by Ron Rash
The car’s metal and cloth upholstery seemed to thin and lighten, the seat beneath her and Jacob seeping away, a sense of weightlessness like the moment between the rise and fall on a rope swing. She pressed Jacob tighter, closed her eyes for a few moments, opened them.
“You mean the Widow?” Rachel said, saying it that way because if it was a question it could still, for a few moments longer, be a question and not a confirmation.
“Yes,” McDowell said.
“Who would do such a thing?”
“Serena Pemberton and a man who works for her named Galloway. You know who he is, don’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
Jacob squirmed in her lap. Rachel looked down and saw his eyes were open.
“Mr. Pemberton…,” Rachel said, and could think of no more words to follow.
“He wasn’t up there, I know that,” the sheriff said. “I’m not even sure he knew what they were going to do.”
McDowell let his gaze settle on Jacob.
“I’ve got my own ideas about why she’d do this, but I’d be interested in yours.”
“I think it’s because I could give him the one thing that she couldn’t,” Rachel said.
The sheriff gave a nod so slight it seemed to Rachel more an acknowledgment that he’d heard her than a sign of agreement. He turned back around, seemingly lost in his own musings. Somewhere in the trees Rachel heard a yellowhammer tapping at a tree. It started up, then paused, then started again, like someone knocking on a door and waiting for a response.
“You’re sure she’s dead?” Rachel said, “not just hurt bad?”
“She’s dead.”
They did not speak for a few moments. Jacob fussed again but when Rachel checked his swaddling it was dry.
“If he’s hungry I can get out and give you some privacy,” Sheriff McDowell said.
“It’s too soon for him to be hungry. He’s just put out because I forgot to bring him some play-pretties.”
“We’ll stay here a couple more minutes,” McDowell said, checking his watch, “just to be sure we weren’t followed. Then we can walk down to Kephart’s place. It’s not far.”
Jacob fussed some more, and she took the sugar teat from the carpetbag, put it in his mouth. The child calmed, a soft kissing sound as he worked the cheesecloth and sugar between his gums.
“What it was that happened,” Rachel asked. “They done it to her in her house?”
“Yes.”
Rachel thought about Widow Jenkins, how the old woman had loved this child in her arms. As far as Rachel knew, the one other person in the world who loved him. She thought of the old woman in her chair by the hearth, knitting or just watching the fire and hearing a knock on the door and probably thinking it could only be Rachel, thinking that maybe Jacob had the flux or a fever and Rachel needed her help.
“They had no cause to kill her,” Rachel said, as much to herself as to Sheriff McDowell.
“No, they didn’t,” the sheriff replied, and reached for his door handle. “We can go now.”
McDowell carried the carpetbag and Rachel carried the child. The trail was steep and narrow, and she watched for roots that could send her and Jacob sprawling. Purple-tinged pokeberry clustered beside the path, the berries shiny-dark as water beetles. Come the first frost, Rachel knew the stems would sag and the berries wither. Where will me and this young one be then, she wondered. They crossed a weathered plank that wobbled over a tight rush of whitewater, and the land leveled out.
The cabin was small but well built, the wattle and clay daubing packed with care between the hand-hewn logs, not so different from her and Jacob’s cabin. A drift of smoke rose from the corbelled chimney, the door partway open.
“Kephart,” the sheriff said, addressing not just the cabin but the nearby woods.
A man Rachel guessed to be in his late sixties appeared in the doorway. He wore denim breeches and a wrinkled chambray work shirt. His gallouses were unstrapped from his shoulders, and a gray stubble showed he hadn’t shaved in several days. The skin below his eyes was puffy and jaundiced looking, the eyes themselves bloodshot. Rachel knew from being around her father what that meant.
“I need a favor,” Sheriff McDowell said, and nodded toward Rachel and Jacob. “They need to stay here, maybe just till this evening, maybe till morning.”
Kephart looked not at Rachel but at the child, who’d fallen back asleep. His tan weathered face revealed neither pleasure nor irritation as he nodded and said all right. Sheriff McDowell stepped onto the porch and set the carpetbag down, turned and looked at Rachel.
“I’ll get back soon as I can,” he said, and walked down the trail and soon disappeared.
“I have a bed you can lay him on if you like,” Kephart said after an awkward minute had passed.
Kephart’s voice sounded different from any she’d heard before. Flatter, leveled out as if every word had been sanded to a smooth sameness. Rachel wondered where he was from.
“Thank you,” Rachel said and followed him into the cabin. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then she saw the bed in the back corner. Rachel laid the child on the bed and opened the carpetbag, removed first Jacob’s bottle and then the pins and clean swaddlings. Shadows cloaked the cabin’s corners, and Rachel knew that even had the two oil lamps been lit shadows would remain, like a root cellar where so much dark had gathered for so long it could never be gotten completely rid of.
“When’s the last time you two ate?’ Kephart asked.
“I fed him near noon.”
“And you?”
It took Rachel a few moments to remember.
“Supper last night.”
“I’ve got beans simmering in that kettle,” Kephart said. “That’s about all I have but you’re welcome to it.”
“Beans is fine.”
He filled a bowl and placed it on the table with a tin of cornbread.
“You partial to sweet milk or buttermilk?”
“Buttermilk would be my rathering,” Rachel said.
Kephart took two pint jelly glasses outside. He came back with one brimmed with buttermilk, the other sweet milk.
“I figure that chap will be hungry again before too long,” he said. “I got another pot to put on the fire if you want to warm him a bottle.”
“That’s alright. He’s learned to drink it cold.”
“Get your bottle then. I’ll pour this in and set it in the springhouse so it’ll be ready when he wakes up. Got some graham crackers too if he wants something to nibble.”
Rachel did what he suggested, knowing he’d done these things before, maybe a long time ago, but sometime. She wondered where his wife and children were and almost asked.
“Have a seat,” Kephart said, and nodded at the table’s one chair.
Rachel looked around the room. Another chair and table were in the corner opposite the hearth. On the table was one of the room’s oil lamps, beside it paper and a typewriter, the words REMINGTON STANDARD stamped in white beneath the keys. A mason jar filled with a clear liquid was also on the table. The lid lay beside the jar.
While she ate, Kephart took Jacob’s bottle to the springhouse. Rachel was ravenous and ate every bean in the bowl. Kephart refilled her jelly jar and she drank half, then crumbled a square of cornbread in it. It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did.
When Rachel finished, she went out to the creek with the bowl and spoon. She laid them on the mossy bank and went into the woods to squat. She came back to the creek and cleaned the bowl and spoon with water and sand and brought them inside. Jacob was awake, clutching the bottle to his mouth. Kephart sat on the bed beside the child.
“He wasn’t of a mind to wait for you, so I figured I’d oblige him.”
Kephart lingered a few moments longer and then went outside.
When Jacob finished the bottle, Rachel burped him and changed his swaddlings. The room felt cozy, but it didn’t seem right to be in the cabin without Kephart there, so she took Jacob outside. Rachel sat on the lowest porch step and placed the child on the grass. Kephart came and perched on the top step. Rachel tried to think of something to make conversation, hoping it’d take at least some of her thinking off Widow Jenkins, them that would do the same to her and Jacob.
“You live here all the time?” Rachel asked.
“No, I got a place in Bryson City,” Kephart answered. “I come out here when I’m tired of being around people.”
He hadn’t said the words in a mean sort of way, the way he would have if he meant to make her feel bad, but they made Rachel feel even more like a bother. Half an hour passed and they didn’t speak again. Then Jacob began to fuss. Rachel checked his swaddlings and set him on her lap, but he continued to whine.
“I got something in the shed I bet he’ll like,” Kephart said.
Rachel followed him behind the cabin. He opened the shed door. Inside two fox kits nestled against each other on a bed of straw.
“Something got their mama. There was another one, but it was too weak to live.”
The kits rose, mewing as they came to Kephart, who scratched them behind their ears as he might pups.
“How do you feed them?” Rachel asked.
“Table scraps now. The first few days cow milk in a medicine dropper.”
Jacob reached out his hand toward the kits, and Rachel stepped inside, kneeled as she held Jacob by the waist.
“Pet them soft, Jacob,” Rachel said, and took the child’s hand and brushed it over one of the kit’s fur.
The other kit nudged closer, pressed its black nose against Jacob’s hand as well.
“It’s about time for them to go out and fend for themselves,” Kephart said.
“They look fat and sassy enough,” Rachel said. “You look to have been a good parent.”
“It’d be the first time,” Kephart said.
After a while, Rachel and Jacob went back to the front steps and watched as the afternoon settled into the gorge. It was the kind of early fall day Rachel had always loved, not warm or cold, the sky all deep-blue and cloudless and no breeze, the crops proud and ripe and the leaves so pretty but hardly a one yet fallen—a day so perfect that the earth itself seemed sorry to let it pass, so slowed down its roll into evening and let it linger. Rachel tried to lose herself in that, let it clear her mind, and for a few minutes she could. But then she’d think of Widow Jenkins, and she could just as well have been sitting in a hailstorm for the comfort the day gave her.
Soon shadows splotched the yard and began to spread. The air cooled and a breeze stirred the higher branches. In that breeze Rachel felt a tinge of the cold weather coming. Kephart went back into the cabin, and the typewriter’s rat-tat-tat began. A few minutes later, as if in reply, the yellowhammer found a closer tree to peck. The typewriter’s sound seemed to soothe Jacob, because he soon crawled into Rachel’s lap and napped.
IT was early evening when Rachel heard footsteps coming up the path. The sheriff stepped into the clearing, a cardboard container slightly smaller and shallower than a cigar box in his right hand.
“Something for him when he gets fussy,” the sheriff said, handing the container to Rachel. “Got them from Scott at the general store.”
She set the container between her and Jacob, the contents shifting and rattling inside. Rachel lifted the lid and found it held marbles.
“Scott said there’s cat eyes and solids and swirls. Some steel shooters in there too.”
Kephart, who’d come out on the porch, shook his head and smiled.
“What?” McDowell asked.
“They’re usually not shooting marbles till they’re a tad older.”
The sheriff’s face reddened.
“Well, I guess he can grow into them.”
“Look here, Jacob,” Rachel said, and lifted the box slightly so marbles rolled and clacked. The child placed his hand inside, lifted as many as he could hold and let them drop back in. He picked up more, dropped them as well. Rachel watched to make sure he didn’t put one in his mouth.
“We’d better go,” Sheriff McDowell said, and stepped onto Kephart’s porch to get the carpetbag.
“Just a moment,” Kephart said, and disappeared into the cabin, came back with a gray wool sock. “There’s only one thing for a boy to keep his marbles in, and that’s a sock.”
Kephart kneeled beside Jacob, the sock soon bulging with marbles. He knotted the sock above the heel.
“There. Now they’ll not be spilling out like they would in that cardboard.”
Rachel took the sock, its heft more than she’d imagined, at least a pound. She lifted Jacob with one arm and handed the sock to the child, who clutched it like a poppit-doll.
“Thank you for letting them stay here,” Sheriff McDowell said.
“Yes, thank you,” Rachel said. “It was a considerable kindness.”
Kephart nodded.
They walked out of the yard and down the path. Rachel glanced back and saw Kephart watched from the porch, the mason jar now in his hand. He raised it slowly to his lips.
“Where’s Mr. Kephart from?” Rachel asked once they had entered the woods.
“The midwest,” Sheriff McDowell said. “Saint Louis.”
When they got to the trail end, the police car had been replaced by a Model T Ford.
“This car will be less conspicuous,” the sheriff said.
“I ain’t got clothes and swaddlings but for two days,” Rachel said as they drove out of the gorge. “Can we go by my cabin?”
The sheriff didn’t say anything, but when the road forked a few miles later he turned toward Colt Ridge. The sheriff drove faster now, and the automobile’s rapid motion seemed to make her mind move faster as well. So much had happened so quickly she hadn’t even begun to take it all in. While she’d been at Kephart’s cabin, it all hadn’t felt quite real, but now what had happened to Widow Jenkins and what could have happened to her and Jacob came full at her, and it was like running ahead of a barn-high wave of water. Running hard to stay ahead of it, Rachel thought despairingly, because when it all did take hold of her she didn’t know if she could bear the burden of it.
They parked next to the cabin. Rachel set Jacob on the ground beside the porch steps as the sheriff opened the trunk.
“We’ll put the things you need in here,” Sheriff McDowell said, following Rachel onto the porch. “I can help you carry out what you need.”
“You think it could be a long while before we come back here?”
“Probably. Leastways if you want that child to be safe.”
“There’s a box trunk in the front room,” Rachel said. “If you can fetch it I’ll get the rest.”
Rachel stepped inside, the cabin somehow different than when she’d left it last night. It appeared smaller, and darker, the windows letting in less light. Nothing had been disturbed that she could tell except that the loft ladder had been set upright. Thinking me and Jacob might have hid up there, Rachel knew. She gathered what she needed as quickly as she could, including Jacob’s toy train engine. As she moved through the cabin filling the carpetbag, Rachel tried not to think about what could have been.
“I’ll put that in the trunk for you,” the sheriff said when she came outside. “You get the boy.”
Rachel kneeled beside Jacob. She took the child’s hand and pressed it to the dirt. Her father had told Rachel that Harmons had been on this land since before the Revolutionary War.
“Don’t ever forget what it feels like, Jacob,” she whispered, and let her hand touch the ground as well.
The woodshed’s door was open, and a barn swallow swung out of the sky and disappeared into its darkness. A hoe leaned against the shed wall, its blade freckled with rust, beside it a pile of rotting cabbage sacks. Rachel let her gaze cross the pasture, the spring clotted with leaves, the field w
here only horseweed and dog fennel grew over winter-shucked corn stalks, no more alive than the man who’d planted them.
They got back in the car. As they approached the Widow’s house, Rachel remembered the cradle her father had made.
“There’s something I got to get from Widow Jenkins’ house,” she said. “It’ll just take a second.”
The sheriff pulled up beside the farmhouse.
“What is it?”
“A cradle.”
“I’ll go in and get it,” the sheriff said.
“I don’t mind. It ain’t heavy.”
“No,” Sheriff McDowell said. “It’s best I get it.”
Rachel understood then. You’d have walked right in and not realized until you seen the blood or whatever else it is he don’t want you to see, she told herself. But as Rachel watched the sheriff enter the front door, it was hard to believe the farmhouse itself was still there, because a place where something so terrible had happened shouldn’t continue to exist in the world. The earth itself shouldn’t be able to abide it.
Sheriff McDowell placed the cradle in the trunk. When he got back in the car, he passed back a brown paper bag.
“It’ll be a while before we get where we’re going, so I got you a hamburger and co-cola. I loosened the cap, so you won’t need an opener.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said, setting the bag beside her, “but what about you?”
“I’m fine,” the sheriff said.
Rachel smelled the grilled meat and realized she was hungry again despite the bowl of beans, the cornbread and buttermilk. She settled Jacob deeper into her lap, then unwrapped the wax paper moist with grease. The meat was still warm and juicy, and she pinched off a few bits for Jacob. She took out the drink and pressed her thumb against the metal cap, felt it give. A kindly thing for him to have done that, Rachel thought, just his thinking to do it, same as buying the marbles. When she’d finished, Rachel put the bottle and wrapper in the bag and set it beside her.
They skirted Asheville and passed over the French Broad. As Rachel stared at the river, she told herself to think of something that wasn’t fretful, so she thought of the sheriff’s room, how you’d have known it was a man’s room as much from what wasn’t in it as what was—no pictures on the wall or lacy curtains over the window, no flowers in a vase. But there had been a neatness she’d have not have reckoned on. On the bedside table, a shellcraft pipe and stringed cloth tobacco pouch, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and a pearl pen knife he’d pare his nails with. Across the room on the bureau, a looking glass, in front of it a black metal comb, a straight razor and its lather bowl and brush. On the chest of drawers, a Bible and a Farmers’ Almanac, a tall book titled Wildlife of North America and another called Camping and Woodcraft, all stacked in a tidy row like in a library. Everything looked to have its place, and that place seemed to have been set and determined for a long time. A lonely sort of room.