Serena

by Ron Rash

  Joel said his words loud enough for the women to hear them. Rachel lowered her head, but a smile creased her lips. Cora Pinson and Mabel Sorrels got up in a huff and went to the kitchen with their trays.

  Joel took off his gray cap, revealing the thatch of curly bright-orange hair that had been an uncombable tangle ever since Rachel had known him.

  “That young one of yours is sprouting up like June corn,” Joel said. “When I seen him Sunday at church I’d have not known who it was if you hadn’t been holding him. I didn’t know babies grew so fast, but I reckon us boys don’t know much about such things.”

  “I didn’t know it either,” Rachel said. “I don’t seem to know much about babies at all.”

  “He’s stout and healthy, so I’d say that shows you know enough,” Joel said, nodding at Rachel’s plate as he reached for his fork. “You best be eating too.”

  He lowered his eyes and ate with the same fixed attentiveness as all the other men. Rachel looked at him, and it surprised her how much he had changed but not changed. As a child, Joel had been smaller than most of the boys, but he’d caught up in his teens, not just taller but wider-shouldered, more muscled. A man now, even a thin mustache over his lip. But his face was the same, freckled and easy to grin, a boy you knew had mischief in him. Smart as a whip, and kind, a kindness you could see in his green eyes as well as his words. Joel set the fork down and raised the coffee cup to his lips, took a swallow and then another.

  “You’ve been doing good for yourself,” Rachel said. “From what folks say you’ll be an overseer like Mr. Campbell before too long. There’s no surprise in that though. You always had the most smarts of any of us at school.”

  Joel’s face reddened into a blush. Even his freckles appeared to darken.

  “I just fill in where they need me. Besides, soon as I can find another job I’m leaving here.”

  “Why do you want to leave?” Rachel asked.

  Joel met her eyes.

  “Because I don’t like them,” he said, and turned back to his food.

  Rachel looked at the clock by the doorway and saw it was time for her to get back to work. She could already hear the clatter of crockery and metal being washed and rinsed in the fifty-gallon hoop barrels, but she didn’t want to get up. It had been so long since she’d talked to someone her own age. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be.

  “We had some good times at that school,” she said as Joel finished the last bit on his plate. “I didn’t know how good those times was till I left, but I guess that’s the way of it.”

  “We did have some fun,” Joel said, “even if Miss Stephens was a grumpy old sow.”

  “I remember the time she asked where in the United States we’d want to go, and you said far as you could get from her and the schoolhouse. That really got her out of sorts.”

  The dining hall suddenly grew quiet as Galloway opened the side door and took a step inside, his head cocked slightly to the right as he scanned the room. He found Joel and jerked his head toward the office.

  “I better go and see what old flop arm wants,” Joel said, and got up.

  Rachel got up as well, speaking softly across the table as she did so.

  “Have you ever heard Mr. or Mrs. Pemberton say anything about me?”

  “No,” Joel said, his face clouding.

  Joel looked like he wanted to say something more, and whatever that something more was it wouldn’t be said in a playful tone or with a smile on his face. But he didn’t. He put on his cap and mackinaw.

  “Thanks for sitting with me,” Rachel said.

  Joel nodded.

  As Joel went out the door, Rachel saw Mrs. Pemberton through the dining hall’s wide window. Horse and rider moved briskly through the last crews walking toward the woods. Rachel watched until Mrs. Pemberton and the horse began their ascent onto the ridge. She raised herself from the chair, her eyes about to turn away from the window when Rachel saw her own reflection. She did not bend to pick up her plate but let her gaze linger. Despite the apron and her hair tied back in a bun, Rachel saw that she was still pretty. Her hands were chapped and wrinkled by the kitchen work, but her face was unlined and smooth. Her body hadn’t yet acquired the sagging shapelessness of the other women in the kitchen. Even the soiled apron could not conceal that.

  You’re too pretty to stay covered up, Mr. Pemberton had told her more than once when Rachel waited until she was in bed to take off her dress and step-ins. She remembered how after the first few times there’d been pleasure in the loving for her as well as him, and she’d had to bite her lip to not be embarrassed. She remembered the day she’d walked through the house while he slept, touching the ice box and the chairs and the gilded mirror, Rachel also recalling what hadn’t been there—no picture of a sweetheart hung on the wall or set on a bureau, just as there’d been no woman come down from Boston like Mrs. Buchanan had once. At least not one until Serena.

  Someone called Rachel’s name from the kitchen, but she did not move from the window. She remembered again the afternoon at the train station when Serena Pemberton held the bowie knife by its blade, offering the pearl handle to her. Rachel thought how easily she might have grasped the bowie knife’s handle, the blade that had just killed her father pointed at the other woman’s heart. As Rachel continued to stare at her reflection, she suddenly wondered if she’d been wrong about having had only one real choice in her life, that in that moment at the depot Serena Pemberton had offered her a second choice, one that could have made laying down in bed with Mr. Pemberton the right choice after all, even at the cost of her father. Don’t think a thing that terrible, Rachel told herself.

  Rachel turned and walked into the kitchen, setting her plate and fork on the oak stacking table before settling herself beside the hoop barrel closest to the back door. She picked up the scrub brush in her right hand and the slab of Octagon soap in the left, dipped her hands in the gray water and scuffed the wood bristles against the tan-colored soap to make her lather. As Rachel took up her first plate to clean, one of the other kitchen workers shouldered open the back door. In her hands was a tin tub filled with breakfast dishes and silverware from the office.

  “Mr. Pemberton wants more coffee brought to his office,” the woman said to Beason, the head cook.

  Beason looked around the kitchen, his eyes passing over Rachel before settling on Cora Pinson.

  “Take a pot of coffee over there,” Beason said to her.

  As Cora Pinson went out the back door, Rachel thought of Mrs. Pemberton astride the great horse, erect and square-shouldered, not looking anywhere but straight ahead. Not needing to, because she didn’t have to care if someone stepped in front of her and the horse. She and that gelding would go right over whoever got in their way and not give the least notice they’d trampled someone into the dirt.

  Smart of her, Rachel thought, not to allow me near her food.

  Fourteen

  THE MEETING WITH THE PARK DELEGATION WAS set for eleven on Monday morning, but by ten o’clock Pemberton, Buchanan and Wilkie had already gathered in the office’s back room, smoking cigars and discussing the payroll. Harris also sat at the table, reading the morning’s Asheville Citizen with visible ire. Campbell stood in the corner until Pemberton checked his watch and nodded it was time to get Serena.

  “They’re early,” Buchanan said minutes later when the office door opened, but it was Doctor Cheney and Reverend Bolick instead. They came into the back room, and Cheney settled into the closest chair. Bolick held his black preacher’s hat in his hand, but he sat down without being asked and placed his hat on the table. Pemberton couldn’t help but admire the man’s brazenness.

  “Reverend Bolick wishes to have a word with you,” Doctor Cheney said. “I told him we were busy but he was insistent.”

  The morning was warm and the preacher dabbed his forehead and right temple with a cotton handkerchief, not touching the left side
of his face where the skin was withered and grainy, thinner seeming, as if once shaved with a planer. Caused by a house fire during his childhood, Pemberton had heard. Bolick placed the handkerchief in his coat pocket and set his clasped hands before him.

  “As you have guests arriving soon, I’ll be brief,” Reverend Bolick said, addressing them all but looking specifically at Wilkie. “It’s about the pay raise we’ve discussed. Even half a dollar more a week would make a huge difference, especially for the workers with families.”

  “Have you not seen all those men on the commissary steps?” Wilkie said, his voice quickly shifting from annoyance to anger. “Be grateful your congregation has work when so many don’t. Save your proselytizing for your congregation, Reverend, and remember you serve here at our indulgence.”

  Bolick glared at Wilkie. The fire-scarred side of the preacher’s face appeared to glow with some lingering of that long-ago violence.

  “I serve only at God’s indulgence,” he said, reaching for his hat.

  Pemberton had been looking out the window and now he spoke.

  “Here comes my wife,” he said, and the others turned and looked out the window as well.

  Serena paused at the ridge crest before her descent. Lingering fog laid a thick mist on the ground and the ridge, but the morning’s brightness broke full on the summit. Threads of sunlight appeared to have woven themselves into Serena’s cropped hair, giving it the appearance of shone brass. She sat upright on the gelding, the eagle perched on the leather gauntlet as if grafted to her arm. As Bolick pushed back his chair to rise, Wilkie turned his gaze from the window and met Bolick’s eyes.

  “There’s a true manifestation of the godly,” Wilkie said admiringly. “Such an image gave the Greeks and Romans their deities. Gaze upon her, Reverend. She’ll never be crucified by the rabble.”

  For a few moments no one spoke. They watched Serena descend into the swirling fog and vanish.

  “I’ll listen to no more of this blasphemy,” Bolick said.

  The preacher put on his hat and quickly walked out of the room. Doctor Cheney remained seated until Pemberton told him his services were no longer needed.

  “Of course,” Cheney said dryly as he got up to leave. “I forgot my input is needed only in matters of life and death.”

  Pemberton went to the bar and brought a bottle of cognac to the table, went back and got the crystal tumblers. Buchanan looked at the bottle and frowned.

  “What?” Pemberton asked.

  “The liquor. It could be perceived as a provocation.”

  Harris looked up from his newspaper.

  “I was under the impression we were meeting the Secretary of the Interior, not Eliot Ness.”

  THE park delegation was twenty minutes late, by which time Wilkie had gone to the commissary for a bromide. Everyone shook hands, the visitors unsurprised when Serena offered hers. Pemberton surmised they’d been told she was not a woman of deference, and that it might help their cause to acknowledge as much. Except for Kephart, who was dressed in a clean flannel shirt and dark wool pants, the visitors wore dark suits and ties, lending the meeting a formal air despite the room’s rusticity. Albright and Pemberton sat at opposing ends of the table. Davis, Rockefeller’s lawyer, seated himself to the right of Albright, Kephart and Webb near the table’s center. Cuban cigars and cognac were passed around. Several of the late arrivals took a cigar, but all in the visiting contingent politely declined the alcohol except Kephart, who filled his tumbler. Gunmetal-blue streams of cigar smoke soon rose, raveled into a diaphanous cloud above the table’s center.

  Harris folded the newspaper and laid it on the table.

  “I see you’ve folded the paper to my most recent editorial, Mr. Harris,” Webb said.

  “Yes, and as soon as my constitution allows, I plan to wipe my ass with it.”

  Webb smiled. “I plan to write enough articles on this park to keep you well supplied, Mr. Harris. And I won’t be alone. Secretary Albright informs me a New York Times reporter will arrive this weekend to write about what land has already been purchased, as well as complete a profile on Kephart’s role in the park’s creation.”

  “Perhaps the article will discuss Mr. Kephart’s desertion of his family,” Serena said, turning to Kephart. “How many children were left in Saint Louis for your wife to raise alone, was it four or five?”

  “This is not really relevant,” Albright said, looking at the table as if for a gavel.

  “It’s very relevant,” Serena said. “My experience has been that altruism is invariably a means to conceal one’s personal failures.”

  “Whatever my personal failings, I’m not doing this for myself,” Kephart said to Serena. “I’m doing it for the future.”

  “What future? Where is it?” Serena said sarcastically, looking around the room. “All I see is the here and now.”

  “With all respect, Mrs. Pemberton,” Albright said. “We are here to discuss a reality, the creation of a national park, not engage in sophistry.”

  “The sophistry is on your side,” Harris said. “Even with the land you’ve bought, this park is still nothing more than a fairy dream on a goat hill.”

  “Rockefeller’s five million dollars is real enough,” Webb countered. “This country’s eminent domain law is real enough also.”

  “So the threats begin,” Harris said.

  The door opened and Wilkie entered. He apologized profusely to all though Pemberton noted the old man’s eyes were on Secretary Albright as he spoke. Albright stood and offered his hand.

  “No need to apologize, Mr. Wilkie,” Albright said as they shook. “It’s good to finally meet you in person. Henry Stimson speaks highly of you as both a businessman and a gentleman.”

  “That’s kind of him to say,” Wilkie replied. “Henry and I go back many years, all the way to Princeton.”

  “I’m a Princeton man myself, Mr. Wilkie,” Davis said, offering his hand as well.

  Pemberton spoke before Wilkie could respond.

  “We are very busy, gentlemen, so please tell us about your proposition.”

  “Very well, then,” Albright said, as Wilkie took his seat. “The initial price we offered Boston Lumber Company for its 34,000 acres was, I admit, too low, and with the generous help of Mr. Rockefeller we can make a far more substantial offer.”

  “How much?” Pemberton asked.

  “Six hundred and eighty thousand.”

  “Our price is eight hundred thousand,” Pemberton said.

  “But the land has been appraised at six hundred and eighty thousand,” Davis objected. “This country is in a potentially long-term depression. In this market our offer’s more than fair.”

  “What about my eighteen thousand acres?” Harris asked.

  “Thirty-six thousand, Mr. Harris,” Davis said. “That’s two dollars an acre, and, as with Boston Lumber, a substantial increase on our initial offer.”

  “Not nearly good enough,” Harris replied.

  “But think how much you already have profited here,” Webb said with exasperation. “Can’t you give something back to the people of this region?”

  Serena raised her index finger to her chin, held it there a moment as if bemused.

  “Why is this pretense necessary, gentlemen?” she said. “We know what’s going on with these land grabs. You’ve already run two thousand farmers off their land, that’s according to your own census. We can’t make people work for us and we can’t buy their land unless they want to sell it, yet you force them from their livelihood and their homes.”

  Davis was about to speak but Albright raised his hand. The Secretary’s visage achieved a profound solemnity Pemberton suspected was an innate talent of undertakers as well as career diplomats.

  “An unfortunate aspect of what has to be done,” Albright said. “But like Mr. Webb, I believe it’s ultimately for the common good of all people in these mountains.”

  “And therefore all should sacrifice equally, correct?” Serena
said.

  “Certainly,” Albright agreed, and as he did so Davis grimaced.

  Serena took a sheaf of papers from her pocket and placed them on the table.

  “This is part of the bill passed by the Tennessee legislature. In it are provisions stating that a number of wealthy landowners will be exempt from eminent domain. They get to keep their land, even though it’s inside your proposed park. Perhaps your New York Times reporter can do an article about that.”

  “We had to have their support at that time,” Davis replied. “If we hadn’t, the park would have been doomed from the start. That was 1927, not today.”

  “We expect nothing more than to be treated like other wealthy landowners,” Serena said.

  “That just can’t be done now,” Davis said, shaking his head.

  “Can’t or won’t?” Harris jeered.

  “We’ll get this land either way,” Davis said, his voice now strident, “and if it’s by eminent domain you’ll be lucky to get half what we’re offering now.”

  Albright gave a deep sigh and leaned back.

  “No final answer is needed today,” he said, looking at Buchanan and Wilkie, who’d been silent during the exchange. “Discuss it among yourselves. And consider the fact that Mr. Rockefeller is a businessman like all of you, yet he has given five million dollars. Think about how little in comparison we’re asking of Boston Lumber Company.”

  Buchanan nodded. “We’ll certainly discuss the matter.”

  “Yes,” Wilkie said. “We appreciate your coming all this way to talk to us personally.”

  “My pleasure,” Albright said and raised his hands, palms open in a gesture of mollification. “As I said, nothing need be decided today. We’ll be in Tennessee this weekend but back in Asheville Monday. We’re beginning negotiations with your fellow timberman, Colonel Townsend. His Elkmont tract has more virgin hardwoods than any land in the Smokies, yet we’re offering you the same price per acre as him.”