by Ron Rash
“Tell me this don’t make a lick of sense.”
“If anyone could do it,” Ross answered, “they’d be the ones.”
* * *
—
The bell clanged again only as the day’s last gray light expired. The torches were relit and the men made their descent. Foremen wove around the stumps and slash, their crews close behind. From a distance, flames streamed down the ridge as if molten. Some workers tripped, tumbling downhill like ballhooted logs. Quince banged his shin on a stump and bumped Henryson. Both men fell, their lunch buckets clattering to the valley floor. When the torches reached level land, their flames came together as if funneling back into their initial source.
Once at camp, the foremen gathered around a hoop barrel filled with water. The torches smoked and hissed as they were doused. As Snipes’s crew went into the mess hall, they passed the photograph of Rachel Harmon, Galloway’s knife still embedded in her throat.
Another cook and extra servers had been hired, and as the men sat down, food already steamed on the tables before them: platters piled with bloody steaks and fried chicken, yellowware brimming with corn and potatoes, baskets of cornbread and butter-drenched biscuits. Coffee too, not in the usual containers with spouts but five-gallon pots men dipped cups into as they might soup or cider. Servers whisked away dishes with the same speed as in the morning, but even with a head start, the men ate so fast that the servers barely kept up. Taste preferences deferred to whatever was most easily reached. Some loggers dispensed with cutlery, ate hand to mouth. More food came, seemingly taken from larders at random, field peas and pickles, rice, beets, and cheese. Then more biscuits, set beside them tins of jam and honey and molasses. Snipes’s crew emptied their table’s containers three times before they were sated enough to speak.
“I never eat so much in all my life,” Henryson said when he finally set down his knife and fork.
“Stoking us like we’re nothing but machines,” Ross said.
Loggers around them suddenly grew quieter, many looking at the main door. Snipes’s crew turned to see Sheriff Bowden, hat held belt-high before him, waiting to be noticed. His lips were pinched tight, evoking not so much stoicism as resignation. Serena nodded and he walked to the back table and began conversing with her. When they’d finished talking, Galloway banged a wooden salt shaker gavel-like on the table. Bowden turned and faced the loggers. He cleared his throat and spoke.
“We are still searching for Rachel Harmon, so any information about her possible whereabouts is needed. Also, William Meeks’s body was found in the Tuckasegee River this afternoon. We haven’t the least cause to suspect his death to be anything other than an accidental drowning.”
Bowden turned, nodded at Serena, and quickly walked past the tables and out the door.
“Sheriff Bowden didn’t seem to notice that Galloway’s suspenders are the ones that he saw Meeks wearing just last night,” Henryson said.
“Justice is blind,” Snipes said, “includes color-blind too.”
“Despite them suspenders, I was holding out a bit of hope that Meeks just up and left,” Quince said. “He warn’t the worst boss ever I worked for.”
“Don’t seem they’ve struck trail on that Harmon girl,” Henryson said. “Maybe she’s going to dodge them after all.”
The loggers began to rise from the tables and go outside. Soon Snipes’s crew joined them as they gathered around the porch steps.
Snipes spotted Murrell talking with two foremen.
“I think I’ll go and hear the scuttlebutt,” Snipes said.
Most loggers were already heading to the bunkhouse to sleep.
“Them fellows yonder has the right idea,” Quince said, and followed them.
“I had a mind to play some rook or checkers, but I’m too tuckered out,” Henryson said to Ross. “What about you, cousin?”
Before Ross could answer, the loggers around them began clearing a path below the steps. One of the men caught Henryson’s eye and nodded at the porch. Galloway and his mother, linked elbow to elbow in a manner almost matrimonial, were coming out the mess hall door.
Henryson tugged his kinsman’s sleeve and took a step backward, but Ross remained where he was, not directly in their path, but close enough that Galloway would have to lead his mother around him.
“Get out of our way, Ross,” Galloway said when he and his mother neared the bottom step.
Ross didn’t move. Galloway and his mother stopped.
“I’m going to have to take the shine off you,” Galloway said. “Take more than that if I have a mind to.”
“You can’t take a thing I care about,” Ross replied.
Galloway placed his thumb and index finger on one of the purple suspenders, looked down as if inspecting the material for some stain or flaw.
“They’s many a man that would disagree,” Galloway said, his eyes slowly rising from the cloth. “Of course, they ain’t around to tell you.”
“I said anything I care about,” Ross answered.
Galloway’s mother tugged at her son’s arm.
“I got a couple of others to take care of first,” Galloway said as he brushed past Ross, “but our time will come.”
As Galloway and his mother slowly made their way to the farmhouse, Henryson placed his hand on his kinsman’s elbow.
“Come on,” Henryson said, urging Ross toward the bunkhouse.
The broad-winged hawk left, many in pairs, others singly, then the carolina parakeet and yellow-billed cuckoo, barred owl and indigo bunting, and then the cedar waxwing and wild turkey, wood thrush and scarlet tanager, ruffed grouse and northern cardinal, and after that the yellow warbler and goldfinch, barn swallow and rose-breasted grosbeak, red-winged blackbird and eastern bluebird, raven and mourning dove…
8
He had thought that she was talking in her sleep, but then, as he was about to undress, Galloway realized that his mother was awake. He listened to what she said and went downstairs. Serena was speaking to the Pinkertons about tomorrow. He glared at the men. They could strut around with their shiny badges and bowler hats, shave every day and dab perfume on afterward, but to his way of thinking, there wasn’t nothing that made shit smell sweet.
“We got need to talk,” Galloway said to Serena. “Just us.”
Serena nodded and the Pinkertons left.
“What is it?”
“Momma says we’re too far away to hone in on that gal,” Galloway said, “so me and her need to get on the train come morning.”
“You know I need you both here to make the deadline,” Serena said. “Leave on Saturday. I’ll return to Brazil as we planned. You two stay until it’s done.”
Galloway remembered the rainy morning when this woman had saved his life. She had tied the tourniquet above his severed limb, helped him onto the Arabian. Serena had gripped the reins with one hand, the other arm wrapped around his waist, pressing Galloway’s smaller body against hers as they galloped back to the camp. He would be bound to her for life, that was part of his mother’s prophecy, as was their dying together. Each now bound to the other.
“Momma said if we don’t find that child soon, there’ll be a time when that child finds us.”
For a few moments Serena didn’t speak.
“Soon, that’s all she said, nothing about how soon.”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll get enough trees down tomorrow. You’ll leave Friday morning, maybe even Thursday night. Twelve hours, twenty-four at most, that’s soon enough.”
Galloway went back up the stairs. He stood by the bed and waited, but his mother did not speak again so he undressed and went to bed.
The window was open. The relative quietness made him yearn for Brazil even more. He missed the sounds of the jungle’s night stalkers, the screeches and snarls as they attacked each other. It was the m
ost honest place he knew. From the very start you knew near everything was out to kill you. Vines would snag and hang a man, and the forest was so thick you could wander off a few yards and never be seen again. In the Amazon things came straight at you. Bats big as turkeys dropped from the sky to suck your blood, jaguars leaped out of trees to rip your throat out. Underfoot were bushmasters that made rattlers look like garter snakes and there were fer-de-lances that could kill a full-grown man in five minutes. Even the bright-colored frogs oozed with poison. The water was even worse. There were fish that swarmed on you like hornets and whittled you down to your bones, and eels that could shock you, and stingrays and catfish with poison in their tails and fins, and even a little-bitty fish that swam right up your pecker and got you that way. There were caimans and anacondas and the water itself was black as tar so you couldn’t see nothing till it grabbed hold of you. No, in the Amazon you didn’t need a nickel to go in some tent. It was all free and out in the open with nary a trapdoor to cheat folks.
The nub began to ache and he rubbed it. Soon.
9
Even on those first mornings as he watched older students go to the board with chalk, it was the numbers, not the letters, that captivated him. He loved how numbers didn’t change. Grammar and spelling always had exceptions: you are, not is. I before e except after c. But added or subtracted, multiplied or divided, the numbers worked the same. Though he could not articulate it then, he believed he’d found a way to understand the world.
Soon he was so far beyond the others that Miss Jenkins got him textbooks from the junior high, then the high school. In algebra, letters returned, but now they were consistent. At the end of seventh grade, Miss Jenkins presented him with a slide rule and a manual that taught him how to use it. He learned how to gauge the weight of water as gallons, the horsepower of a waterfall, to alter gears on a lathe. All he had to do was move the slide a few inches and the answer would appear. There was a beauty in it, because the numbers were always true.
Your son is so bright. It would be a shame for him not to continue his education.
His parents had been reluctant, but he’d promised to complete his chores, do farm work all day Saturday. So they allowed him to ride horseback five miles to Waynesville High School, where he won the math award two years straight. Mr. Randolph, the principal, helped him get a work scholarship at the college in Cullowhee, promising that a teaching job would be waiting when he received his degree. By then he’d begun to spend Sunday evenings with Emma Parton, who lived on the adjoining farm. Before he left for college they announced their engagement. Their parents promised a wedding gift of ten acres between the two farms. He and Emma picked out the place on the land where they’d build their house and make a home.
At the college, he learned about Pythagoras, who gave him words for what he had felt, that math and reality were indeed one thing. His teachers urged him to go on to a university, perhaps one day discover theorems of his own, but that was not in the plan. He’d gotten his teaching certificate and taken a job at Waynesville High School. He and Emma married two weeks after his graduation.
Each morning he rode back and forth on horseback, though sometimes foul weather or late school events forced him to stay in town overnight. He taught grades eight and nine, awaiting the moments when the students’ eyes brightened with understanding. On weekends he began building his own house. He went to the lumberyard with only a mathematical calculation on a single piece of paper:
40^2 + 30^2 = c^2
1600 + 900 = 2500
C = v2500
C = 50
He calculated the sawn lumber for the subfloor and dressed lumber for the main floor so there would not be a single shim needed. A 12-and-12-inch run for the pitch of the roof so that every cut would be at 45 degrees. Then calculations for gutters and shingles, even the number of nails. On weekends men, including those from the lumberyard, came to watch the house rise, believing experience trumped the veracity of numbers. His father and father-in-law helped, though skeptical at times themselves. But the house rose exactly as the numbers said it would, as if the wood and metal merely confirmed what had always been there. When the last nail had been driven into the last shingle, no man could find fault. For the next six years he taught at the high school. A daughter was born, then a second. Money was saved to purchase an automobile.
Their children were five and two when influenza ravaged the county. Brought back by soldiers, some claimed. One of his students died; another lost her father. He’d been terrified he would bring the contagion home, but then the epidemic waned. No new outbreaks for weeks. On a spring Saturday the family went to Waynesville. The next night Susie came down with a fever. He had taken the thermometer from the medicine cabinet and set it in her mouth. 100.2. He checked it again the next morning. 98.6. Emma suggested he have the doctor come from Waynesville, but the number reassured him. There was a PTA meeting on Monday evening, and he did not get home until after ten. By then Susie was delirious and Emma and Mae had taken to bed. By the time he got the doctor, it was too late. His family was nothing more than three filled coffins.
The principal told him to take two weeks off, a month if needed. They could take care of his classes. But he turned in his resignation. He refused his neighbors’ help and dug the graves alone. In labor he found what no words from preacher, friend, or kin could give him. After hours of flinging dirt at the sky, he exhausted himself into numbness. It wasn’t anything like peace or acceptance, but it allowed him a few hours of oblivion. So he sold the land and house and sought such work elsewhere, but not before buying stones to mark the graves. He bought a fourth stone and set it beside the others for the time when the misery would end and he’d join them.
At the Sunburst logging camp, they offered him a job as a bookkeeper, but he was finished with numbers so asked for an ax instead. Then he’d moved on to work for the Pembertons. For twelve years, he’d never allowed himself to care about what happened to him or to anyone else. But had his eldest daughter lived, she and Rachel Harmon would have been almost the same age. Last fall, when the girl and child were hiding in Kingsport, the crone had found her. And now she might again, and this time they would not escape.
As Ross lay on his cot among the other loggers, he wondered if he had been wrong again: that, unlike him, Galloway, Galloway’s mother, and Serena Pemberton had found a theorem that could take the measure of the world, a theorem they’d further validate by cutting the throats of an eighteen-year-old girl and her child.
Ross fell asleep and dreamed of a fourth grave finally filled.
10
The next morning the loggers ate fiercely. There were pancakes and eggs, biscuits and grits and gravy, but also beef and ham and chicken. Coffee was again in five-gallon pots set on each table. The men, many exhausted from the day before, dipped out cup after cup. More baskets of biscuits came. When the molasses and honey ran out, jars of jam were brought, their colors and containers so varied it was clear root cellars all over the county had contributed, though by force or barter no logger knew.
“It’s like I got a big hole in my belly and food runs out quick as I can swallow,” Henryson said, grabbing another biscuit.
When the work bell rang, men stuffed their overall pockets with biscuits, placed as many in their lunch pails as would fit, and went outside.
As Snipes’s crew came down the mess hall steps, a light rain began falling.
“Like that ridge warn’t slick enough already,” Quince said.
“At least you’ve got some brightness on today,” Snipes said, eyeing Quince’s red shirt and yellow kerchief.
As the foremen lit their torches, Serena appeared on horseback. Following behind her were two dozen men never seen before. Some were young, others gray-haired and grizzled. Their lack of scars and nubbed fingers made clear none were experienced loggers. As did their ragged, denimless attire: madras and cassi
mere pants, poplin and broadcloth shirts. Some wore scuffed oxfords or wingtips instead of boots. All carried shiny new axes in their hands.
“On this morning we’ll all go out together,” Serena said.
The Pinkertons led, railroad lanterns in hand. Serena and Galloway came next, then the regular crews, torches aloft. The new men came last, their faces wary. The procession made its way to the left base of the uncut ridge and halted. As one crew ascended, Serena took twenty strides to the right and signaled the next up the flank. When half the veteran crews had peeled off, she tripled the number of footsteps and summoned the new recruits.
“Any tree that you can’t link your arms around,” Serena said, “leave for the sawyers.”
“How far up do we go?” a thin man in a white pongee shirt asked.
“Until you tumble down the yonder side,” Galloway said. “And one more thing. You best not be lolling when we come round.”
Serena took another thirty paces and Snipes’s crew made its ascent.
“Them’s the sorriest bunch of wood hicks I ever seen,” Henryson said when they reached where trees replaced stumps. “Where’d they get them fellows, anyway?”
“Bowden found them in the hobo camps,” Snipes answered. “Charged the lot with vagrancy and sentenced them to three days working here. Murrell said they’ll likely bring in more.”
The sound of axes began in the ridge’s center, but the veteran crews tarried.
“I’m worn plumb out and yet to saw a lick,” Henryson said.
“Even with my eyes shut I see trees,” Quince said. “I dreamed all night that I was cutting them.”
“Sure it was a dream?” Snipes said.
“Don’t start with that stuff, Snipes,” Henryson said. “We got a pharaoh’s plague of troubles now that we’re awake.”
“Sure that we’re awake?” Snipes asked.
