In the Valley

by Ron Rash

  Brandonkamp did a calculation of how many additional acres he could purchase, and felt his heart quicken. Definitely five hundred acres, perhaps five hundred and fifty if he could buy them right away, not in a year or two. He even knew the perfect tract in Macon County, for sale at this very moment. Brandonkamp looked toward the east ridge again. With his eight years’ experience to less than one for her, how could he not know more? And yet…

  Then Brandonkamp understood. The trick was so obvious that he’d nearly missed it.

  “You were going to load the equipment and leave the remaining trees uncut,” Brandonkamp said once back inside. “I must admit, Mrs. Pemberton, you almost had me. I would have made our wager, I promise you that, had I not realized your ruse.”

  “Then I take you at your word, Brandonkamp.”

  Serena opened up the desk drawer, took out the contract and a pen. She turned to the last page and added the information about all timber being cut and hauled away. She wrote her name and the date, pushed the contract to Brandonkamp’s side of the desk.

  He read the addendum twice. Don’t do it, the voice in his head implored. But whose voice was that really—Calhoun’s, the other gadabouts at the Grove Park? He still didn’t pick up the pen.

  “So you’re not a man of your word, Brandonkamp?” Serena said, and nodded at his tie pin. “I would have expected more from a Princeton man.”

  He searched to find the right words, not for her but silently for himself. Distill it to one sentence he could truly, above all else, believe. And he did. I know more about timber and deadlines than this woman.

  Brandonkamp picked up the pen and signed.

  13

  When the noon dinner bell finally rang, Snipes’s crew devoured their food, then checked their pails and pockets for missed crumbs. Afterward, no one smoked and Snipes’s newspaper went unread. Henryson and Quince sprawled out on the ground and began to snore. Snipes and Ross leaned against stumps and fell asleep also. The other crews apparently slept too, for silence fell over the ridge. Even the injured lost grew quieter, their low moans sounds any sleeper might make.

  When the bell to resume work rang, Snipes yawned, rubbed his eyes, slapped his cheeks. He placed a blistered hand atop the stump that had been his pillow. Like a creaky accordion, Snipes’s body didn’t as much rise as unfold. Snipes roused the rest of the crew. As the others got to their feet, he stared down at the valley.

  “Lord God,” the foreman said.

  “What is it, Snipes?” Henryson asked, standing beside him.

  From the direction of the graveyard, human shapes emerged, but they did not walk like men. They approached, arms limp, gaits hesitant, like specters summoned from the deepest of sleeps. Fog unraveled around them like shroud cloth as they made their torpid progress across the valley floor. As they became more visible, Snipes and Henryson saw no chests or stomachs but skeletal alternations of slants and gaps. A clinking could be heard, as bones might make. When the figments ascended the ridge, the slants and gaps transformed into black and white stripes. Faces and shackles gained definition.

  “I knowed it wasn’t nothing but some jailbirds,” Henryson said, but his voice trembled as he spoke.

  The men went back to work. Parts of their bodies had begun to give out, altering movements. Henryson and Snipes switched sides mid-tree to rest shoulders. Quince’s lower back had locked up, and he winced with each ax swing. Ross worked slower than anyone. After each chop, he lowered the ax blade to the ground, let it stay there while he deliberated the next strike. He no longer severed trees close to the ground, instead cut waist-high, the ax blade level as it entered the wood. The cut trees looked like fence posts. Yet each swing was delivered with precision and force, some trees felled with a single blow.

  Snipes looked at Henryson.

  “He’s cutting high to provoke Galloway,” Snipes said.

  “You want me to try and talk to him?” Henryson asked.

  “You think that he’d listen?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then pray like hell that her and Galloway will be too busy with them new recruits,” Snipes said. “Their next spat won’t be words but blades and blood.”

  Whether time passed slow or fast, or even passed at all, Snipes and his men no longer knew, were uncertain even what day it was. The fog lightened but did not lift. Instead of time they had the ridgetop, which could be clearly seen now, though the men were so exhausted they feared that, as parched men in deserts saw oases before them, the crest might be a mirage. When Snipes’s crew reached the first fir, Henryson rubbed the green needles, sniffed the clean, crisp scent.

  “If we can smell it,” he said, “then it must be real.”

  “Thirty yards and we’ll be at the crest,” Snipes said. “Just maybe we’ll survive this after all.”

  Along the ridge, equally exhausted loggers suffered a litany of injuries. A bark chip blinded an eye, a severed branch speared a back, a cable hook cracked a skull. These men walked or were carried to the blue boxcar, where Watson ministered to them as best he could. A second wave of convicts came up the ridge. They did not shout “timber” or attempt to work together. They simply swung their axes until what stood before them fell.

  Snipes’s crew worked on. They were near somnolent now, tripping over stumps and slash, tangling their feet. Snipes and Henryson were out of sync, yanking each other’s arms. Ross rested more between strokes. Quince’s back was so painful that he could no longer bend. Instead of standing, he got down on hands and knees, gripping the ax like a hatchet as he chopped.

  Quince was clearing away some shorn branches when he felt the bite. At first, he did not know what had happened. Then, looking closer, he saw the viper’s slit eyes and triangular head. Quince jerked his hand away. The fangs remained clamped to Quince’s wrist, and as he stumbled backward, the satin-black body lengthened to five feet before the blunt tail, vibrating fiercely, appeared. Still on the ground, Quince tried to shake the snake off, which caused the reptile to twine around the stricken limb.

  “Get it off me,” Quince screamed, and staggered to his feet.

  He lifted the serpent-draped arm before him as if imploring both man and God. The reptile’s mouth opened and struck again.

  “Get it off me,” Quince screamed again. He stumbled toward a tree and raked his forearm against it as if to peel the snake off.

  “Hold still,” Ross shouted, beside him now.

  Ross finally stilled Quince enough to grab the snake behind its head, uncoil enough length that Snipes, pocketknife out, could slash the body until the snake was ripped in two. Ross flung what part he held downridge. The rest, the rattle yet buzzing, slipped off Quince’s arm and fell to the ground. Snipes turned Quince’s forearm palm-up and grimaced.

  “It got him in the vein,” Snipes said. “Lean him against a stump and get that shirt off. Hurry.”

  As Henryson pulled off his belt and Snipes wiped the knife blade with his handkerchief, Ross kneeled beside Quince, placed his hands inside the shirt’s collar, and jerked. Buttons flew off and Ross freed the shirt from the shoulder, then the arms and hands. Streaks of red already ran up the afflicted limb. An oily sweat covered Quince’s face and arms and his body began to tremble.

  “It’s a dry bite, ain’t it?” Quince asked, his voice quivering.

  Henryson kneeled and looped his belt around the upper forearm.

  “Higher, dammit,” Snipes said. “This poison’s moving fast.”

  Henryson slipped the belt higher, jerked it tight.

  “It’s a dry bite, ain’t it?” Quince pleaded as the foreman motioned for Ross to grip Quince’s arm. “I wore the brightness.”

  Quince screamed and tried to jerk the arm free as Snipes cut an X across the first puncture, then the second. Snipes placed his mouth on the punctures, sucked and spit six times before wiping his mouth
with his sleeve. The hand and forearm continued to swell.

  “I got out all I could,” Snipes said.

  “You got to get it all,” Quince moaned. “It’s still too much inside me. I can taste the poison, Snipes. I swear I can.”

  “Tie it higher,” Snipes said to Henryson, who loosened the belt, raised it to the armpit, and again jerked it tight. Snipes placed a hand on Quince’s heaving chest.

  “It’s got to his heart,” Snipes said.

  “I wore the brightness, Snipes,” Quince pleaded, sweat and tears mingling on his face. “Just like you said.”

  “I know you did,” Snipes answered. “You done all you could.”

  Quince’s whole body began to shake. A white foam gathered on his lips and his breaths began to shallow. Snipes leaned close and used finger and thumb to pull back an eyelid. The outer eye had begun to redden. He turned to Ross and Henryson.

  “We got to try,” Snipes said softly. “You go and I’ll stay here. If I’m chopping they’ll know we ain’t asleep.” Snipes turned back to Quince, placed a hand lightly on the stricken man’s shoulder, and leaned close. “They’re going to help you get down to the camp.”

  “My eyes is blurry,” Quince said, each word an effort now, barely a whisper.

  “They won’t let you fall.”

  “Don’t leave me in the fog.”

  “You know we won’t,” Snipes said and stood. “Move that arm little as you can,” he told the two kinsmen, but though they did, Quince cried out before, mercifully, falling into unconsciousness.

  By the time they got him to the boxcar, Quince’s hand and arm had begun to blacken, his breath so shallow it was barely discernible. Bile and foam covered Quince’s mouth and chin. His lips parted as if to speak, but no words came. Ross kneeled, took out a handkerchief, and wiped away the bile and foam. He balled up the handkerchief and closed Quince’s unbitten hand around it. Watson had them set Quince on a pallet made of quilts. He examined the puncture marks and told them he’d do what he could.

  Henryson and Ross began walking back. As they did, two loggers carrying a corpse came down the ridge.

  “This has got to end,” Ross said.

  The blue ridge salamander left first, then the pygmy salamander and red-backed salamander, then the long-tailed salamander and the marbled salamander, after them the fence lizard and five-lined skink, then spring peeper and box turtle, after that the unlimbed: black racer and green snake, garter snake and queen snake, water snake and king snake, copperhead and rattlesnake, corn snake and milk snake…

  14

  As the last smudge of gray light was disappearing and the bell rang, Snipes and Henryson let go of the misery whip’s handles. They left the blade midsaw inside a balsam’s heartwood and got to their feet slowly, head down, one hand on the tree’s trunk for support. Once upright, hands remained on the balsam as their necks unbent. When the dizziness subsided, Snipes lit the torch and he and Henryson picked up the lunch buckets, including Quince’s. They joined Ross, who now stood beside the balsam, ax in hand.

  “I ain’t wanting to go down there yet,” Henryson said. “Long as I’m up here I can believe he’s still alive.”

  As the three men stood in silence, torches began winding down the ridge.

  “We best get on moving,” Ross finally sighed. “We’ll lack the starch if we stay much longer.”

  Snipes’s crew made their descent. On the valley floor they merged with the other loggers. In the glare of the torchlight, the loggers looked like casualties of a conflagration they’d yet to escape.

  Some had bloody cloth or gauze wound around nubs that had been fingers that morning. Others bore gashes and pumpknots. Men limped, some hopping on one foot while leaning on a comrade. Several loggers collapsed on the ground, one clutching his chest and expiring. I got to sleep, another said, waving his friends on.

  As they entered camp, Snipes’s crew veered toward the blue boxcar. The torch soon illuminated injured men lying on quilts. Among them stood Watson, wiping blood off his hands on an already bloody towel. When he saw Henryson and Ross, Watson shook his head, nodded toward the cemetery, where a grave was being filled.

  “I had a bit of hope,” Henryson said.

  They watched until the grave was filled, a cross made of twine and two sawed hickory limbs planted at the head.

  Snipes and Henryson began walking toward the mess hall, but Ross did not move.

  “Come on, Ross,” Snipes said.

  “This ax needs sharpening,” Ross answered.

  “Take it to Mullins then,” Snipes said. “We’ll wait here.”

  “You all go on,” Ross said, turned and left.

  Henryson shrugged.

  “I guess we may as well.”

  Snipes and Henryson went up the porch steps and entered the mess hall. They filled their plates, but as with so many of the loggers around them, they teetered between exhaustion and hunger. Some men ate awhile and then shut their eyes and leaned forward, resting foreheads on elbows before rousing themselves to eat more. All had to suppress yawns as they opened their mouths. Several men had crawled under the tables to sleep. Serena, Galloway, and Galloway’s mother sat at the back table, paying little notice to the scene before them.

  “I’ll not survive another day like this,” Henryson said.

  “You won’t have to,” Snipes said. “We’ll be finished by early afternoon.”

  “Sun time, or their time?”

  “Sun time.”

  “We’ll see,” Henryson said skeptically, and glanced toward the door for a second time.

  “What’s taking him so long?” he said worriedly.

  Just as he spoke, Ross entered, limping slightly as he approached the table. Henryson moved down the bench to make space, but Ross did not sit. Instead, he handed his kinsman a note, keeping the other arm and hand behind his back.

  Get me back home, the note said.

  “What do you mean by this?” Henryson asked, but Ross was already striding toward the back table. What he held behind his back was his ax.

  Galloway rose, knife at the ready as Ross clambered onto the table, scattering dishes and platters as he gained his balance. After a moment’s indecision, Galloway stepped to his right to protect Serena. He slashed at Ross’s calves while loggers rushed for the door as the Pinkertons, revolvers drawn, shoved against the stampede. Ross leaped off the table and landed beside Galloway’s mother. The crone was still seated when Ross pulled back the ax and paused, making a final calculation. Then the fresh-honed blade flashed toward her throat, entering just beneath her chin, slicing through the black bonnet’s silk tie-string, then through skin and bone before the blade embedded itself in the wooden wall. Ross released the ax handle and stepped back. The men rushing toward the door froze, as did the Pinkertons. All watched as the crone’s neck and shoulders sagged and, like a tent-show magic trick, her head appeared to levitate.

  Two bullets entered Ross’s back as Galloway’s blade ripped open his stomach. Ross fell to the floor and the Pinkertons stood above him, still firing, filling the air with blue smoke and the odor of cordite. As the smoke drifted away, Galloway’s mother reappeared. The bonnet had slipped off, revealing a pate hairless and pale except for a scrimshaw of purple veins. Then her body spasmed and folded over itself. The head remained where it had been, balanced on a blade bright as a silver platter.

  15

  As Rachel walked down the sidewalk, Jacob tucked dry beneath her slicker, she thought of Joel Vaughn. It was Joel, not Galloway or Galloway’s mother, she’d dreamed of last night. In the dream Miss Stephens pointed out North Carolina on a map and asked Joel to find the safest place away from where they were, but before Joel chose, he asked Rachel to help him. So they’d pressed their palms together, index fingers touching as they pointed first north to Maine, then south to Texas, west to California b
efore settling their fingertips on Seattle.

  Rachel did not know if Joel was still alive, though shortly after arriving here, she’d thought she’d glimpsed him leaving the Salvation Army shelter, the same colored mackinaw he’d worn back at camp, red hair spilling out from under a black slouch hat. Wouldn’t he think to flee here too? Or was that just wishful thinking? All she knew was what Sheriff McDowell had told her the night he drove Rachel to Tennessee: that Joel had saved her life. And this dream, surely it meant that she and Jacob would be safe here. Maybe, Rachel thought, it might mean even more.

  16

  The following morning the fog began dissipating, and by early afternoon the last wisps were gone. The clearing sky revealed dead men, some caught in attitudes that the living did not wish to contemplate. Two were impaled by sheared limbs, one had an ax imbedded in his skull, another had been decapitated by a snapped cable. A blackened arm reached out from under a slash pile, nearby a face masked by yellow jackets. In the cemetery below, men dug more graves.

  On the east ridge’s crest a single white pine rose mastlike above the valley’s empty arc. Snipes and Henryson had already made their descent and loaded their tools into a boxcar. They watched the valley’s last tree lean, casting a final shadow across the ridge. As the tree crashed to the ground, men loading equipment paused to watch as the sole crew left on the ridge quickly severed the branches and then, like harpooners, grasped iron peavey sticks to spear the shorn trunk. They prodded and shoved until the pine could be hooked to the last cable. For a few more moments, the only sounds were the rasp of shovels and splash of pitched dirt.

  “When did Noah say we can get him took to Sylva?” Henryson asked Snipes.

  “Soon as her and Galloway leave.”

  “He deserves more respect than being laid out inside a boxcar,” Henryson said.