Serena Read online

  They went into the woods behind the house, pausing first at the white bee box set at the wood’s edge. Unlike during warm weather, Rachel had to lean close to hear them, their shifting huddle soft as a drowsy wind. The bee box’s paint was chipped and fading, and she’d have to fix that by spring because white soothed the bees almost as much as smoke.

  You have to tell the bees he died. They’ll leave if you don’t, Widow Jenkins had told Rachel the day of her father’s funeral. It was something the old folks believed, and though Rachel wasn’t sure if it was true or not she’d done it. She’d taken off her dark mourning clothes and put on a worn linen dress, then walked out to the shed to find the cheesecloth veil. It was white as well, made of muslin. By then almost all of the bees had returned for the night, only a few coming and going as she’d approached the box. Rachel remembered how she’d slowly opened the super, especially how clear and clean the smell had been, like moss on a creek bank. She’d spoken to the bees calmly, her voice merging with their own slurry voices. Afterward, as she’d walked back to the house in that late-June twilight, it had struck Rachel that someone at a distance might see her and easily mistake her for a bride. She’d also thought how, if that distance had been one of months instead of furlongs, taking her back to those winter middays she’d spent in Pemberton’s bed, she could have imagined the same herself.

  Jacob whined and Rachel felt the first drops of a cold drizzle.

  “We better get that egg,” she told the child.

  It took a few minutes, because the guinea was good at hiding them, but Rachel finally found an egg in a wither of honeysuckle vines. Rachel pulled the bundling over Jacob’s head, because the drizzle had quickened, tinged with ice that stung her face. She walked into the barn and set Jacob on a bed of gathered straw. The whispery sound of the drizzle hitting the tin roof made the barn feel snug, as if its broad-beamed shoulders had shrugged closer together.

  Rachel went to the shed and unwound the hook and line from the fishing pole and returned to the barn. With the fish hook’s barb, she chipped a small hole in the egg, then guided the hook’s barb and shank into the yolk until no metal showed. Rachel delicately placed the egg back on the straw and tied the six feet of fishing line to a nail head. All this trouble because she was living so close to the bone a few pennies mattered, Rachel told herself bitterly. She and her father had had hard times before. When Rachel was seven they’d lost a milk cow that had eaten cherry leaves, and when she was twelve a hail storm had destroyed the corn crop. But even in the leanest times there’d always been a few dollars left in the coffee can stowed on the pantry’s top shelf, a cow or horse in the pasture yet to be sold.

  Sell it, it’ll fetch a good price, Mrs. Pemberton had said when she’d handed Rachel the bowie knife. And it probably would, perhaps even as much as the ginseng, but Rachel couldn’t abide doing what Mrs. Pemberton had commanded her to do. She’d sell the shoes off her feet before taking the knife out of the box trunk and selling it. Widow Jenkins would say Rachel was just being prideful, and maybe Preacher Bolick would agree, but she’d had enough proud shucked off her the last few months to believe God wouldn’t begrudge her keeping just a little.

  THE next morning Rachel found a raccoon crouched in the stall’s corner, the fishing line tugging one side of the creature’s mouth. Its pink tongue was panting. The raccoon’s head did not turn when she opened the stall door. Only the black-masked eyes shifted. It wasn’t the eyes but the front paws that made her hesitate. They looked like hands shriveled and blackened by fire, but human hands nevertheless. A year ago her father would have done this, done what he’d done when a big cur had come into the yard and killed a rooster, done what he did when a colt was born lame. What you had to do on a farm.

  Let him go and he’ll be back, Rachel told herself, and you won’t catch him again because a coon’s too smart to be fooled twice. It’ll look for the line and hook and stay clear of that one while it takes every other egg in the barn. I don’t even have a choice. Rachel thought how that was pretty much true of everything now, that you got one choice at the beginning but if you didn’t choose right, and she hadn’t, things got narrow real quick. Like trying to wade a river, she thought. You take a wrong step and set your foot on a wobbly rock or in a drop-off and you’re swept away, and all you can do then is try to survive.

  It ought not be like that, Rachel told herself, and she knew that for a few folks it wasn’t. They could make a wrong choice and be on their way with no more bother than a cow swishing a fly with its tail. That wasn’t right either. Her anger made it easier to go to the shed and get the axe.

  When Rachel stepped into the stall, the raccoon didn’t move. She remembered her father saying a bobcat’s skull was so thin you could crush it with your hands. She wondered if a raccoon’s skull was the same. She tried to decide if it was best done with the axe head or the blade. Rachel lifted the axe a few inches off the ground, thinking how if she didn’t swing true with the sharp end she could slice the line.

  She turned the handle so that the blunt end was what she’d strike with. She aimed and swung and heard a crack. The raccoon quivered a moment and grew still. Rachel kneeled and worried the fish hook free from the raccoon’s mouth. She looked at the fur, knowing if the raccoon had come a few months later cold weather would have thickened the pelt enough to sell to Mr. Scott. She picked the raccoon up by the tail and took it out behind the cabin and flung it into the woods.

  Eight

  THE EAGLE ARRIVED IN DECEMBER. SERENA HAD notified the depot master it would be coming and must be brought immediately to camp, and so it was, the six-foot wooden-slat crate and its inhabitant placed on a flat car with two youths in attendance, the train making its slow ascent from Waynesville as if bringing a visiting dignitary.

  With the eagle came two small leather bags. In one was a thick gauntlet of goat skin to cover the forearm from wrist to elbow, in the other the leather hood and jesses and swivels and the leash, that and a single piece of rag paper that may have been instructions or a bill or even a warning but written in a language the depot master had never seen before but suspected was Comanche. The conductor of the train that brought the bird to Waynesville disagreed, telling of the strange man who’d accompanied the bird from Charleston to Asheville. Hair black as a crow’s feather and wearing a dress so bright blue it hurt your eyeballs to look at it long, the conductor told the men at the depot, and a pointy fur hat. Plus a sword on his belt nigh tall as he was that give a fellow pause about making sport of the dress he wore. No sirrie, the conductor declared, that wasn’t one of our Indians.

  The bird’s arrival was an immediate source of rumor and speculation, especially among Snipes and his crew. The men had come out of the dining hall to watch the two boys lift their charge off the flatcar, the youths solemn and ceremonious as they carried the crate to the stable. Dunbar believed the creature would be used as a messenger in the manner of a homing pigeon. McIntyre cited a verse from Revelations while Stewart suggested the Pembertons planned to fatten up the bird and eat it. Ross suggested the eagle had been brought in to peck out the eyes of any worker who closed them on the job. Snipes uncharacteristically ventured no theory about the creature’s purpose, though he did give a lengthy discourse on whether or not men could fly if they had feathers on their arms.

  Serena had the youths place the eagle in the back stall where Campbell had built a block perch of wood and steel and sisal rope. Serena then dismissed the two boys, and they walked out of the stable side by side, each matching his stride to his fellow’s. They marched back to the waiting train and climbed onto the flat car and sat with legs crossed and faces shorn of expression, much in the manner of the Buddha. Several workers gathered around the car, inquiring of the eagle and its purpose. The youths ignored all imprecations. Only when the wheels turned beneath them did the two boys allow themselves condescending smiles aimed at lesser mortals who would never be entrusted as the guardians of things original and rare.

  S
erena and Pemberton remained in the stable, observing the eagle from outside the stall door. The bird’s head was covered with the leather hood, and its immense yellow talons gripped the block perch inside the crate, the six-foot wingspan pressed tight to the body. Motionless. But Pemberton sensed the eagle’s power as he might an unsprung coil of wrought iron, especially in the talons, which stabbed deep into the perch block’s hemp.

  “Those talons look very powerful,” Pemberton noted, “especially the longer one at the back of the foot.”

  “That’s the hallux talon,” Serena said. “It’s strong enough to pierce a human skull, or, as more often occurs, the bones of a human forearm.”

  Serena did not raise her eyes from the eagle as she reached out and took Pemberton’s hand, but even in the barn’s dim light he could see the intensity of her gaze. Serena’s thin eyebrows arched as if to allow her vision to take in as much of the eagle as possible.

  “This is what we want,” she said, her voice deepening, the emotion so often controlled fully unbridled now. “To be like this always. No past or future, pure enough to live totally in the present.”

  Serena’s shoulders shuddered, as if to cast off an unwanted cloak. Her face reassumed its look of measured placidity, the intensity not drained from her body but spread to a wider surface. They did not speak again until the Arabian shifted in the front stall and stamped its foot.

  “Remind me to tell Vaughn to move the Arabian into the stall next to this one,” Serena said. “The bird needs to get used to the horse.”

  “When you train the eagle,” Pemberton asked, “you starve her, then what?”

  “She weakens enough to take food from my glove. But it’s when she bows and bares her neck that matters.”

  “Why?” Pemberton asked, “because it shows the bird has surrendered?”

  “No, that’s where she’s most vulnerable. It means she trusts me with her life.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Two, perhaps three days.”

  “When will you start?” Pemberton asked.

  “This evening.”

  Serena slept all afternoon, and at dinner she ate until her stomach swelled visibly. Afterward, she sent Vaughn to the commissary, and he returned with a chamber pot and a gallon bucket filled with water. When Pemberton asked about food or quilts, Serena told him she’d not eat or sleep again until the eagle did.

  For two nights and a day Serena did not leave the stall. It was late morning of the second day when she came to the office. Dark half-moons lined the underside of Serena’s eyes, her hair matted and straw-strewn.

  “Come and see,” she told Pemberton, and they walked out to the stable, Serena’s gray eyes set in a heavy-lidded wince against the unaccustomed light. A heavy snow had fallen the day before and Serena slipped, would have fallen if Pemberton had not grabbed her arm and righted her.

  “We should go on to the house,” Pemberton said. “You’re exhausted.”

  “No,” Serena answered. “I need to show you.”

  To the west, gray clouds thickened, but the sun held sway in the center sky, the snow so bright-dazzling that as Serena and Pemberton entered the barn the day’s light broke off as if cleaved. Pemberton still held Serena’s elbow, but it was her eyes more than his that led them across the barn’s earthen floor to the back stall. As Serena unhinged the stall door, the eagle’s form slowly separated itself from less substantial darkness. The bird did not seem even to be breathing until it heard Serena’s voice. Then its hooded head swiveled in her direction. Serena stepped inside the stall and removed the hood, placed a piece of red meat on her gauntlet and held out her arm. The eagle stepped onto Serena’s forearm, gripping the goatskin as the head bowed to tear and swallow the meat between its talons. As the bird ate, Serena stroked the raptor’s neck with her index finger.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said, gazing at the eagle. “It’s no wonder it takes not just the earth but the sky to contain it.”

  Serena’s tone of dreamy wonder was as disturbing to Pemberton as her feebleness. He told her again they should go to the house, but she didn’t seem to hear him. Serena gave the bird the last hank of meat and settled it back on the block perch. Her hands trembled as they placed the hood back on. She turned and stared directly at Pemberton, her gray eyes glassy as marbles.

  “I’ve never told you about going to our house after it burned down,” Serena said. “I’d only been out of the hospital three days. My father’s foreman, the man I was staying with, I’d told him to burn the house with everything left inside, everything. He hadn’t wanted to do that, and even after saying he had I needed to make sure. He’d figured on that so he hid my boots and clothes, but I took one of his horses while he was gone, wearing just a robe and overcoat. The house had been burned, burned to the ground. The ashes were still warm when I stepped on them. When I got on the horse, I looked down at my footprints. They were black at first and then gray and then white, growing lighter, less visible with each step. It looked like something had moved through the snow before slowly rising. For a few seconds, I felt that I wasn’t on the horse but actually…”

  “We’re going to the house,” Pemberton said, taking a step into the stall.

  “I didn’t sleep when I was with the eagle,” Serena said, as much to herself as to Pemberton. “I didn’t dream.”

  Pemberton took her hand in his. He felt a limpness as if its last strength had been used to feed the eagle.

  “All we’ll ever need is within each other,” Serena said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Even when we have our child, it will only be an image of what we already are.”

  “You need to eat.” Pemberton said.

  “I’m not hungry anymore. The second day I was, but after that…”

  Serena lost her train of thought. She looked around as if the thought might have drifted into one of the stall’s corners.

  “Come with me,” Pemberton said, and led her by the hand.

  Vaughn was outside the dining hall, and Pemberton motioned him over. He told the youth to get food and coffee from the kitchen. They walked slowly up to the house. Vaughn soon came with a silver platter normally used to hold a ham or turkey. Heaped on it were thick slabs of beef and venison, green beans and squash and sweet potatoes drenched in butter. Buttermilk biscuits and a bowl of honey. A coffee pot and two cups. Pemberton helped Serena to the kitchen table, placed the platter and silverware before her. Serena stared at the food as if unsure what to do with it. Pemberton took the knife and fork and cut a small piece of beef. He molded his hand around hers.

  “Here,” he said, and raised the fork and meat to her mouth.

  She chewed methodically while Pemberton poured the coffee. He cut more pieces of beef for her and lifted the tin cup to her mouth so she could sip, allow the coffee’s dense warmth to settle inside her. Serena did not try to talk, as if it took all her concentration to chew and swallow.

  Afterwards, Pemberton drew her bath and helped Serena undress. As he helped her into the tub, he felt the terraced ribs and pinched stomach. Pemberton sat on the bathtub’s rim and used soap and a washcloth to cleanse the reek of manure and livestock off Serena’s skin. The thick tips of his fingers kneaded soap into her matted hair and quickly raised a lather so thick it gloved his hands white. A sterling silver pitcher and basin sat on the washstand, a wedding gift from the Buchanans. He rinsed Serena’s hair with water poured from the pitcher. Yellow splinters of straw floated on the water’s dingy surface. Outside, the sun had vanished and sleet had begun to fall. Pemberton helped Serena from the porcelain tub, dried her with a towel and helped her into her peignoir. She walked by herself to the back room, lay down and quickly fell asleep. Pemberton sat in the chair opposite the bed and watched her. He listened to the tapping of the sleet on the tin roof, soft but insistent, like something wanting in.

  Nine

  WHEN THE SICKNESS CAME UPON THEM RACHEL thought it was something picked up at the camp’s church service, bec
ause it was a Tuesday when Jacob first glowed with fever. He fussed and his brow slickened with sweat. Rachel was no better off herself, fever sopping her dress and hair, the world off plumb and whirling like a spin-top. She laid cold poultices on the child’s forehead and fed him clabber. She wet a paper and placed it around an onion and set it in the embers to bake, took the juice and mixed it with sugar and fed it to Jacob with a spoon. She used the witch hazel as well, hoping at least to clear his lungs. Rachel remembered how her father claimed a fever always broke on the third evening. Just wait it out, she told herself. But by late afternoon of the third day they both shivered as if palsied. She placed another log on the fire and made a pallet before the hearth, lay down with Jacob and waited for evening. They slept as dusk ambered the day’s last light.

  It was full dark when Rachel awoke, shivering though her calico dress was sweat-soaked. She changed Jacob’s swaddlings and warmed a bottle of milk, but his appetite was so puny he did little more than gum the rubber nipple. Rachel pressed her hand to his brow, and it was just as hot as before. If it don’t break soon I’ll have to get him to the doctor, she said, talking aloud. The fire was almost out, and she laid a thick white oak log on the andirons, nestled kindling around it to make sure the log caught. She stirred the embers beneath with the poker, and sparks flew up the chimney like swarming fireflies.

  The kindling finally caught and the room slowly emerged. Shadows scattered and reformed on the cabin walls. Rachel discerned shapes in them, first cornstalks and trees and then scarecrows and finally swaying human forms that steadily became more corporal. She lay back down on the pallet with Jacob, shivered and sweated and slept some more.

  When Rachel woke, the fire had dimmed to a few pink embers. She pressed her palm to Jacob’s brow, felt the heat against her skin. She lifted the barn lantern off the fireboard and lit it. We got to go to town, she told the child, and lifted him into the crook of her arm as her free hand clutched the lantern’s tin handle.