In the Valley

by Ron Rash

  ALSO BY RON RASH

  Fiction

  The Risen

  Above the Waterfall

  The Cove

  Serena

  The World Made Straight

  Saints at the River

  One Foot in Eden

  Short Stories

  Something Rich and Strange

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  Burning Bright

  Chemistry and Other Stories

  Casualties

  The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth

  Poetry

  Poems: New and Selected

  Waking

  Raising the Dead

  Among the Believers

  Eureka Mill

  Omnibus

  The Ron Rash Reader

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Ron Rash

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and published simultaneously in Canada by Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Several pieces first appeared in the following publications: “Neighbors” in Epoch (2018) and Best American Mystery Stories 2019; “When All the Stars Fall” in Southword (2019); “Sad Man in the Sky” in Bitter Southerner (2019); “L’homme Blessé” in Ploughshares (2018); “The Baptism” in Southern Review (2017) and Best American Short Stories 2018; “Flight” in Washington Square Review (2020); “Last Bridge Burned” in The Masters Review (2018); and “The Belt” in South Carolina Review (2018).

  Cover image: Stump, 2000, color woodcut (detail) © Neil Welliver, courtesy of the Alexandre Gallery

  Photo credit: Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill/Art Resource, NY

  Cover design by Emily Mahon

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rash, Ron, 1953—author.

  Title: In the valley : stories and a novella based on Serena / Ron Rash.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2020]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019058231 | ISBN 9780385544290 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385544306 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3568.A698 A6 2020 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019058231IP

  Ebook ISBN 9780385544306

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For Collins Lee Rash

  And I do not mean the faith which flees the world, but the one that endures the world and that loves and remains true to the world in spite of all the suffering which it contains for us.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Ron Rash

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Neighbors

  When All the Stars Fall

  Sad Man in the Sky

  L’homme Blessé

  The Baptism

  Flight

  Last Bridge Burned

  Ransom

  The Belt

  In the Valley

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Neighbors

  They came at dawn, ground crackling beneath the trample of hooves, amid it the sound of chickens flapping and squawking. Then voices, one among them shouting to dismount. The corn shucks rasped as Rebecca rose, quickly tugging her wool overcoat tight against her gown. She waked the children. As they rubbed questioning eyes, Rebecca whispered for them to get under the bed and be absolutely still. Hannah’s chin quivered but she nodded. Ezra, three years older, took his sister’s hand as they raised themselves off the mattress. He helped Hannah underneath and followed.

  A pounding on the door began as Rebecca gathered the salt pouch from the larder, the box of matches off the fireboard. She considered lifting the loose plank beneath the table and placing what filled her hands inside the clay crock, but the pounding was so fierce now that the door latch looked ready to splinter. Rebecca shoved the salt and matches beneath the bed too, whispered a last plea for the children to be quiet. She waited a few moments, some wisp of hope that the men might simply take the chickens and the ham in the barn and leave. But the man at the door shouted that they’d burn out those inside if the door didn’t open.

  Rebecca knew they would, that these men had done worse things in Shelton Laurel. Just months ago, they’d whipped Sallie Moore until blood soaked her back, roped Martha White to a tree and beat her. Barns had been burned, wells fouled with slaughtered animals. There’s nary a meanness left for them rebels to do to us, Ginny Lunsford had claimed, but she’d been proved wrong the next day when eleven men and a thirteen-year-old boy were marched west a mile on the Knoxville pike, lined up, and shot.

  Rebecca lifted the latch. As she pushed the door open, boot steps clattered off the porch. A low swirling fog made the horses mere gray shapes, those mounted upon them adrift, like revenants. Rebecca stepped far enough out to show her empty hands. A rein shook and a horse moved forward, its rider a man whose age lay hidden behind a thick brown beard. He alone wore an actual uniform, though his butternut jacket lacked two buttons, his officer’s hat stained and slouched. He raised a hand, but before tipping his hat he caught himself, set the hand on the saddle pommel. The man asked if anyone else was inside.

  Rebecca hesitated.

  “I’m Colonel Allen, of the North Carolina 64th regiment,” he said. “You’ve heard of us, of me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know you’ll rue any lie you tell me.”

  “My chaps,” Rebecca said. “They’re but seven and four.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Bring them out here,” Colonel Allen said, and turned to a tall man behind him.

  Rebecca went inside, kneeled by the bed, and helped the children to their feet. Hannah whimpered, Ezra’s eyes wide with fear.

  “Will they kill us, Mother?” Ezra asked.

  “No,” Rebecca answered, her hands huddling them onto the porch. “But we must do what is asked.”

  They stood beside the cord of wood Brice Fothergill had cut for them in October, accepting nothing for his labor. Rebecca took off the overcoat and covered the children. After all of the men had tethered their horses, Colonel Allen and the sergeant stood in front of the porch as the other men gathered behind them. The chickens had calmed and several clucked and pecked nearby.

  “Come a little closer, chickees,” one of the soldiers said, “and I’ll give ye neck a nice stretch.”

  Hannah started to cry. Rebecca stroked the child’s flaxen hair as she whispered for her to hush.

  “Them young ones look stout for their ages,” the sergeant said. “Must be eating well.”

  “A nit makes a louse,” a soldier wearing a black eye patch said, and another man loudly agreed.

  Allen raised a hand and the men grew quiet.

  “Your man,” he asked, “where is he?”

  “Likely hiding up on the ridge,” the sergeant said, “waiting to take a shot at us once we’re headed back. That’s their way up here, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Allen said, staring at Rebecca as he spoke. “They’ll not
face us like soldiers. They leave their women and children behind to do that.”

  “I’ve got no man,” Rebecca said.

  “What about them children,” the sergeant scoffed. “They just sprout out of the ground like toadstools?”

  “My husband’s dead.”

  “Dead,” Allen said skeptically. “How long has he been dead?”

  “She’s lying,” the sergeant said when she hesitated. “Him and some of his bluebelly neighbors is probably beading us right now.”

  “Aaron’s been dead two years,” Rebecca said.

  The sun had climbed the ridge now, and yellow light settled on the yard and cabin. The fog began unknitting into loose gray strands and all could be seen—the outhouse and spring, the barn where a ham wrapped in cheesecloth hung from a rafter, stored above it hay for the calf her closest neighbor, Ira Wilkey, would bring once it was weaned. Unlike many in Shelton Laurel, Ira had enough land to hide his livestock, so offered the calf for a quilt Rebecca made from what clothing Aaron left behind. We’ll not make it through these times if we don’t look after each other, Ira answered when she protested the trade was unfair to him.

  The sergeant stepped to the side of the cabin, his eyes sweeping the clearing.

  “I don’t see no grave.”

  “Aaron ain’t buried here,” Rebecca said.

  “No?” Allen said. “Where then?”

  “In Asheville.”

  “Which cemetery in Asheville?” the sergeant asked.

  “I can’t remember its name,” Rebecca said.

  “I told you what we do to liars,” Allen said.

  “I argue he’s close by, sir,” the sergeant said. “He could be hiding in the barn.”

  “Take two men and go look, Corporal,” Allen said to the man with the eye patch.

  “Where’s your pa, boy?” the sergeant asked.

  Behind them now, Rebecca pulled the overcoat tighter around the children.

  “All he knows is his daddy’s dead.”

  “That right, son?” Allen asked. “Your pa’s dead?”

  “Tell him your daddy’s dead,” Rebecca said.

  “Yes, sir,” Ezra said softly.

  “Where’s he buried, boy?” the sergeant asked.

  “He don’t know none of that,” Rebecca said.

  “That right, son?” Allen asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, sir, what? You know or you don’t know?”

  Ezra looked at the ground.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  “I can likely guess some places,” Allen said to his sergeant. “Can’t you?”

  “Antietam or Gettysburg maybe.”

  “I’d say more likely Tennessee, since they head west to join. Shiloh or Stones River, there or maybe Donaldson.”

  At the last word Rebecca’s right hand clutched Hannah’s shoulder so hard the child gave a sharp cry.

  “So it was Donaldson,” the sergeant said.

  Rebecca didn’t respond.

  “My first cousin was killed at Donaldson,” Allen said. “A good man with children no older than those you got your hands on.”

  “I had a friend killed there,” the sergeant added. “Grapeshot ripped his legs off.”

  The two men said nothing more, appearing to expect some response. The corporal and the two men came out of the barn.

  “Ain’t no one hiding in there,” the corporal said, “but there’s a ham curing and it’s enough to give some bully soldiers a full feeding.”

  One of the men whooped and slapped a palm twice against his belly.

  “What else is in the barn?” Allen asked.

  “No livestock,” the corporal said, “but enough hay to make a pretty fire.”

  The only sound was the snort of a horse as Rebecca and the men waited for Colonel Allen to give his orders. Soldiers. That was what the corporal claimed them to be. Rebecca thought of the men sketched in the newspapers her father-in-law had brought with Aaron’s letters in the war’s first months. Those soldiers wore plumed hats and buttoned jackets, sabers and sashes strapped on their waists. They looked heroic and Rebecca knew that many, like Aaron, had been. Some of these men before her were surely heroic at one time too, but now their ill-matched clothing offered no sign of allegiance except to their own thievery.

  “Bost,” Allen said to a man who wore a frock coat Rebecca recognized, “you and Murdock and Etheridge gather what chickens you can.”

  Several men shouted encouragement as Bost dove for the closest chicken. White feathers slapped his face until he pinned the bird firmly to the ground.

  “Kill it now?” Bost panted, his scratched face looking up at the colonel.

  “No, we’ll take them with us.”

  A second man retrieved a burlap sack and the squawking chicken was shoved inside. Bost knotted the sack and tied it to a saddle as the other two men began their own chases.

  “Take a man and get that ham, Corporal,” Allen said. “Sergeant, go inside. Look around good. You know how they hide things.”

  “Nothing inside is worth your while,” Rebecca said. “There’s a root cellar behind the barn. It’s partial hid by old board planks. Near all what food we have is there.” She met Allen’s eyes, saw that, like Aaron’s had been, there were gold flecks within the brown. “These chaps are cold. Just let me and them go inside, and you take everything else.”

  “She must be hiding something real good,” the sergeant said. “It’s yankee money or clothes that boy there can’t fill. Maybe the son of a bitch himself is hiding under the bed.”

  “Go see then,” Allen said, and turned to Rebecca. “You and your children come on out here.”

  “Let me get their shoes first,” Rebecca said, but Allen shook his head.

  Rebecca settled Hannah on her hip and took Ezra’s hand. They went down the porch’s one step and into the yard. As Allen gave more orders, Rebecca glanced furtively toward the ridge, looking for a bright wink of sun on metal, then looked farther down the valley. Smoke rose from Ira Wilkey’s farm and, beyond it, Brice and Anna Fothergill’s home, which meant the Confederates had come in the night unseen. Hannah began whimpering again, but Ezra stood silent, his hands balled into fists. Don’t, she whispered, and used her free hand to open his.

  She should have burned the letters, as she had done with the newspapers her father-in-law had brought. But there were only five because Aaron died early in the war, so early her father-in-law had been able to travel the eighteen miles from Asheville in broad daylight, this before bushwhackers as well as Colonel Allen and his men made any stranger in Shelton Laurel a suspected spy or thief, thus shot on sight. I will return with a wagon to take you and the children back to live with me. That was her father-in-law’s promise when he’d brought the last letter, which contained a brass button taken from Aaron’s field jacket. My hope is that this button might offer some remembrance, Aaron’s commander had written.

  But her father-in-law had not come again, with or without a wagon, and Rebecca had wondered if it was suspicion of her allegiance, not fear, that had kept him away.

  “Put a match to the barn?” the corporal asked when he’d returned with the ham.

  “We’ll feed our horses first,” Allen said, as men returned with potatoes and apples from the root cellar, what chickens had been caught.

  The two privates came out of the cabin, one holding the salt pouch and matches. The sergeant followed, in his hands the crock.

  “It’s near all letters, except for this,” the sergeant said. He cradled the container with his elbow as he reached inside and removed a button with CSA stamped into the brass.

  He handed it to Allen, who examined the button a moment before putting it in his jacket pocket.

  “You know it was took off one of our own, prob
ably killed up here by some coward sniping from behind a tree.”

  “What do the letters say?” Allen asked.

  “You know I never had any school learning, Colonel.”

  Rebecca glanced toward the ridge, then the closer woods before she spoke.

  “Please,” she said softly.

  Colonel Allen took the crock and sat on the porch step. He lifted the lid, took out a letter, and began to read. As he did so, Rebecca remembered the night Aaron had packed the travel trunk with clothing but also his briar pipe, pocket watch, and penknife, the tintype taken on their wedding day. She thought of the two shirts and pair of breeches he’d left, cut up for Ira’s quilt, and how her fingers lingered on those cloth squares, sometimes pressing one against her cheek.

  After he’d read the first letter, Allen read quicker, then merely scanned. Coming to the last, which, unlike the others, had been written on rag paper, he read slowly again, then raised his eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” he asked, his voice as perplexed as his eyes.

  When Rebecca didn’t respond, he refolded the letter carefully and set it back in the container. Colonel Allen placed the lid back on and stood.

  “Tell the men to put everything back, Sergeant Reeves.”

  “Sir?” the sergeant said.

  “Free those chickens, and put that ham back too,” Allen said, addressing the corporal as well. When the sergeant didn’t respond, he added, “That’s a direct order.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, not alone in watching hungrily as the ham was returned to the barn.

  “Mrs. Penland, it is too cold for you and your children to be out here,” Allen said. “You must go inside.”

  He took off his hat and followed them. Colonel Allen set the crock on the fireboard and went out to the porch, first for kindling, then one of the hearth logs Brice Fothergill had cut. Allen took a tin of matches from his pocket and lit the kindling, waved his hat to coax the fire into being.

  “You children,” he said as he stood. “Come closer and get warm. You too, ma’am.”