Serena Read online

  “Nobody told me,” Snipes said. “I seen it my ownself last Sunday. One of them on the porch steps picked up his axe and said he was headed to Jackson County, and a good dozen men up and followed like he was Moses leading them to the promised land.”

  “Your brother-in-law don’t do no doctoring, does he?” Ross asked Henryson. “Got an opening there.”

  “No,” Henryson replied, “but even if he was I’d as lief have him stick to the logging. At least you’ve got a chance to dodge a tree or axe blade. I ain’t of a mind to say the same of Galloway.”

  Twenty-three

  SHE’D BEEN TOLD TO STAY IN BED FOR SIX weeks, but when a month had passed Serena resumed supervising the cutting crews. When she stepped off the front porch, Galloway waited. They went to the stable together and Serena came out on the Arabian, the eagle on its perch. She rode slowly out of camp, Galloway following in his shambling gait, a constant and resolute shadow. The land had been cleared up Rough Fork to Wash Ridge. From a distance, the valley’s forests appeared not so much cut down as leveled by some vast glacier. Though the rains had lessened, silt-stalled creeks continued to make traversing the bottomland a precarious business. Men stumbled and slipped, came up cursing and wiping mud from their faces and clothes. Two workers broke bones in the miasma and several more lost tools. A sawyer who’d once logged on the coast said the only difference between the valley and a Charleston County swamp was the absence of cottonmouth moccasins.

  Pemberton watched from the office porch as Serena and Galloway slogged on through the wasteland and disappeared up Cove Creek. As the morning passed, he worked on invoices and talked with Harris about meeting two potential investors. Every half hour, Pemberton got up from his desk and looked west to where Serena was. At eleven, it was time to check in with Scruggs, the man who’d overseen the saw mill operation since Buchanan’s death. But Pemberton was reluctant to leave the camp, and not just because he was worried about Serena. For the first time he could remember, Campbell hadn’t shown up for work. Pemberton found Vaughn and told him to stay in the office and answer the telephone. As Pemberton drove out of camp, he saw Serena and the horse ascending Half Acre Ridge. He remembered the workers’ surprise at how the thin mountain air never affected her, even in her first days when she’d ridden into the tract’s highest elevations. They forget where I’m from, Serena had told him.

  When Pemberton arrived at the saw mill, he found Scruggs at the splash pond supervising two workers guiding timber toward the log buggy. Using their eight-foot-long jam pikes like acrobats, the men moved quickly across the splash pond’s surface, stepping log to log with a confidence that belied the job’s dangers. Pemberton saw that the older man was Ingledew, a foreman who’d worked at the saw mill since it had begun operation. Ingledew wore cutter boots, their steel points grabbing the wood like claws, but the youth with him still worked barefoot, despite being at the saw mill a month.

  “Is that Jacob Ballard?”

  “Yes sir,” Scruggs said, a slight surprise in his voice. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

  “I remember his name on the payroll,” Pemberton said. “Why hasn’t he bought his cutter boots yet?”

  “I been telling him to,” Scruggs said, “but he’s sparking some girl over in Sevierville every Sunday. Young Ballard there would rather waste his money buying gewgaws for her.”

  Pemberton and Scruggs watched as the youth stepped barefoot across the pond’s all but hidden surface, now wielding the jam pike like a harpoon as he jabbed and herded the timber into position for the log buggy, Ingledew behind him untangling timber as well. Most of the logjams gave readily, but some had knit together like stitches, the whole jam moving instead of a single log, forcing the two men to crouch and untangle the timber by hand.

  “Good at it though, ain’t he, especially to be so green,” Scruggs said. “He glides over that pond like a water spider.”

  Pemberton nodded as they watched Ballard scamper to another log, prod more timber toward the buggy where a third worker waited to transport it onto the log carrier. Ballard was skinny but Pemberton could tell from the way he shoved the logs around that, like so many of the highlanders, he possessed a wiry strength.

  Pemberton was about to leave when he saw Ingledew unlock another logjam and free the lower trunk of a large poplar, push it toward the single slab of timber Ballard rode. The poplar log bumped against a smaller one only a yard behind the younger worker, it in turn bumping the timber the youth rode. It was hardly more than a tap, but enough. The log rolled and Ballard slipped. He plunged feet first through a small breech in the timber as through a trap door. Legs, trunk, and then head fell in a blur, all vanished except for a hand and a few inches of wrist. Somehow Ballard managed to hold onto the jam pike with his right hand. For a few moments, Pemberton thought it might save him, because each end of the pike had snagged timber. Pemberton watched the hand gripping the pike, willing the boy to hold on while Ingledew hurdled logs to come help. As Ingledew came closer, his wake caused the timber near where the youth fell to shift, and the breech Ballard had fallen through became no wider than the fist poking through to clutch the jam pike.

  Another five seconds and Ingledew might have been able to pull him out, but Ballard’s hand let go of the jam pike to make a last clawing grab at a log, his fingertips breaking off a piece of oak bark. The last breech in the gap disappeared along with the hand. Ingledew frantically opened a hole in the timber, but Pemberton knew as well as the workers that under the splash pond’s calm surface the creek’s old currents yet swirled. Ingledew kept moving, prying open more holes nearby as Pemberton and Scruggs scoured the pond for a logjam rocked or swayed by Ballard pushing from underneath. The man operating the log buggy was on the water as well now, but Ballard was lost. After twenty minutes Ingledew and the other man gave up and came to shore.

  Scruggs, the sole Catholic in the camp and perhaps the whole county, bowed his head and crossed himself.

  “Them logs sealed that boy up like a coffin lid,” Scruggs said softly.

  Pemberton stared out at the pond’s timbered surface, so calm now that the logs could have been perceived as resting on land, not water. The world suddenly appeared to Pemberton to widen in distance between the earth and sky, followed by a lightheadedness like what had caused him to pass out on the hospital gurney. For a moment, Pemberton feared his legs would give way. He bent his knees slightly and lowered his head, hands against thighs as he waited for the feeling to pass.

  “You all right?” Scruggs asked.

  “Just give me a second,” Pemberton said and slowly raised his head.

  Pemberton saw that not just Scruggs but also Ingledew and the other worker watched him. Scruggs reached out to steady him, but Pemberton waved the proffered arm away. He took slow breaths, let the space between the sky and world contract, steady itself.

  “You want to sit in the office for a while, Mr. Pemberton?” Scruggs asked.

  Pemberton shook his head. The lightheadedness had been replaced by nausea, and he wanted to be gone from this place before it got worse.

  “Come into camp tomorrow and we’ll get you a new man,” Pemberton said, already walking back to his car, “and this time make it clear he buys cutter boots with his first week’s pay.”

  “Yes sir,” Scruggs said.

  Pemberton got in the Packard and drove until he was out of sight of the saw mill. He pulled off the road and opened the door, waiting to see if his stomach was strong enough to hold its moiling contents.

  Once back at camp, Pemberton found that Campbell still hadn’t shown up, so he sent Vaughn instead to check on a problem with the second skidder. Pemberton went back to the invoices on his desk, but after getting up and standing by the window a third time, he placed the checkbook back in the Mosler safe and went to the stable after telling Vaughn that he’d return in the late afternoon. Pemberton mounted his horse and rode through slash and mud to Wash Ridge where he found Serena talking to a crew boss. The eagle’s
hooded head swung in Pemberton’s direction as he approached.

  “Come to check up on me, Pemberton?” Serena said as he rode up beside her.

  “You’d do the same.”

  “True enough,” Serena said, and reached out and touched his cheek. “But you’re the one who looks a little peaked. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Pemberton said.

  As the foreman asked Serena a final question, Pemberton thought of Ballard’s hand grasping the jam pike. He imagined the youth hanging in the murky water, debating whether or not to let go, to try and save himself or wait to be saved. Those seconds would have felt like minutes, Pemberton knew, the same way it had been when the bear enveloped him. Closing over the youth like a coffin lid, Scruggs had said. It would have felt that way, Pemberton knew, just as black and hopeless.

  The foreman nodded to Serena that he understood. He doffed his battered felt hat and went back to his men as Pemberton moved his horse alongside the Arabian.

  “Harris called,” Pemberton said. “We meet our potential investors at the Cecils this weekend.”

  “So I see the castle at last,” Serena said. “What else did Harris say about them?”

  “The Calhouns are old-money Charleston. They summer in Asheville and stay part of the time with the Cecils, which is why we’re meeting there. Lowenstein’s a businessman in New York City, a very successful one.”

  “Why is he here?”

  “His wife has tuberculosis.”

  Pemberton paused and watched the workers as they walked into the deeper woods, still watching them as he spoke again.

  “As far as Brazil, Harris told me they’re only considering investments in this region.”

  “Then we’ll have to change their minds,” Serena said.

  For a few moments neither of them spoke. The eagle’s jesses and swivels rustled as the bird raised its wings. Serena stroked the eagle’s keel with the back of her index finger and the bird calmed.

  “We lost a man at the saw mill today,” Pemberton said. “One of the new hires Scruggs was high on.”

  “If Scruggs liked him, then it is a loss. He’s a good judge of workers,” Serena said, pausing as she glanced east towards camp. “Has Campbell shown up?”

  “No,” Pemberton said. “I sent Vaughn to look for him, but he didn’t have any luck.”

  “Then it’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “A sawyer claimed that he’s deserted us,” Serena said. “We’ll give him until morning before we send Galloway after him.”

  “Why bring him back? If he doesn’t want to work for us, the hell with him.”

  “He knows who we’ve paid off and what for,” Serena said, “which might become a problem. Besides, the workers need to understand the necessity of loyalty.”

  “Campbell will keep his mouth shut. If Galloway does bring him back, it’ll look to the men like we can’t run this place ourselves.”

  “He won’t be bringing him back,” Serena said, addressing both Pemberton and the man behind him.

  Galloway leaned against a chestnut tree whose trunk outspanned his narrow shoulders. Despite wearing a blue denim shirt, Galloway had been so still Pemberton hadn’t seen him. He didn’t acknowledge Pemberton, but Pemberton knew Galloway had been listening all the while. Still listening. Pemberton looked down for a moment. His left hand folded inward slightly, and he saw that his thumb rubbed the index finger’s gold. An image came to him from his childhood of a turbaned genie rubbing a lamp. He closed the hand completely and looked up.

  “All right,” Pemberton said.

  “MCINTYRE’S doing some better,” Stewart said that evening as the men set their tools down for the day, rested a minute before walking the half-mile back to camp. “Me and his missus done what you all suggested.”

  “Hung him up on a stick?” Ross asked.

  “No, got him in the sunlight. He wouldn’t leave his bed so me and his missus had to tote him out on it. We set him and that bed in the cow pasture where there ain’t no shadows.”

  “Help any?” Henryson asked.

  “Seemed to for a while,” Stewart said. “He wasn’t talking none but did get to where he’d pick up his axe and cut some firewood, but then a big hoot owl flapped over the pasture and give him the fantods again. He figured it for a portent of something bad a-coming.”

  Ross cleared his throat and spit, nodded across the quarter-mile of stumps and slash to the south where the Pembertons and Galloway had appeared. Galloway was on foot but the Pembertons rode on horseback, the eagle rigid as a sentinel as it perched on Serena’s arm.

  “You want a portent of something bad a-coming there it is,” Ross said.

  Henryson nodded. “They say death always comes in threes, and if that ain’t the thing itself then I’m the king of England.”

  The men paused and stared out at the wasteland and watched the Pembertons and Galloway pass below them, Serena’s white gelding gleaming against the stark backdrop, Galloway trailing the procession, his hat brim low against the evening sun.

  “Look at them rattles on Stub’s hat,” Ross said. “They’s tilted up like a satinback ready to pour its teeth into you.”

  Henryson leaned over and raised his pant leg, examined a fist-sized bruise left by a limb whipping against it.

  “I’m of a mind it’s a good thing for Stub to have them rattles,” he said, “especially if they give a little shake once in a while. Leastways you’d know he was around. That fellow could hide from his own shadow.”

  The men were silent a few moments.

  “Campbell didn’t come to work today,” Henryson said.

  “And that ain’t like him,” Stewart added.

  “It ain’t like him to haul a grip full of clothes and leave his front door open either,” Henryson said, rolling down his pants leg. “Vaughn got up late last night to piss and seen him packing his car and heading out. I reckon Campbell read the writing on the wall. He was ever always a clever man.”

  “Like I told you,” Ross noted, “Campbell’s going to look after number one when things get too hot, like any other man.”

  “I think he was sick of being part of all their meanness,” Stewart said. “You could tell he never cottoned to them, even if he never said so.”

  “They’ll not abide his taking off like that,” Henryson said, his eyes on the Pembertons and Galloway as he spoke.

  “No,” Ross agreed. “If you book keep, you know where the checks go, including the ones them senators in Raleigh stuff in their pockets.”

  “How long you figure her to give Campbell before she sics Stub there after him?” Henryson asked.

  “I’d guess a day,” Ross said, “just to give some sport to it.”

  “Some claims Galloway’s mama helps him with his murderings,” Stewart said. “All she’s got to do is get a good look at you. Then she tells Galloway what he needs to do. That’s what some say.”

  “There’s some likely in that conclusion,” Snipes said, finding a segue into the discussion. “Even your scientists and such argue some folks got uncertain ways of knowing things.”

  “Which is why you’ll not hear me calling him Stub,” Ross said to Henryson, “and I’d advise you not to call him that unless you’re wanting to join the others he’s taken a disliking to.”

  They watched the party enter the fold of land where Rough Fork Creek flowed into the valley. Their vanishing forms appeared to wobble and haze, miragelike. Then they were gone as if consumed by the air itself.

  Twenty-four

  ON SATURDAY EVENING PEMBERTON FOLLOWED the blacktop through the declining hills and into the Pigeon River valley. A month earlier the last dogwood blossoms had wilted and fallen in the passing forests, the understory now the bright green of dogwood leaves and scrub oak, the denser green of mountain laurel and rhododendron. Pemberton suspected someday soon there’d be a poison to eradicate such valueless trees and shrubs and make it easier to cut and haul out hardwoods.

>   Pemberton raised his index finger and loosened the silk tie around his collar. He’d dressed up for the first time since his wedding. The white Indian cotton suit lay light over his body, but it still felt constrictive. Yet worth it to see Serena in the same dress she’d worn the first evening they’d met. Now as then the dress seemed in motion as it revealed her body’s clefts and curves, its thin green current of silk coursing from neck to ankle. Pemberton placed his right hand on Serena’s knee. As he felt the smooth skin beneath the smoothness of the silk, Pemberton tried to make its promise of later pleasure eclipse other concerns. But it didn’t. As the road began its ascent from the valley, Pemberton lifted his hand and shifted the Packard into a lower gear.

  “I heard McDowell came into the commissary last evening,” Pemberton said, keeping his hand on the knob. “He was asking the men about Campbell.”

  “If he’s asking questions, he must not have the answers,” Serena replied, turning so her body angled toward Pemberton. “How is Meeks working out?”

  “Considering it was his first week, pretty well. He has trouble with the local brogue, but he got the payroll numbers right.”

  The land leveled and then fell as they crossed the French Broad, the river brown and swollen from an afternoon rain. It was eventide and streetlights were flickering on as the Packard skirted Asheville. They crossed the Swannanoa River, then passed through the Biltmore Estate’s main gate and began the winding three-mile drive to the mansion. The forest pressed close to the road, blotting out any light other than the Packard’s beams.

  The road curved and then straightened, revealing a grassy esplanade. Pemberton made the last turn, and the mansion appeared before them like a cliff of lights. Towers and spires surged upward in silhouette. Gargoyles leaned from the parapets, their scowling features backlit by the glow of windows. The limestone veneer bespoke solidity, a confidence that the Vanderbilt family’s place in the world was beyond the vagaries of stock markets and industry.