Debasement, too, was on this morning’s one-hundred-dollar agenda; hence, the wine goblet. It need not be mentioned what fluid other than wine Jiff filled it with and then forced Sute to consume.
“I’m so unworthy—I’m scum! Shit on me if you like!”
Even for a hundred bucks, Jiff was not quite up to that. As a “grand finale,” however, he slapped his client up a few more times, then took a big hock in his face, but while he was engaged in these final tweaks, he swore he could still see the stoked flames from the dream furnace, thought sure he could still hear the screams…
When services had been properly rendered, J.G. Sute sobbed tears of joy as his elephantine body shuddered.
“My love, I could die now…”
Freak show’s over. Jiff loped to the bathroom sink to wash up. I just cain’t do this shit anymore. When he returned to the bedroom, he was relieved to see that Sute had wiped his face off and donned his robe. The man looked dreamy-eyed now, his demented needs slaked. “That was wonderful,” he sighed.
“Yeah, yeah.” Jiff stood listlessly at the liquor cabinet. He wasn’t going to tell the man that this was his last trick with him. “Mind if I have a shot?”
“What’s mine is yours, my love.”
Jesus. Jiff’s eyes scoured the shelves: Asombroso tequila, Macallan thirty-year-old scotch, Johnnie Walker Green. Shit, he ain’t got no Black Velvet? He poured himself an inch of something and sat down bare-assed on a William and Mary wing-back chair.
Now that his perverse duties were over, his nightmare filtered back into his head.
“Jiff, you look inconsolable.”
The liquor bit hard. “Huh?”
“You appear to be troubled by something…”
“Bad dream, is all. I get ’em sometimes—don’t rightly know why.” The horrid images felt like bruises in the back of his brain. “Dreamed I was a coal shoveler, back durin’ the war.”
“Heaver,” Sute corrected. “That was the official job title in those days. A coal heaver. They shoveled sixteen hours a day, for about fourteen dollars a month.” Sute’s “afterglow” left him relaxed, or perhaps it was just Jiff’s presence. It was a conversation, not a demented sexual scenario. “A contributing factor to the C.S.A.’s surrender was its inability to mine coal as effectively as the North. You were a Confederate coal heaver I take it?”
Jiff’s nude pecs popped when he rubbed his brow. “Naw, and I weren’t paid no fourteen bucks a month, neither. See, in this dream, I was a black man. I was a slave.”
Sute’s bulbous face creased in concern. “You seem terribly upset, Jiff. It was only a dream. But this is interesting. Where were you working?”
“What’s that?”
“Where were you shoveling this coal? A supply ship? A locomotive?”
Jiff shook his head. “A big furnace, and I mean really big.”
Sute’s attention became more focused. “And how do you know it was during the war?”
“On account’a the place was full up with Confederate guards all walkin’ ’round with bayonets on their rifles. They was all callin’ me nigger’n tellin’ me I’m dead meat if I don’t keep shovelin’. Bunch’a other black fellas with me doin’ the same thing. Seemed like the dream went on forever: me throwin’ in one shovel fulla coal after the next. Place was so hot I could feel my skin blisterin’.” Jiff took another inch of scotch and sighed. “I been havin’ weird dreams every now and then long as I can remember, always durin’ the war, but each time I’m someone else, and it’s always horrible.”
“Slavery was a horrible thing, Jiff.”
“Aw, shit, that ain’t what I mean. The really horrible part was what they was usin’ that furnace for.”
“Smelting ore, I presume.”
Jiff shook his head. “Weren’t no ore in the place that I could see. It was more like a prison camp. See, we was shovelin’ the coal into the fuel chutes on one side, but on the other side, the soldiers was throwin’ people into the furnace.”
“What?”
“Yup. They’d bring folks in a few at a time; women and kids, mostly, and most of ’em were naked—see, they come offa these wagons outside. Some still had their clothes on but they was all shit’n puke-stained and fulla bugs. Then every now’n then some Indian fellas’d bring in more women, and each time they done so, a soldier’d give ’em some money.”
“Delivery fees,” Sute said. “Same thing as a bounty. Gast’s deputies frequently recruited nearby Indians to round up civilians who’d fled their homes as the Union forces encroached. Strange that you should dream something so accurate.”
“Aw, shit, but that weren’t the worst part,” Jiff went on, beating down his disgust with the liquor. “Lotta the women they brung in was pregnant, and the kids, too, just little girls, all starin’ out with big hollow eyes in their skinny faces like they ain’t et in weeks. And the soldiers just fed ’em all right into the furnace. Didn’t even think twice about it.”
Sute went silent.
“Babies, too, they was throwin’ in. We could see inside’n the fire was so hot sometimes the person they throwed in would just explode. Others looked like they was melting. Like they’d just turn into vapor.”
Sute lumbered up and began rubbing Jiff’s shoulders. “You’re letting the legends get the best of you. Come and lie down with me…”
But Jiff was spacing out. “Finally, I fall down. I’m so weak, see, that I can’t shovel no more coal, so…so—”
“What happened?”
“The soldiers throwed me into the furnace…”
Sute stroked Jiff’s face from behind. “It’s just the legend, Jiff, it’s the legend. Put it out of your mind.”
“That’s just it, J.G.—my mind. Why in hell would my mind serve up somethin’ so vile? And after I got tossed in, I just kept burnin’. I could see the flesh smokin’ right off my body, but the nightmare still wouldn’t end. Finally I did wake up, and I was screamin’ bloody murder. And you know what? ’bout a minute later, I heard Lottie screamin’, too—her bedroom’s right next to mine. How fucked up is that? Lottie cain’t talk, can’t barely make no sound at all. But she was screamin’, too, like she was havin’ a nightmare herself. Jesus H. Christ, I hope she didn’t have the same one as me.”
“I’m sorry to see you in such duress, Jiff.” Sute was nearly in tears. This was the first time that Jiff had ever confided in him, the first time he’d ever regarded Sute as more than just a kink trick. “Stay with me. Let me make you breakfast.”
Shit, Jiff thought. What am I doin’? He snapped out of it. He’s right, it was just a dumb dream, and I’m all actin’ like a baby about it. He pulled away from his client and began to dress. “Naw, I gotta go. Got work at the inn.” He blinked away the remaining dream fragments yet still felt his stomach souring.
Sute sat back down on the bed, morose that the love of his life was leaving. “If it’s any consolation, Jiff, a long time ago I spent the night at the inn when my roof was being reshingled. You were just a teenager then. But I had a nightmare, too, that’s similar to yours in some ways.”
Jiff paused to look at him.
“I dreamed that I was a Confederate general, who’d sold his soul to the devil, and the first man I met after making the pact was Harwood Gast.”
Jiff felt as though a tarantula had just skimmed up his back. He didn’t want to hear anything about the devil. But he had to ask, “J.G.? You think a place can make nightmares, ’cos of what happened in it in the past?”