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The
Conductor
by
A.W. Hill
THE RAILROAD YARDS are still at this
time of night, the invisible pivot between one day and the next.
Still, but not quiet. Railroad yards are never really quiet. They
creak like the bedsprings in an old cathouse; they moan softly
when the river wind detours through the open door of a cattle
car. The atoms of memory in the these old diesel juggernauts still
groan with the stress of laboring through the Cumberland Gap.
And there are memories in the plush upholstery of the fine old
passenger cars, as well, of the groans and sighs of another sort
of exertion.
I have come here to enjoy a recollection for one last time, before
age and infirmity deny me the ability to recall. For seven years,
from 1957 through the Spring of 1964, I was conductor on a private
and highly exclusive leg of the Chesapeake & Ohio run from Newport
News, VA to Louisville, Kentucky. The train, known to all as The
Fast Flying Virginian, left Newport News with two engines and
seven passenger cars and arrived in Louisville with one and four.
I’ll tell you what happened to the rest of the train, for it’s
a story that can now be savored as myth. As far as I know, none
of those whose reputations might be damaged by the telling of
it are still among the living. None but me, and I have neither
reputation nor virtue to lose. If witnesses to debauchery were
named as accomplices, I might be held to account at the gates
of Heaven, but that would be only if God is a moralist, and if
I once believed he was, I no longer do. Whatever occurs on earth
between man and woman, he permits by way of divine abstention.
The Chesapeake & Ohio was born as a coal line, and the Virginian
ran the old track laid by hand and hammer through the voluptuous
Shenandoah Valley and the strip-mined wilderness of the Appalachians.
In my time, Number 96 carried not coal, but those made rich by
its extraction. Just west of Charlottesville, however, at a point
equidistant from Richmond, VA and Washington, D.C., the train
continued to make, as if by habit, what used to be the last water
stop before the steep ascent into the mountains. Even in 1957,
this was an anachronism:the engines no longer ran on steam. But
there was, at Mt. Pisgah, a solitary depot at which I and my crew
of six black porters waited patiently, playing Pinochle. And there
was, more often than not, a phalanx of black limousines lined
up behind the depot, camouflaged by night, big V-8’s purring,
their passengers eager to get on board and begin what they invariably
called, in Southern lilt, “the festivities”. Some of the limos
had driven all the way down from the Capitol, others from cities
nearer by; some appeared as if delivered out of the mist that
draped the perpetually damp and fertile valley. In the later years
of the Virginian’s run, when regular passengers had come to know
me and I them, my crew and I were sometimes joined for a hand
or two by those who had tired of the mute company of their drivers
and the pliant leather of the back seats. They were hard men in
soft suits, and their varnished accents inevitably dipped toward
the vales and hollows of their birth when they felt themselves
to be in the company of “working men” like myself and the porters.
They observed decorum only when accompanied by either their “distinguished
guests” from Washington or their feather-hatted mistresses, some
of whom had come all the way from Hollywood and whose familiar
features were leant only the flimsiest disguise by the black mesh
which covered their faces. I have played Pinochle with senators
and ambassadors, torch singers and movie stars. During those years,
more celebrity passed through the Pisgah depot than had likely
passed through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in the same span of
time.
At
Mt. Pisgah, Engine No. 1 decoupled from the lead car and rolled
through a switcher onto a side track. There, it waited for Number
2 to bring it the three first-class Pullman cars: two sleepers
and a club car. Number 1 then rejoined the four remaining coach
cars and continued on to Louisville with all its regularly ticketed
passengers. In all those years, none of those passengers - save
for one curious young man - ever questioned the unscheduled stop
or the loss of half the train. A blind eye is bred into all good
Southerners. Oh, there was talk, plenty of that. Gossip is the
libretto of Dixie’s opera. But no scandal, no expose. In that
day, the lions of the print press understood that powerful people
have powerful appetites, and probably understood also that discretion
might one day earn them a pass to the “festivities”. Given what
they’d heard, it must have seemed a small price to pay, for whatever
itch desire inflamed could be scratched aboard my train. As for
the young man I mentioned, he was a sailor on leave from the base
at Newport News.
He left the train to get a breath of mountain air and wandered
across to the side track, where he stood and gawked as three showgirls
in silk dressing gowns were escorted aboard by no less than an
Admiral in full dress whites. The officer paused on the grated
steps for a moment and stared down the recruit, ready to swear
him to silence upon pain of court martial, but then had the good
sense to beckon the sailor on board and treat him to the ride
of his life, a far better guarantee of his confidence.
And
so, as the Virginian dieseled on west to Kentucky, my Number 96
- now dubbed The Sportsman II - headed north along the Great Valle,
with the Appalachians on its left and the Blue Ridge on its right,
and Front Royal, VA our final destination. They tell me that it’s
one of the most beautiful stretches of rail ever laid, but I honestly
couldn’t say. We travelled between the hours of midnight and five
a.m., so the great, heaving mountains were never more than a looming
presence, flanking us as we cleaved our way through a blackness
only fleetingly pierced by the light of a clifftop cabin. The
limousines followed up the old state highway which ran, for parts
of the journey, parallel to the track. Occasionally, I’d step
between the club car and the sleeper for a cigarette and spot
a pair of high-beams -- then another, and another -- breaking
around a bend in the road some quarter-mile distant, tailing us
like a procession of slow barges moving up the canal (though,
somehow, the limos always arrived at Front Royal before we did).
I was once joined out on the platform by an ash-blond woman in
an ermine stole who’d just consumed the semen of seven men as
lustily as a New Englander swallows Masapeake oysters. She was
smoking a cigarillo and said, while exhaling a plume of blue smoke,
“Too bad we can’t lose them. I’d ride this train forever.”
It will by now be apparent that The Sportsman II was a pleasure
train with a highly exclusive clientele, though by no means was
it merely a rolling bordello. None of the women who boarded her
over those years was ever paid, as such, for her company. They
came, just as the men did, to experience that freedom from all
prohibition that only transit can provide. Nor were the women
ever treated poorly (had that occurred, it would have been my
sworn duty to stop the train and put the offending party off to
make his way through the wilderness). No, our patrons had the
good breeding to know that if you wish for a woman to behave like
a pagan, it’s best to treat her like a goddess. If anything, the
women of The Sportsman were more lascivious than the men. God
knows, they had greater endurance. I’ve come to believe in the
years since that my train provided them with something closer
to the “natural state” of things, and this notion was most piquantly
affirmed by a well-known society hostess who’d come aboard in
the company of her Cuban houseboy.
“You know what?” she asked me. She was seated on the toilet in
the gentlemen’s room (which, for reasons unstated, she preferred
to the ladies) and had asked me to “stand guard” just outside
the cracked door. “In a perfect world ... a world with no ‘bad
girls’ or ‘good girls’ ... no husbands or wives ... I’d screw
everybody.” I said nothing, but I must have shifted my weight
or chuckled unconsciously. “I would,” she insisted. “Even you,
sweetie. Why not? It truly is what I do best.”
The
club car, which was the center of the festivities, was a fully
restored classic Pullman from the 1910’s, down to the red plush
booths and polished brass. Each and every accoutrement aboard
The Sportsman had been hand selected by the Proprietor for its
quality, and this was equally true of the libation dispensed at
the bar. We served only Kentucky Bourbon whiskey and its derivatives,
at least twenty varieties from private old family distilleries,
none aged less than ten years. There was seltzer and branch water
for those who favored it, and our highball glasses were of cut
crystal mined from caverns deep beneath the Kentucky bluegrass.
One of the club car’s time-honored erotic sacraments involved
the application of a smoky-sweet liqueur distilled from thirty
year-old mash, a favorite digestif reputed to have aphrodisiacal
effects. A lady, after being caressed to the brink of fever by
the men present and freed from constraint by good bourbon and
the primal rhythm of the rails, would disrobe down to her shoes
and her hat (for reasons of ritual, a lady’s hat was seldom removed
and the fine mesh veil rarely left her face). She’d plant her
pumps in the soft carpet in front of the bar and then lean in,
resting her bare arms and a rouged cheek langorously on its laquered
oak surface, so that the span from her shoulderblades to her tailbone
described a forty-five degree angle. The bow-tied bartender, acting
as celebrant of this carnal mass, warmed a snifter of the liqueur
over a bunsen burner until it reached the temperature of a warm
bath, then gently pushed aside the woman’s hair to expose the
nape of her fine neck. The woman, as you may have guessed, was
to serve as both altar and rail. Meanwhile, the communicant --
the first of three gentlemen selected by lot -- had knelt behind
her on the ceremonial velvet cushion, his nose at the height of
her anus, his waiting tongue extended just short of the plump
teardrops of her buttocks, within tantalizing reach of her upended
cunt. It was against the rules for any but the designated third
man to make contact with her flesh. The penalty for violating
this rule was excommunication from the festivities.
Before
dispensing the liqueur, the bartender urged the woman to extend
her coccyx and lift her ass until she was able to feel the heat
of the gentleman’s tongue a scant half-inch from her sex. This
exercise not only made the rapture more dizzying for both supplicant
and goddess, but contracted her back muscles to form a gently
banked channel which neatly contained the liquid amber as it flowed
down her spine from nape to tailbone and dripped bountifully into
the communicant’s mouth. As he rose from the cushion and left
her, the second man approached and the ritual was repeated. By
the time the second man had drunk his fill, there were urgent
murmurings among the onlookers. Breasts had been freed from lacy
bodices to be fondled; groins were feverishly pressed against
willing backsides. I often found myself perspiring beneath my
cap and experiencing a sort of sexual vertigo (the Proprietor
required strict celibacy of the Sportsman’s crew). The third man
came forward and was stripped to the waist by a pair of “ladies-in-waiting”,
who then pressed him to his knees and administered three lashes
each with a cat o’ nine tails. Now the viscous firewater, color
of blonde tobacco, flowed for the third time down the sacral spine,
only this time it was allowed to run down the cleft of her ass
and onto the tender lips of her vagina, where its astringency
begged for the healing balm of saliva. The experienced ladies
could stand nearly a full minute of the exquisitely fiery torment
before they cried out for the tongue; the novices screamed out
and pleaded instantly for relief. But whether novitiate or abbess,
each ended up with a man’s nose pressed into her rump and came
with the profane fury of a maenad.
There were many such entertainments performed in the club car
of the Sportsman II as she climbed snow-dusted foothills under
jeweled skies. Some were boisterous and giddy, others almost reverential
in tone. Common to all of them was a single element: a rarefied
appreciation of the juices squeezed from sexual congress, most
especially of that admixture of the male and female essences which
results when the pot is stirred (rumor has long held that each
bottle of the Proprietor’s special sour mash liqueur contained
a thimble full of it). Not a drop was ever wasted; no stains were
ever found on the combed wool carpets or in the plush velvet booths.
All of it was, in some fashion, consumed. I cannot tell you how
or when the festivities were originated, or why all who boarded
my train -- yes, even the first-timers -- seemed to know them
as familiar, as if recalling some long-dormant memory of tantric
excess in Eden. It is said by the old hands that the Proprietor
learned much in his track-laying days from a Chinaman by the name
of Li Po, a railroad worker whose strength and stamina were said
to have exceeded that of men twice his size and whose sexual wisdom
was legendary.
I won’t attempt to catalog all that I saw during those years;
that would risk reducing a kaleidoscope to a mere peephole. For
purely selfish reasons, I don’t wish to diminish the memories.
But if you can imagine it, wish it, desire it, it occurred, if
not in the club car then certainly in the sanctum of the private
sleeping compartments, where crisp linen sheets were cast in the
hue of virgin snowdrift by blue night lights and porters with
skin dark as bittersweet chocolate (darker for the starched white
jackets they wore) rustled discreetly down the aisles, attending
to every need. There were paddlings administered to pink, yielding
bottoms, sodomies of every variety known to man, petticoats cast
off and petticoats kept on for effect, women whose pleasure was
to sit blindfolded behind the compartment door, awaiting the soft
knock that signaled the arrival of the first, then the second,
then the third of her anonymous satyrs. There were captains of
state and industry whose aching hunger for humiliation equalled
their lust for conquest and women who could dance between the
two poles. But the most singularly erotic event I ever witnessed
involved a famous actress, her equally famous consort, and a dead
horse.
The Sportsman made no stops between Mt. Pisgah and Front Royal,
but on one fragrant Summer night, an exception was made. They
came aboard in the deserted mining town of Parkland, accompanied
by two plain-suited agents. We had, of course, been told to expect
them. Now, they say that She was able - in her last years - to
wander unnoticed in crowds, disguised only in head scarf and sunglasses,
but I am quite sure I’d have spotted her in any surrounding. The
walk, seductive but sweetly clumsy, gave her away. That, and the
nervous giggle and earnest chorus girl handshake as she was introduced
to me and my crew. He was godlike in spite of his affliction (the
outline of the back brace was visible above the vent of his powder
blue suitcoat). Of all the notable and notorious people I met,
I don’t recall seeing anyone who looked so much like the picture
in my mind’s eye. He shook my hand and offered a broad, gleaming
smile, then unbuttoned his jacket and stepped into the club car,
working the room with his blonde chorine in tow.
Once
the train had pulled away from the empty depot, they settled back
into a plush booth and were allowed the zone of privacy which
all honored guests of the Proprietor received. The bartender brought
them each an aperitif and trimmed a fat Cuban cigar for him. After
the first puff, he smiled widely, raised the cigar in the air
and said, “Thank you, Fidel,” which elicited hearty laughter from
all aboard. After that, the party went on about them as if they
were king and queen hosting a feast of flesh. In the booth next
to theirs, a woman parted her legs to allow a man’s head beneath
her skirts. On the opposite side of the car, a well-known lady
writer hiked up her skirt and unhooked her garter while her admirer
flicked his tongue across her distended nipple. When she could
stand no more, she pushed him away, stood up, folded herself over
the table and cried, “For God’s sake, Harry, fuck me before I
expire!” The subsequent display, in which the lady writer seized
the edges of the table and thrust her buttocks fiercely into the
man’s groin in exuberant synchronization with the k-chunk -- k-chunk
-- k-chunk of the train’s wheels on track, so aroused the guests
of honor that the actress rolled up her own skirt and wriggled
onto her lover’s lap, crying out sharply three times as he slipped
into her. At the moment of her third cry, there came the sound
of a horrible impact and the airbrake screeched into service,
drowning out all but the most ardent moans.
We
had hit something big. I could gauge its weight as a matter of
simple physics; it slowed the locomotive almost as much as the
brakes did. The dullness of the impact told me that it was organic
and not mechanical. I shuddered, pulled aside the club car’s heavy
door, and stepped out onto the landing, flashlight ready, waiting
for the train to slow to a crawl. Then I lept onto the spongy,
pine needle-strewn red earth and began the long walk to the head
of the hissing locomotive, followed shortly by my chief porter
and an assemblage of guests which included the actress and her
companion (their coitus rudely interrupted by whatever unfortunate
thing had impeded our juggernaut). I had a feeling of dread as
deep as the black ravines which surrounded us.
It was a silver-gray mare, fully saddled and festooned as if for
a parade. A military horse. I reasoned that she must have bolted
from the grove of cottonwood on our right, spooked perhaps by
a black bear or a wild Virginia boar. I swept my flashlight’s
beam across the track and the gravel shoulders ahead and into
the brush beyond: there was no sign of a rider. The collision
had left gruesome damage: her neck and both front legs had been
broken and her skull split by the impact, and yet - amazingly
- she still drew wheezing calliope breaths through her flared
nostrils. I felt myself get a little weak in the knees and turned
to wave the passengers back and direct the porter to make a search
of the bramble for her mount, though I somehow felt certain that
she had come with her saddle empty. I glanced at the actress,
who seemed both shattered and spellbound. Her escort, a man who
had seen violent death in the Pacific theater, comforted her,
though his own face was creased in evident distress, no doubt
from the pain in his chronically troubled back.
The
engineer jumped down from the cab and joined me at the side of
the beast, where we whispered plans for its removal and disposal.
The local sheriff would have to be notified. Some money would
probably have to change hands. The mare whinnied pitifully and
tried to lift her head.
“Should
we put ‘er to sleep?” the engineer asked me. There was a hunting
rifle in the engine compartment, never used. I nodded, and was
about to go fetch it when I heard a whisper of satin and smelled
Chanel and musk. It was the actress.
“No,” she said softly, dropping to her knees on the splintered
ties, just beside the mare’s head. “Don’t. She’s almost gone,
almost gone ....” I didn’t question her. She lifted the massive
head with its gaping wound and laid it on the soft folds of her
skirt, stroking the mare’s nose and humming faintly. Within seconds,
the pink satin dress was saturated with blood, and within seconds
more, the mare was dead. I leaned in and slipped the head from
her lap, then called for two of the porters to fetch shovels and
rope. I helped the actress to her feet, assisted by her stoical
companion, who brushed the hair from his forehead in characteristic
gesture and told me, “Thank you. We’ll leave you some room to
work. You’ll let me know if I can help.” I nodded, though a salute
might have been more fitting.
All
during the removal of the corpse, he held her close in the bright
beam of the locomotive’s cyclops eye, not minding that the blood
and tissue on her dress were now on him, as well. From time to
time, I stopped working to wipe my brow and glanced at the two
of them: rocking, whispering, both kissed by pitiless fate. A
wind rose out of the grove from which the mare had raced and lifted
the thick hair on his scalp, and I was struck by an awful vision.
Later,
after we had resumed our journey, I made my customary rounds of
the sleeper cars with the head porter. Though initially our patrons
had gamely tried to continue the festivities in the club car,
most had now retired to their private compartments and were conspicuously
silent. Only the cabin assigned to the actress and the statesman
rocked with libido. The door was slightly ajar, whether by force
of the train’s movement or deliberately, I can’t say. I could
see the bloody dress and a pair of silk stockings hanging from
the bunk. She was astride him, rising and falling in ever more
rapid strokes. The porter halted and turned, and I put my finger
to my lips. Then she came softly, and after that rose and shut
the door.
That
was the Summer of 1963. In April of 1964, the Proprietor discontinued
service on the Number 96, and her engineer and I hauled the club
car and two sleepers to the great, sprawling train yard in Southern
Ohio, where they remain today, and where I have come to stir my
memories and pay my last respects to those two souls who flaunted
eros in the face of death.
_______________
A.W.
Hill
lives in Los Angeles. His first novel, a supernatural thriller
entitled Enoch's Portal (ISBN 1-891400-59-2) was published in
June 2002 and acquired for motion picture development by Paramount.
A screenplay, Little Black Book, a comedy about a modern-day courtesan,
is currently being shopped to studios and actresses unafraid to
soil their reputations. More info about Hill and his alter-ego,
P.I. Stephan Raszer, can be found at www.raszer.com.
Visit
A.W. Hill online at: www.awhill.net
The
Conductor © 2001 by A.W. Hill
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