Serena

by Ron Rash

  “He’s taking your offer seriously?” Serena said.

  “Very much so,” Davis said. “He’s smart enough to know a small profit is better than a big loss.”

  Secretary Albright stood and the rest of the delegation rose as well. Wilkie and Buchanan accompanied them as they walked back to the train.

  “A total waste of time,” Harris complained on the office porch.

  “I disagree, Mr. Harris,” Serena said. “We may have learned about a tract we can invest in together.”

  “Ah,” the older man said, his smile broadening enough to show glints of gold. “That would be something, wouldn’t it? Buying Townsend’s land out from under them would really throw a monkey wrench in this park business.”

  Harris paused and watched as the train pulled out and headed back to Waynesville. He took out his car keys, jangled them loosely in his palm before enclosing them in his fist, mimicking a throw of the dice.

  “Let’s get it in touch with Townsend. They’ve mined copper on that tract. I don’t know how much, but I can find out. This could be a boon for both of us, virgin hardwoods for you and copper for me.”

  Harris walked out to his Studebaker and drove off. As Pemberton and Serena walked toward the stable, Pemberton saw Buchanan and Wilkie lingered beside the tracks though the train had disappeared over McClure Ridge.

  “I believe Buchanan’s wavering.”

  “No, he’s not wavering” Serena said. “He’s already decided.”

  “How do you know?”

  “His eyes. He wouldn’t look our way, not once.” Serena smiled. “You men notice so little, Pemberton. Physical strength is your gender’s sole advantage.”

  Pemberton and Serena stepped inside the stable, pausing a moment to let their eyes adjust. The Arabian stamped his foot impatiently at Serena’s approach. She unlatched the wooden door and led the gelding out.

  “Wilkie wasn’t as resolute as he usually is either,” Pemberton said.

  “Hardly,” Serena said. “They stroked him like a housecat and he purred.”

  She paused and lifted the saddle, placed it below the horse’s withers.

  “So if Buchanan sides against us,” Pemberton said, “you believe Wilkie could be swayed as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what should we do?”

  Serena led the Arabian to the mounting block and handed the reins to Pemberton.

  “We’ll rid ourselves of Buchanan.”

  She strapped the gauntlet on her right forearm and opened the adjacent stall where the eagle waited quiet and unmoving as a soldier at attention. It’s a Berkute, Serena had told Pemberton the week after the creature arrived, much like the golden eagles she and her father hunted with in Colorado, only bigger and stronger, more fierce. The Kazakhs hunted wolves with them, and Serena had claimed Berkutes attacked even snow leopards given the opportunity. Looking at the eagle’s huge talons and muscled keel, Pemberton believed it possible.

  Serena emerged from the stall, the bird on her arm. She stepped onto the mounting block, then slipped her left foot in the stirrup and swung onto the saddle. Serena’s legs and hips clinched the horses saddled midsection as she balanced herself. It was a deft maneuver, equal parts strength and agility. The eagle raised its wings a moment, resettled them as if also balancing itself.

  “Are you still hunting with Harris Sunday?” Serena asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ask Buchanan to come along as well. Tell him it’ll give the two of you a chance to discuss the Secretary’s offer. On the way out there, talk to Harris some more about the Townsend land, maybe also mention the Jackson Country tract Luckadoo called you about. You probably won’t have a chance to talk afterward.”

  Because? Pemberton almost said, but then understood. Serena stared fixedly at Pemberton, her pupils waxing in the barn’s muted light.

  “I need to get that second skidder up and running Sunday morning, but I could join you in the afternoon. I can do it, if you want me to.”

  “No. I’ll do it.”

  “Another time for me, then,” Serena said.

  Fifteen

  THE PARTY GATHERED SUNDAY MORNING IN FRONT of the commissary. Galloway suggested they hunt an abandoned homestead at the headwaters of Cook Creek, an apple orchard that had drawn game all winter. Fresh tracks showed plenty of deer yet lingered. Enough to draw any panther that might be around, Galloway had added, and told Pemberton to carry the twenty-dollar gold piece in his front pocket, just in case. Vaughn and Galloway and the hounds rode in the wagon while the other men followed on horseback.

  The hunting party crossed Noland Mountain and then Indian Ridge, moving beyond the last timbered land. Buchanan and Harris rode side by side. Pemberton followed. Woods soon surrounded them, newly fallen leaves softening the trail. A few large hardwoods caught Pemberton’s eye, but much of what they passed through was white pine and fir, near a creek a stand of river birch. Pemberton noted as much to Buchanan, who only nodded in response, his gaze fixed ahead of him. They began their descent into the gorge. The trail followed a creek, and Harris’ eyes scanned the bedding of the exposed rock.

  “Think there might be something of value here?” Pemberton asked.

  “Up top there was granite, maybe enough for a quarry, but this is more interesting.”

  Harris tethered his horse to a sycamore and stepped across the creek. He ran his finger across the lighter color streaking an outcrop.

  “Copper,” Harris said, “though impossible to say how much without some blasting and sediment samples.”

  “But not coal?” Pemberton asked.

  “Wrong side of the Appalachians,” Harris said. “The Allegheny plateau, that’s where the coal is. You have to go to Pennsylvania to find any on the eastern slopes.”

  Harris kneeled on the creek bank and used his fingers to sift through sand and silt. He picked out a few small stones, examined each a moment before flicking it into the water.

  “Looking for something special?” Pemberton asked.

  “No,” Harris replied, and stood up, brushing wet sand off his corduroy breeches.

  “I talked to Colonial Townsend last night,” Pemberton said as the older man remounted. “He’s as willing to sell to us as to Albright.”

  “Good,” Harris said. “I know a geologist who’s worked for Townsend. I’ll have him send me a report.”

  “We also found nine thousand acres in Jackson County that looks promising, a recent foreclosure.”

  “Promising for who,” Harris said brusquely. “That Glencoe Ridge tract was ‘promising’ as well, but only for you and your wife.”

  They rode on. The trail narrowed and they traveled single file behind the wagon, Buchanan first, then Pemberton. Harris trailed, still studying the landscape’s geology. Buchanan wore a black split-tailed fox hunting coat ordered from London, and as they passed through the narrowest portion of the trail Pemberton kept his eyes on Buchanan’s coat, using its dark cloth to better summon forth a picture of the past.

  Buchanan’s wedding had been at Saint Marks in downtown Boston. Unlike the Pembertons’ civil ceremony, it had been a large and elegant affair, Buchanan and the groomsmen and the bride’s father in tuxedos, the reception afterward at the Hotel Touraine. Buchanan and his bride had stood at the head of the receiving line as guests entered the ballroom. Pemberton had shaken his partner’s hand and hugged Elizabeth. Pemberton recalled how small her waist had been as they embraced, an hourglass figure a recent photograph in Buchanan’s office showed she’d retained.

  Pemberton closed his eyes a moment, trying to raise an image of who’d been next in the receiving line. Buchanan’s parents were dead, so it had to have been Elizabeth’s parents. A dim face surfaced and then receded, nothing more than white hair and spectacles. Of the mother he could remember nothing, nor of Buchanan’s siblings. Their lack of any lasting impression boded well, Pemberton realized. He’d always believed himself good at recognizing formidability in others.

/>   “Your siblings, Buchanan,” Pemberton said. “A brother and sister?”

  Buchanan switched the reins to his right hand and turned.

  “Two brothers,” he said.

  “And their occupations?”

  “One teaches history at Dartmouth. The other is studying architecture in Scotland.”

  “And Mrs. Buchanan’s father?” Pemberton asked. “What’s his occupation?”

  Buchanan did not answer. Instead he looked at Pemberton with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Harris listened as well and entered the conversation.

  “Such reticence must mean he’s a bootlegger or bawdy house owner, Pemberton. Whichever it is, I’ll make every effort to sample his product the next time I’m in Boston.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing unseemly,” Pemberton suggested. “I thought perhaps a banker or lawyer.”

  “He’s a physician,” Buchanan said tersely, not bothering to turn around as he spoke.

  Pemberton nodded. The coming negotiations would be easier than expected, good news he’d soon enough share with Serena. He’d call Lawyer Covington tonight and have him prepare the necessary documents to make an offer for Buchanan’s third interest. His right hand felt the rifle holstered to the saddle. One well-aimed shot. Then it would be just Serena and him.

  Soon the trees fell away and the men entered an old pasture. Locust fence posts still stood, draping brown tendrils of barbed wire. Milking traces were faint but visible, indenting the slantland like the wide steps of some Aztec ruin. Though wisps of fog held fast to the coves and valleys, sunlight leaned into the pasture. The air was bracing, more reminiscent of fall than spring.

  “A good day for a hunt,” Harris said, glancing skyward. “I was afraid it might start raining again, but from the looks of it we’ll be able to stay out until evening.”

  Pemberton agreed, though he knew they wouldn’t be gone that long. He would be back with Serena by early afternoon. Do this one thing, he told himself, reciting the words like a mantra, as he’d done since he’d awakened at first light.

  They splashed through Cook Creek and soon came to the homestead. No deer grazed the orchards, so Galloway and Vaughn unleashed the dogs and they moved in a swaying wave across the orchard, quickly into the deeper gorge. Vaughn unloaded the wagon and gathered wood for a cooking fire.

  “We’ll give Harris the upper orchard,” Pemberton told Buchanan. “You and I can take the lower.”

  Pemberton and Buchanan walked to where the orchard ended at a sagging farmhouse, beside it a barn and well. The well bucket dangled from a rotting rope, a rusty dipper beside the well mouth. Pemberton dropped the dipper into the darkness, unsurprised when he heard no splash.

  “You take this side,” Pemberton said. “I’ll be near the barn.”

  Pemberton walked a few paces, then stopped and turned.

  “I almost forgot, Buchanan. Mrs. Pemberton wanted me to tell you that you are wrong about the origin of ‘feathered into.’”

  “How so?” Buchanan asked.

  “She says the phrase is indeed from Britain. The feathers referred to are the fletching of an arrow. If you’ve feathered into your opponent, the arrow’s so deep the feather itself has entered the body.”

  Buchanan gave a slight nod.

  Pemberton walked on toward the barn, the smell of hay and manure yet lingering inside the gray wood. The front had collapsed but the back portion’s spine remained level. From the side, the barn resembled the petrified remains of an immense kneeling animal. As Pemberton got closer, he saw something on the barn’s back wall. Little more than withered rags of skin and fur held by rotting nails, but Pemberton knew what it was. He touched a tawny boll of fur.

  Half an hour passed before the Redbones’ long-spaced howls quickened. Shortly thereafter a deer came into Harris’ shooting alley. He fired twice and a few moments later a buck staggered through the orchard’s center row toward Pemberton and Buchanan. The animal was shot in the hindquarters, and when it fell Pemberton knew it would not get up. Buchanan stepped into the orchard.

  “Save your bullet,” Pemberton said. “The dogs will finish it off.”

  “I can afford the damn bullet,” Buchanan said, pausing to glare at Pemberton.

  Pemberton released his safety, the click so audible in the crisp morning air that for a moment he thought Buchanan might have heard. But Buchanan’s eyes stayed on the deer. The buck’s head lifted, dark eyes rolling. Its forelegs treaded the air, the torso flinging blood as the animal tried vainly to rise. Buchanan aimed but the deer’s writhing allowed no clean head shot. He took off the fine English hunting jacket and set it behind him. Laid on the grass but nevertheless neatly folded, Pemberton noted, a man of propriety to the very end. Something about Buchanan’s fastidiousness extinguished Pemberton’s last misgiving.

  Buchanan placed the barrel against the buck’s skull, pressed hard enough to hold the deer’s head still. Pemberton stepped into the apple orchard and aimed his rifle as well.

  VAUGHN had gone ahead of the party, racing back to camp on Buchanan’s horse although Doctor Cheney would only be able to confirm what Vaughn and the rest of the hunting party already knew. It was early afternoon when the wagon crested the last ridge and rolled into camp. The scene appeared almost Egyptian, Buchanan wrapped inside an oilcloth, the Plotts and Redbones gathered around the corpse like the animals of old pharaohs accompanying their master into the afterlife. Pemberton and Harris followed the wagon, Buchanan’s black hunting jacket tied to the hitch-gate’s top slat like a banner of mourning. The wagon halted in front of the office.

  The procession had barely come to a stop when Frizzell’s green pickup jolted up beside the commissary. Pemberton suspected the photographer had heard there’d been an accident and assumed the dead man a highlander. Doctor Cheney and Wilkie stepped off the office porch. Sheriff McDowell, who’d been sitting on the cane ash stump, got up and walked over to the wagon as well.

  For a few moments the three men did nothing but stare at the shrouded body. Galloway came around and lifted the hitch-gate from its tracks and shooed the Plotts and Redbones off the wagon. When the last dog was out, Doctor Cheney climbed aboard. He unwrapped Buchanan’s corpse so it lay face upward on the planked bed, then probed where the bullet had passed through the heart before shattering the spine. Rifle, Cheney said softly, as much to himself as McDowell. Doctor Cheney picked up something from the wagon bed, rubbed the blood from its oval shape to reveal a dull whiteness. Sheriff McDowell placed his hands on the wagon’s sideboard and leaned forward.

  “Is that a button?”

  “No,” Doctor Cheney said, “a piece of vertebrae.”

  Wilkie’s face paled. Sheriff McDowell turned to Pemberton and Harris, who were still on their horses.

  “Who shot him?”

  “I did,” Pemberton said. “He was in the orchard. He was supposed to be farther away, over by the barn. I wouldn’t have shot otherwise.”

  “Anybody else with you?” Sheriff McDowell asked.

  “No.”

  McDowell looked at the dead man.

  “Interesting how your shot hit dead center in the heart. I’d call that a rather amazing accident.”

  “I would call it an especially unfortunate accident,” Pemberton said.

  The sheriff raised his eyes, looking not at Pemberton but at Serena, who watched from the Pembertons’ porch, a boot she was polishing in her right hand, a rag dabbed black in the other.

  “Mrs. Pemberton doesn’t seem particularly distressed by the loss of your partner.”

  “It’s not her nature to make outward shows of emotion,” Pemberton said.

  “What about you, Wilkie?” McDowell asked. “Any suspicions as to why your partner might be shot, other than an accident.”

  “None at all,” Wilkie quickly said, then walked toward the office, stepping through a mud hole he seemed not to notice until his right pant cuff got soaked.

  Sheriff McDowell pulled the oilcloth over Buchan
an’s head and torso, the legs alone visible. Several loggers had wandered over to look into the wagon. They stared at Buchanan’s corpse impassively.

  “Put his body on the train,” McDowell told the loggers. “I’m going to have an autopsy done.”

  As the men lifted the corpse out of the wagon, the sheriff looked over at Galloway, who stood amid the hounds.

  “You got anything to add?”

  “It was an accident,” Galloway said.

  “How do you know that?” McDowell asked.

  Galloway nodded at Pemberton, baring a grin toothless but for a few nubs of brown and yellow.

  “He ain’t a good enough shot to do it on purpose.”

  McDowell turned to Vaughn, who had not moved from the buckboard. The youth looked frightened.

  “What about you, Joel?”

  “No sir,” Vaughn said, looking at the floorboard when he spoke. “I stayed with the horses and wagon.”

  “Anything else, Sheriff?” Pemberton asked.

  McDowell did not acknowledge the comment, but in a few moments he got in his car and left. Galloway herded the dogs back into the wagon bed. He took the reins from Vaughn and followed the police car’s dusty wake out of the camp. Doctor Cheney lingered a few more moments, then walked toward his house. As Pemberton turned to join Wilkie on the porch, he saw the photographer’s truck had left as well.

  Wilkie sat in a ladderback chair. He dabbed his forehead with a blue silk handkerchief that was usually no more than an ornament. Pemberton joined Wilkie on the porch, pulling up a chair in front of his partner.

  “It must give you pause to see someone three decades younger die so suddenly,” Pemberton said. “As a matter of fact, I’d think it would persuade you to sell your third interest and go back to Boston, live out what time you have left in comfort instead of in these inhospitable mountains.”

  Pemberton shifted the chair closer, their knees touching now. Pemberton could smell the shaving cream mailed from Boston each month, see a small razor nick just below Wilkie’s left ear lobe.