Serena Page 32

The others smiled at Calhoun’s remark, including Salvatore, who eased back into his chair. Pemberton emptied his tumbler and set it down forcefully enough that Mrs. Salvatore flinched.

  “So how will I die, Mrs. Galloway?” Pemberton asked, his words beginning to slur. “Will it be a gunshot? Perhaps a knife?”

  Galloway, who’d been gazing out the window, now fixed his eyes on his mother.

  “A rope’s more likely for a scoundrel like you, Pemberton,” Calhoun said, eliciting chuckles all around.

  The old woman turned her head in Pemberton’s direction.

  “No gun nor knife,” she answered. “Nor rope around your neck.”

  “That’s a relief,” Pemberton said.

  Except for the Salvatores, the guests laughed politely.

  “What killed my father was his liver,” Pemberton said.

  “It ain’t to be your liver,” Mrs. Galloway said.

  “So what, pray tell, is the thing that will kill me?”

  “They ain’t one thing can kill a man like you,” Mrs. Galloway answered, and pushed back her chair.

  Galloway helped his mother to her feet, and at that moment Pemberton realized it was all a jape. The others realized also as Mrs. Galloway took her son’s arm and made her slow clatter across the room and disappeared into the darkened hallway. Pemberton raised his tumbler toward Serena.

  “Splendid answer, and the best any man could hope for,” he said. “A toast to my wife, who can play a rusty with the best of them.”

  Pemberton looked down the table’s length and smiled at Serena as the others laughed and clapped. The alcohol made everyone else in the room hazy to Pemberton, but somehow not Serena. If anything, she appeared brighter, the dress vivid and shimmering. Evergreen. The word came to him now though he could not say why. He remembered the touch of his lips on the pale bareness of her neck and wished the guests hours gone. If they were, he wouldn’t wait but would lift Serena onto the table and undress her on the Chestnut’s heartwood. For a few moments, he thought of doing it anyway and giving Mrs. Salvatore a real case of the vapors.

  All raised their glasses and drank. Calhoun, who’d drunk almost as much as Pemberton, wiped a dribble of scotch from his chin before pouring himself another drink.

  “I must admit,” Mrs. Calhoun said, “that from the way she put on there were a few moments I almost believed the old woman could see the future.”

  “She played her role well,” her husband agreed. “Never a hint of a smile the whole time.”

  Pemberton lifted his watch from his pocket and opened the case with no attempt to hide his purpose. The watch hands wavered like compass needles, causing Pemberton to raise the watch closer to his face.

  “It’s been a wonderful evening,” he said, “but it’s time for our revelry to end if you’re to be at the station when the Asheville train leaves.”

  “But you must open your present first,” Serena said. “Galloway can call the depot in Waynesville and have them hold the train.”

  Serena lifted a long cylinder-shaped cardboard box from under the table. She passed the box to Pemberton and he opened the flap, slowly removed a rifle. Pemberton placed his hands under the stock and set the weapon before him so the others could see.

  “A Winchester 1895,” Serena said, “albeit a more personalized one, as you can see from the wood and gold trigger and plating. And the scrollwork, of course. In the Rockies it’s the weapon of choice for hunting mountain lions.”

  Pemberton picked up the rifle and ran his hand over the wood’s glossed finish.

  “I know about this gun,” he said. “It’s the one Roosevelt called ‘Big Medicine.’”

  “Too bad Teddy didn’t use it on himself,” Calhoun said.

  “Yes, but who knows,” Pemberton said, raising the rifle toward the window and feigning disappointment when he squeezed the trigger and there was only a click. “Perhaps that cousin of his will show up, and I’ll take a shot at him.”

  Pemberton handed the rifle to Mr. Salvatore. The gift slowly circled the table, the women passing it with palms underneath as if a platter, except for Mrs. De Man, who like the men jostled the rifle in her hands, nodding appreciatively at the gun’s heft and sturdiness.

  “The scrollwork, Mrs. Pemberton,” Mr. Lowenstein said. “It’s beautifully done, but I don’t recognize the depiction.”

  “The shield of Achilles.”

  “Such a gun would do good service in Quebec with our brown bears,” Mrs. De Man noted as she passed the rifle to her husband.

  Pemberton filled his tumbler again, sloshing scotch onto the table as he poured. When the rifle was passed back to him, he leaned it against the table.

  “I’ll kill my mountain lion first,” Pemberton boasted, “then a jaguar.”

  “Brazil,” Lowenstein mused. “What an adventure for the two of you.”

  “Indeed,” Calhoun said. “Forests enough for a lifetime and plenty left over.”

  Pemberton raised his hand and waved it dismissively.

  “Give us a lifetime and Mrs. Pemberton and I will cut down every tree, not just in Brazil but in the world.”

  The words inside Pemberton’s head were luminous enough, but he knew that he’d tried to say too much. Vowels and consonants had dragged and halted like gears that wouldn’t mesh, the words hopelessly slurred.

  Salvatore nodded at his wife and stood.

  “We should be going now. Our train back to Chicago leaves rather early in the morning.”

  The other guests rose and made their goodbyes, began leaving as well. Pemberton tried to rise from his chair, but as he did the room tilted. He sat back down, focused his eyes and saw Serena still sat opposite him, the table lengthening out between them.

  “See them to the train?” Pemberton asked. “Not sure I can.”

  Serena looked at him steadily.

  “They know the way, Pemberton,” Serena said, watching him steadily.

  The room slowly leaned back and forth, not as bad as when he’d stood up, but enough to make him grip the table’s edge, feel the smooth waxed wood against his palms. He gripped the table harder. An image almost like a dream came to him of being alone on a vast sea and hanging onto a piece of wood as waves lapped against him, and then he let go.

  Thirty-Seven

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING PEMBERTON AWOKE with the worst hangover of his life. It was early, but what light filtered through the window stung his eyes. His tongue felt coated with a foul dust that had liquefied in his stomach. The previous evening returned in a series of blurry images that passed before him like boxcars come to unload freight he didn’t want.

  Serena still slept, so he turned on his side and closed his eyes but couldn’t fall back asleep. He waited, not seeing but feeling the sun slowly brighten the room. After a while, Serena stirred beside him, her bare hip brushing against his. Pemberton could not remember if they’d coupled last night, or even how he’d gotten back to the house. He turned and looked at Serena through bleary eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry about what?”

  “Imbibing too much last night.”

  “It was your birthday, and you celebrated,” Serena said. “There’s no crime in that.”

  “But it may have cost us a couple of investors.”

  “I doubt it, Pemberton. Profits matter more than social graces.”

  Serena sat upright. The bed sheet fell away, and Pemberton saw her long slim back and the slight taper before the flare of her hips. She faced the window, and the morning sun fell lambent over her profile. Enough light to make his bloodshot eyes squint, but he did not turn away. How could anything else have ever mattered, Pemberton wondered. He reached out and held her wrist as Serena prepared to leave the bed.

  “Not yet,” he said softly.

  Pemberton slid closer to wrap his other arm around Serena’s waist. He pressed his face to the small of her back, closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of her.

  “You need to get up,”
Serena said, freeing herself and leaving the bed.

  “Why?” Pemberton asked, opening his eyes. “It’s Sunday.”

  “Galloway said be ready by eleven,” Serena replied, slipping on her breeches and riding jacket. “Your mountain lion awaits you.”

  “I’d forgotten,” Pemberton said, and slowly sat up, the room leaning for a few moments then righting itself.

  He rose, still groggy as he walked over to the chifforobe. He lifted his duckcloth pants and wool socks from the shelf, stripped his hunting jacket from a hanger. Pemberton tossed them on the bed, then retrieved his heavy lace-up hunting boots from the hall closet before sitting beside Serena, who was pulling on her jodhpurs. He closed his eyes, trying to stall the headache the morning light intensified.

  “And you’re fine here alone?” Pemberton said, his eyes still shut as he spoke.

  “Yes, all I’ve got to do is make sure what’s left in the kitchen and the commissary gets loaded on a railcar. But first I’ll take the eagle out, a final hunt before we leave this place.”

  Serena rose, looking toward the door as she spoke.

  “I have to go.”

  Pemberton reached for her hand, held it a moment.

  “Thank you for the rifle, and the birthday party.”

  “You’re welcome,” Serena said, withdrawing her hand. “I hope you find your panther, Pemberton.”

  After Serena left, he contemplated going to the dining hall for breakfast, but his stomach argued against it. He dressed but for his boots, then lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes. For just a few minutes, he told himself, but Pemberton didn’t wake until Galloway knocked on the door.

  Pemberton yelled he’d be out in ten minutes and went to the bathroom. He filled the basin with cold water and plunged his whole head into it, kept it submerged as long as he could stand. He raised up and did the same thing again. The cold water helped. Pemberton toweled off and combed his hair so it lay sleek against his scalp, then he brushed his teeth as well to dim the nauseating smell of his own breath. He found the aspirin bottle on the medicine shelf and took out two, capped the bottle and put it in his pocket. As he was about to turn, he saw himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and his pallor could have been better, but his being up and about at all seemed a triumph considering how he’d felt earlier. Pemberton picked up his jacket from the bed and went into the front of the house where the new rifle lay on the fireboard. He couldn’t remember setting it there last night, or being given the box of .35 caliber bullets beside it.

  “Heard you had quite a evening of it,” Galloway said as Pemberton stepped onto the porch, his face grimacing against the bright cloudless day.

  Pemberton ignored Galloway’s comment, focusing instead on Frizzell’s truck parked beside the commissary. The photographer had set up his tripod on the railless track where the skidder boom had once sat, his camera aimed not at any worker living or the dead but the decimated valley itself. Frizzell hunched beneath his black shawl, oblivious to the fact that Serena, atop the gelding with the eagle on the pommel, rode toward him.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Pemberton asked.

  “No idea, but your missus looks to be going to find out,” Galloway said and glanced skyward. “We need to be going. We got us a late start as it is.”

  “Go on to the car,” Pemberton said, and handed the rifle and box of bullets to Galloway. “I’m going to find out what this is about.”

  Pemberton walked toward the commissary as Frizzell emerged from beneath the cloth, eyes blinking as if just awakened as he spoke with Serena. Pemberton passed the office, empty now, even the windows taken to the camp. The door was ajar, a few skittering leaves already wind-brushed inside.

  “Secretary Albright’s commissioned a photograph of the devastation we’ve wrecked upon the land,” Serena said to Pemberton when he joined her. “A further way to justify his park.”

  “This land is still ours for another week,” Pemberton said to Frizzell. “You’re trespassing.”

  “But she just said I’m free to take all the photographs I wish,” Frizzell objected.

  “Why not, Pemberton,” Serena said. “I’m pleased with what we’ve done here. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” Pemberton said, “but I do think Mr. Frizzell should compensate us with a photograph.”

  Frizzell’s brow furrowed in surprise.

  “Of this?” the photographer asked, his palm turned upward toward the valley.

  “No, a photograph of us,” Pemberton replied.

  “I thought I made my views on such things clear at the Vanderbilt Estate,” Serena said.

  “Not a portrait, just a photograph.”

  Serena did not answer.

  “Indulge me this one time,” Pemberton said. “We have no photograph of us together. Think of it as a last birthday present.”

  For a few moments Serena did not respond. Then something in her countenance let go, not so much a softening as a yielding that Pemberton thought at first was resignation but then seemed more like sadness. He remembered the photographs she left in the Colorado house to burn, and wondered, for all her denying of the past, if some part of her yet dwelled on those photographs.

  “All right, Pemberton.”

  Frizzell slid the negative plate from his last photograph into its protective metal sleeve and placed a new one in the camera.

  “We’ll need a less dreary backdrop, so I’ll have to move my equipment,” Frizzell said irritably.

  “No,” Pemberton said. “The backdrop is fine as it is. As Mrs. Pemberton says, we’re pleased with what we’ve done here.”

  “Very well,” Frizzell said, turning to Serena, “but surely you’re not staying on your horse?”

  “Yes,” Serena said. “I am.”

  “Well,” Frizzell said with utter exasperation, “if the photograph is blurred you’ll only have yourselves to blame.”

  Frizzell disappeared under his shawl, and the photograph was taken. The photographer began packing his equipment as Galloway gave a long blast of his car horn.

  “I’ll have one of my men pick it up in Waynesville tomorrow,” Pemberton said, lingering beside Serena.

  “You need to go, Pemberton,” Serena said.

  She leaned in the saddle and pressed her hand against his face. Pemberton took her hand and pressed it to his lips a moment.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Serena nodded and turned away. She rode off toward Noland Mountain, black puffs of lingering ash rising around the horse’s hooves. Pemberton watched her a few moments and then walked to the car, but he paused before opening the passenger door.

  “What is it?” Galloway asked.

  “Just trying to think if there’s anything else I may need.”

  “I got us food,” Galloway said. “Got your hunting knife too. The Missus had me fetch it. It’s in my tote sack.”

  As they left camp, Pemberton glanced up the ridge at Galloway’s stringhouse, one of the few that hadn’t yet been hauled to the new site. The old woman wasn’t on the porch, was probably inside sitting at the table. Pemberton smiled as he thought of her prophecy, the way they’d all been taken in by her performance. They rode north, Galloway using his stub to guide the wheel when he shifted gears. Pemberton closed his eyes and waited for the aspirin to ease his headache.

  After a while the Packard slowed and turned. Pemberton opened his eyes. Trees closed in around them. They bumped down into Ivy Gap, a swathe of private land just east of the park holdings. The car passed over a wooden plank bridge, and the automobile’s vibration caused Pemberton’s latent headache to return.

  “Why don’t you get a damn fender brace for this thing,” Pemberton said, “that or slow down.”

  “Maybe it’ll shake that hang over out of your head,” Galloway said, swerving to avoid a washout.

  They passed a harvested cornfield where a scarecrow rose, wide-armed as if forsaken. A pair of doves fluttered up amid the tatter of broken stalk
s and shucks, resettled. Pemberton knew men hunted them but could not imagine what satisfaction came from killing something hardly larger than the shell you shot with. The woods thickened until the road did not so much end as give up, surrendering to scrub oaks and broom sedge. Galloway stopped and jerked the handbrake.

  “We’ll have to hoof it the rest of the way.”

  They got out and Galloway took a tote sack from the back seat. Pemberton retrieved his rifle and opened the box of bullets, lifted out a handful and stuffed them in a jacket pocket. Galloway swung the tote sack over his shoulder.

  “Anything else?” Pemberton asked.

  “No,” Galloway said, starting down the hint of road that remained. “All we need’s in this tote sack.”

  “You have the car keys?”

  “Got them,” Galloway said, patting his right pants pocket.

  “Give me my knife.”

  Galloway opened the tote sack and handed Pemberton the knife.

  “Where’s the sheath?”

  “I reckon it’s still in that drawer,” Galloway said.

  Pemberton cursed softly at Galloway’s oversight, placed the hunting knife in the jacket’s side pocket.

  Pemberton and Galloway moved deeper into the gorge, crossing a spring bog and then a creek. They moved through a stand of tulip poplars whose yellow leaves shimmered the forest floor with new-fallen brightness. The land made a last steep drop, and they entered the meadow, tufts of broom sedge giving the open landscape a luster to rival the surrounding trees. A deer lay in the meadow’s center, little left but rags of fur and bones. Galloway opened the tote sack and removed a dozen ears of corn, placed them in a full circle as if to enclose the carcass. Pemberton wondered if Galloway was enacting some primitive hunting ceremony, something learned from the Cherokee or done centuries ago in Albion, the kind of thing that had so fascinated Buchanan.

  “That panther fed on this deer pretty good, didn’t it,” Galloway said.

  “It appears so.”

  “I figured it would,” Galloway said, taking a hawkbill knife from his right pocket.

  Galloway walked over to the meadow edge where a bed sheet hung from a dogwood branch, its four corners knotted to hold something sagging within. He methodically freed the knife blade, then sliced open the bed sheet. A dead fawn spilled onto the ground. Galloway picked up a back leg and dragged the fawn to the meadow’s center, set it beside the other carcass.