Serena

by Ron Rash

  “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.

  An air presser and air hammer lay next to the entrance, in the room’s center a work bench, on it mallets and chisels, a compass saw and a slate board chalked with words and numbers. Some of the stones lining the four walls had names and dates. Others were blank but for lambs and crosses and volutes. The air smelled chalky, the room’s earthen floor whitened as if with a fine snow. Surratt sat in a low wooden chair, a stone leaning against the work bench before him. He wore a hat and an apron, and as he worked he leaned close to the marble, the hammer and chisel inches from his face.

  Rachel knocked and he turned, his clothes and hands and eyelashes whitened by the marble dust. He laid the hammer and chisel on the bench and without a word went to the back of the shop. He lifted the sixteen-by fourteen-inch marble tablet Rachel had commissioned the week after her father had died. Before she could say anything, he’d set it beside the doorway. Surratt stepped back and stood beside her. They looked at the tablet, the name Abraham Harmon etched in the marble, above it the fylfot Rachel had chosen from the sketch pad.

  “I think it come out all right,” the stone mason said. “You satisfied?”

  “Yes sir. It looks fine,” Rachel said, then hesitated. “The rest of your money. I thought I’d have it, but I don’t.”

  Surratt did not look especially surprised at this news, and Rachel supposed there were others who had come to him with similar stories.

  “That saddle,” Rachel said, nodding toward the horse. “You could have it for what I owe.”

  “I knew your daddy. Some found him too bristly but I liked him,” Surratt said. “We’ll work something else out. You’ll need that saddle.”

  “No sir, I won’t. I sold my horse to Mr. Donaldson. After this weekend I’ll not need it.”

  “This weekend?”

  “Yes sir,” Rachel said. “That’s when he’s coming to pick up the horse and cow both.”

  The stone mason mulled this information over.

  “I’ll take the saddle then, and we’ll call it square between us. Have Donaldson bring it back with him,” Surratt said, pausing as another Model T sputtered past. “Who have you hired to haul the stone up there?”

  Rachel lifted the burlap cabbage sack from the saddle pack.

  “I figured to do it.”

  “That stone weighs more than it looks, near fifty pounds,” Surratt said. “It’ll bust right through a sack that thin. Besides, once you get up there you still got to plant it.”

  “I got a mattock with me,” Rachel said. “If you help me tie the stone to the saddle horn I can manage.”

  Surratt took a red handkerchief from his back pocket, winced and rubbed the cloth across his forehead. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket as his eyes resettled on Rachel.

  “How old are you?”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  “Almost.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Rachel expected the stone mason to tell her what Widow Jenkins had said, how she was just a girl and knew nothing. He’d be right to tell her so, Rachel supposed. How could she argue otherwise when all morning she’d figured wrong on everything from a baby’s teething time to what things cost.

  Surratt leaned over the tombstone and blew a limn of white dust from one of the chiseled letters. He let his hand linger on the stone a moment, as if to verify its solidity a final time. He stood and untied his leather apron.

  “I ain’t that busy,” he said. “I’ll put the stone in my truck and take it on up there right now. I’ll plant it for you too.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said. “That’s a considerable kindness.”

  She rode back through Waynesville and north on the old toll road, but quickly left it for a different trail than the one she’d come on. The land soon turned steeper, rockier, the mattock’s steel head clanking against the stirrup. The horse breathed harder as the air thinned, its soft nostrils rising with each
pull of air. They sloshed through a creek, the water low and clear. Leathery rhododendron leaves rubbed against Rachel’s dress.

  She traveled another half hour, moving up the highest ridge. The woods drew back briefly and revealed an abandoned homestead. The front door yawned open, on the porch a spill of pans and plates and moldering quilts that bespoke a hasty exodus. Above the farmhouse’s front door a rusty horseshoe upturned to catch what good luck might fall the occupant’s way. Clearly not enough, Rachel thought, knowing before too long her place might look the same if she didn’t have a good harvest of ginseng.

  The mountains and woods quickly reclosed around her. The trees were all hardwoods now. Light seeped through their foliage as through layers of gauze. No birds sang and no deer or rabbit bolted in front of her. The only things growing along the trail were mushrooms and toad-stools, the only sound acorns crackling and popping beneath Dan’s iron hooves. The woods smelled like it had just rained.

  The trail rose a last time and ended at the road. On the other side stood a deserted white clapboard church. The wide front door had a padlock on it, and the white paint had grayed and begun peeling. So many people lived in the timber camp now that Reverend Bolick held his services in the camp’s dining hall instead of the church. Mr. Surratt’s truck was not parked by the cemetery gate, but Rachel saw the stone was set in the ground. She tied Dan to the gate and walked inside. She moved through the grave markers, some just creek rocks with no names or dates, others soapstone and granite, a few marble. What names there were were familiar—Jenkins and Candler and McDowell and Pressley, Harmon. She was almost to her father’s grave when she heard howling down the ridge below the cemetery, a lonesome sound like a whippoorwill or a far-off train. A pack of wild dogs made their way across a clearing, the one who’d raised his throat to the sky now running to catch up with the others. Rachel remembered the mattock strapped to the saddle and thought about getting it in case the dogs veered up the ridge, but they soon disappeared into the woods. Then there was only silence.