The Black Train Part 17

"Really?"

"There's long been the suggestion that Gast sold his proverbial soul...to a demon."

Collier rubbed his eyebrows, if anything, laughing at himself now. That other stuff? It was just human nature, plus too much beer. He was seeing what the fabulist in him wanted to see. People make any excuse to think they've seen a ghost. More human nature, primal human nature. He was the Cro-Magnon listening to the scary story in the cave, and just knowing that that sound he'd heard in the woods was a Wendigo or a lost soul.

And now Sute was professing demons.

"I'm glad you said that, Mr. Sute. Because now, your story isn't really that disturbing anymore."

"I'm glad. You don't believe in ghosts then?"

"No, not at all."

"Nor in demons?"

"Nope. I was raised in a Christian family-" Collier felt an inner gag. Peeping on a sixty-five-year-old woman taking a bath, coitus interruptus with Lottie, getting drunk to the gills, plus a burning, unabated, unrepentant l.u.s.t...Jesus, what am I trying to say? "What I mean is, I'm not what you'd call a practicing Christian, but-"

Sute nodded, with a cryptic smile. "You were influenced by the faith. They say that more than half of the Americans who even call themselves Christians never even go to church."

That would be me, Collier realized.

"But I think what you're trying to say is that some of your upbringing, in the midst of Christian values, has remained with you."

"Right. And I don't believe in demons."

"How about Christian thesis in general? Do you believe that?"

"Well, yeah, sure. The Ten Commandments, the New Testament, and all that. Blessed are the pure of heart. I mean, I guess I even believe in Jesus."

"Then you believe in basic Christian ideology," Sute observed more than asked.

His hypocrisy raged. I'm profane, I'm l.u.s.tful, I'm gluttonous, I'm a pretty serious sinner, but, sure, I believe it. "Sure," he said.

Sute rose, and pointed at him. "In that case, Mr. Collier, then you do believe in demons. Because Christ acknowledged their reality. *I am Legion, for we are many.' And on that note, I must excuse myself momentarily."

Collier watched him depart for the restroom.

The conversation's shadow hovered over him. In truth, he didn't know how to define his beliefs at all. When he turned, his vision was cut off by a pair of ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s in a tight white T-s.h.i.+rt, and a silver cross between them.

"Did I hear you right? You were discussing...Christian thesis?"

Collier looked up, slack-jawed. It was Dominique. She'd removed the ap.r.o.n and was standing right next to him.

Collier didn't know how to reply. He was hypocritically claiming a Christian ideal to explain why he didn't believe in demons? I'd sound like a complete tube steak. Dominique-at least it seemed-was a genuine Christian, not a phony. For a moment, he even thought of lying to her, just to impress her.

And she'd see through that...like I see through this empty beer gla.s.s.

Finally, he said, "Mr. Sute and I were just talking subjectively."

"About what?" she asked in a heartbeat. A little catsmile seemed to aim down at him.

Collier tried to sound, well, like a writer. "Theoretical Christian interpretation of demonology."

She s.h.i.+fted her pose, to stand with a hand on her hip. "Well, Jesus was an exorcist. He cast out demons like he was a football ref throwing penalty flags."

Collier's thoughts stumbled. This is the girl of your dreams, d.i.c.khead. Maintain conversation. "So...true Christians believe in demons?"

"Of course!"

"And the devil?"

"Well, Jesus wasn't tempted in the desert for forty days by the Good Humor Man. If you believe in G.o.d, you have to believe in the devil, and the devil's minions. Lucifer isn't a metaphor-jeez, I'm so tired of hearing that one. He isn't an abstraction or a symptom of mental illness." She groaned. "G.o.d punted him off the twelfth gate of heaven-once his favorite, the angel called Lucifer-for his vanity and his pride. The friggin' devil, in other words, is a real dude, and so are his demons. If you don't believe in demons, then you can't believe that Christ cast them out, and if you don't believe that, then that's the same as saying the New Testament is bulls.h.i.+t-"

Collier sat stunned, by the variety of her animated explanation.

She finished up with a nonchalant shrug. "So if a person who calls himself a Christian doesn't believe the New Testament, that person is no Christian at all. Simple."

Collier could've laughed at her diversity, or remained stunned by her conviction. Before he could comment, she asked, "So what brought this conversation on? It's not exactly what I would expect America's premier beer chronicler to be yakking about at lunch."

Now Collier did laugh. "I guess some aspects of religion snuck their way into my curiosity about the town lore."

Dominique rolled her eyes at the empty martini gla.s.s. "Oh, so he's the one ordering umpteen Grey Goose martinis."

Collier craned his neck up at her. Sunlight sparkled off the cross on her bosom like molten metal. "Do you..."

"What?"

"Do you believe any of it, the lore, I mean?"

Her little cat-grin dropped a notch. "Yes."

For some reason, the tone of her response gave him a chill. Is she jerking me around?

"You only ate a smidgen of your trout cake," she noticed. "Do I have to go back to the kitchen and kick some a.s.s?"

Collier chuckled. "No, they're great. But I'm a sucker for a good story, and Mr. Sute got the best of me."

"Mr. Sute...or Harwood Gast?"

"Well, both, I guess. But you know, last night you sounded kind of into it yourself."

She shrugged again, and tossed her hair. "I'm a sucker for a good story, too. Just, please, don't ask me if I've ever seen anything at the Gast House. It'd put me in a compromising position."

She's as bad as Sute, or do I just have a MANIPULATE ME sign on my head?

"Anyway, I have to go now, so I just came over to say 'bye."

Collier was wracked. "I thought you worked till seven," he almost exclaimed.

"I just got a call from one of my distributors. I have to drive up to Knoxville and pick up a hops order. I won't be back for several hours, and I'm sure you can't hang around till then."

s.h.i.+t! Collier was p.i.s.sed. He'd been so busy listening to Sute's ghost stories, he'd missed his chance to talk to her. "d.a.m.n, well. I'll come by tomorrow and give you the release form."

"That would be great," she said. "I really appreciate it."

"Don't thank me. You're the one who makes the lager." Collier's mind blanked, and before he knew what he was saying, he'd already said it: "Maybe we could go out to dinner sometime..."

What! he thought. What did I just say? I didn't ask h- "Sure. How about tonight?"

Collier froze. "Uh, yeah, perfect."

"Pick me up here at eight. 'Bye!"

Dominique whisked out the front door.

Collier felt like a parachutist who just stepped out of the plane. His face felt like it was glowing. I just asked her out...and she said yes!

He barely noticed when Sute's bulk sat back down. Were the man's eyes red? Either he's allergic to something, Collier supposed, or the guy's been crying.

"You okay, Mr. Sute?"

The man looked absolutely disconsolate. "Oh, yes, I just...I've got several personal quagmires, that I'm not quite sure how to deal with." He ordered another big martini.

Well, that's one way of dealing with it, Collier thought. Even during their discussion's peak, Sute seemed haunted, even pining for something. Could it have something to do with Jiff?

Collier knew he shouldn't but..."Oh, yeah, that's another thing I was wondering about. The land. Yesterday when Jiff was showing me my room, I asked him about all that land around the town. It looks like perfectly good farmland to me. But Jiff says it hasn't been cultivated in years."

Sute swallowed hard, nodding. But the tactic had worked; both times the name Jiff had been mentioned, Sute reacted in his eyes-the same pained cast. It was everything he could do just to respond to the subject.

"The land hasn't been cultivated, actually, since Harwood Gast's death in 1862. It was great land, mind you, outstanding soil. There were rich, rich harvests of cotton, corn, and soybeans for as far as one could see." Sute's voice darkened. "If farmers grew crops there now...no one would eat them."

"Because the land is cursed?" Collier posed. "As I recall...Jiff said something along those lines."

Was Sute's hand shaking?

"Of course, Jiff didn't say that he personally believed the land was cursed," Collier went on for effect. "Just that that's part of the legend."

"It is, very much so." Sute finally composed himself. "People believe the land is tainted for what happened on it when Gast owned it. As the story goes, he executed a vast number of slaves on that land."

"Really? So this is fact?"

"Exaggerated fact, more than likely. Based on my own research, perhaps thirty or forty slaves were executed, not the hundreds that the legend claims. But still, men were killed there."

"Lynchings, in other words?"

"Yes, but not by hanging, which is the standard denotation. These men were slaves, of course, there was never any trial beforehand. Bear in mind, this was the era of Dred Scott-slaves, by law, were regarded as property, not citizens ent.i.tled to the rights granted by the Bill of Rights. Therefore, slaves accused of crimes never got their day in court. They were executed summarily anytime white men suspected them of something criminal."

"Legal murder."

"Oh, yes."

"These slaves-what were they accused of?"

"Some s.e.xual crime, almost exclusively. If a white woman willingly had s.e.xual congress with a slave-the slave was guilty of rape. If a slave put his hands on a white woman, or even looked at her salaciously...same thing. A number of these accusations were made by none other than Penelope Gast herself. There were even some accounts of slaves rebuffing her advances, which infuriated her to the point that she'd swear the man either raped her or molested her. Instant execution. And of course we know that she had many, many willing liaisons with slaves, a few of which no doubt resulted in very unwanted pregnancies. The entire ordeal was ghastly. I doubt that any of the slaves killed were guilty of forcible rape-ever."

Collier's eyes narrowed. "If they weren't hanged, how were these men executed?"

"They were dragged to death by horses, or sometimes butchered in place. And then they were beheaded while all of the other slaves were forced to watch. Harwood Gast very much believed in the principles of deterrence. The severed heads were mounted on stakes and simply left there, so to be visible, and some remained erected for years."

Collier's brow jumped. "Well, now I can see why superst.i.tious people would believe the land was cursed."

Sute's martini was being drained in quick increments. "No, the beheadings weren't the highlight. After the unfortunate slave was decapitated, his body was crushed by sledgehammers, minced by axes, and then hoed into the soil. How's that for a *haunted field' story?"

Collier's stomach turned sour. Jesus. Gast was purea.s.s psycho. He could make Genghis Khan look like Mickey Mouse. "Now I know why the locals call Gast the most evil man the town's ever seen."

"Essentially, everything Harwood Gast ever did was in some way motivated by evil."

"Just building the railroad itself," Collier added. "Solely to transport captured northern civilians to concentration camps-that kind of takes the cake, too."

Sute popped a brow at what Collier had said.

Almost as if to reserve an additional comment.

Collier noticed that, too. That and the man's distress-from some "personal quagmire"-made Collier think: I'd love to know what's REALLY going on in this guy's noggin...

"They say evil is relative," Sute picked up when his next drink was done, "but I really don't know."

"Gast was insane."

"I hope so. As for his wife, I'm not sure that she was really insane-just a sociopathic s.e.x maniac is probably more like it."

Collier laughed.

Over the course of their talk, Sute's face looked as if it had aged ten years. Bags under his eyes dropped, while his lids were getting redder.

"Mr. Sute, are you sure you're all right?"

He gulped, and repatted the handkerchief to his forehead. "I suppose I'm really not, Mr. Collier. I'm not feeling well. It's been wonderful having lunch with you, but I'm afraid I must excuse myself."

"Go home and get some rest," Collier advised. And don't drink a s.h.i.+TLOAD of martinis next time. "I'm sure you'll feel better soon."

"Thank you." Sute rose, wobbly. He shook Collier's hand. "And I hope my accounts of the town's strange history entertained you."

"Very much so."

Quite suddenly, a sixtyish man probably even heavier than Sute wended around the table: balding, white beard, big jolly Santa Claus face. "J.G.!" the man greeted with a stout voice. "Going so soon? Stay and have a drink!"

"Oh, no, Hank, I've had too much already-"