The Black Train

“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…

He winced until the dirty image was gone.

When he looked again, the woman was on her tiptoes, a great big white dental-bleached smile. She was waving at him.

“Pardon me, pardon me,” she was saying.

“Yes?”

“You’re Justin Collier, aren’t you?”

Collier tried not to sigh. “Why, yes.”

“Oh, we’re big fans! Look, honey, it’s the Prince of Beer!”

The husband waved, too. “Love your show, Mr. Collier.”

“Thanks.”

The wife: “Could we get your autograph?”

He could’ve groaned. “It would be my pleasure—” But then the vestibule doors opened, and in trod Lottie with his suitcase and laptop bag. Off the hook for the moment, Collier thought. “But let me catch you later today. I’m just now checking in.”

“Of course,” the giddy woman said. “Nice meeting you!”

“Last room on the stair hall, Mr. Collier,” the old lady added.

A fake smile; then he rushed to Lottie.

“Here, let me take one,” he said, but she just grinned and shook her head no.

The old lady’s right, she’s strong as a mule. She effortlessly hauled the cumbersome bags up the staircase. Lean legs took the steps two at a time. Collier wasn’t sure why at first—he deliberately lagged several stairs behind her—but then…

More pervert instinct, he assumed.

He was trying to look up her denim skirt. For only a second he caught white panties bunched up the crack of a delectable little rump.

What is WITH me today?

Maroon carpet took them down the main stair hall; over the rail Collier could hear Mrs. Butler’s jack-jawing with the Wisconsin couple. He fought the urge to look down, hoping for a cleavage view of both women but this time he gritted back the impulse. How come I’m suddenly obsessed with sex! he demanded of himself. When no answer came, he took to eyeing Lottie’s rump and the backs of her toned legs. He felt crazed by the imagery, and could imagine no reason why. Even her Achilles tendons and her bare heels seemed enticing, and the drab shanks of hair, the backs of her arms, her fingers wrapped around his suitcase handles seemed inexplicably erotic…

When she stopped and set the cases down, he stalled, then remembered he’d already been given his key. Last room on the stair hall, he’d been told. He put the key in—

Lottie tugged his arm, shaking her head. She pointed to the door she stood beside.

“I thought your mother said last room on the—”

She seemed to lip something he didn’t catch—