by Ron Rash
“It won’t need stitches,” she said, “just iodine and a dressing.”
Pemberton nodded. Adrenaline surged through him and when Buchanan’s concerned face loomed closer, his partner’s features—the clipped black hedge of moustache between the pointed narrow nose and small mouth, the round pale-green eyes that always looked slightly surprised—seemed at once both vivid and remote. Pemberton took deep measured breaths, wanting to compose himself before speaking to anyone.
Serena picked up the bowie knife and carried it to Harmon’s daughter, who leaned over her father, hands cradling the blank face close to hers as if something might yet be conveyed to him. Tears flowed down the young woman’s cheeks, but she made no sound.
“Here,” Serena said, holding the knife by the blade. “By all rights it belongs to my husband. It’s a fine knife, and you can get a good price for it if you demand one. And I would,” she added. “Sell it, I mean. That money will help when the child is born. It’s all you’ll ever get from my husband and me.”
Harmon’s daughter stared at Serena now, but she did not raise a hand to take the knife. Serena set the bowie knife on the bench and walked across the platform to stand beside Pemberton. Except for Campbell, who was walking toward the platform, the men leaning against the livestock barn’s railing had not moved. Pemberton was glad they were there, because at least some good might come from what had happened. The workers already understood Pemberton was as physically strong as any of them, had learned that last spring when they’d put down the train tracks. Now they knew he could kill a man, had seen it with their own eyes. They’d respect him, and Serena, even more. He turned and met Serena’s gray eyes.
“Let’s go to the camp,” Pemberton said.
He placed his hand on Serena’s elbow, turning her toward the steps Campbell had just ascended. Campbell’s long angular face was typically enigmatic, and he altered his path so as not to walk directly by the Pembertons—done so casually someone watching would assume it wasn’t deliberate.
Pemberton and Serena stepped off the platform and followed the track to where Wilkie and Buchanan waited. Cinders crunched under their feet, made gray wisps like snuffed matches. Pemberton gave a backward glance and saw Campbell leaning over Harmon’s daughter, his hand on her shoulder as he spoke to her. Sheriff McDowell, dressed in his Sunday finery, stood beside the bench as well. He and Campbell helped the girl to her feet and led her into the depot.
“Is my Packard here?” Pemberton asked Buchanan.
Buchanan nodded and Pemberton addressed the baggage boy, who was still on the platform.
“Get the grips and put them in the back seat, then tie the smaller trunk onto the rack. The train can bring the bigger one later.”
“Don’t you think you’d better speak to the sheriff?” Buchanan asked after he handed Pemberton the Packard’s key.
“Why should I explain anything to that son-of-a-bitch?” Pemberton said. “You saw what happened.”
He and Serena were getting in the Packard when McDowell walked up briskly behind them. When he turned, Pemberton saw that despite the Sunday finery the sheriff wore his holster. Like so many of the highlanders, the sheriff’s age was hard to estimate. Pemberton supposed near fifty, though the sheriff’s jet-black hair and taut body befitted a younger man.
“We’re going to my office,” McDowell said.
“Why?” Pemberton asked. “It was self-defense. A dozen men will verify that.”
“I’m charging you with disorderly conduct. That’s a ten-dollar fine or a week in jail.”
Pemberton pulled out his billfold and handed McDowell two fives.
“We’re still going to my office,” McDowell said. “You’re not leaving Waynesville until you write out a statement attesting you acted in self-defense.”
They stood less than a yard apart, neither man stepping back. Pemberton decided a fight wasn’t worth it.
“Do you need a statement from me as well?” Serena said.
McDowell looked at Serena as if he hadn’t noticed her until now.
“No.”
“I would offer you my hand, Sheriff,” Serena said, “but from what my husband has told me you probably wouldn’t take it.”
“He’s right,” McDowell replied.
“I’ll wait for you in the car,” Serena told Pemberton.
When Pemberton returned, he got in the Packard and turned the key. He pressed the starter button and released the hand brake, and they began the six-mile drive to the camp. Outside Waynesville, Pemberton slowed as they approached the saw mill’s five-acre splash pond, its surface hidden by logs bunched and intertwined like kindling. Pemberton braked and slipped the Packard out of gear but kept the engine running.
“Wilkie wanted the saw mill close to town,” Pemberton said. “It wouldn’t have been my choice, but it’s worked out well enough.”
They looked past the splash pond’s stalled flotilla of logs awaiting dawn when they’d be untangled and poled onto the log buggy and sawn. Serena gave the mill a cursory look, as well as the small A-frame building Wilkie and Buchanan used as an office. Pemberton pointed to an immense tree rising out of the woods behind the saw mill. An orange growth furred the bark, and the upper branches were withered, unleafed.
“Chestnut blight.”
“Good that it takes them years to die completely,” Serena said. “That gives us all the time we need, but also a reason to prefer mahogany.”
Pemberton let his hand settle on the hard rubber ball topping the gear shift. He put the car into gear and they drove on.
“I’m surprised the roads are paved,” Serena said.
“Not many are. This one is, at least for a few miles. The road to Asheville as well. The train would get us to camp quicker, even at fifteen miles an hour, but I can show you our holdings this way.”
They were soon out of Waynesville, the land increasingly mountainous, less inhabited, the occasional slant of pasture like green felt woven to a rougher fabric. Almost full summer now, Pemberton realized, the dogwood’s white blossoms withered on the ground, the hardwood’s branches thickened green. They passed a cabin, in the side yard a woman drawing water from a well. She wore no shoes and the towheaded child beside her wore pants cinched tight by twine.
“These highlanders,” Serena said as she looked out the window. “I’ve read they’ve been so isolated that their speech harks back to Elizabethan times.”
“Buchanan believes so,” Pemberton said. “He keeps a journal of such words and phrases.”
The land began a steep ascent, and soon there were no more farms. Pressure built in Pemberton’s ears and he swallowed. He turned off the blacktop onto a dirt road that curved upward almost a mile before making a final sharp rise. Pemberton stopped the car and they got out. A granite outcrop leaned over the road’s right side, water trickling down the rock face. To the left only a long falling away, that and a pale round moon impatient for the night.
Pemberton reached for Serena’s hand and they walked to the drop-off’s edge. Below, Cove Creek Valley pressed back the mountains, opening a square mile of level land. At the valley’s center was the camp, surrounded by a wasteland of stumps and branches. To the left, Half Acre Ridge had been cut bare as well. On the right, the razed lower quarter of Noland Mountain. As it crossed the valley, the railroad track appeared sewn into the lowland like stitches.
“Nine months’ work,” Pemberton said.
“We’d have done this much in six out west,” Serena replied.
“We get four times the amount of rain here. Plus we had to lay down track into the valley.”
“That would make a difference,” Serena acknowledged. “How far do our holdings go?”
Pemberton pointed north. “The mountain beyond where we’re logging now.”
“And west.”
“Balsam Mountain,” Pemberton said, pointing it out as well. “Horse Pen Ridge to the south, and you can see where we quit cutting to the east.”
“Thirt
y-four thousand acres.”
“There were seven thousand more east of Waynesville that we’ve already logged.”
“And to the west, Champion Paper owns that?”
“All the way to the Tennessee line,” Pemberton said.
“That’s the land they’re after for the park?”
Pemberton nodded. “And if Champion sells, they’ll be coming after our land next.”
“But we’ll not let them have it,” Serena said.
“No, at least not until we’re done with it. Harris, our local copper and kaolin magnate, was at the meeting I told you about, and he made clear he’s against this national park scheme as much as we are. Not a bad thing to have the wealthiest man in the county on our side.”
“Or as a future partner,” Serena added.
“You’ll like him,” Pemberton said. “He’s shrewd and he doesn’t suffer fools.”
Serena touched his shoulder above the wound.
“We need to go and dress your arm.”
“A kiss first,” Pemberton said, moving their joined hands to the small of Serena’s back and pulling her closer.
Serena raised her lips to Pemberton’s and pressed them firm against his. Her free hand clutched the back of his head to bring him nearer, a soft exaltation of her breath into his mouth as she unpursed her lips and kissed fiercer, her teeth and tongue touching his. Serena pressed her body fully into his. Incapable of coyness, as always, even the first time they’d met. Pemberton felt again what he’d never known with another woman—a sense of being unshackled into some limitless possibility, limitless though at the same time somehow contained within the two of them.
They got in the Packard and descended into the valley. The road became rockier, the gullies and washouts more pronounced. They drove through a creek clogged with silt, then more woods until the woods were gone and they were driving across the valley floor. There was no road now, just a wide sprawl of mud and dirt. They passed a stable and a shotgun frame building whose front room served as the payroll office, the back room a bar and dining area. To the right were the workers’ dining hall and the commissary. They crossed over the railroad track, passing the line of flat cars waiting for morning. A caboose that served as a doctor’s office sat next to the track, its rusting wheels sunk into the valley floor.
They passed below a row of three dozen stringhouses set precariously on Bent Knob Ridge, their foundations propped by ragged locust poles. The stringhouses resembled cheap wooden boxcars, not just in size and appearance but also in the way cable connected each in the line to the other. On top of every one was an iron rung. Axes had gouged splintery holes through the wood to serve as windows.
“The workers’ housing, I assume,” Serena said.
“Yes, as soon as we’re finished here we can set them on flat cars and haul them to our new site. The workers don’t even have to move their belongings.”
“Very efficient.” Serena said, nodding as she spoke. “How much is the rent?”
“Eight dollars a month.”
“And their pay.”
“Two dollars a day right now, but Buchanan wants to raise it to two-ten.”
“Why?”
“He claims we’ll lose good men to other camps,” Pemberton said as he pulled up in front of their house. “I say these government land grabs mean a surplus of workers, especially if Champion sells out.”
“What does Wilkie think?”
“Wilkie agrees with me,” Pemberton said. “He says the one good thing about this stock market crash is cheaper labor.”
“I agree with you and Wilkie,” Serena said.
A youth named Joel Vaughn waited on the front steps, beside him a cardboard box, in it meat and bread and cheese, a bottle of red wine. As Pemberton and Serena got out of the Packard, Vaughn stood and doffed his wool golf cap, revealing a thatch of carrot-colored hair. A mind equally bright, Campbell had quickly realized, and trusted Vaughn with responsibilities usually given to much older workers, including, as evidenced by the scraped forearms and purple swelling on his freckled left cheekbone, tussles with a horse as spirited as it was valuable. Vaughn retrieved the grips from the car and followed Pemberton and his bride onto the porch. Pemberton opened the door and nodded for the youth to enter first.
“I’d carry you over the threshold,” Pemberton said, “but for the arm.”
Serena smiled. “Don’t worry, Pemberton. I can manage.”
She stepped inside and he followed. Serena examined the light switch a moment as if skeptical it would work. Then she turned it on.
In the front room were two Coxwell chairs set in front of the fireplace, off to the left a small kitchen with its Homestead stove and ice box. A poplar table with four cane-bottom chairs stood beside the front room’s one window. Serena nodded and walked down the hall, glanced at the bathroom before entering the back room. She turned on the bedside lamp and sat on the wrought iron bed, tested the mattress’s firmness and seemed satisfied. Vaughn appeared at the doorway with the steamer trunk, which had belonged to Pemberton’s father.
“Put it in the hall closet,” Pemberton said.
Vaughn did as he was told and went out, came back with the food and wine.
“Mr. Buchanan thought you might be needful of something to eat.”
“Put it on the table,” Pemberton said. “Then go get iodine and gauze from the caboose.”
The youth paused, his eyes on Pemberton’s blood-soaked sleeve.
“You wanting me to get Doctor Cheney?”
“No,” Serena said. “I’ll dress it for him.”
After Vaughn left, Serena stepped closer to the bedroom window and peered out at the stringhouses.
“Do the workers have electricity?”
“Just in the dining hall.”
“It’s best that way,” Serena said, stepping back into the room’s center. “Not just the money saved but for the men. They’ll work harder if they live like Spartans.”
Pemberton raised an open palm toward the room’s bare rough-board walls.
“This is rather Spartan as well.”
“Money freed to buy more timber tracts,” Serena said. “If we’d wished our wealth spent otherwise we’d have stayed in Boston.”
“True enough.”
“Who lives next door?”
“Campbell. He’s as valuable as any man in this camp. He can book keep, repair anything, and uses a Gunter’s chain as well as any of the surveyors.”
“And the last house?”
“Doctor Cheney.”
“The wag from Wild Hog Gap.”
“The only doctor we could get to live out here. Even to get him we had to offer a house and an automobile.”
Serena opened the room’s chifforobe and looked inside, perused the closet as well.
“And what of my wedding present, Pemberton?”
“In the stable.”
“I’ve never seen a white Arabian.”
“It’s an impressive horse,” Pemberton said.
“I’ll take him for a ride first thing tomorrow.”
When Vaughn had delivered the iodine and gauze, Serena sat on the bed and unbuttoned Pemberton’s shirt, removed the weapon wedged behind his belt. She took the knife from the sheath, examined the dried blood on the blade before placing it on the bedside table. Serena opened the bottle of iodine.
“How does it feel, fighting a man like that? With a knife I mean. Is it like fencing or…more intimate.”
Pemberton tried to think of how what he’d felt could be put in words.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, “except it feels utterly real and utterly unreal at the same time.”
Serena gripped his arm harder but her voice softened.
“This will sting,” she said, and slowly poured the auburn-colored liquid into the wound. “The cause of your notoriety in Boston, did that knife fight feel the same as the one today?”
“Actually, it was a beer stein in Boston,” Pemberton replied. “More of
an accident during a bar room brawl.”
“The story that I heard involved a knife,” Serena said, “and made the victim’s demise sound anything but accidental.”
As Serena paused to dab iodine leaking from the wound, Pemberton wondered if he detected a slight disappointment in Serena’s tone or only imagined it.
“But this one, hardly an accident,” Serena noted. “Myself will grip the sword—yea, though I die.”
“I’m afraid I don’t recognize the quote,” Pemberton said. “I’m not the scholar you are.”
“No matter. It’s a maxim best learned the way you did, not from a book.”
As Serena loosed gauze from its wooden spool, Pemberton smiled.
“Who knows?” he said lightly. “In a place this primitive I suspect knife-wielding is not the purview of one sex. You may do battle with some snuff-breathed harridan and learn the same way I have.”
“I would do it,” Serena said, her voice measured as she spoke, “if for no other reason than to share what you felt today. That’s what I want, everything a part of you also a part of me.”
Pemberton watched the cloth thicken as Serena wrapped it around his forearm, iodine soaking through the first layers, then blotted by the dressing. He remembered the Back Bay dinner party of a month ago when Mrs. Lowell, the hostess, came up to him. There’s a woman here who wishes to be introduced to you, Mr. Pemberton, the matron had said. I should caution you, though. She has frightened off every other bachelor in Boston. Pemberton recalled how he’d assured the matron he was not a man easily frightened, that perhaps the woman in question might need to be cautioned about him as well. Mrs. Lowell had noted the justness of Pemberton’s comment, matching his smile as she took his forearm. Let us go meet her then. Just remember you were warned, just as I’ve warned her.
“There,” Serena said when she’d finished. “Three days and it should be healed.”
Serena picked up the knife and took it into the kitchen, cleaned the blade with water and a cloth. She dried the knife and returned to the back room.