Serena Read online

  “Perhaps you were already thinking something similar when the politicians were courting you Thursday morning.”

  Wilkie looked not at Pemberton but at the silk handkerchief in his lap. The old man’s gnarly fingers rubbed the cloth as if fascinated with its texture. It was an oddly childlike gesture, and Pemberton wondered if Wilkie was succumbing to dotage at that very moment.

  “Mrs. Pemberton and I will pay half of what the park service offered for your share.”

  “Half?” Wilkie said, the proposal’s unjustness rousing him to meet Pemberton’s eyes.

  “It’s more than enough to live out your remaining years in comfort. Think of it as a kind of eminent domain.”

  “But half,” Wilkie said, his voice teetering between dismay and anger.

  The old man looked past Pemberton at a cur come down from one of the stringhouses. The dog hunched where the wagon had been, its long tongue licking dust moistened by Buchanan’s blood. Another cur came, sniffed the ground and began licking as well.

  “All right,” Wilkie said bitterly.

  “We’ll draw the papers up this evening,” Pemberton said. “Doctor Cheney is a notary and Campbell can be a witness. I’ll have Campbell take the papers to Lawyer Covington tonight. We can have the complete transaction done at Covington’s office tomorrow. And a handshake, of course. We are, after all gentlemen, even here in this forsaken landscape.”

  Pemberton offered his hand. Wilkie raised his also, but very slowly, as if lifting some invisible weight. The old man’s palm was moist, and he made no effort to match Pemberton’s confident grip.

  Pemberton left Wilkie on the porch. He walked across the yard to the house and went inside. He found Serena looking out the back room’s window at the stumps and slash that covered a quarter-mile before rising upwards to the ridge crest. Her boots dried in the corner on a piece of newspaper. The gray cotton stockings she wore were pulled off as well. In the muted light, Serena’s feet and ankles shown pale as alabaster.

  Pemberton came and stood behind her, placed his arms around her waist, his head leaned close to hers. Serena did not turn but eased back into him. He felt the curve of her hips against his groin, and desire seemed to fill not only his body but the whole room. The air felt charged with some small but discernable electrical current. What light slanted through the window gave the room a honeyed tinge.

  “So it’s done,” Serena said, her right hand taking his and pressing it to her thigh.

  “Yes.”

  “And the sheriff?”

  “Suspicious, but he has no proof or witness to show it wasn’t an accident.”

  “And our senior partner’s agreed to sell his share?”

  Pemberton nodded.

  “What did you learn about Buchanan’s siblings?”

  “One’s a student, the other a professor.”

  “Good news all around,” Serena said, staring out the window. “You’ll have to spend more time at the saw mill, at least at first, but we’ll promote a foreman and hire a few new men. From what I’ve heard, it’s the foremen who have run the day-to-day operation, even when Wilkie and Buchanan were there. Campbell can help eventually, but first he needs to walk the Jackson County land, Townsend’s tract as well.”

  Serena’s hand slid down a few inches, her fingers molding his to the curve of her thigh. Serena’s gold band settled over Pemberton’s. The current he’d felt since entering the room intensified, as if the touching gold provided a conduit for the energy to flow directly through Serena into him. Part of Pemberton ached to move his hand so he could lead her to the bed, but another part did not want to move, even slightly, lest the touching bands separated and the current became more diffuse. Serena seemed to feel the same energy, because her hand remained where it was. She shifted slightly, pressed her body deeper into his.

  “You didn’t shoot him in the back, did you?”

  “No,” Pemberton said.

  “I knew you wouldn’t. But concerns like that don’t matter. We’re beyond them, Pemberton.”

  “He’s dead,” Pemberton replied. “That’s all that matters. It’s over and done with and we’ve got all we wanted.”

  “At least for today,” Serena said. “A start, a true beginning.”

  Pemberton bowed his head, smelled the French cologne he’d ordered at Christmas, which Serena wore only after her evening bath and only at his behest. He let its smell, the touch of his lips against her neck, overwhelm everything else.

  Serena lifted her hand from Pemberton’s and stepped out of his embrace. She began to undress, letting her clothes fall to the floor. When Serena was completely naked, she turned and pressed her body full against his. The pants he wore were still damp from helping carry Buchanan to the wagon, and when Serena stepped back Pemberton saw a thin smear of red on her lower stomach. Serena saw it as well but did not go to the bathroom for a washcloth.

  Pemberton sat on the bed and took off his boots and clothes. He reached to open the lamp table’s drawer for a condom, but Serena grasped his wrist, settled his hand firm against her hip.

  “It’s time to make our heir,” Serena said.

  Sixteen

  THE PREVIOUS DECEMBER, BUCHANAN HAD suggested all the workers be given Christmas presents. If for no other reason a matter of morale, he’d argued to Pemberton and Wilkie, so Campbell, who’d been put in charge of the buying, went to Waynesville on Christmas Eve, taking Vaughn with him. This Christmas, on his own volition, Campbell did the same. He and Vaughn loaded a flat car with all manner of gifts from Scott’s General Store, stopping at the saw mill to retrieve items purchased earlier. Once the train returned to camp, the flat car’s bounty filled makeshift shelves on the commissary porch. Campbell and Vaughn unloaded and arranged the gifts, finishing well after midnight. Come morning, the camp’s employees ascended the commissary porch. Campbell had chosen the gifts with a wide sympathy of taste and imagination, ordering what he could not find in Scott’s General Store from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue and a Soco Gap moonshiner, so the workers had much to choose from with their fifty-cent allowance. Those with children came up first. Because Campbell wouldn’t allow it otherwise, these men spent at least half their portion lightening the shelf that held licorice whips and oranges, another shelf of dolls and teddy bears and pop guns, bright-metal toy cars and toy train engines. While Vaughn checked off names, Campbell tabulated each worker’s allotment in his head.

  The rest of the workers came next and chose from fishing lines and fish hooks, hats more rakish than pragmatic, cigarette papers and pipes and jackknives and, placed discretely on a bottom shelf, pint jars of moonshine. On another set of shelves, items for wives and girlfriends and the women in the kitchen—lengths of calico and lace, scarves and perfume, hair braids and bracelets. Strewn among these more traditional offerings were Campbell’s more esoteric choices. These gifts were singular in nature, a teakwood flute, a pair of red-and-green baseball stockings, a jigsaw puzzle of the United States. Though the workers could, not one ventured into the commissary itself, lest they be tempted to use their fifty cents in trade to acquire something more utilitarian, such as gloves or step-ins, a new axe head or wool socks. They instead wandered the porch, lifting one item, possessing it a moment, and then setting it aside to pick up another. An occasional quarter was flipped in the air, caught, and slapped on the back of the hand, leaving the final decision to some other power.

  By mid-morning the shelves were half empty, yet there was a steady traffic up and down the porch steps, among them workers brought by train from Waynesville, occupants of the stringhouses who decided a few rare hours of extra sleep worth a more desirous gift. Snipes and his crew had been among the early arrivals. Except for Stewart, who’d left to eat a Christmas meal at Preacher McIntyre’s house, the crew remained, watching the comings and goings from the dining hall’s porch steps. Their gifts were already on display. Snipes’ red-and-green baseball stockings sprouted out of his brogans to cover his overalls up to his knees. Dun
bar donned his felt hat that, though a dusty brown, had a rakish tilt to its brim. Ross had chosen the moonshine, most of which now smoldered in his stomach.

  Ross raised his pint jar and took another swallow. His eyes watered and his lips made a fleshy O as he vigorously exhaled a plume of white breath.

  “I’m ever amazed Santy Claus had the grit to come to this camp,” he said, “especially after what happened to Buchanan.”

  “He wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Campbell just up and doing it without asking,” Snipes said.

  “They’d of fired any other man but him for that,” Dunbar noted, “buying them gifts without asking, I mean.”

  “He knows they need him more than ever with Buchanan and Wilkie gone,” Ross said. “Campbell’s a good man but he’s nobody’s fool, and he’s going to look after his own hide when it starts getting scorched.”

  “Still,” Dunbar said, “there’s not many a overseer would have done this for us.”

  “I’d not argue against that,” Ross conceded.

  The men turned their gazes to the commissary porch, where Rachel Harmon was setting her gifts before Campbell.

  “Looks to be she picked nothing but denim cloth and a play-pretty for her young one,” Snipes said. “I remember last year she got good-smelling soap and a fancy hair-bow.”

  “She was giggling and acting silly with them other kitchen girls all the while,” Dunbar said, “but she don’t look to be giggling much these days.”

  “Having a child and no daddy tends to take the giggle out of a gal,” Ross said.

  “You’d think Pemberton would own up to it and help her out some,” Dunbar said. “I don’t see how a man can do something like that and not tote a lot of guilt.”

  “I’d say maybe his missus has some say in that,” Ross surmised.

  “There’s one fellow that / treats her good, though,” Dunbar said, as Joel Vaughn came up the steps.

  The crew watched as Vaughn spoke to Rachel Harmon a moment before giving her a toy train engine, its bright metal catching the late-morning light. Vaughn and the Harmon girl talked a little longer before she left, the toy train engine placed in the poke with what she’d selected. For a few minutes, the commissary porch was vacant but for Campbell and Vaughn. Dunbar turned to the dining hall’s wide window and apprised himself in his new haberdashery.

  “This one’s got some pert to it,” he said, “but I still wish it had a bright-yallar hatband.”

  “If it did, Snipes might have snatched it up,” Ross said. “That’s all you got left needing brightening now, ain’t it, Snipes, your head?”

  “That and my brogans.”

  Dunbar tilted the brim a little more and sat back down.

  “What do you reckon Galloway got from Santy Claus?” Dunbar asked. “A set of fangs to go with them rattles he’s wearing atop his head?”

  “Maybe some rat poison for to season his victuals,” Snipes suggested.

  “That’s what I probably ought to have got instead of this hat,” Dunbar said. “Since the cold’s settled in the rats has pretty much laid claim to my stringhouse. You’d think they was having a revival the way they’re packing in.”

  “Wouldn’t do no good,” Ross said. “I used some of that Paris Green in my stringhouse and it’s the stoutest poison going. Them rats ate it like it was no more than salt on popcorn.”

  “What about them traps at the commissary you bait with cheese?” Dunbar asked. “You all tried them?”

  “These is some bully rats,” Ross said. “They’d likely haul the traps down to the commissary and turn them back in for a rebate, same as you would a sody bottle.”

  “The thing to kill them is snakes,” Snipes said, examining his boots as he spoke, “but that eagle has done upset what the Orientals call the yen and the yang.”

  “What does that mean?” Dunbar asked.

  “The way things is balanced. Everything in the world has its natural place, and if you take something out or put something in that ought not be out or in, everything gets lopsided and out of sorts.”

  “Kindly like not having different seasons,” Dunbar said.

  “Exactly. If you was to have just winter all year round we’d freeze, and if it was summer all year the water would dry up and your crops die.”

  “I wouldn’t mind spring all year round,” Dunbar said. “It’s warm but there’s rain, and everything’s sprouting and feeling alive, the birds all a-singing.”

  “That’d be the problem,” Snipes said. “You’d have too much aliveness. Everything would be sprouting all the time, and pretty soon there’d be trees and vines and grass covering every inch of the earth. You’d need your axe every morning just to whittle you out a place to stand up.”

  Ross finished the last of his moonshine and raised his gaze to take in the gray and brown valley floor, the scalped ridges of Noland Mountain.

  “So what happens when there ain’t nothing left alive at all?” he asked.

  THE next morning the camp returned to its normal work schedule. Some men were rested and some were hungover and some a bit of both. Serena went out with a crew working on Indian Ridge. She was pregnant, though none in the camp other than Pemberton knew it. When he’d asked if she should risk riding a horse, she’d smiled and told him any child of theirs could stand a little jostling.

  Harris called the office in the early afternoon. He’d been out of state for two weeks and returned to find a telegram from Albright chastising Harris and the Pembertons for pursuing the Townsend tract, especially since the park was inevitable, as was eminent domain for those unwilling to sell.

  “He’s given up being a diplomat,” Harris seethed. “Thinks if he bares his teeth we’ll roll over and show our belly the same way Champion did. Luckadoo at the Savings and Loan had a message for me too. He said Webb and Kephart have been over there inquiring about that Jackson County tract you like. God knows what that’s about, but it can’t be good.”

  After Harris hung up, Pemberton went to the stable and rode east toward Indian Ridge. As he rode through the camp, Pemberton saw a few wreaths yet adorned the stringhouses. Some of the highlanders considered the true Christmas to be on January fourteenth. Old Christmas, they called it, believing it was the day the magi visited the Christ child. Another tidbit Buchanan had written in his notebook. Remembering the notebook brought with it a memory of the man, but only for a few moments before Pemberton turned his thoughts to Serena and the life she held within her.

  He found her with a crew helping to build a new spur line, the four of them contemplating a massive white oak that blocked the rail path. Serena made a final suggestion and rode over to Pemberton. Pemberton told her about the telegram.

  “If the park’s inevitable, Albright wouldn’t bother,” Serena said. “Townsend’s tract must be more valuable to them than they want us to know, probably because of those virgin hardwoods. They’ll use them to sway the public the same way Muir used his redwoods in Yosemite. Let them keep blustering and we’ll keep cutting.”

  A momentary silence fell over the nearby woods as the lead cutter finished his notching and stepped away. The two sawyers kneeled on the frozen ground where yesterday’s snow lingered, between them the twelve-foot cross-cut saw used only on the biggest trees. As they lifted the saw to slide into the notching, the afternoon sun fell full upon the polished blade, and it appeared the steel was being forged anew to confront the white oak. Serena and Pemberton watched as the men gained their rhythm after a few slips and catches. The crew foreman raised his hand and signaled to Serena that whatever problem had confounded the crew had been surmounted.

  “Webb and Kephart came by the Savings and Loan,” Pemberton said. “Luckadoo told Harris they were inquiring about the Jackson County tract. For more park land, Harris thinks. Harris said they’re starting to believe they can do anything.”

  Serena had been watching the sawyers, but she turned to Pemberton now.

  “But that makes no sense when all the other park
land’s at least twenty miles away.”

  “Let them do what they like over there,” Pemberton said. “Campbell claims Townsend’s land is the better buy for us. Anyway, Harris is so flummoxed about this park that he may be completely wrong about Webb and Kephart’s inquiry.”

  “But they are growing more confident,” Serena said, watching the cross-cut’s blade work its way into the heartwood. “Harris is right about that.”

  Seventeen

  ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF THE NEW YEAR, THE Pembertons and Harris drove east toward Jackson County to look at the land Waynesville Savings and Loan had repossessed six months before, land Harris suddenly insisted on seeing before committing to the Townsend tract. Harris sat in the backseat, using a wool overcoat and a flask of whiskey to keep himself warm. Sleet had fallen the day before, and though now only drizzle smudged the windshield, scabs of ice lingered on bridges and curves where cliff hangs shaded the blacktop. Pemberton drove cautiously, staying in the road’s center whenever possible, all the while wishing Serena hadn’t insisted on coming.

  Harris leaned forward and offered the flask but the Pembertons declined. Harris slipped the flask back into his pocket and took out the Wednesday edition of the Asheville Citizen, began to read aloud.

  “While our attention to the creation of a national park is crucial to our region’s future, we must also act as a state to secure our own immense but threatened natural beauty. The recent foreclosure on 9,000 acres of farmland in the Caney Creek region of Jackson County, while tragic for those who owned that land, offers a rare opportunity to buy a tract as pristine as any in our region and at a very reasonable price. This hidden jewel is rich in hardwoods and sparkling streams, as well as a profusion of plant and animal life. Mr. Horace Kephart, our region’s leading authority on these matters, believes the acreage is as rich in natural resources as any he’s seen in southern Appalachia. Nevertheless, Mr. Kephart argues that the time to act is now. Because of the land’s proximity to Franklin, the property is beginning to receive interest from speculators who have no concern for western North Carolina other than lining their own pocketbooks. Since North Carolina, like the rest of this country, has its monetary resources stretched to the limit, now is the time for our state’s wealthier inhabitants to take the lead and contribute to a legacy not only for themselves but for all North Carolinians.”