Serena (30 page)

“We’re all right now,” she told him. “We’re all right.”

There was hay on the boxcar’s floor, and Rachel heaped some of it into a corner. She and Jacob lay on it, her arms around him. They were out of Kingsport now, headed south through the Smokies. They passed an occasional farmhouse, what wan light its windows shed skiffing the metal floor a moment, then gone. The rocking heartbeat of the train soon lulled the child asleep, herself as well. Rachel dreamed that she and
Jacob stood in a cornfield where only a single green stalk grew. She and Jacob pulled shucks off the stalk’s one ear and found not corn but a knife blade.

She woke in darkness, for a moment unsure where she was. Rachel spooned her body tighter around Jacob’s and tried to fall back asleep but sleep did not come. She listened to the train passing over the rails, listened to Jacob’s measured breaths. Rachel waited for the wheels to slow beneath her, and when they finally did she and Jacob got out and crossed rows of tracks, moving around stalled boxcars toward the depot. The sign above the front door said Knoxville. She went inside and checked the train schedule before asking to borrow the telephone mounted on the wall behind the counter. A collect call, she assured the depot master. She lifted the receiver to her ear and leaned toward the mouthpiece, Jacob clutching the black clothbound cord as Rachel spoke to the operator.

McDowell answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” he asked, and as soon as she told him he asked when the next train left.

“The one we need don’t leave for four hours.”

“The next train,” he said again, “to anywhere.”

“There’s one headed to Chattanooga in thirty minutes.”

“Take it. Then when you get to Chattanooga buy the ticket to Seattle.”

“You think he’s already headed here, don’t you?” Rachel said.

“I’d say it’s likely.”

For a few moments only static crossed the miles of lines between them.

“Just get to Chattanooga,” McDowell said. “I’m going to end this tonight, end it for good.”

“How?”

“That’s not your concern. Go buy your tickets.”

She did what he said. Thinking she hadn’t offered enough money to the other depot master, Rachel handed this one a five-dollar bill. Then she described Galloway.

The depot master stared at the bill, a smile rising on his face that offered no comfort or sympathy.

“You must be in some serious trouble,” the depot master said, “and one thing I’ve learned is folks with trouble ain’t no different than folks with head lice or the shits. You get close enough to them and soon enough you’ll get it your ownself.”

The depot master looked past Rachel as he spoke, as if so pleased with his words he hoped a larger audience had heard them.

Rachel met the man’s eyes, held his gaze until the smirk left his face. She no longer felt anger or fear or even weariness. What remained was just a numb acceptance that she and Jacob would or wouldn’t survive. Something would happen or it wouldn’t happen, and that was the way of it. Almost as if she was outside of herself, watching her and the child from some distant vantage point. As Rachel spoke, the coldness of her inflection felt outside herself as well.

“You’ll help us or you won’t, mister. You can make light of our troubles and smile at your own smartass sayings. You can refuse to take my money or take it and tell where we went anyway. You’ll do what you want to do. But know one thing. If that man finds us he’ll rake a knife blade across this young one’s throat and bleed him dry like he was no more than a shoat in a hog pen. That blood will be on your hands, every bit as much as on him that does the killing. If you can handle knowing you done that, then go ahead and tell him.”

The depot master placed a hand on the five-dollar bill but did not slide it toward himself. He no longer looked at Rachel but at Jacob.

“I won’t tell him nor nobody else,” he said, then handed the bill back to Rachel.

T
HAT NIGHT IT WAS NOT THE GLARE OF FLAMES
or the smell of smoke that roused Pemberton but a sound, something heard but not registered until other senses lifted him from a restless sleep. When he opened his eyes, the bed was a raft adrift on a rising tide of smoke and fire. Serena had awakened as well, and for a few moments they only watched.

The front of the house disappeared in a wide rush of flame, as did the foyer leading to the back door. The bedroom’s window was five feet away but hidden by smoke. Each breath Pemberton took felt like a mouthful of ash singeing his throat and lungs. Waves of heat rolled over his bare skin. Smoke seemed to have clouded inside his mind as well as the room, and for a second he forgot why the window mattered. Serena held to his arm, coughing violently as well. They helped each other off the bed and
Pemberton wrapped a blanket around them, its fringe catching aflame when it touched the floor.

Pemberton used his last clear thought to gauge where the window would be. With his arm around Serena and hers around his waist, he led them stumbling and breathless toward the window. When Pemberton found it, he lowered his head and turned his shoulder and used what momentum they had to break the glass and wooden mullion. He and Serena plunged through the window clutching each other, the glass raining around them, twirling and refractive like a kaleidoscope. Their legs caught the sill a moment, slipped through. Then they were falling, so slowly it did not feel like falling but a suspension. Pemberton felt a moment of weightlessness as if they were submerged in water. Then the ground came rushing upward.

They hit and rolled free of the flaming blanket and pressed their naked flesh against each other’s. He and Serena stayed on the ground, holding each other though coughs racked their bodies like seizures. Fire had burned Pemberton’s forearm and a six-inch glass shard jagged deep into his thigh, but he did not break his and Serena’s embrace. As the roof collapsed, orange sparks spewed upward, hovered a moment and dimmed. Pemberton shifted to cover Serena, ash and cinders stinging his back before expiring.

A tumult of shouting came toward them as what workers remained in the camp gathered to contain the fire. Meeks appeared out of the smoke and leaned over them, asking if Pemberton and Serena were all right. Serena said yes, but neither she nor Pemberton unclenched. As the heat washed over him, Pemberton thought of their stumbling rush toward the window and how, at that one moment, the world had finally revealed itself to him, and in it there was nothing but himself and Serena, everything else burning away around them.
A kind of annihilation.
Yes, he thought, I understand now.

Pemberton finally let go of Serena to pull free the glass shard. Meeks helped Serena and Pemberton to their feet, placing a bedsheet around them as he did so.

“I’ll call a doctor,” Meeks said, and walked briskly back to the office.

Serena and Pemberton began slowly walking in the same direction, arm in arm. The flames cast the whole camp into a pulsing translucence, light gathering and dispersing like brightened shadows. Pemberton made a quick inventory of what had burned inside the house that could not be replaced. Nothing. A foreman came up to Serena, his face damasked with a sooty sweat.

“I’ve got men checking to make sure it don’t spread,” he said. “When we get it put out, you want me to send the crews out?”

“Keep them around camp, just in case,” Serena answered. “We’ll let them rest up and get a full day from them tomorrow.”

“You was lucky to have got out of there,” the foreman said, looking toward the house.

Serena and Pemberton turned and saw the truth of his statement. The back portion was still aflame, but the front was a tumble of black smoking wood but for the brick steps that now rose toward nothing but singed air. A man in silhouette sat in a ladderback chair directly in front of the steps. The man watched the flames, seemingly oblivious to the workers who rushed and shouted around him. On the ground beside the chair was an empty ten-gallon canister of kerosene. Pemberton did not have to see the man’s face to know it was McDowell.

I
T WAS MID-MORNING BEFORE ENOUGH LIGHT
filtered through the pall of smoke to see more than a few yards. Even then the ashy air brought tears to any lingering gaze. Much of the slash and stumps in the valley had burned along with the lean-tos of wood and tin assembled by squatters. Men begrimed by smoke and soot moved to and fro across the valley’s smoldering floor, gathering sludgy buckets of water from the creek to smother what gasps of fire lingered. From a distance, they appeared not so much like men as dark creatures spawned by the ash and cinder they trod upon. Had there not been rain the day before, every building in the camp would have burned.

Snipes’ crew sat on the commissary steps. With them was McIntyre, whose proven talent as a sawyer had gotten him rehired. The lay preacher had not spoken a single word since his return, nor did he now as the crew
observed the black square that was once the Pemberton’s house. Snipes lit his pipe and took a reflective draw, let the smoke purl from his rounded lips as if some necessary precursor to what wisdom the lips were about to impart.

“An educated man such as myself would of knowed better than try to kill them in their natural element,” Snipes mused.

“Fire, you mean?” Henryson asked.

“Exactly. That’s like throwing water on a fish.”

“What would you have done?”

“I’d of planted a wooden stake in their hearts,” Snipes said as he tamped more tobacco into his pipe. “Most all your best authorities argue for it in such situations.”

“I seen Sheriff Bowden cuffing up McDowell earlier,” Henryson said. “He was hitting at him, but it looked like he was doing no more than swatting flies off of him. Much as he’s wanting to be, the new high sheriff ain’t in them other three’s league.”

“I doubt there’s not a one north of hell itself that is,” Ross exclaimed.

For a few moments the men grew silent, their eyes turning one pair at a time to look at McIntyre, who in previous times would have gleaned half a dozen impromptu sermons after hearing the other men’s comments. But McIntyre stared fixedly across the wasteland at the bleary western horizon. Since his return, McIntyre’s silence had been a matter of much speculation among the men. Snipes suggested the lay preacher’s experience had caused McIntyre to adopt a vow of silence in the manner of monks of long-ago times. Stewart retorted that in the past McIntyre had been vehemently opposed to all manner of things popish, but conceded that perhaps the flying snake had changed his view on this matter. Henryson surmised that McIntyre was waiting for some particular revelation before speaking.

Ross said maybe McIntyre just had a sore throat.

Yet none of the men laughed or snickered when Ross made his quip, and Ross himself seemed to regret the remark as soon as it left his
mouth, for they all believed, even Ross, the most cynical of men, that the lay preacher had been truly and irrevocably transformed.

L
ATE
that morning after being treated by the doctor summoned from Waynesville, Serena and Pemberton dressed in denim breeches and cotton shirts gleaned from what sundries remained in the commissary. They sent a worker to town to buy clothing and toiletries the commissary could not furnish. Serena gathered some of the kitchen staff to prepare Campbell’s old house for them while Pemberton went to make sure any stray fires had been put out. As he followed the fire’s leaps and sidles, Pemberton found that though acres of slash and stumps had burned, not a single building aside from the house had been lost. After these tasks had been done, he and Serena lingered in the office.

“I probably should go and ride the ridge,” Serena said, “just to make sure the cables are undamaged.”

Pemberton looked at the bills and invoices on the desk, then got up.

“I’ll go with you. The paperwork can wait.”

Serena came around the desk and placed her bandaged hand on the back of Pemberton’s neck. She leaned and kissed him deeply.

“I want you with me,” Serena said, “not just this morning but all day.”

They went to the stable and saddled their horses. Serena freed the eagle from its roost and they rode out of the stable. The noon sun shone on the train tracks, and even in the dingy light the linked metal gave off a muted gleam. Soon it would be time to pull up the rails, Pemberton knew, starting with the spurs and moving backward. He looked forward to taking off his shirt and working with the men again, asserting his strength. It seemed so long since he’d done that, spending all his days in the office, poring over numbers like some drudge in a bank. With Meeks settled in, he’d be able to get out more, especially at the new camp.

Warm ash blackened the horses’ hooves and forelegs as Pemberton and Serena rode across the valley floor. They passed exhausted workers
washing soot off their faces and arms, the men looking not so much like loggers as minstrels unmasking after a performance. The men did not speak, the only sound their hacking coughs. The last flames doused were where the cemetery had been, and smoke wisps rose there as if even the souls of the dead were abandoning the charred valley for some more hospitable realm.

Pemberton and Serena followed Rough Fork Creek to Shanty Mountain, halfway up when they heard a shout behind them and saw Meeks coming their way. The accountant had never ridden a horse before coming to the camp, and he kept his back bowed and head close to the mare’s neck. When he caught up with the Pembertons, Meeks lifted his head and spoke softly, no doubt fearful a raised voice might cause the horse to bolt.

“Galloway called,” he said to Serena.

Serena turned to Pemberton.

“I’ll catch up with you in just a minute.”

“No,” Pemberton said. “I’ll wait.”

Serena looked at Pemberton’s face a few moments, as if searching for some feature in it that might counter his words. Satisfied, she nodded.

“Tell us,” she said to Meeks.

“Galloway’s traced ‘them,’ whoever ‘them’ are, to Knoxville and they didn’t buy a ticket,” Meeks said with some exasperation. “He also said to tell you no freight train left before he arrived, so ‘they’ are evidently still there.”

Meeks slowly lifted himself higher in the saddle to retrieve a piece of paper from his pocket.

“He told me a telephone number and said you needed to tell him what to do next.”

“Go call him,” Serena said, ignoring the proffered paper. “Tell him I said they’ve probably got no one there to stay with and no money, so he should start looking around Knoxville.”

“I didn’t realize I was also a receptionist,” Meeks grumbled, then began his halting descent back to camp.

Pemberton and Serena did not stop again until they were on the mountain top. Smoke dimmed the sun to the color of tarnished copper, the light around them transformed as well, tinted like a daguerreotype. Serena untethered the eagle, raised her arm and lifted it skyward. The bird rose, its great wings beating as if pushing away not only air but the very earth itself. It veered left, caught an updraft for a moment, then continued the ascent.

Pemberton looked back at the camp, the blackened absence where the house had been. The chimney had crumbled but the steps remained intact, looking not so much like the last remnant of a house but instead steps constructed for a gallows. The ladderback chair where McDowell had sat still faced the steps.

Serena reined her horse closer to Pemberton, her leg brushing against his. He reached out his hand and caressed Serena’s upper leg. Serena placed her hand on his and pressed firmly, as if wishing Pemberton’s hand to leave its impression on her flesh.

“What shall we do about our former sheriff?” she asked.

“Kill him,” Pemberton said. “I can do it if you want me to.”

“No, Galloway can do it,” Serena said, “as soon as he gets back from Tennessee.”

Pemberton looked up and saw the eagle’s circle had tightened. It had spotted something.

“What will it hunt in South America?”

“A snake the natives call a fer de lance,” Serena said. “It’s far more deadly than a rattlesnake.”

“As for my hunting, it doesn’t seem I’ll get my mountain lion,” Pemberton mused, “but a jaguar will surely be an equal challenge.”

“One even more worthy of you,” Serena said.

Pemberton gazed into Serena’s pewter-gray irises, the specks of gold within them, then the pupils themselves. How long, Pemberton wondered, since he’d looked there, had the courage to accept such clarity.

“You’re more the man I married than you’ve been for quite a while,” Serena said.

“The fire reminded me about what matters.”

“And what is that?”

“Only you,” Pemberton said.

The eagle’s shadow passed over them, then the bird flung itself earthward, landing fifty yards below. The bird jousted with its prey, the snake’s rattles buzzing furiously at first but soon intermittent.

“That’s forty-two it’s killed since early April,” Serena said. “I should take it over to Jackson County, let it kill some there before cold weather drives the snakes into their dens.”

Serena took the metal whistle from the saddle pocket and blew, then swung the lure overhead. The bird ascended and with two great wing flaps glided up the ridge to land next to the horses, the dust-colored rattlesnake set down like a piece of slash. Pemberton’s horse neighed and cantered backward and he had to jerk the reins, but the Arabian was so used to the bird and its prey that it did not even turn its head. The snake twisted onto its belly, and Pemberton saw where the bird’s beak had opened the snake’s midsection, tugged free strands of purple guts. The snake’s tail rattled feebly a few moments more, then was still.

I
T
was two afternoons later when Pemberton heard the sound of Galloway’s car as it bumped and rattled into camp. He went to the office window and watched Galloway rise stiffly from the car, a plum-colored stain darkening the left side of his face. The left eye socket was blackened, the eye just a slit. Galloway walked into the slash and stumps and searched with his good eye until he saw Serena. She was riding toward camp, the day over. Galloway hobbled up the ridge to meet her. With his gone hand and damaged face, he appeared a man who’d fallen sideways into some dangerous machine.

Pemberton sat back down. He told himself not to think about what Galloway’s face might betoken of the child’s fate. He made himself think instead about the fire, those moments flames had enclosed him and Serena, and how he did not know if they would live or die, but nothing else
mattered except they’d live or die together. In a few minutes Galloway’s car started up and drove off out of the valley. Serena came into the office.

“Galloway’s going to visit our ex-sheriff,” she said, but offered no explanation of Galloway’s injuries, nor did Pemberton ask.

Serena paused and looked at the boxes of files stacked in the corner for the coming move.

“We’ve done well here,” Serena said.