Serena (11 page)

I
N THE FOLLOWING WEEKS, MOST OF
N
OLAND
Mountain had been logged and crews had worked north to Bunk Ridge before turning west, following a spur across Davidson Branch and into the wide expanse between Campbell Fork and upper Indian Creek. The men worked faster now that full summer had come, in part because there hadn’t been a single rattlesnake bite since the eagle’s arrival. As the crews moved forward, they left behind an ever-widening wasteland of stumps and slash, brown clogged creeks awash with dead trout. Even the more resilient knottyheads and shiners eventually succumbed, some flopping onto banks as if even the ungillable air offered greater hope of survival. As the woods fell away, sightings of the panther grew more frequent, fueled in part by hopes of earning Pemberton’s gold piece. No man could show a convincing track or scrap of fur, but all had their stories, including Dunbar,
who claimed during an afternoon break that something large and black had just streaked through the nearby trees.

“Where?” Stewart asked, picking up his axe as he and the rest of Snipes’ crew perused the nearby woods.

“Over there,” Dunbar said, pointing to his left.

Ross went to where Dunbar pointed and skeptically studied ground still damp from a morning shower. Ross came back and sat on a log beside Snipes, who’d returned to perusing his newspaper.

“Maybe it was that eagle,” Ross said, “because there’s nary a sign of a track. You’re just hoping for that flashy hat.”

“Well, I thought I saw it,” Dunbar said gloomily. “I guess sometimes you’ve got the hope-fors so much it makes you imagine all sorts of things.”

Ross turned to Snipes, expecting Dunbar’s comment to provoke a philosophical treatise, but the crew foreman was immersed in his newspaper.

“What’s in your paper that’s got you so squinch eyed, Snipes?”

“They’ve got a big-to-do meeting about that park in two weeks,” Snipes said from behind his veil of newsprint. “According to Editor Webb here, the Secretary of the Interior of the whole U S of A will be there. Bringing John D. Rockefeller’s own personal pettifogger with him too. Says they’re coming to make Boston Lumber and Harris Mineral Company sell their land or face eviction.”

“Think they’ll be able to do that?” Dunbar asked.

“It’ll be a battle royal,” Snipes said, “not a smidgen of doubt about that.”

“They won’t beat them,” Ross said. “If it was just Buchanan and Wilkie they might, but not Harris and Pemberton, and especially not her.”

“We better hope that’s the way of it,” Dunbar said. “If this camp gets shut down we’ll be in the worst kind of fix. We’ll be riding the boxcars sure enough.”

“J
UST
Albright and Rockefeller’s lawyer,” Pemberton replied that evening as he and Serena prepared for bed. “Albright wanted no state
politicians at the meeting. He said even with Webb and Kephart there we’ll still have a five to four advantage.”

“Good, we’ll get this settled, once and for all,” Serena said, her eyes settling on the Saratoga trunk at the foot of the bed, a trunk whose contents Pemberton had yet to see. “It jeopardizes more important matters.”

Serena took off her jodphurs and placed them in the chifforobe. Overhead, a few tentative taps announced the hard rain promised all afternoon by clouds draped low across Noland Mountain. The rain steadily picked up pace, soon galloping on the tin roof. Pemberton began to undress, reminded himself to get his hunting boots from the hall closet. Don’t fret none if it rains tonight, Galloway had told him that afternoon. Momma says it’ll clear up by morning. She’s counting on that as much as we are.

Serena turned from the chifforobe.

“What’s the bard of Appalachia like, in person?”

“Stubborn and cranky as his buddy Sheriff McDowell,” Pemberton said. “Kephart told me at the first meeting how it pleased him to know I’d die and eventually my coffin would rot, and how then I’d be nourishing the earth instead of destroying it.”

“Which is one more thing he’s wrong about,” Serena said. “I’ll make sure of that, for both of us. What else?”

“He’s also overly fond of the bottle, not nearly the saint the newspapers and politicians make of him.”

“Though they have to make him appear so,” Serena said. “He’s their new Muir.”

“Galloway says we’ll be going right past Kephart’s cabin tomorrow, so you could see the great man himself.”

“I’ll meet him soon enough,” Serena said. “Besides, Campbell and I are putting down the stobs for the new spur line.”

Serena stepped out of her undergarments. As Pemberton gazed at her, he wondered if it was possible that a time would come when he’d look at her naked and not be stunned. He couldn’t imagine such a moment, be
lieved instead that Serena’s beauty was like certain laws of math and physics, fixed and immutable.
She walks in beauty
. Words recited years ago in a voice dry as the chalk dust choking the classroom’s air, part of a poem Pemberton had paid attention to only so he might laugh at its sentiment. But now he knew the truth of the words, for Serena’s beauty was like that—something the world opened a guarded space around so it could go forth unsullied.

After they’d coupled, Pemberton listened to Serena’s soft breaths mingle with the rain hitting the roof. She slept well now, in a deepness beyond dreams, she claimed. It had been that way since she’d stayed in the stable with the eagle, as though the nightmares had come those two sleepless nights and, with no dream to enter, gone elsewhere, the way ghosts might who find a house they’ve haunted suddenly vacated.

The rain stopped during the night, the sky blue and cloudless by midday. Scouting, not hunting, Galloway had called their trip, searching for tracks and scat, a fresh-killed deer carcass with its heart ripped out, but Pemberton took his rifle from the hall closet, just in case.

When Pemberton walked down to the office, he found not only Galloway on the porch but also Galloway’s mother. She wore the same austere dress as last summer and a black satin bonnet that made her face recede as if peering from a cave mouth. The old woman’s shoes were cobbled out of a reddish wood that looked to be cedar. Comical looking, but something else as well, Pemberton realized, a disconcerting
otherness
that was part of these mountains and would always be inexplicable to him.

“She likes to get out on a pretty day like this,” Galloway explained. “Says it warms her bones and gets her blood to flowing good.”

Pemberton assumed getting out meant the office porch, but when he walked over to the Packard, the old woman shuffled toward the car as well.

“Surely she’s not going with us?”

“Not on the traipsing part,” Galloway said, “just the riding.”

Galloway did not give Pemberton a chance to argue with the arrangement. He opened the Packard’s back passenger door and helped his mother in before seating himself beside Pemberton.

They drove toward Waynesville a few miles before turning west. The old woman pressed her face close to the window, but Pemberton couldn’t imagine what her blighted eyes could possibly see. They shared the road with families returning from church, most walking, some in wagons. As Pemberton passed these highlanders, they characteristically lowered their eyes so as not to meet his, a seeming act of deference belied by their refusal to sidle to the road’s shoulder so he might get around them easier. When they drove into Bryson City, Galloway pointed at a storefront,
SHULER DRUGSTORE AND APOTHECARY
lettered red on the window.

“We got to stop here a minute,” he said.

Galloway came out of the store with a small paper bag, which he gave to his mother. The old woman clutched the folded top of the bag with both hands, as if the bag’s contents might attempt to escape.

“She’s a fool for horehound candy,” Galloway said as Pemberton shifted the car into gear.

“Does your mother ever speak?”

“Only if she’s got something worth listening to,” Galloway said. “She can tell your future if you want. Tell you what your dreams mean too.”

“No thanks,” Pemberton said.

They drove another few miles, passing small farms, a good number inhabited only by what creatures sheltered inside the broken windows and sagging roofs, foreclosure notices nailed on doors and porch beams. In the yard or field always some remnant left behind—a rusty harrow or washtub, a child’s frayed rope swing, some last forlorn claim on the place. Pemberton turned where a leaning road sign said Deep Creek, traversing what might have been a dry river bed for all its swerves and rocks and washouts. When Pemberton got to where the road ended, he saw that a car was already parked in the small clearing.

“Kephart’s?” Pemberton asked.

“He ain’t got no car,” Galloway said, and nodded at a tan lawman’s hat set on the dash. “Looks to be the high sheriff’s. Him and that old man is probably out looking for pretty bugs or flowers or some such. The sheriff’s near hep on naturing as Kephart is.”

Galloway and Pemberton got out of the car, and Galloway opened the back door. The old woman was motionless except for her cheeks creasing and uncreasing like bellows with each suck of the candy. Galloway went around and opened the other back door as well.

“That way she can get her a nice breeze,” Galloway said. “That’s what she’s been craving. You don’t get no breeze in them stringhouses.”

They walked down the path a hundred yards before the trees fell away to reveal a small cabin. Sheriff McDowell and Kephart sat in cane chairs on the porch. A ten-gallon hoop barrel squatted between them, on it a tattered topographical map draped over the barrel like a tablecloth. McDowell watched intently while Kephart marked the map with a carpenter’s pencil. Pemberton placed a boot on the porch step, saw that the map encompassed the surrounding mountains and eastern Tennessee. Gray and red markings covered the map, some overlapping, some partially erased, as if a palimpsest.

“Planning a trip?” Pemberton asked.

“No,” Kephart replied, acknowledging Pemberton for the first time since he’d stepped into the clearing. “A national park.”

Kephart laid the pencil on the barrel. He took off his reading glasses and set them down as well.

“What are you doing on my land?”

“Your land?” Pemberton said. “I assumed you’d already donated it to this park you’re wanting so bad. Or is it just other people’s property that the park gets?”

“The park will get any land I own,” Kephart said. “I’ve already taken care of that in my will, but until then you’re trespassing.”

“We’re just passing through,” Galloway said, beside Pemberton now. “Heard a panther might be roaming around here. We’re just helping to protect you.”

McDowell stared at the rifle in Pemberton’s hands. Pemberton motioned at the map with the gun’s barrel.

“You for that park, too, Sheriff?”

“Yes,” McDowell said.

“I wonder why that doesn’t surprise me,” Pemberton said.

“Move on, or I’ll arrest you for trespassing,” McDowell said. “And if I hear that gun go off, I’ll arrest you for hunting out of season.”

Galloway grinned and was about to say something, but Pemberton spoke first.

“Let’s go.”

They walked around the cabin, then passed a woodshed, behind which a rusty window screen lay atop two sawhorses. On the screen were arrowheads and spear points, other stones various in size and hue, including some little more than pebbles. Galloway paused to inspect these, lifting one into the light to reveal its murky red color.

“I wonder where he found you,” Galloway mused.

“What is it?” Pemberton asked.

“Ruby. These ain’t big enough to be worth anything, but if you was to find a bigger one, you’d have something that sure enough would get your pockets jingling.”

“Do you think Kephart found them around here?”

“Doubt it,” Galloway said, tossing the stone back on the screen. “Probably found them over near Franklin. Still, I’ll keep my eyes open while we’re sauntering around the creek. Might be something hiding around here besides a panther.”

They walked on past the woodshed and followed the trail into the forest. Few hardwoods rose around them, and those that did were small. After a while Pemberton heard the stream, then saw it through the trees, larger than he’d imagined, more a small river than a creek. Galloway’s eyes focused intently on the sand and mud. He pointed to a small set of tracks on a sand bar.

“Mink. I’ll be back to trap him this winter when his fur thickens up.”

They moved upstream, Galloway stopping to peruse tracks, sometimes kneeling to trace their indentions with his index finger. They came to a deep pool, above it a boggy swath of mud printed with tracks larger than any they’d yet seen.

“Cat?” Pemberton asked.

“Yeah, it’s a cat.”

“I’d have thought there’d be claw marks.”

“No,” Galloway said. “Them claws don’t come out until it’s time to do some killing.”

Galloway grunted as he settled himself on one knee. He placed a finger to the side of a track, pressed into the mud so water drained from the print.

“Bobcat,” Galloway said after a few more moments. “A damn big one, though.”

“You’re sure it can’t be a mountain lion?”

Galloway looked up, something of both irritation and amusement on his face.

“I reckon you could stick a tail on it and claim it for a panther,” Galloway snorted. “There’s fools that’d not know the difference.”

The highlander stood up and stared at the sun to gauge the time.

“Time to go,” he said, and stepped onto the bank. “Too bad Mama’s with us or we could stay longer. If that panther’s really around, come the nightfall we might hear him.”

“What do they sound like?” Pemberton asked.

“Just like a baby crying,” Galloway said, “except after a few seconds it shuts off of a sudden like something that’s had its throat slashed. You’ll have need to hear it only once to know what it is. It’ll make the back of your neck bristle up like a porcupine.”

They made their way back up the ridge, the sound of the stream’s fall and rush dimming behind them. In a few minutes, Kephart’s cabin came into view.

“Want to find out if that sheriff has some real sand in him or is just talk?” Galloway asked.