Serena (5 page)

At seven o’clock, two kitchen workers set the table with Spode bone china and silver cutlery and linen napkins. They left and returned pushing a cart laden with wicker baskets of buttered biscuits and a silver platter draping with beef, large bowls of Steuben crystal brimmed with potatoes and carrots and squash, various jams and relishes.

They were midway through their meal when Campbell, who’d been bent over the adding machine in the front room, appeared at the door.

“I need to know if you and Mrs. Pemberton are holding Bilded to the bet,” Campbell said. “For the payroll.”

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?” Pemberton asked.

“He has a wife and three children.”

The words were delivered with no inflection, and Campbell’s face was an absolute blank. Pemberton wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to play poker against this man.

“All for the better,” Serena said. “It will make a more effective lesson for the other workers.”

“Will he still be a foreman?” Campbell asked.

“Yes, for the next two weeks,” Serena said, looking not at Campbell but Pemberton.

“And then?”

“He’ll be fired,” Pemberton told the overseer. “Another lesson for the men.”

Campbell nodded and stepped back into the office, closing the door behind him. The clacking, ratchet and pause of the adding machine resumed.

Buchanan appeared about to speak, but didn’t.

“A problem, Buchanan?” Pemberton asked.

“No,” Buchanan said after a few moments. “The wager did not involve me.”

“Did you note how Campbell attempted to sway you, Pemberton,”
Doctor Cheney said, “yet without doing so outright. He’s quite intelligent that way, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Pemberton agreed. “Had his circumstances been such, he could have matriculated at Harvard. Perhaps, unlike me, he would have graduated.”

“Yet without your experiences in the taverns of Boston,” Wilkie said, “you might have fallen prey to Abe Harmon and his bowie knife.

“True enough,” said Pemberton, “but my year of fencing at Harvard contributed to that education as well.”

Serena raised her hand to Pemberton’s face and let her index finger trace the thin white scar on his cheek.

“A Fechtwunde is more impressive than a piece of sheepskin,” she said.

The kitchen workers came in with raspberries and cream. Beside Wilkie’s bowl, one of the women placed a water glass and bottles containing bitters and iron tonics, a tin of sulpher lozenges, potions for Wilkie’s contrary stomach and tired blood. The workers poured the cups of coffee and departed.

“Yet you are a woman of obvious learning, Mrs. Pemberton,” Wilkie said. “Your husband says you are exceedingly well read in the arts and philosophy.”

“My father brought tutors to the camp. They were all British, Oxford educated.”

“Which explains the British inflection and cadence of your speech,” Wilkie noted approvingly.

“And no doubt also explains a certain coldness in the tone,” Doctor Cheney added as he stirred cream in his coffee, “which only the unenlightened would view as a lack of feeling towards others, even your own family.”

Wilkie’s nose twitched in annoyance.

“Worse than unenlightened to think such a thing,” Wilkie said, “cruel as well.”

“Surely,” Doctor Cheney said, his plump lips rounding contemplatively. “I speak only as one who hasn’t had the advantages of British tutors.”

“Your father sounds like a most remarkable man,” Wilkie said, returning his gaze to Serena. “I would enjoy hearing more about him.”

“Why?” Serena said, as if puzzled. “He’s dead now and of no use to any of us.”

D
EW DARKENED THE HEM OF HER GINGHAM
dress as Rachel Harmon walked out of the yard, the grass cool and slick against her bare feet and ankles. Jacob nestled in the crook of her left arm, in her right hand the tote sack. He’d grown so much in only six weeks. His features transformed as well, the hair not just thicker but darker, the eyes that had been blue at birth now brown as chestnuts. She’d not known an infant’s eyes could do such a thing and it unsettled her, a reminder of eyes last seen at the train depot. Rachel looked down the road to where Widow Jenkins’ farmhouse stood, found the purl of smoke rising from the chimney that confirmed the old woman was up and about. The child squirmed inside the blanket she’d covered him in against the morning chill.

“You’ve got a full belly and fresh swaddlings,” she whispered, “so you’ve no cause to be fussy.”

Rachel tucked the blanket tighter. She ran her index finger across the ridge of his gums, Jacob’s mouth closing around the finger to suckle. She wondered when his teeth would come in, something else to ask the widow.

Rachel followed the road as it began its long curve toward the river. On the edges, Queen Anne’s lace still held beaded blossoms of dew. A big yellow and black writing spider hung in its web’s center, and Rachel remembered how her father had claimed seeing your initial sewn into the web meant you’d soon die. She did not look closely at the web, instead glanced at the sky to make sure no clouds gathered in the west over Clingman’s Dome. She stepped onto the Widow’s porch and knocked.

“It ain’t bolted,” the old woman said, and Rachel stepped inside. The greasy odor of fry pan lard filled the cabin, a scrim of smoke eddying around the room’s borders. Widow Jenkins rose slowly from a caneback chair pulled close to the hearth.

“Let me hold that chap.”

Rachel bent her knees and laid down her tote sack. She shifted the child in her arms and handed him over.

“He’s acting fussy this morning,” Rachel said. “I’m of a mind he might be starting to teethe.”

“Child, a baby don’t teethe till six months,” Widow Jenkins scoffed. “It could be the colic or the rash or the ragweed. There’s many a thing to make a young one like this feel out of sorts, but it ain’t his teeth.”

The Widow raised Jacob and peered into the child’s face. Gold-wire spectacles made her eyes bulge as if loosed from their sockets.

“I told your daddy to marry again so you’d have a momma, but he wouldn’t listen,” Widow Jenkins said to Rachel. “If he had you’d know some things about babies, maybe enough to where you’d not have let the first man who gave you a wink and a smile lead you into a fool’s paradise. You’re still a child and don’t know nothing of the world yet, girl.”

Rachel stared at the puncheon floor and listened, the way she’d done for two months now. Folks at her Daddy’s funeral had told her much the same, as had the granny woman who’d delivered Jacob and women in
town who’d never given Rachel any notice before. Telling her for her own good, they all claimed, because they cared about her. Some of them like Widow Jenkins did care, but Rachel knew some just did it for spite. She’d watch their lips turn downward, trying to look sad and serious, but a mean kind of smile would be in their eyes.

Widow Jenkins sat back down in her chair and laid Jacob in her lap.

“A child ought to carry his daddy’s name,” she said, still speaking like Rachel was five instead of almost seventeen. “That way he’ll have a last name and not have to go through his life explaining why he don’t.”

“He’s got a last name, Mrs. Jenkins,” Rachel said, lifting her gaze from the floor to meet the older woman’s eyes, “and Harmon is as good a one as I know.”

For a few moments there was no sound but the fire. A hiss and crackle, then the gray shell of a log collapsing in on itself, spilling a slush of spark and ash beneath the andirons. When Widow Jenkins spoke again, her voice was softer.

“You’re right. Harmon is a good name, and an old woman ought not have to be reminded of that.”

Rachel took the sugar teat and fresh swaddlings from the tote sack, the glass bottle of milk she’d drawn earlier. She laid them on the table.

“I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“You having to sell that horse and cow just to get by, and him that’s the cause of it richer than a king,” Widow Jenkins said sadly. “It’s a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming into it. Tears from the very start.”

Rachel walked back up the road to the barn and took a step inside. She paused and let her gaze scan the loft and rafters, remembering, as she always did, the bat that had so frightened her years ago. She heard the chickens in the far back clucking in their nesting boxes and reminded herself to gather the eggs soon as she returned. Her eyes adjusted to the barn’s darkness, and objects slowly gained form and solidity—a rusting milk can, the sack of lice powder to dust the chickens with, a rotting wagon wheel. She looked up a final time and stepped all the way inside,
lifted the saddle and its pad off the rack and went to the middle stall. The draft horse was asleep, his weight shifted so the right hoof was at an angle. Rachel patted his rear haunches to let him know she was there before placing the cabbage sack in the pack. She tethered the mattock to the saddle as well.

“We got us a trip to make Dan,” she told the horse.

Rachel didn’t take the road past Widow Jenkins’ house but instead followed Rudisell Creek down the mountain to where it entered the Pigeon River, the path narrowed by sprawling poke stalks that drooped under the weight of their purple berries and goldenrod bright as caught sunshine. Enough dew yet remained on the leaves to dampen her legs and dress. Rachel knew in the deeper woods the ginseng leaves would soon begin to show their brightness as well. The prettiest time of year, she’d always believed, prettier than fall or even spring when the dogwood branches swayed and brightened as if harboring clouds of white butterflies.

Dan moved with care down the trail, gentle and watchful with Rachel as he’d always been. Her father had bought the horse a year before Rachel was born. Even when he’d been at his drunkest or angriest, her father had never mistreated the animal, never kicked or cursed it, never forgotten to give it feed or water. Selling the horse was another lost link to her father.

She and Dan came to the dirt road and followed the river south toward Waynesville, the sun rising over her right shoulder. A few minutes later Rachel heard an automobile in the distance, her heart stammering when she glanced up and saw the vehicle coming toward her was green. It wasn’t the Packard, and she felt ashamed that a part of herself, even now, could have wished it was Mr. Pemberton coming to Colt Ridge to somehow set things right. The same as when she’d gone to the camp’s church service the last two Sundays, dawdling outside the dining hall with Jacob in her arms, hoping Mr. Pemberton would walk by.

The automobile sputtered past, leaving its wake of gray dust. Soon she passed a stone farmhouse, hearth smoke wisping from the chimney,
in the fields plump heads of cabbage and corn stalks taller than she was, closer to the road pumpkins and squash brightening a smother of weeds. All of which promised the kind of harvest they might have had on Colt Ridge come fall if her father had lived long enough to tend his crops. A wagon came the other direction, two children dangling their legs off the back. They stared at Rachel gravely, as if sensing all that had befallen her in the last months. The road leveled and nudged close to the Pigeon River. In the morning’s slanted light, the river gleamed like a vein of flowing gold. Fool’s gold, she thought.

Rachel remembered the previous August, how at noon-dinner time she’d take a meal to Mr. Pemberton’s house and Joel Vaughn, who’d grown up with her on Colt Ridge, would be waiting on the porch. Joel’s job was to make sure no one interrupted her and Mr. Pemberton, and though Joel never said a word there’d always be a troubled look on his face when he opened the front door. Mr. Pemberton was always in the back room, and as Rachel walked through the house she looked around at the electric lights and the ice box and fancy table and cushioned chairs. Being in a place so wondrous, even for just a half hour, made her feel the same way as when she pored over the Sears wish book. Only better, because it wasn’t a picture or description but the very things themselves. But that wasn’t what had brought her to Mr. Pemberton’s bed. He’d made notice of her, chosen Rachel over the other girls in the camp, including her friends Bonny and Rebecca, who were young like her. Rachel had believed she was in love, though since he’d been the first man she’d ever kissed, much less lain down with, how could she know. Rachel thought how maybe the Widow was right. If she’d had a mother who’d not left when Rachel was five, maybe she would have known better.

But maybe not, Rachel told herself. After all, she’d ignored the warning looks of not only Joel but also Mr. Campbell, who’d shook his head
No
at Rachel when he saw her going to the house with the tray one noon. Rachel had just smiled back at the hard stares the older women in the kitchen gave her each time she returned. When one of the men who cooked said something smart to her like
don’t look like he had much of an
appetite today, for food at least,
she’d blush and lower her eyes, but even then a part of her felt proud all the same. It was no different than when Bonny or Rebecca whispered
Your hair’s mussed up,
and the three of them giggled like they were back in grammar school and a boy had tried to kiss one of them.

One day Mr. Pemberton had fallen asleep before she left his bed. Rachel had gotten up slowly so as not to wake him, then walked room by room through the house, touching what she passed—the bedroom’s gold-gilded oval mirror, a silver pitcher and basin in the bathroom, the Marvel water heater in the hallway, the ice box and oak-front shelf clock. What had struck her most was how such wonders appeared placed around the rooms with so little thought. That was the amazing thing, Rachel had thought, how what seemed treasures to her could be hardly noticed by someone else. She’d sat in one of the Coxwell chairs and settled the plush velvet against her hips and back. It had been like sitting on a plump cloud.

When her flow stopped, she’d kept believing it was something else, not telling Mr. Pemberton or Bonny or Rebecca, even when one month became three months and then four. It’ll come any day now, she’d told herself, even after the mornings she’d thrown up and her dress tightened at the waist. By the sixth month, Mr. Pemberton had gone back to Boston. Soon enough she didn’t have to tell anyone because despite the loose apron her belly showed the truth of it, not only to everyone in the camp but also to her father.

Outside of Waynesville the dirt road merged with the old Asheville Toll Road. Rachel dismounted. She took the horse by the reins and led it into town. As she passed the courthouse, two women stood outside Scott’s General Store. They stopped talking and watched Rachel, their eyes stern and disapproving. She tethered Dan in front of Donaldson’s Feed and Seed and went in to tell the storekeeper she’d take his offer for the horse and cow.

“And you won’t pick them up till this weekend, right?”

The storekeeper nodded but didn’t open his cash register.

“I was hoping you could pay me now,” Rachel said.

Mr. Donaldson took three ten-dollar bills from his cash register and handed them to her.

“Just make sure you don’t lame that horse before I get up there.”

Rachel took a snap purse from her dress pocket, placed the money in it.

“You want to buy the saddle?”

“I’ve got no need for a saddle,” the storekeeper said brusquely.

Rachel walked across the street to Mr. Scott’s store. When he produced the bill, it was more than she’d expected, though what exactly Rachel expected she could not say. She placed the remaining two dollar bills and two dimes in her snap purse and went next door to Merritt’s Apothecary. When Rachel came out, she had only the dimes left.

Rachel untethered Dan and she and the horse walked on by Dodson’s Café and then two smaller storefronts. She was passing the courthouse when someone called her name. Sheriff McDowell stepped out of his office door, not dressed in Sunday finery like three months ago but in his uniform, a silver badge pinned to his khaki shirt. As he walked toward her, Rachel remembered how he’d put his arm around her that day and helped her off the bench and into the depot, how later he’d driven her back up to Colt Ridge and though the day wasn’t cold, he’d built a small fire in the hearth. They’d sat there together by the fire, not talking, until Widow Jenkins arrived to spend the night with her.

The sheriff tipped his hat when he caught up to her.

“I don’t mean to hold you up,” he said, “just wanted to check and see how you and your child were doing.”

Rachel met the sheriff’s eyes, noting again their unusual hue. Honey-colored, but not glowy like that of bees fed on clover, but instead the darker amber of basswood honey. A warm comforting color. She looked for the least hint of judgment in the sheriff’s gaze and saw none.

“We’re doing okay,” Rachel said, though there being only two dimes in her snap purse argued otherwise.

A Model T rattled past, causing the horse to shy toward the sidewalk.
Sheriff McDowell and Rachel stood together in the street a few moments more, neither speaking until McDowell touched the brim of his hat again.

“Well, like I said, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. If I can help you, in any way, you let me know.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said and paused for a moment. “That day Daddy was killed, I appreciate what you did, especially staying with me.”

Sheriff McDowell nodded. “I was glad to do it.”

The sheriff walked back toward his office as Rachel tugged Dan’s reins and led him on past the courthouse.

At the end of the street Rachel came to a wooden frame building, in its narrow yard a dozen blank marble tombstones of varying sizes and hues. Inside she heard the tap tap tap of a hammer and chisel. Rachel tethered the horse to the closest hitching post and crossed the marble-stobbed yard. She paused at the open door above which was written
LUDLOW SURRATT—STONE MASON
.