The Black Train Read Online Free PDF

GEORGIA RAILROAD .
    “Everything here was found on this premise at one time or another,” Mrs. Butler said. Now she stood back proudly, crossing her arms under her breasts, which made them appear even larger. “I get a tax break through the state historical commission by displayin’ it all…and by keepin’ that blasted portrait of Gast hangin’ up there.”
    The most evil man to ever live here? Collier was amused. It was likely just promotion. “If this man was so evil,” he baited, “I suppose the house is haunted, huh?”
    “Only by the memory of that low-down bastard,” came the strange response.
    Collier changed the subject, back to the Jefferson shoe and its long-dead owner. “But I’ve never heard of this railroad. Was this prewar?”
    “They started in 1857 and finished in 1862,” she said. “It was Gast’s railroad. He put down track from here to the middle’a Georgia, the perfect junction from the main roads that branched into town. He built it with a hundred slaves and fifty white men—not a bad feat for back then. That’s a lotta rail to lay.”
    The notion impressed Collier. They had no machines to do it back then, just hard-muscled humans lugging iron rails and driving spikes with hammers. Five years …Collier suspected that the hardest labor he ever did was carrying groceries from the car to the house.
    “And this?” he asked.
    ASH CAKE —1858
    “Ash cake is what they used for soap back then,” Mrs. Collier went on. “Weren’t no Ivory or Irish Spring, you can be sure.”
    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 slowlyadd 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 forfifteen 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