In the Valley

by Ron Rash

  “You know now,” Henryson said.

  Ross’s ax blade struck the beech tree’s trunk. The sound ricocheted off the opposite ridge and returned to its source. Quince went back to limbing as Henryson and Snipes took up the handles of their crosscut saw. After a glance upward at a tulip poplar twenty times their height, the two men began and soon achieved a rhythm, the saw’s steady rasps punctuated by Ross’s ax strikes, Quince’s blows a softer percussion. A few minutes later Snipes paused and placed a steel wedge in the trunk. As he reached behind him for the sledgehammer, Snipes’s fingers touched something cold and coiled. He jerked his hand away just as the copperhead struck. As it coiled to bite again, Quince’s ax severed the snake’s head, but even then its mouth, fangs protracted, snapped open and shut. Snipes sat down on a stump. The fang marks looked more like scratches than punctures. As the rest of the crew gathered around him, Snipes pressed a finger next to where the snake had struck.

  “It’s not tender or swelling,” Snipes said.

  “A dry bite then?” Ross asked, studying the hand and forearm for red streaks.

  “I don’t feel no poison,” Snipes said, making a fist and then unclenching it.

  “Don’t get up yet,” Henryson cautioned, placing a hand on Snipes’s shoulder.

  After another minute they were certain.

  “You sure got lucky, Snipes,” Quince said.

  Snipes rubbed the sleeve of his red shirt as another man might rub a rabbit’s foot.

  “Not a bit of luck,” he said. “It was the brightness.”

  Snipes picked up the sledgehammer and drove the wedge deeper into the tree.

  The saw’s teeth raked across the trunk seven more times before the tulip poplar began to tremble. Snipes and Henryson pulled out the saw and yelled “timber.” The tree creaked and tottered, then paused as if the ridge that held it upright for over a century might yet anchor it. A last loud crackling and the tulip poplar crashed earthward.

  2

  The road, barely wider than the car itself, tilted and swerved down the mountain as if designed with drunken malevolence. There was no guardrail, only a long falling toward death that Galloway, their one-handed driver, appeared oblivious to as he again let go of the steering wheel to raise a cigarette to his lips. Calhoun, who shared the back seat with Brandonkamp, appeared unalarmed, perhaps because he’d emptied a whiskey flask on the train ride from Asheville to Sylva. From what Brandonkamp had heard about Serena Pemberton, she might have commanded the driver to unnerve him deliberately, gain an early advantage before he made the agreed-upon inspection of the equipment.

  Then the road straightened, and for the first time he saw the valley. From this vantage, the glistening railroad tracks, the engine and its flatcars, resembled what a child might discover under a Christmas tree. Soon he could see the camp, smoke rising above the mess hall, beside it a weathered two-storey farmhouse and a smaller A-frame building that served as the office. Behind these buildings were two makeshift bunkhouses where the loggers slept. The valley floor was, except for a pasture, a welter of stumps and slash and mud, the ridges the same except for a portion of the east-facing flank. The unlogged portion appeared formidable, steep-graded and thick-timbered.

  The Pierce-Arrow made a last long plunge. The engine whined and both passengers held on to the side doors as their bodies tilted forward. The land leveled and they entered the camp, passing the mess hall and farmhouse and stopping in front of the office, where two dark-suited Pinkertons smoked cigars. Brandonkamp and Calhoun got out of the car.

  “In yonder,” Galloway said, waving his hand toward the A-frame.

  Unlike at the train station, Brandonkamp could see Galloway more clearly—the sinister stitch-scarred wrist evoking past violence, the conspicuously worn dagger auguring a desire for more. But the man’s eyes were even more disconcerting. As soon kill you as look at you, Brandonkamp had heard men described, chimerically it now seemed, because this man appeared to be truly weighing the option, and favoring the first.

  “I want to have a look at the machinery,” Brandonkamp said as Galloway drove off to park the car.

  “I assure you it’s in the condition she told you,” Calhoun said. “Whatever else one can say of her, she is a woman who always honors her contracts.”

  “I prefer to check anyway,” Brandonkamp said.

  Calhoun had other business with Mrs. Pemberton, so he went on inside. Brandonkamp set his briefcase on the porch and walked over to inspect the skidder and McGiffert loader, listened for any dissonance between the gears and levers. Then he had the operator pause and climbed onto the skidder himself to examine it further. Brandonkamp inspected the loader in a similar manner. The condition of lesser equipment told much about the care of the expensive items, so he went to the east ridge and joined the loggers, found their axes and crosscut saws well maintained. He calculated the amount of timber and the time required to cut it. Mud clung to his alligator shoes and pants cuffs, but a small price for confirmation that, as he’d expected after such a hard winter and rainy spring, the deadline wouldn’t be met. Only then did he head toward the office. As he crossed the yard, he noticed an old woman sitting in a wooden chair. She was dressed all in black, her face bonneted. He tipped his fedora but the woman didn’t acknowledge him.

  The Pinkertons were gone when Brandonkamp stepped onto the office porch. He picked up his briefcase and entered the front room. Serena Pemberton and Calhoun studied a map so large that it draped over the desk like a tablecloth. She wore dust-colored jodhpurs and a green poplin shirt and was taller than he’d expected. Her high cheekbones, narrow nose, and slender lips were striking, but most of all the eyes—gray but gold-flecked, more oval than round. Her body similar, distinctly feminine but thin, though thin wasn’t exactly right. Honed seemed a better word. No rings gilded her long fingers, the nails cut to the quick. Her only seeming excess was her shoulder-length blond hair.

  He had expected her to be different, less attractive, less feminine. He could see why George Pemberton had been smitten. Impressive, but still a woman, and now without the husband who’d made Pemberton Lumber Company so successful. Brandonkamp moved forward and extended his hand. Her palm was more callused than his, her grip firm.

  “First of all, my condolences,” Brandonkamp said. “I met your husband once on a visit to Boston. An exceptional man.”

  “He tried hard to be so,” Serena said.

  Brandonkamp looked at the map and Calhoun pointed to a red circle.

  “Ten square miles of prime mahogany,” Calhoun said.

  “Very impressive,” Brandonkamp agreed. “It seems you’ve found Brazil much to your liking.”

  “I have,” Serena said.

  “And dealing with a foreign government?”

  “I find their candor refreshing.”

  “How so, if I may presume to ask?”

  “They don’t pretend that they can’t be bought,” Serena said.

  Brandonkamp turned to Calhoun.

  “Once the camp is fully operating, will you be going to Brazil as well?”

  Calhoun shook his head, a sardonic smile on his face.

  “As regards Mrs. Pemberton and her ventures, it behooves a partner to leave all decisions to her alone.”

  Serena rolled up the map and placed it inside a tin cylinder. Calhoun sat down in one of the room’s three ladder-back chairs. Brandonkamp sat also, but Serena remained standing. Never underestimate this woman, Calhoun had warned, and Brandonkamp had not as he and Mrs. Pemberton discussed the sale of the logging equipment via telegram. But she may have underestimated him.

  “You’ve found the equipment to your satisfaction?”

  “Very well maintained,” Brandonkamp answered, “but as far as the July thirty-first deadline, I must remind you that there is a ten-percent price deduction if it’s not met, and that includes having a
ll equipment loaded on the train.”

  “Having the equipment loaded was not discussed,” Serena said. “That is your responsibility.”

  Brandonkamp wasn’t sure how he expected her to react, but except for her eyes locking on his, there was no change in her face. He withdrew a thick document from his briefcase. He turned to a back page and set it on the desk.

  “A sentence was added to the final contract. As you can see, your man Meeks signed in your absence. There were a number of pages, so perhaps he missed the addition. Or simply forgot to tell you.”

  Calhoun’s eyes briefly met Brandonkamp’s, conveying little. For a few moments the room was silent. Behind Brandonkamp a match was struck. He turned and saw Galloway leaning against a doorjamb. He hadn’t heard the man enter. The highlander raised a cigarette to his mouth and flicked the match out the door. He inhaled and let the smoke drift toward Brandonkamp.

  Brandonkamp set the soles of his shoes firmly on the floor, as if the planks had become very slippery. They were trying to unnerve him enough to drop the proviso, but he also knew that if he did give in to this woman, a gadabout like Calhoun would have it known all over the region. He could almost hear the laughter as Calhoun told how the newcomer had been intimidated into backing down.

  “With the amount of acreage left to cut,” Brandonkamp said in a conciliatory tone, “the matter of loading the equipment will be moot. I’m afraid it looks as if that ten-percent reduction is assured.”

  “To catch the next train, you need to leave now,” Serena said, and turned to Galloway. “Have one of the men saddle my horse. When you get back, I’ll be on the ridge with the crews.”

  As he and Calhoun waited for Galloway to bring around the Pierce-Arrow, Brandonkamp gazed at the east ridge and felt a surge of confidence. Come Friday at midnight sharp, he’d be here, and with him Calhoun to witness the lapsed deadline. As the Pierce-Arrow pulled up in front of the office porch, Brandonkamp told himself that if he could just survive the drive back to the station, everything would be fine.

  The mountain lion was the first to depart the valley. The front paw lost years back to a trap’s steel teeth was warning enough. As the trees began to fall, others followed: black bear and bobcat, otter and mink, some in pairs, some singly. Then beaver and weasel, deer and muskrat, groundhog and fox. After them raccoon and rabbit, opossum and chipmunk, squirrel and vole, deer mouse and shrew…

  3

  When the bell rang three times, signaling it was noon, the crew set down their tools and ate. Two water boys made their midday trek across the ridge, wooden barrels strapped to the mules they rode. Some men refilled jars or canteens while others used the tin dipper to drink from the barrel. When Snipes finished his lunch, he settled his back against a stump and took out the newspaper Noah Holt, both train engineer and postmaster, bought in Sylva for him. Snipes perused the front page, then lit his briar pipe and flapped the paper open. Tobacco fumes rose from behind the paper like smoke signals.

  “So what’s your fishwrapper got to say today?” Henryson asked Snipes.

  Snipes lowered his newspaper just enough to peer over it.

  “More banks is closed,” Snipes said. “Poor folks is getting poorer.”

  “There ain’t nary a bit of news in that,” Henryson said.

  “Capone is headed to the hoosegow now,” Snipes said. “Seems you can murder all the folks you want as long as you don’t cheat the government.”

  “The missus must keep all her taxes paid,” Henryson said.

  “She’s always been a conscientious woman,” Snipes acknowledged, “even pays them Raleigh politicians some extra just in case she needs a favor.”

  Ross stood and gazed down into the valley. Meeks, suitcase in hand, came out of the farmhouse where he’d lived since November. He walked toward the bunkhouses, head down like a chastened schoolchild as Serena, on horseback, and Galloway, on foot, moved slowly below the ridge to observe each crew’s progress. Henryson came and stood beside his cousin.

  “What are you looking at so steely-eyed?” Henryson asked, then saw the small, black-clothed figure at the valley’s center. She was seated in a high-backed mahogany armchair. There, amid the vast floor of stumps and slash, Galloway’s mother appeared almost regal. Snipes and Quince joined them.

  “Come out to see her boy off to work,” Henryson quipped. “She’s ever the doting mother, don’t you think?”

  “Probably hoping the sun will warm her up,” Snipes said, “as is the way of many other a reptile.”

  “That hag is pointed west toward Tennessee,” Ross said. “They’re going after that Harmon girl again.”

  “Well nigh a miracle she dodged them once,” Snipes said. “No one else has, unless it’s Joel Vaughn. They never found his body. But the others…”

  The men became somber.

  “What Galloway and his knife done to McDowell, to do that to a man before he killed him,” Henryson said, then paused. For a few moments, the men looked elsewhere instead of at one another. “I’m hoping they won’t have the time to find her,” Henryson finally said. “They’ll only be here till this valley’s logged.”

  “They’ll make the time,” Ross said.

  The two beefy young men came out of the mess hall. They were still in suits but wore badges now.

  “Them is Pinkertons,” Snipes said.

  “Pinkertons?” Quince said worriedly. “There ain’t no talk of striking in this camp.”

  “They might be wanting to snuff it before it starts,” Snipes said. “Them fellows up north has lit the powder keg.” Snipes turned the pages as if fanning himself, found what he looked for and held it outward. Twelve Injured in Union Riot.

  “Maybe it’s time for us to do the same,” Ross said. “An injury to one’s an injury to all.”

  “That’s Wobbly talk and best you don’t repeat it,” Quince warned, “especially with Pinkertons around.”

  The men went back to work. Because the east ridge was so steep, balance was less certain. Henryson and Snipes made divots to secure their footing. Quince did the same. Ross took no such precautions, nor did he notice a rattlesnake until he almost stepped on it. The snake struck his boot, then glided smoothly down the ridge, head aloft as the satin-black body skimmed the ground.

  Shortly thereafter Quince yelled “sarpent” and cleaved a black-and-white snake into four pieces.

  “That’s a chain snake, you durn onion head,” Henryson said. “It eats them other ones that got the poison.”

  “How’s I to know?” Quince replied sulkily. “Open its mouth and see if it has fangs?”

  At three o’clock, the water boys made their rounds again. By this time Serena and Galloway had worked their way halfway across the ridge, Serena giving instructions to each crew, occasionally dismounting to scrutinize work or instruct how to do a task better. As they approached Snipes’s crew, every man except Ross stopped working and bared his head. Ross continued notching a white oak as Serena got off the horse.

  “You need Mullins to sharpen the teeth on that saw,” she told Snipes, and walked over to the felled poplar Quince was limbing.

  “Can’t you see you’re not trimming those branches close enough?” Serena said, taking Quince’s ax and swinging. When she stepped back, the branch was sheared so cleanly it might have been sanded.

  “I promise that I’ll do it better, ma’am,” Quince said as Galloway stepped alongside Ross.

  “The blade of a broad ax don’t work good for notching,” Galloway said. “Move out of the way so the missus can see it.”

  Ross swung again, the blade passing inches from Galloway’s right leg. Chips flew. Ross freed the ax head and met Galloway’s glare.

  “Time to go check the upper ridge,” Serena said. “His notching is fine.”

  “Best remember you some manners, Ross,” Galloway said, “else you’ll lea
rn them again the hard way.”

  Galloway’s index finger brushed the dagger looped around his neck. He did it with no more concern than a man flicking off a piece of lint. Still looking at Ross, Galloway raised the finger, now streaked with blood.

  “That’s not a man you want to trifle with,” Snipes said once Galloway and Serena were out of sight. “A man like you who knows his math can cipher the percentages ain’t good.”

  “Yeah, I know all about percentages,” Ross said.

  The men went back to work. An hour later a nearby logger slipped and almost cut his foot off. Snipes’s crew watched as the man hobbled across the valley floor toward the blue boxcar that served as office and infirmary for Watson, no doctor but a stretcher-bearer in the Great War. Only a few yards from the boxcar was the camp’s graveyard, their proximity noted by the crews with varying degrees of irony and dismay. Eight crosses rose inside the split-rail fence.

  “I suspect that boneyard’s going to crowd up quick,” Snipes said, and no one argued otherwise.

  As the afternoon wore on, the last sycamore and silver birch fell. Stands of tulip, poplar, and hickory appeared, which, along with the increasing slant of the land, made the work more arduous. At six o’clock Snipes’s crew joined the other men shogging down the ridge.

  “Appears the law is making a social call,” Henryson said, gesturing at a black Ford with SHERIFF’S PATROL on the side.

  On the mess hall porch, flanked to the left by Serena and Meeks, stood a purfled young man dressed in a brown Cheviot suit, a silver star on the coat’s lapel. His black hair glistened with pomade. The Pinkertons stood to his right, arms crossed. Galloway joined them, accompanied by a crew foreman named Murrell. The loggers gathered in front of the porch and grew silent.

  Serena motioned to Meeks and he stepped forward. Neck tucked, narrow shoulders hunched, he resembled a cautious turtle. Meeks looked at the loggers he’d commanded for nine months. What he saw in their faces did not hearten him.