Serena

by Ron Rash

“No, but he’s liable to any time now,” Snipes said. “He was at the commissary last night, trying to get fellers to help figure out what town his mama was visioning. Said he’d pay a dollar to the one named it.”

  “What sort of visioning did that old witch have?” Henryson asked.

  “Claimed the Harmon girl and her young one was in Tennessee, a town where there was a train track. Which don’t tell you much of nothing, of course, but she also told Galloway the place was a crown set amongst the mountains.”

  “A crown?” Ross asked, reentering the conversation.

  “Yes, a crown. A crown set amongst the mountains. Them’s the exact words.”

  “It might could be the top of a mountain,” Henryson said. “I’ve heard peaks called crowns before.”

  “But it was set amongst the mountains,” Ross noted, “not part of the mountain.”

  “Which would argue for it being a crown like them that royalty wears,” Snipes added.

  “Anybody figure it out?” Henryson asked Snipes. “Last night, I mean?”

  “One of the cooks claimed there was a Crown Ridge over near Knoxville. That was all they come up with, and Galloway had already gone over there the day before and caught nary a scent of them.”

  Ross stared west toward the Tennessee line and slowly nodded to himself.

  “I know where they are,” he said. “Or leastways I can narrow it to two places.”

  “You ain’t going to tell Galloway, are you?” Stewart asked.

  “No,” Ross said. “Maybe there’s nothing I can do to stop them, but I damn well won’t help them. I can give that girl a few more hours head start.”

  Henryson shook his head.

  “I’d still not give you a dime to a dollar they’ll survive another week.”

  Ross was about to speak in agreement when he saw a curious assemblage making its way into the camp.

  “What in the name of heaven is that?” he said.

  Three horse-drawn prairie schooners led the procession. Grimy muslin stretched over the iron hoop frames, and each tarp bore a different proclamation. HAMBYS CARNIVAL DIRECT FROM PARIS said the first, the second SEEN BY EUROPES ROYALTY, the third ADULTS A DIME. CHILDREN A NICKEL. Behind the wagons came a tethered menagerie, around each animal’s neck a wooden placard naming the species. The animals traveled two abreast, led by a pair of slump-backed Shetland ponies. Next came two ostriches, their serpentine necks bowed as if embarrassed to be part of such an entourage, then two white horses striped with what appeared to be black shoe polish. ZEBRA, their placards proclaimed. A flatbed wagon ended the parade, a steel cage filling its wood-plank bottom. WORLDS DEADLIEST CREATURE was written on a tarp concealing the cage’s bottom half.

  The first wagon halted in front of the commissary steps. A portly man adorned in a rumpled beige cotton suit doffed his black top hat with a flourish and bid Snipes and his fellows a good afternoon. The stranger spoke with a nasal accent none of the men had ever heard before but Snipes immediately suspected had been cultivated at a European university.

  “Appears you’ve took a wrong turn,” Ross said, nodding at the paired animals. “That ark I notion you’re searching for ain’t around here. Even if it was, you’re a tad late to get a seat on it.”

  “Our destination is the Pemberton Lumber camp,” the man said, puzzled. “Is this not it?”

  Snipes stood up. “Yes sir, it is, and unlike Mr. Ross here I’m a man of some culture and respectful of others that has it as well. How may I assist you?”

  “I need to speak with the camp’s owners, for permission to perform this evening.”

  “That would be Mr. and Mrs. Pemberton,” Snipes said. “They like to ride their horses on Sundays, but they ought to be heading back in soon enough. They’ll come right by here, so’s the best thing to do is just sit and wait.”

  “Your suggestion appears a sound choice,” the man said, and despite his considerable bulk leaped off the buckboard and landed with surprising light-footedness, the top hat wobbling but remaining on his head. “My name is Hamby, and I am the owner of this carnival.”

  Hamby knotted the horse’s reins to a porch rail and clapped his hand twice. The other three men, who up until this moment had been inanimate as statues, now tethered their wagons as well. They immediately went about various tasks, one watering the menagerie while another searched possible sights to raise the tent. The third, a small swarthy man, disappeared into his wagon.

  “Say you been doing your show across the ocean,” Henryson said, nodding at the second wagon.

  “Yes sir,” the carnival owner said. “We’re only back in this country for a limited engagement. We’re headed to New York, then back to Europe.”

  “Kind of a roundabout way to get to New York, coming through these mountains,” Ross said.

  “Indeed it is,” Hamby said, weariness tinting his voice, “but as professional entertainers, we feel a need, dare I say a moral obligation, to bring culture to those such as yourself exiled to the hinterlands.”

  “Awful kind of you to do that for us,” Ross said.

  At that moment, the man who’d entered the wagon reemerged in black tights and a black-and-white checked shirt made of the same pliable material, four bowling pins dangling from his hands. But it was what adorned his head that most intrigued Snipes and his crew, a piece of haberdashery concocted from red and green felt and silver bells, splayed atop the man’s skull like an exhausted octopus.

  “What do you call that thing on your noggin?” Snipes asked.

  “A cap and bells,” the man said in a thick accent, then began juggling the bowling pins.

  “A cap and bells,” Snipes repeated. “I’ve read of them but yours is the first I ever seen. I’d of not notioned it to have so much color.”

  Snipes joined the other crew members who’d gathered around the last wagon. The worker who’d been tending to the animals walked toward it as well, a bantam chicken squawking and flapping in his grip. The worker lifted the tarp and with obvious trepidation shoved the chicken and as little of his flesh as possible between the steel bars. He jerked his hand back and looked at it dubiously, as if surprised it was still there. Something very large and very powerful lunged against the cage with such force the whole wagon shook, the wheels rocking a few inches forward. A flurry of feathers rose into the cage’s upper realm, seemed to hang a few moments before slowly floating down. One slipped through the bars, and Henryson reached out so it might settle in his hand. He peered at the feather and spoke.

  “Favors chicken, does it?”

  The carnival worker gave an enigmatic smile that did not balance the flinty look in his eyes.

  “It favors anything that’s got meat on it.”

  Hamby joined Snipes and the others. For a few moments the only sound came from within the cage, a brisk crunching of bones.

  “I reckon you got to pay to know what sort of critter you got in there?” Henryson asked.

  “Not at all, sir,” Hamby said, opening his hands and arms in an expansive gesture. “It’s a dragon.”

  Ross nodded at the zebras, one of which was licking a stripe off its shoulder, the long tongue black as licorice.

  “I hope it’s a sight more convincing than them.”

  “Convincing,” Hamby spoke the word as if it had a pleasant taste. “That’s the main purpose of our show, to convince our audience it has seen, in the flesh, the world’s most dangerous creature. My dragon has fought a jaguar in Texas, an alligator in Louisiana, an orangutan in London, innumerable breeds of canine and several men now deceased.”

  “And never lost?” Stewart asked.

  “Never,” Hamby said. “So whatever manner of ferocious beast these mountains offer, bring it tonight, gentlemen. I welcome wagers on the side as well, to make it more sporting.”

  Henryson stared intently at the cage.

  “How much you charge to look at it? Right now, I mean?”

  “Free of charge for you men, just so you’ll tell your fri
ends of the terrifying wonder you have witnessed with your very own eyes.”

  Hamby nodded to the worker who’d fed the creature, and he pulled a frayed hemp cord. The muslin tarp fell away from the cage, revealing a creature shaped much like an alligator, though its skin was dusty and gray. A forked purple tongue stabbed the air as its head swayed slowly back and forth.

  “Six feet in length and two hundred pounds of reptilian muscle and meanness,” Hamby said. “Trapped on the isle of Komodo, its native habitat.”

  As the men stepped closer to the cage, Hamby motioned behind them.

  “You sir, you can see the world’s deadliest creature for free as well.”

  Galloway came forward, stared at the reptile impassively.

  “Say you’ll fight it against anything,” Galloway said after a few moments.

  “Anything,” Hamby replied, signaling his cohort to raise the tarp. “Bring your champion tonight, and your billfolds, for the ultimate test against the ultimate foe.”

  BY nightfall the canvas tent had been raised, lamps and torches lit, at the center a waist-high steel-mesh fence linked to make a ring, inside of which the man in black tights juggled before swallowing fire and pieces of colored glass and, finally and most dramatically, a sword. The menagerie then paced around the ring while Hamby, dressed now in a red swallow-tailed coat, top hat set on the crook of his arm, held forth with great originality on the animals’ various attributes and origins. Only after all this was the dragon brought forth, one section of the fence unlocked so the cage door filled the gap. A carnival worker climbed atop the steel bars and lifted the door, the dragon swaggering forth into the pit. As its purple tongue probed the new surroundings, several men tested the interlocked metal holding the creature in and decided to watch from a farther vantage point. Hamby had set up a table beside the cage. Money and paper scraps with names and initials and in a few cases distinctive X’s quickly covered its surface, though the largest wager had already been made with Serena. Side bets with the carnival’s other workers were more informal, including one between Snipes and the juggler.

  Several men cheered when Serena entered the tent, the eagle on her arm. She raised her free hand and the men grew silent. Serena told all the workers to be as quiet and still as possible, then motioned for those closest to the fence to back up at few feet. Serena placed the eagle, still hooded, on her fist. She spoke to the Berkute in a calm voice, then softly stroked the bird’s keel with the backs of two fingers. The dragon still paced but it had moved into the far corner, like a boxer awaiting the bell.

  Serena nodded to Galloway, who stood where the cage closed the ring’s one entry point. Galloway shoved hard against the cage bars and created an opening, small but enough. By the time Hamby and the other onlookers realized what was happening, Serena had stepped into the ring.

  “Get her out of there,” Hamby shouted at one of his workers, but Galloway flashed a knife.

  “She comes out when she decides, not you,” he said.

  After speaking to the bird a last time, Serena removed its hood. The dragon and the eagle acknowledged each other at the same moment. The dragon had moved into the ring’s center, but now it paused in its pacing. The eagle’s head swiveled downward. As the two creatures stared at each other, something summoned forth from an older world passed between them.

  Serena lifted her hand and the Berkute flapped awkwardly over the ring and landed on the fence’s back portion where no lamp or torch burned and the shadows deepened. As the bird passed overhead, the dragon lunged upward with a speed and dexterity that belied its bulk.

  “Another six inches and we’d have had it ended before it even started,” Snipes told Stewart in a hushed tone.

  The eagle did not move again for almost a minute, though its gaze remained on the dragon, which resumed pacing around the ring’s center. Though she was still in the ring, the reptile appeared oblivious to Serena, who now blocked its one exit point from the pit.

  “I thought dragons could breathe fire,” Stewart whispered to Snipes.

  “They used to a far back ago,” Snipes replied softly, “but they evolutioned out of it to survive.”

  Stewart leaned toward Snipes’ ear.

  “How come? It’s a mighty powerful weapon to have, breathing fire.”

  “Too powerful,” Snipes said. “They was scorching all the meat off their prey. Wasn’t none left to eat.”

  The third time the dragon passed below the eagle, the bird pounced, wings outspread as its talons grasped the reptile’s face. The dragon whipped its head back and forth, shaking free not just the eagle but a few of its feathers, but not before the eagle’s talons had pierced the reptile’s eyes. The bird half-leaped, half-flew back onto Serena’s arm as its adversary plunged blindly into the metal, making the whole fence shudder. The dragon turned and lunged in the other direction, its slashing tail raising spumes of strawy dust off the earthen floor. It slammed against the fence’s other side, only a few feet from where Serena stood, both she and the bird placid amid the dragon’s frantic rushes. The mesh shuddered again.

  “That fence ain’t gonna hold it in,” a worker shouted, eliciting a frantic rush that almost collapsed the tent as a number of onlookers shoved their way out the entrance and into the night.

  Hamby now pressed his considerable bulk against the ring, causing the metal to give enough that the fence was further destabilized. The carnival owner leaned over the railing and raised both arms out, imploring his champion to rally.

  The dragon’s lunges were weakening, a white froth coating the rim of its mouth. The dragon turned back toward the ring’s center, making a slower and slower circle, its belly dragging against the earth. Serena waited a few moments more, then lifted her arm and the eagle swooped down and landed on the dragon’s neck. The bird stabbed the base of the reptile’s head with its hallux talon, piercing the skull with the same force and result as a well-struck sixteen penny nail. The eagle arose and this time flew onto one of the tent’s rafters as the dragon rolled over on its back, feebly righted itself. Hamby tumbled into the ring, his top hat falling off his head. He got up and watched his champion use what life it yet had to drag itself to the ring’s far corner.

  Hamby called for more light, and the juggler tossed him a torch. The carnival owner kneeled beside his reptile, the torch lowered so all could see that the dragon was indeed dead, its split purple tongue laid on the ground like a flag in defeat. Hamby remained hunched over the creature almost a minute, then looked up. He reached into the front pocket of his swallow-tailed coat and brought forth an elegant white handkerchief with the initials D. H. embossed on the center. The carnival owner opened his handkerchief with great formality and gently placed it over the dragon’s head.

  Henryson walked toward the tent’s exit, Snipes joining him, now wearing the cap and bells.

  “I don’t see Ross picking up his winnings,” Henryson noted as they passed the table where bets were being settled. “That’s the first wager I’ve seen him lose in a coon’s age.”

  Snipes nodded at Mrs. Pemberton, who was taking the eagle back to the stable, Galloway walking behind her with a thick stack of bills in his hand.

  “Looks like she done pretty good for herself, though.”

  “Yes, sir,” Henryson agreed. “I’d say she just bankrupted a whole carnival. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the lot of them on the commissary steps tomorrow.”

  They stepped out of the tent and followed other workers up the ridge. Above them, the locust pole foundations made the stringhouses look like shaky dry-docked piers.

  “I bet if you tugged good on just one pole every one of them stringhouses would tumble off this ridge,” Henryson said. “That would be a wager near certain as betting on that eagle tonight.”

  Henryson paused and glanced back at the tent.

  “I wonder what notion got into Ross’s head to make him think her and that eagle could be beat.”

  “It wasn’t in his head,” Snipes said.
<
br />   Twenty-nine

  RACHEL DIDN’T SLEEP WELL THE FIRST NIGHTS in Kingsport. Every passing train waked her, and once awake she could think only of Serena and her henchman. She’d removed the pearl-handled bowie knife from the trunk and placed it under her pillow. Each time the house creaked and settled, Rachel grasped the knife’s smooth handle. The child slept beside her, closest to the wall.

  It wasn’t until the fifth day that Rachel took Jacob outside. On an earlier trip to the grocery store, she’d found a rhubarb patch across the tracks from Mrs. Sloan’s house. I can at least make her a pie, Rachel figured, a little something to thank the older woman for her kindness. She and Jacob crossed the tracks, the bowie knife and an empty tote sack in her free hand. The rhubarb was near a rusty boxcar so long motionless its wheels had sunk deep in the ground. She moved through a blackberry patch, the briars clutching at her dress. The boxcar cast a square of shade, and Rachel set the child in it. She took the sock from her dress pocket and spilled its contents before him. Now don’t be putting them near your mouth, Rachel told him. Jacob placed the marbles in small groups, then pushed them farther apart.

  Rachel began cutting the rhubarb, topping the plants the same way she would early-summer tobacco. It wasn’t the sort of work she’d ever have thought you could miss, the purplish stalks so twiny it was like cutting rope, but it felt good to be doing something outdoors, something that had a rhythm you could fall into because you’d done it all your life. Next year I’ll plant me a garden, she told herself, no matter where we are.

  Soon small bouquets of crinkled leaves lay scattered around her. Rachel gathered up a handful of stalks, placed them in a stack like kindling. Jacob played contentedly, appearing glad as Rachel to be outside. A train came up the track, moving slow out of the depot. As it passed, a flagman waved from the caboose’s railing. A pair of bright-red cardinals flew low across the tracks, and Jacob pointed at them before turning his gaze back to the marbles.

  The sun had narrowed the boxcar’s shadow by the time she’d cut the last stalk, stuffed the pile into her tote sack. More than enough rhubarb for five pies, but Rachel figured she and Mrs. Sloan could find a use for the extra. When she and Jacob recrossed the tracks, the sheriff’s Model T was parked in front of the house.