive such a war.”

  Poltrock shook his head. He didn’t believe any of this war talk. The Congress would make things right for the South. Gast must not remember what the federal army did to Mexico not too long ago. And who were these confidantes? Probably just big money people, more plantation barons. Lots of money and lots of big ideas.

  When he looked again, the girl with the dog was gone from the foyer, but he could swear he heard children giggling from deeper within the house. And—

  There was that smell again: the stench of urine.

  It must be in his mind, for Gast clearly didn’t detect it.

  “The East Tennessee corridor is ideal,” Gast went on. “All the way to Maxon we won’t have to spend a penny excavating; we’ll scarcely have to fell a single tree.”

  “The only thing I know of in Maxon, sir, is the old armory and barrel works.”

  Gast turned again, impressed. “You’re a learned man, Mr. Poltrock. That’s quite correct.”

  “But I also know the furnace there has been permanently shut down. They haven’t made a gun barrel in Maxon since 1814.”

  The jaundiced eyes looked blurred. “Again, you’re correct. But that’s not my interest, nor is it in the interest of my confidantes.”

  Confidantes again, Poltrock thought. Gast just ain’t right in the head and that’s all there is to it. It’s downright crazy to lay five hundred miles of track to a dead town.

  “You just leave that to us,” Gast said, “while we leave the construction of the railroad to you.”

  Poltrock severed his next
objection when more movement caught the corner of his eye. A beautiful woman in white had just swept into the room.

  “Mr. Poltrock. Allow me to introduce you to my wife, Penelope.”

  Poltrock stood up at once.

  The sight hijacked his gaze. All he saw first was the beaming face surrounded by tousles of hair the color of sunlight. A graceful white hand daintily held a fan with embroidered roses.

  “Mrs. Gast,” Poltrock nearly stammered. “It is truly my honor to make your acquaintance.”

  “Likewise, Mr. Poltrock.”

  She extended her hand, which felt hot when Poltrock took it. An erection that made no sense suddenly ached in his trousers. The fragrance of flowers seemed to emanate from her. Poltrock knew he dare not stare but one stolen glance revealed the rest of her: a figure of perfect contours fitted into a pleated bustle dress white as the clouds. By the tenets of the day, it was crude to look directly at another man’s wife—especially a wealthy man’s—and Poltrock found it close to impossible to keep his eyes from falling to the lacy neckline and considerable cleavage exposed.

  “Your fine husband and I were just discussing—”

  “Business,” Gast said abruptly.

  “Oh, I know,” the lilting accent drifted from her lips. “Your important railroad, which will help confederate our Southern states into the most powerful nation in the world.”

  “You can be sure, my dear,” Gast said. “My railroad will be more important to the South than the depot in Chattanooga.” But the look in Gast’s tinted eyes said that he did not appreciate the interruption.

  Penelope Gast stroked her fan a few times, which blew a few strands of golden hair upward. “Will Mr. Poltrock be joining us for lunch?”

  “Of course he will,” Gast answered before Poltrock could. “But we still have business to discuss, so—”

  “Of course, dear,” the woman said. “Have a fine day, Mr. Poltrock.”

  Poltrock gulped and nodded. “And you, too, ma’am.”

  The stunning beauty of the woman rocked Poltrock. He hoped he’d recovered well when he sat back down and said, “You have a wife of great culture and beauty, Mr. Gast. You must be very proud of her.”

  “I certainly am, Mr. Poltrock.”

  Poltrock didn’t think his erection had been noticeable. Good God, I hope not. He closed his eyes again for a moment…

  At once, his nostrils flared and his stomach clenched: the stench of stale urine seemed thick as fog. And then came the words:

  “She’s a whore of the first water. She smells of piss and reeks of weakness and gluttony. She’s fucked dozens of men behind my back, sometimes even slaves. One day, and you can mark my words, I’ll see her raped to the brink of death and then I will personally halve her detestable pussy with an ax.”

  Poltrock’s eyes shot open at the devilish talk, but when he looked around the den…

  Gast wasn’t there. Poltrock was alone.

  He shuddered in place. First those vile images and now this evil talk. Crazy, he thought. This is a crazy house…

  What’s happening to me?

  In his hand, he noticed that he was still holding the check.

  Gast’s fine leather shoes snapped back into the room over the hardwood floor. “My wife is quite a busybody, as I’m sure you noticed. Forgive the interruption to our important discourse.”

  Poltrock tried to shake cobwebs from him head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gast, but I must be much more fatigued from my trip than I thought. I feel so distracted. I didn’t even see you leave the room.”

  “Your long journey from Raleigh, yes—certainly,” Gast remarked. “I escorted my wife to the kitchen; she insisted on showing me the funnel cakes she’d made. Oh, I know she didn’t really make them—she’s terrible in the kitchen—but I let her believe that I think she did. She’s quite worth the accommodation.”

  He wasn’t even in the room when I heard the voice…

  Poltrock was sweating. He was trying to order his thoughts. Somewhere, a dog was barking.

  “Work for me, Mr. Poltrock. You’ll be doing yourself and this great land of ours a proud service.”

  The job, the railroad, Poltrock finally remembered. A hundred miles of track per year, from here to Maxon… He looked at the impressive check still in his hand. “Mr. Gast, fifty dollars a month is indeed a handsome salary, especially with the economy so deflated from Northern taxes, but it’s just that—”

  “I apologize for not making myself clear in the first place,” Gast interrupted with a raised finger. “Not fifty dollars per month, Mr. Poltrock. Fifty dollars per week.” Poltrock stared at the man and his overwhelming offer, and as the words left his mouth to take the job, Poltrock could’ve sworn he smelled urine.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  Collier couldn’t remember what happened in the dream, but he remembered what it smelled like:

  Urine.

  He wakened from the nap aggravated and dry-mouthed. Yes, it was the smell of urine that permeated his slumber, and as he leaned up, he thought he recalled other details, not sights, but sounds.

  A steady and nearly musical sound of metal striking metal. He thought of metal bars being clanged together, or hammers hitting steel. And something else, too…

  A whistle?

  Yeah. Like a whistle in a train yard.

  He rarely dreamed at all, but when he did it was typically of things he could see: people, places. Not sounds and smells.

  When he turned out of bed, he caught himself musing over, first, Lottie’s body, then Mrs. Butler’s.

  Damn it!

  A narrow night table stood by the desk, marbletopped. On it the clock told him it was 6:30 P.M. I invited Jiff to Cusher’s, didn’t I? At seven.

  He roused, then showered in the small but homey bathroom.

  Why smell piss in a dream?

  More puzzlement, a chaser for the entire day. But a brief relief came when he thought again of the sounds. Metal striking metal. Hammers! Sledgehammers driving spikes—of course! This could only signify the sound of men laying railroad track, which made grateful sense since Mrs. Butler had mentioned something about Harwood Gast building a railroad in the late 1850s. Collier remembered the old paycheck in the case she’d shown him—a railroad check.

  The East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad, he remembered. The whistle in the dream, too, could only have been a train whistle.

  One mystery solved, however useless. Next, in the sudden daydream, he pictured himself in the shower…with Lottie…

  If all this horniness is from the fresh air and great outdoors, then I’m MOVING here once Evelyn gets her divorce, he joked to himself. But he couldn’t laugh, for one thing still bothered him.

  That smell…

  One of Collier’s earliest childhood memories, regrettably, involved the smell of urine. He’d been about ten when his father had taken him for a long drive. “Come on, kiddo. We’re going to go visit Granddad at that special apartment he lives in.” Collier was too young to grasp the entire concept of nursing homes, but he got the idea. The whole place smelled bad and was very quiet save for distant shouts. “Here’s his room, son. Now, remember like I told you. Granddad hasn’t been feeling well for a while, and he might not recognize us. But let’s just act like everything’s normal.” Collier guessed Granddad wasn’t in very good shape. When they entered the drab room, though—Collier gagged, and so did his father. The room reeked of urine.

  Granddad’s bed lay empty and stained yellow. Another man in the next bed, who looked like a gray skeleton, jerked his face right at them and toothlessly bellowed, “That fucker don’t do nothin’ but jabber and piss! Turned the damn bed into a damn piss sponge—” A bony finger wagged at them. “—and these lazy fucks here don’t never change the mattress ’cept when one of us dies!” Collier broke out in tears from the shocking rant, but he already had tears in his eyes from the sheer potency of the stench. Strong, saturated, and old. His father ushered him out quickly and that�
�s when they learned that Granddad had died that morning. Collier remembered riding home in strange, choking silence, eyes still stinging long after the tears had abated. Even their clothes reeked of the smell.

  The same unmistakable smell of Collier’s dream, only the dream had been worse.

  Collier stepped out of the shower. Now why the hell would my mind make me dream of the smell of piss!

  He dried off, then slipped on the robe hanging on the door. Gold embroidery on scarlet terry read BRANCH LANDING INN with crossed cannons beneath the letters C.S.A. She really takes this Civil War stuff seriously.

  He stepped back in the bedroom, and stopped.

  Sniffed.

  That’s not urine I smell…is it?

  It was his mind now, he was sure. Like when you were in the woods and were certain you felt a tick on your leg but when you looked there was nothing there…

  He sniffed again and found the only scent to be a cinnamonlike tinge from a bowl of potpourri.

  Thank God…

  Knuckles rapidly tapped at the door.

  Who the…Collier looked at the clock and saw he still had plenty of time before he met Jiff.

  “Hi, sorry if this is a bad time!” The smiling housewifey face beamed when he opened the door. It was the Wisconsin woman.

  Huh? Collier thought. “Oh, of course, your autograph.

  I hadn’t forgotten.” But he thought, Jesus, lady! Can’t you see I just got out of the shower?

  “We’re going out to dinner now,” she explained, “and we didn’t want to miss you. Oh, but we’d love for you to come along.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I’ve already got plans…”

  “Here, could you sign on this please? It would be a wonderful souvenir.”

  She handed him a napkin that had the inn’s name on it. “Sure.” He tried to sound enthused. A flashing glimpse revealed her more closely than before. Probably pretty hot ten years ago. Her plushness was leaning toward fat but she still retained some cuteness within. Short, with a dark coif, and…Stacked, he noted of the volume of flesh filling the bra. The otherwise boring face and eyes lit up with the elation of being so close to a “star.”