Chemistry and Other Stories

Pemberton’s Bride

I

When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after four months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, a man named Harmon who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.

The conductor shouted “Waynesville” as the train came to a shuddering halt. Pemberton looked out the window and saw his partners on the platform, both dressed in suits to meet his bride of three days, an unexpected bonus from his time in Boston. Buchanan, ever the dandy, had waxed his mustache and oiled his hair. Peabody wore a fedora, as he often did to protect his bald head from the sun. Pemberton took out his gold pocket watch and saw the train was on time to the exact minute. He turned to his bride.

“Not the best place for a honeymoon.”

“It will suit us well enough,” Serena said, leaning into his shoulder. As she did so, he smelled the bright aroma of Ivory soap and remembered tasting that brightness on her skin earlier that morning. A porter came up the aisle, whistling a song Pemberton did not recognize. His gaze returned to the window.

Next to the ticket booth Harmon and his daughter waited, Harmon slouched against the chestnut wall. It struck Pemberton that males in these mountains never stood upright but rather slouched or leaned into some tree or wall whenever possible. If none were available they squatted, buttocks against the backs of their heels. The daughter sat on the bench, her posture upright to better reveal her condition. Pemberton could not recall her first name. He was not surprised to see them. Buchanan had phoned him the night before he left Boston. “Abe Harmon is down here threatening to kill you,” Buchanan had said, “and I suspect you know the reason.”

“Well, my dear,” Pemberton said to his bride. “Our welcoming party includes some of the natives. This will make for a colorful arrival.”

Pemberton took Serena’s hand for a moment, felt the calluses on her upper palm, the simple gold wedding band Serena wore in lieu of a diamond. Then he stood and retrieved two grips from the overhead compartment. He handed them to the porter, who stepped back and followed as Pemberton led his bride down the aisle and the steel steps to the platform. There was a gap of two feet between the metal and wood. Serena did not reach for his hand as she stepped onto the planks. Buchanan gave a stiff formal bow. Peabody nodded and tipped his fedora.

Pemberton knew aspects of her appearance surprised his partners, not just the lack of a cloche hat and dress but her hair, blond and thick, cut short in a bob — distinctly feminine yet also austere.

Serena went to the older man and held out her hand. Pemberton noted that at five-seven his wife stood tall as Peabody.

“Peabody, I assume.”

“Yes, yes, I am,” he stammered.

“Serena Pemberton,” she said, her hand extended so that he had no choice but to take it. She turned to the younger man.

“And Buchanan. Correct?”

“Yes,” Buchanan said. He took her proffered hand and cupped it awkwardly in his.

Serena smiled slightly.

“Don’t you know how to properly shake hands, Mr. Buchanan?”

Pemberton watched as Buchanan blushed and corrected his grip, withdrawing his hand quickly as he could. In the two years Boston Timber Company had been here, Buchanan’s wife had come only once, arriving in a taffeta gown that was soiled before she made it to her husband’s house on the other side of the street. She spent one night and left on the morning train. Now Buchanan and his wife met once a month for a weekend in Richmond, as far south as Mrs. Buchanan would travel. Peabody’s wife had never left Boston.

His partners appeared incapable of speech. Their eyes shifted to peruse the leather chaps Serena wore, the oxford shirt and black jodhpurs. Her British inflection and erect carriage confirmed that, as had their wives, she’d attended private boarding school in the Northeast. But Serena had been born in Colorado, the child of a timberman who taught her to shake hands and look men in the eye as well as to ride and hunt. The porter laid the grips on the platform and went back for the two trunks stored in the back train car.

“Any sighting of my mountain lion?” Pemberton asked.

“No,” Buchanan said. “A worker found tracks on Laurel Creek he thought belonged to one, but they were a bobcat’s.”

Peabody turned to Serena.

“Your husband hopes to kill the last panther in these mountains, but if there is one left, it’s not being very cooperative.”

“We will find it, won’t we, Pemberton?” Serena said.

Pemberton concurred, encircling his bride with an arm.

Serena looked over at the father and daughter, who now sat on the bench together, watchful and silent as actors awaiting their cues.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

The daughter continued to stare at Serena sullenly. It was the father who spoke.

“My business ain’t with you. It’s with him standing there beside you.”

“His business is mine,” Serena said, “just as mine is his.”

“Not this business. It was did before you got here.”

Harmon nodded at his daughter’s belly, then looked back at Serena.

Buchanan and Peabody stared at Pemberton, waiting for him to intervene. The porter set the trunks on the platform. Pemberton gave the man a quarter and dismissed him.

“You’re implying she’s carrying my husband’s child,” Serena said.

“I ain’t implying nothing,” Harmon replied.

“Then you’re a lucky man,” Serena said. “You’ll find no better sire to breed her with.” Serena turned her gaze and words to the daughter on the bench. “But that’s the only one. From now on, what children Pemberton has will be with me.”

Harmon pushed himself fully upright and Pemberton glimpsed the ivory handle of a bowie knife before the coat resettled over it. He wondered how a man like Harmon could possess such a fine weapon. Perhaps it was booty won in a poker game or an heirloom passed down from a more prosperous ancestor. Pemberton leaned and unclasped his calfskin grip, grabbled among its contents for the wedding present Serena had given him. He turned slightly and slipped the elk-bone hunting knife from its sheath. Harmon’s large freckled hand grasped the bench edge. He leaned forward but did not rise.

Several mountaineers watched expressionlessly from the courthouse steps. The only one Pemberton recognized was a crew foreman named Chaney, an older employee who’d spent five years in prison for killing two men in a card game dispute. Chaney shared his stringhouse with his blind mother, a woman given great deference in the camp as an oracle. Pemberton was glad to have him as a witness. The workers already understood Pemberton was as strong as any of them, had learned that last September when he stripped to his waist and helped unload the sawmill’s heaviest machinery. Now he’d give them something besides his strength to respect.

“Let’s go home, Daddy,” the daughter said, and laid her hand on her father’s wrist. Harmon flicked it away as if a bothersome fly and stood up.

“God damn the both of you,” he said.

Harmon opened the frock coat and freed the bowie knife from its leather sheath. The blade caught the late-afternoon sun, and for a moment it appeared the mountaineer held a glistening flame in his hand.

“Go get Sheriff McDowell,” Buchanan yelled toward the courthouse steps, but none of the men moved.

Pemberton unsheathed his knife as well. He felt the elk-bone handle against his palm, its roughness all the better for clasping. For a few moments he relished the knife’s balance and solidity, its blade, hilt, and handle precisely calibrated as the épées he’d fenced with at Princeton.

Buchanan made a move to step between the two men, but Pemberton waved him away with his free hand.

“This is best done now,” Pemberton said to Buchanan. He glanced at Serena. “Better to settle it now, right?”

“Yes,” Serena said. “Settle it now.”

Pemberton took a calculated step toward Harmon. The old man kept the knife head high and pointed toward the sky, and Pemberton knew he had done little fighting with a blade. Pemberton took a step closer and Harmon slashed the air between them. The man’s tobacco-yellowed teeth were clenched, the veins in his neck taut as guy wires. Pemberton kept his knife low and close to his side. He took another step forward and raised his left arm. The bowie knife swept forward but its arc stopped when Harmon’s forearm hit Pemberton’s. Harmon jerked down and the blade sliced Pemberton’s forearm. Pemberton took one final step, the blade flat as he slipped it inside Harmon’s coat and plunged half the blade’s length into the soft flesh above Harmon’s right hip bone. He grabbed Harmon’s shoulder with his free hand for leverage and quickly opened a thin smile across the mountaineer’s stomach. For a second there was no blood.

Harmon’s knife fell clattering onto the platform. The man placed both hands on his stomach and stepped back to the bench, slowly sat down. After a few moments he lifted his hands to see the damage, and his intestines spilled in gray ropes onto his lap. Harmon stared at them, studied the inner workings of his body as if for some further verification of his fate. He raised his head a last time, leaned it back against the depot’s graying boards. Pemberton watched the man’s eyes. The way they clouded over was no different than any other animal he’d watched die.

Serena stood beside him now.

“Your arm,” she said.

Pemberton saw that his poplin shirt was slashed below the elbow, the light blue cloth darkened by blood. Serena unclasped a silver cuff link and rolled up the shirtsleeve, examined the cut across his forearm.

“It won’t need any stitches,” Serena said. “Just a dressing and some iodine.”

Serena picked up the bowie knife and carried it over to Harmon’s daughter, who grasped her father by the shoulders as if the dead man might yet be revived. Tears flowed down the young woman’s face but she made no sound.

“Here,” Serena said, holding the knife by the blade. “By all rights it belongs to my husband. It’s a fine knife, and you can get a good price for it if you demand one. And I would,” she added. “Sell it, I mean, because that money will help when the child is born. It’s all you’ll ever get from my husband or me.”

Harmon’s daughter looked at her now, but she did not raise a hand to take the knife. Serena set it on the bench beside the younger woman and walked across the platform to stand beside her husband.

“Is my car here?” Pemberton asked Buchanan.

“Yes, but you and Mrs. Pemberton can take the train if you want to get there faster. Chaney can drive your car back.”

“No,” Pemberton said. “We’ll take the car.”

Pemberton turned to the baggage boy, who was staring at the blood pooling copiously around Harmon’s feet.

“Take that trunk and put them in my car. We’ll get the grips.”

“Don’t you think you’d better wait for Sheriff McDowell?” Buchanan asked.

“Why?” Pemberton said. “It was self-defense, a half dozen men will verify that.”

The boy followed Pemberton and his bride to the Packard, where they loaded the trunk and grips in the backseat.

Pemberton was turning the key when he saw McDowell coming up the sidewalk. The sheriff wore his Sunday finery, no badge or gun visible. Pemberton pressed the starter button on the floor, then released the hand brake and drove the Packard north into the higher mountains.

WHEN THEY GOT to the camp, a youth named Parker waited on the front steps. Beside him was a cardboard box, in it a bottle of wine, meat and bread and cheese for sandwiches. Parker retrieved the grips from the car and followed Pemberton and his bride onto the porch. Pemberton unlocked the door and nodded for the young man to enter first.

“I’d carry you over the threshold,” Pemberton said, “but for the arm.”

Serena smiled.

“Don’t worry, Pemberton. I can cross it myself.”

Serena stepped inside and Pemberton followed. She examined the light switch a moment as if doubtful electricity existed in such a place. Then she turned it on.

In the front room were two captain’s chairs set in front of the fireplace, off to the left a small kitchen with a stove and icebox. A table with four cane-bottom chairs stood in the corner by the front room’s one window. Serena nodded and walked down the hall, glanced at the bathroom before entering the back room. She turned on the bedside lamp and sat down on the wrought iron bed, tested the mattress’s firmness and seemed satisfied. Parker appeared at the doorway, a trunk that had formerly belonged to Pemberton’s father in his grasp.

“That one in the hall closet,” Pemberton said. “Put the other at the foot of the bed.”

The youth did as he was told and soon brought the second trunk, then the food and wine.

“Mr. Buchanan thought you might be needing something to eat,” Parker said.

“Put it in the icebox,” Pemberton said. “Then go get iodine and gauze from the caboose.”

The youth paused, his eyes on Pemberton’s blood-soaked sleeve.

“You wanting me to get Dr. Carlyle?”

“No,” Serena said. “I’ll dress it.”

WHEN THE BOY had delivered the iodine and the gauze, Serena sat on the bed and unbuttoned Pemberton’s shirt. She removed the knife and sheath wedged behind his belt buckle, took the knife from the sheath with her left hand, and examined the dried blood before placing it on the bed.

She opened the bottle of iodine.

“What was it like, killing someone with a knife?” she said.

“Like fencing, but more intimate.”

“You’ve never killed a man like that before?”

Serena gripped his arm harder, poured the auburn-colored liquid into the wound.

“No,” Pemberton said. “The other time was with fists and a beer stein. But they both had certain satisfactions.”

Once Serena finished wrapping the gauze around Pemberton’s wound, she picked up the knife and took it into the kitchen, wiped it clean in the basin with water, soap, and a washcloth. She dried the knife with a hand towel and returned to the back room. She set the knife and sheath on the bedside table.

“I’ll take a whetstone and sharpen the blade tomorrow,” Serena said. “Will you store it with your hunting equipment?”

“No,” Pemberton said. “I’ll keep it in the office, close at hand.”

Serena sat down in a ladder-back chair opposite the bed and pulled off her jodhpurs. She undressed, not looking at what she unfastened and let fall to the floor but directly at Pemberton. She took off her underclothing and stood before him. Her eyes had not left his the whole time. The women he’d known before Serena had been shy with their bodies, waiting for a room to darken or sheets to be pulled up, but that wasn’t Serena’s way.

She did not come to him immediately, and a sensual languor settled over Pemberton. He gazed at her body, into the eyes that had entranced him the first time he’d met her, gray irises the color of burnished pewter. Hard and dense like pewter too, the gold flecks not so much within the gray as floating motelike on the surface. Eyes that did not close when their bodies came together.

Serena opened the curtains so moonlight could fall across the bed. She turned from the window and looked around the room, as if for a moment she’d forgotten where she was.

“This will do fine for us,” she said, returning her gaze to Pemberton as she stepped toward the bed.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING Pemberton introduced his bride to the camp’s workers. Serena stood beside her husband as he spoke, wearing riding breeches and a flannel shirt. Her boots were different from the ones the day before, the leather on these scuffed and worn, the toes rimmed with tarnished silver. Serena held the reins of the Morgan she’d had freighted down from Massachusetts, the horse’s white coloration so intense as to appear nearly translucent in the day’s first light.

“Mrs. Pemberton’s father owned the Vulcan Lumber Company in Colorado,” Pemberton said. “He taught her well. She’s the equal of any man here, and you’ll soon find the truth of it. Her orders are to be followed the same way you’d follow mine.”

Among the gathered workers was a thick-bearded cutting crew foreman named Hartley. He hocked audibly and spit a gob of phlegm on the ground. At six-two and well over two hundred pounds, Hartley was one of the few men big as Pemberton in camp. Serena opened the saddlebag and removed a Waterman pen and a small spiral pad. She spoke to the horse quietly, then dropped the reins and walked over to Hartley, stood exactly where he had spit. She pointed toward the office, where a cane ash tree had been left standing for its shade.

“I will make a wager with you,” Serena said to Hartley. “We’ll estimate total board feet of that cane ash. Then we’ll write our estimates on a piece of paper and see who’s closest.”

Hartley stared at Serena a few moments, then at the tree, as if already measuring its height and width. He was not looking at her when he spoke.

“How we going to know who’s closest?”

“I’ll have it cut down and taken to the sawmill in Waynesville. Soon as we’ve made our estimates.”

By this time Buchanan and Dr. Carlyle had come out of the office and watched as well.

“How much we wagering?” Hartley asked.

“Two weeks’ pay.”

The amount gave Hartley pause.

“There ain’t no trick to it? I win I get two weeks’ extra pay.”

“Correct,” Serena said. “And if you lose you work two weeks for free.”

She offered the pad and pen to Hartley, but he did not raise a hand to take it.

A lumberman behind him snickered.

“Perhaps you want me to go first then?”

“Yeah,” Hartley said after a few moments.

Serena turned toward the tree and studied it almost a minute before lifting the pen with her left hand, writing down her number. She tore the page out of the pad and folded it.

“Your turn,” she said and handed pad and pen to Hartley. He walked up to the cane ash to better judge its girth, then came back and looked at the tree awhile longer before writing down his own number.

AT DINNERTIME, EVERY worker in camp gathered in front of the office. The Pembertons and their partners were there as well, watching from the porch as a sawmill boss named Campbell mounted the ash tree’s stump and took a pad from his coat pocket, announced the estimates and then the total board feet.

“Mrs. Pemberton the winner by thirty board feet,” Campbell said, and he stepped down without further comment.

The workers began to disperse up the ridge to their stringhouses, those who had bet and won stepping more lightly than the losers. As Pemberton followed their progress, he saw Mrs. Chaney on her porch. Her white hair was knotted in a tight bun and she wore a black front-buttoned dress Pemberton suspected was sewn in the previous century. She raised her milky eyes and though he knew the old woman was blind, Pemberton could not shake the sense that she was staring directly at him. She can see things other folks can’t, Pemberton had heard one worker tell another, and she don’t need eyes to do it.

“Time for dinner,” Buchanan announced, “and a celebratory drink of our best scotch.”

He and Peabody followed Carlyle and the Pembertons through the office and into the small back room whose sole furnishings were a bar on one wall and a fourteen-foot dining table, a dozen well-padded captain’s chairs surrounding it. They had barely sat down when Campbell, who’d been bent over the adding machine in the office, appeared at the door. He did not speak until Pemberton asked if there was a problem.

“I just need to know if you and Mrs. Pemberton are going to hold Hartley to the bet.” He gestured behind him. “For the payroll.”

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”

“He has a wife and three children.”

The words were delivered with no inflection and Campbell’s face was an absolute blank. Pemberton wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to play poker with this man.

“His having a family is all for the better,” Pemberton said. “It will make a more effective lesson for the other workers.”

“Will he still be a foreman?” Campbell asked.

“What do you think?” Pemberton asked his bride.

“Yes,” Serena replied. “For the next two weeks. Then he’ll be fired. Another lesson for the men.”

Campbell nodded and stepped back into the office, closing the door behind him. A few moments later the clacking, ratchet, and pause of the adding machine resumed.

Pemberton turned to Carlyle.

“I understand we had another rattlesnake bite today.”

“Yes,” the doctor replied. “He’ll live but lose his leg.”

“How many men have been bitten since the camp opened?” Serena asked.

“Five before today,” Buchanan said. “Only one has died, but every man who’s been bitten save one had to be let go.”

The doctor turned to Serena.

“A timber rattlesnake’s venom destroys blood vessels and tissue. Even if the victim is fortunate enough to survive the initial bite, lasting damage is often incurred.”

“I am aware of what happens when someone is bitten by a rattlesnake, Doctor,” Serena said. “Out west we have diamondbacks, which are even deadlier.”

Carlyle gave a brief half bow in Serena’s direction.

“I yield to the lady’s superior knowledge.”

Peabody, who’d seemed lost in some internal reverie, spoke.

“The rattlesnakes cost us money, and not just when a crew is halted by a bite. Men get overcautious, and progress is slowed.”

“The snakes are a problem,” Serena said, “and so they must be killed off, especially in the slash.”

Peabody frowned.

“Yet that is the hardest place to see them, Mrs. Pemberton. They blend so well with brush and limbs as to be invisible.”

“Better eyes are needed then,” Serena said.

“Cold weather will be here soon and will send them up into the rock cliffs,” Buchanan said.

“Until spring,” Peabody said. “Then they’ll be back, every bit as bad as before.”

“Perhaps not,” Serena said.

II

It was in early spring that Harmon’s daughter returned to camp. By then Boston Lumber Company had become Pemberton Lumber Company. Peabody had suffered a stroke during a Christmas visit to New England, allowing the Pembertons to buy his share. In February, Pemberton and Buchanan went bear hunting alone near the headwaters of Hazel Creek. Buchanan had been shot. An accident, Pemberton had claimed, but Sheriff McDowell had been openly skeptical.

It was Campbell who told Pemberton about Harmon’s daughter.

“She’s sitting there in the dining hall,” Campbell said. “She wants her old job in the kitchen back.”

“Where has she been all this time?” Pemberton asked.

“Living with her sister over in Cullowhee the last eight months. But now she’s moved back into her daddy’s place on Colt Ridge.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Pemberton said.

“No more than a mile west of here,” Campbell said.

Pemberton raised himself from his office chair, looked out the window toward the dining hall.

“Does she have a child with her?”

“No,” Campbell said.

“She say anything about having a child?”

“No, but I seen her in town last week and she had one with her.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Looked to be a boy.”

“Who’s going to look after that baby if she’s working?” Pemberton asked.

“Her aunt lives up there on Colt Ridge. She may be of a mind to have her look after it.”

Pemberton turned from the window, sat back down.

“She was a good worker before she left last summer,” Campbell added.

Pemberton looked at the man. Like so many of the highlanders, Campbell tended to never quite come out and say what he meant, or wanted. But Campbell was an intelligent man, brilliant in his way. He could fix any piece of equipment in the camp or at the sawmill, and his suggestions on new hires were invaluable.

“You know she claims that child is mine,” Pemberton said.

Campbell nodded.

“You think I owe her a job because of that, or because I killed her father?”

“That ain’t for me to think,” Campbell said. “All I’m saying is she’s a good worker.”

Pemberton pushed some papers farther toward the center of his desk. “I’ll have to talk with Mrs. Pemberton first.”

“You want me to tell her to stay?” Campbell asked.

“Yes, I’ll be back in an hour.”

Pemberton got his horse and rode up the skid trail that crossed Davidson Branch and on through the stumps and slash to the wood’s edge, where Serena sat on her horse, giving instructions to a cutting crew. The men slumped in various attitudes of repose, but they were attentive. When she’d finished Pemberton rode over to her.

Serena nodded at the crew as they prepared to cut a looming tulip poplar.

“The men say winter’s almost over now.”

“I suspect it is.”

“We’ve done well then. Twenty men lost out of a hundred and ten. I’ll take that any winter.”

“Especially this one. Campbell claims he’s never seen a worse one.”

Serena’s horse stamped impatiently.

“What brings you out this morning, Pemberton?”

“Harmon’s daughter is in the dining hall. She wants her old job back.”

Serena leaned slightly forward, her left hand stroking the Morgan’s neck. The horse calmed.

“What kind of worker was she in the past?”

“Good.”

“And given no favors because you bedded her?”

“Not then nor will she now.”

“What of her child? I assume that it’s alive.”

“Campbell saw her with a child in town.”

“What I said to her at the depot, about her getting nothing else from us.”

“Yes, same wages as before.”

Serena’s eyes were full upon him now.

“The child. It won’t be living in camp. Correct?”

“She’ll live in her father’s house, not one of ours.”

“And when she works, who will keep the child?”

“Campbell said an aunt will take him in.”

“Him. A male then.”

“Campbell said so.”

The sawing paused for a few moments as the lead chopper placed another wedge behind the blade. The Morgan stamped the ground again and Serena tightened her fist around the reins.

“You be the one to tell her that she’s hired,” Serena said. “Just make it clear she has no claim on us. Her son either. Nothing ours is his. We will have our own child soon enough.”

Pemberton nodded and shifted his weight in the saddle. The crosscut saw resumed, the blade’s rapid back-and-forth like inhalations and exhalations, a sound as if the tree itself were panting.

“One other thing,” Serena said. “Make sure she’s not allowed around our food. She might attempt to poison you. Or me.”

Serena turned the horse and made her way through drifts of fallen wood toward the crew.

When Pemberton got back to the camp he went into the dining hall, where Harmon’s daughter waited. She wore a pair of polished but well-worn black oxford shoes and a blue and white calico dress Pemberton suspected was the nicest piece of clothing she owned. When he’d had his say Pemberton asked if she understood.

“Yes sir,” she said.

“And what happened with your father. You saw it yourself, so you know I was defending myself.”

A few moments of silence passed between them. She finally nodded, not meeting his eyes. Pemberton tried to remember what had attracted him to her in the first place. Perhaps her blue eyes and blond hair. Perhaps that she’d been the only woman at the camp who wasn’t already haggard. Aging in these mountains, especially among the women, happened early. Pemberton had seen women twenty-five here who would pass for fifty in Boston.

She kept her head slightly bowed as he studied her mouth and chin, her waist and the white length of ankle showing below her threadbare dress. Whatever had attracted him to her was now gone. Attraction to every other woman besides Serena as well, he suddenly realized. He could not remember the last time he’d thought of a past consort, or watched a young beauty in Boston or Waynesville and imagined what her body would be like joined to his. He knew such constancy was rare, and before meeting Serena would have believed it impossible. Now it seemed inevitable, wondrous but also disconcerting in its finality.

“You can start tomorrow,” Pemberton said.

She got up to leave and was almost to the door when he stopped her.

“The child, what’s his name?”

“Esau,” she said. “It comes from the Bible.”

Pemberton nodded, and Harmon’s daughter took this as a sign she was excused. The name was typical of the mountain people, particularly in its Old Testament derivation. Campbell’s first name was Ezekiel and there was an Absalom and a Solomon in the camp. But no Lukes or Matthews, which Buchanan had once noted to Dr. Carlyle. Carlyle’s response had been that the highlanders tended to live more by the Old Testament than the New.

THE EAGLE ARRIVED the following week. Serena had notified the depot master it would be coming and must be brought immediately to camp, and so it was, the six-foot-by-six-foot wooden crate and its inhabitant placed on a flatcar with two youths in attendance, the train making a slow trek up from Waynesville as if delivering a visiting dignitary.

The bird’s arrival was an immediate source of rumor and speculation, especially among the crews. The men had come out of the dining hall to watch the two boys lift their charge off the flatcar, the youths solemn and ceremonious as they carried the crate into the stable.

Serena had them place the eagle in the back stall, where Campbell had built a block perch out of wood and steel and sisal rope. Serena then dismissed the two boys and they walked out of the stable side by side, each matching his stride to his fellow’s. They marched back to the waiting train, eyes straight ahead and impervious to the men who implored them to tell what they knew of the eagle’s sudden appearance. The boys climbed onto the flatcar and sat with legs crossed and faces shorn of expression, much in the manner of the Buddha. Several workers had followed them, but the youths ignored all imprecations. Only when the train wheels began rolling did the two boys allow themselves tightlipped condescending smiles aimed at the lesser mortals still clamoring and running after them — the preterite who could never be entrusted as the guardians of things original and rare.

Serena and Pemberton remained in the stable, standing outside the stall door.

“You starve the bird, then what?” Pemberton said.

“She takes food from my glove,” Serena replied. “But only when she’s bowed and bared her neck is she truly mine. That’s when I’ll know she trusts me with her life.”

For the next three days Serena spent all day and much of the night inside the stall with the bird. On the third afternoon Serena came to the office.

“Come and see,” she told Pemberton, and they walked out to the stable. The eagle stood on its perch, hooded and still until it heard Serena’s voice. Then the bird’s head swiveled in her direction. Serena stepped inside the stall and removed the hood, then placed a piece of red meat on her gauntlet and held out her arm. The eagle stepped onto Serena’s forearm, gripping the goatskin as the head bowed to tear and swallow the meat between its talons.

Each morning in the following two weeks, Serena walked into the stable’s back stall and freed the eagle from the block perch. She and the bird spent their mornings alone below Half Acre Ridge, where Boston Lumber had done its first cutting. For the first four days she would ride out at dawn with the eagle traveling behind her in an old applecart, a blanket draped over the cage. By the fifth day the bird perched on Serena’s right forearm, its head black-hooded like an executioner, the five-foot leash tied to Serena’s upper right elbow and the leather bracelets around the raptor’s feet. Campbell constructed an armrest out of a Y-shaped white oak branch and affixed it to the saddle pommel. From a certain angle, the eagle itself appeared mounted on the saddle, from a distance as if horse, eagle, and human had transmogrified into some winged six-legged creature from the old primal myths.

In mid-April Campbell killed a timber rattlesnake while surveying on Shanty Mountain. The next afternoon Serena freed the eagle from the block perch and rode west to Fork Ridge, where Chaney and his crew ascended the near slope. The day was warm and many of the men worked shirtless. They did not cover themselves when Serena appeared, for they had learned she didn’t care.

Serena loosed the leather laces and removed the eagle’s hood, then freed the leash from the bracelets. She raised her right arm slightly. As if performing some violent salute, Serena thrust her forearm and the eagle upward. The bird ascended and began a dihedral circle over the twenty acres of stumps behind Chaney’s crew. On the third circle the eagle stopped. For a moment the bird hung poised in the sky, seemingly outside the world’s slow turning. Then it appeared not so much to fall but to slice open the air as if bound to some greater thing that propelled it downward. Once on the ground among the stumps and slash, the eagle opened its wings like a flourished cape. The bird wobbled forward, paused, and moved forward again, the yellow talons sparring with some creature hidden in the detritus. In another minute the eagle’s head dipped, then rose with a piece of stringy pink flesh in its beak.

Serena opened her saddlebag and removed a metal whistle and a lariat. Fastened to one end of the hemp was a piece of bloody beef. She blew the whistle and the bird’s neck whirled in her direction as Serena swung the lure overhead.

“They Lord God,” a worker said as the eagle rose, for in its talons was a three-foot-long rattlesnake. The bird flew toward the ridge crest, then arced back, drifting down toward Serena and Chaney’s crew. Except for Chaney, the men scattered as if dynamite had been lit, stumbling and tripping over stumps and slash as they fled. The eagle settled on the ground with an elegant awkwardness, the reptile still writhing but its movements only a memory of when it had been alive. Serena got off the stallion and offered the gobbet of meat. The bird released the snake and pounced on the beef. When it had finished eating, Serena placed the hood back over the eagle’s head.

“Can I have the skin and rattles?” Chaney asked.

“Yes,” Serena said, “but the meat belongs to the bird, so bring the guts back to camp.”

Chaney set his boot heel on the serpent’s head and detached the body with a quick sweep of his barlow knife. By the time the other men returned, Chaney had finished the snake’s skin folded and tucked inside his lunch box, the rattles as well.

By the following Friday the bird had killed seven rattlesnakes, including a huge satinback that panicked a crew when it slipped from the eagle’s grasp midflight and fell earthward. The men had not seen the eagle overhead, and the snake fell among them like some last remnant of Satan’s rebellion cast from heaven.

III

June came and Serena was now in her fifth month of pregnancy, though no one in camp other than Pemberton knew. Pemberton suspected the workers thought of Serena as beyond gender, the same as they might some natural phenomenon. Carlyle was as oblivious as the rest of the camp, reaffirming Pemberton’s belief that the doctor’s medical knowledge was mediocre at best.

It was dusk when Pemberton returned from looking at a twenty-thousand-acre tract in Jackson County. Light filtered through the office’s one window, and Pemberton found Campbell inside working on payroll. The light in the back room was off.

“Where’s Mrs. Pemberton?”

Campbell finished ratcheting a number and looked up.

“She went on up to the house.”

“Has she eaten?”

Campbell nodded.

“You want me to have somebody bring you a supper up to the house?”

“No,” Pemberton said. “I’ll tell them.”

Though it was after seven, the lights remained on in the dining room. From inside the building’s oak walls came a ragged choir of voices singing a hymn. Pemberton stepped onto the porch and opened the door that led to the kitchen. The kitchen itself was deserted, despite pots left on the Burton grange stove, soiled dishes piled beside sixty-gallon hoop barrels filled with gray water.

Pemberton stepped into the dining room, where Reverend Bolick’s sonorous voice had replaced the singing. Workers filled the benches set before the long wooden tables, women and children in front, men in the rear closest to where Pemberton stood. A number of workers glanced back but quickly returned their gazes to where Reverend Bolick stood behind two narrow, nailed-together vegetable crates, which resembled not so much a podium as an altar. Upon it lay a huge leather-bound Bible whose wide pages sprawled off both sides of the wood.

Pemberton scanned the benches looking for his cook. Most of the workers had their backs to him, so he moved to the side and found the man, motioned for him to go to the kitchen. Then he looked for a server and found one, but the woman was so rapt that Pemberton was almost beside Bolick before he got her attention. The woman left her seat, made her way slowly through a bumpy aisle of knees and rumps. But Pemberton was no longer looking at her.

The child lay in his mother’s lap, clothed in a gray sexless bundling. He held a hand-hewn toy train car in one hand, rolling the wooden wheels up and down his leg with a solemn deliberateness. Pemberton studied the child’s features intently. Reverend Bolick stopped speaking and the dining hall was suddenly silent. The child quit rolling the train and looked up at the preacher, then at the larger man who stood close by. For a few moments the child’s dark brown eyes gazed directly at Pemberton.

The congregation shifted uneasily on the benches, many of their eyes on Pemberton as Bolick turned the Bible’s pages in search of a passage. When Pemberton realized he was being watched, he made his way to the back of the hall, where the kitchen workers waited.

The cook and server went on to the kitchen, but Pemberton lingered a few more moments. Bolick found the passage he’d been searching for and looked out at his audience, settling his eyes on Pemberton. For a few seconds the only sound was a spring-back knife’s soft click as a worker prepared to pare his nails while listening.

“From the book of Obadiah,” Bolick said, and began reading. “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the cleft of the rock, whose habitation is high, that saith in his heart, who shall bring me down.”

Bolick closed the Bible with a slow and profound delicacy, as if the ink were fresh-pressed on the onionskin and susceptible to smearing.

“The word of the Lord,” Bolick said.

Pemberton went to the house with his dinner. He set the dishes on the table and stepped into the bedroom. Serena was asleep and Pemberton did not wake her. Instead, he softly closed the bedroom door. He did not go to the kitchen and eat, instead went to the hall closet and opened his father’s trunk, rummaged through the stocks and bonds and various other legal documents until he found the cowhide-covered photograph album his aunt had insisted he pack as well. He shut the trunk softly and walked down to the office.

Campbell still worked on the payroll but left without a word when Pemberton said he wished to be alone. Embers glowed in the hearth and Pemberton set kindling and a log on the andirons and felt the heat strengthen against his back. He opened the album, the desiccated binding creaking with each turned cardboard page. When he found a photograph of himself at ten months, he stopped turning.

WITH THE PURCHASE of the second skidder, the men now worked westward on two fronts. By June the northern crews had crossed Davidson Branch and made their way to Shanty Mountain while the crews to the south followed Straight Creek west. Recent rains had slowed the progress, not just forcing the men to slog through mud but causing more accidents as well.

On Monday morning Serena mounted the Morgan and rode out to check the work on the northern front. Chaney’s crew was cutting timber on the slope after a night of heavy rain. The slanting ground made footing tenuous. To make matters more difficult, Chaney’s crew had a new lead chopper, a boy of seventeen stout enough but inexperienced. Chaney was showing where to make the undercut when the boy slipped as the ax swung forward.

The blade’s entry made a soft, fleshy sound as Chaney and his left hand parted. The hand fell first, hitting the ground palm down, fingers curling inward like the legs of a dying spider. Chaney backed up and leaned against the white oak, blood leaping from the upraised wrist onto his shirt and denim breeches. The other sawyer stared at Chaney’s wrist, then at the severed hand as if unable to reconcile the two. The boy let the ax handle slip from his hands. The two men appeared incapable of movement, even when Chaney’s legs gave way and he fell sideways into the mud.

Serena dismounted and took off her coat, revealing the condition it had concealed for over a month. She kneeled beside Chaney, quickly stripped the leather string from a boot, and tied it around the man’s wrist. The blood spout became a trickle.

“Get him on the horse,” Serena said.

Two men lifted their wounded foreman and held him upright on the stallion until Serena mounted behind him. She rode back to camp, one arm around Chaney’s waist, pressing the man against her swollen belly.

At camp Campbell and another man lifted Chaney off the horse and carried him into Dr. Carlyle’s caboose. Pemberton came in a few moments later and believed he looked at a dead man. The face was pale as chalk, and Chaney’s eyes rolled as if unmoored, his breathing sharp quick pants. Carlyle emptied a bottle of iodine on the wound. He finished and checked the tourniquet.

“Damn good job whoever tied this,” Carlyle said. He turned to Pemberton. “You’ll have to get him to the hospital quick if you want him to have a chance.” The doctor paused and looked up at Pemberton. “Do you want the bother of that or not?”

“I’ll take him in my car,” Campbell said before Pemberton could reply. Campbell motioned to the worker who’d helped bring Chaney in and they lifted the injured man off the table, set his arms around their shoulders, and began dragging him to the car. Only then did Chaney speak.

“I’ll live,” he gasped. “It’s done been prophesied.”

Pemberton followed the men outside. He looked for Serena and saw her riding back up the ridge where Chaney’s crew waited leaderless. As Pemberton went to get his own horse, he glanced toward the stringhouses and saw Mrs. Chaney on the porch, her clouded eyes turned in the direction of all that had just transpired.

A WEEK LATER Chaney walked back into camp. He had witnessed enough men hurt to know Pemberton Lumber Company took no charity cases, especially when every day men arrived begging for work. Pemberton assumed Chaney had come to get his mother, take her back to their old home on Cove Creek. But when Chaney came to his stringhouse, he did not pause but kept walking out of the camp and across the ridge to where the timber crews worked. For a few moments Pemberton contemplated the possibility that Chaney planned to avenge the loss of his left hand. That would not be a bad thing since it might make other workers more careful in the future.

Pemberton was in the back room with Dr. Carlyle when Chaney returned, walking beside Serena and the stallion. It was almost full dark and Pemberton had been watching out the window for her. She was later than usual. The food had been brought, and Carlyle had already eaten. Serena and Chaney walked toward the stable, Chaney adjusting his gait so he stayed between the saddle and the horse’s rump.

They came out a few minutes later, Chaney still lagging behind Serena in the manner of a dog taught to heel. She spoke briefly to the man, who then walked toward the stringhouse where his mother was.

“We need to keep Chaney on the payroll,” Serena said as she sat down at the dinner table.

“What good will he do for us with just one hand?” Pemberton asked.

“Anything I bid him do.”

Dr. Carlyle looked up from his supper.

“Because you saved his life?” he asked. “As one who has saved numerous lives, dear lady, I can assure you such gratitude is fleeting.”

“Not in this instance,” Serena said. “His mother prophesied a time when he would lose much but be saved.”

Carlyle smiled.

“No doubt a reference to some brush arbor meeting where his soul would be saved for the contents of his billfold.”

“Saved by a woman,” Serena added, “and thus honor bound to protect that woman and do her bidding the rest of his life.”

“And you believe you are that woman?” Dr. Carlyle said. “I assumed you one to deny belief in augury.”

“I don’t believe in it,” Serena said, “but Chaney does.”

IV

In her eighth month Serena awoke with pain in her lower abdomen. Pemberton found Carlyle in the caboose ministering to a worker who had a three-inch splinter embedded in the sclera of his eye. The doctor used a pair of tweezers to work the splinter free, washed the wound out with disinfectant, and sent the man back to his crew.

“Probably something has not lain on her stomach well,” Carlyle said as they walked to the house.

Chaney waited on the porch, Serena’s horse saddled and tethered to the lower banister.

“Mrs. Pemberton will be staying in today,” Pemberton said.

Chaney gazed steadily at Carlyle’s black physician’s bag as the two men passed and went on in the house.

Serena sat on the bed edge. Her face was pale, and her slow, shallow breaths were such as one might use while holding something incredibly fragile or incredibly dangerous. Serena’s peignoir lay open, the dark-blue silk rippling back to reveal her waxing belly.

“Lie down on your back,” Carlyle said, and took a stethoscope from his bag. The doctor pressed the instrument to Serena’s stomach and listened a few moments.

“All is well, madam.”

The doctor smiled at Serena.

“It is normal for women to be susceptible to minor, sometimes even nonexistent pains, especially when with child. What you are feeling is probably a mild gastrointestinal upset, or to put it less delicately, excessive gas.”

“Mrs. Pemberton is no hypochondriac,” Pemberton said as Serena slowly raised herself to a sitting position.

“I do not mean to imply such,” Dr. Carlyle said. “The mind is its own place, as the poet tells us. What one feels one feels. Therein it has its own peculiar reality.”

Pemberton watched Carlyle flatten his hand as if preparing to pat his patient on the shoulder, but the doctor wisely reconsidered and let the hand remain by his side.

“I can assure you that she will be better by morning,” Dr. Carlyle said when they stepped back out on the porch.

“Is there anything that will help until then?” Pemberton asked. He nodded at Chaney, who still waited on the steps. “Chaney can go to the commissary, to town if necessary.”

“Yes,” Dr. Carlyle said, then turned to Chaney. “Go to the commissary and fetch your mistress a bag of peppermints. I find they do wonders when my stomach is sour.”

THE NEXT MORNING Pemberton awoke to find his wife sitting up with the covers at her feet, Serena’s open left hand pressed between her legs. When he asked what was wrong, Serena could not speak. Instead, she raised the hand as if making a vow, her fingers and palm slick with blood. He lifted Serena into his arms and carried her out the door. The train was about to make an early run to the sawmill and men had collected around the tracks. Pemberton yelled at several loitering workers to uncouple all the cars but for the coach. Mud holes pocked the ground but Pemberton stumbled right through them as men scurried to uncouple cars and the fireman frantically shoveled coal. Campbell had come from the office and helped get Serena into the coach and lay her across a seat. Pemberton told the highlander to call the hospital and have a doctor and ambulance waiting at the depot, then to drive Pemberton’s Packard to the hospital. Campbell left and Pemberton and Serena were alone amidst the shouts of workers and the Shay engine’s gathering racket.

Pemberton sat on the seat edge and pressed a towel against Serena’s groin to try to stanch the bleeding. Serena’s eyes were closed, her face fading to the pallor of marble as the engineer put the reverser into forward. The tumbler shaft turned and set the position of the steam valves. The engineer knocked off the brakes and opened up the throttle. Pemberton listened to the train make its gradations toward motion, steam entering the throttle valve into the admission pipes and into the cylinders before the push of the pistons against the rod, and the rod turning the crankshaft and then the line shaft turning through the universal joints and the pinion gears meshing with the bull gears. Only then the wheels ever so slowly coming alive.

Pemberton opened his eyes and looked out the window and it was as if the train were crossing the bottom of a deep clear lake, everything slowed by the density of water — Campbell entered the office to call the hospital, workers came out of the dining hall to watch the engine and lead car pull away. Chaney emerged from the stable, his half arm flopping uselessly as he ran after the train.

By the time the train pulled into the depot, the towel was saturated. Serena had not made a sound the whole way, and now she’d lapsed into unconsciousness. Two orderlies in white helped Serena off the train and into the waiting ambulance. Pemberton and the hospital doctor got in as well. The doctor, a man in his early eighties known for his bluntness, lifted the soggy towel and cursed.

“Why in God’s name wasn’t she brought sooner?” the doctor said. “She’s going to need blood, a lot of it and fast. What’s her blood type?”

Pemberton did not know and Serena was past telling anyone.

“Same as mine,” Pemberton said.

Once in the hospital emergency room, Pemberton and Serena lay side by side on metal gurneys, thin feather pillows cushioning their heads. The doctor rolled up Pemberton’s sleeve and shunted his forearm with the needle, then did the same to Serena. They were connected now by three feet of rubber hose, the olive-shaped pump blooming in the tubing’s center. The doctor squeezed the pump. Satisfied, he motioned for the nurse to take it and stand in the narrow space between the gurneys.

“Every thirty seconds,” the doctor told her. “Any faster and the vein can collapse.”

The doctor stepped around the gurney to minister to Serena as the nurse squeezed the rubber pump, checked the wall clock until half a minute passed, and squeezed again.

Pemberton raised his shunted arm and gripped the nurse’s wrist with his hand.

“I’ll pump the blood,” he said.

“I don’t think …” the nurse said.

Pemberton tightened his grip, enough that the nurse gasped. She opened her hand and let him take the pump.

Pemberton watched the clock and when fifteen seconds had passed he squeezed the rubber. He did so again, listening for the hiss and suck of his blood passing through the tube. But there was no sound, just as there was no way to see his blood coursing through the dark-gray tubing. Each time he squeezed, Pemberton closed his eyes so he could imagine the blood pulsing from his arm into Serena’s and from there up through the vein and into her heart, imagined the heart itself expanding as it refilled with blood.

Pemberton turned his head toward her. He listened to her soft inhalations and matched his breathing exactly to hers. He became light-headed, no longer able to focus enough to read the clock or follow the words passing between the doctor and nurses. Pemberton squeezed the pump, his hand unable to close completely around it. He listened to his and Serena’s one breath, even as he felt the needle being pulled from his forearm, heard the wheels of Serena’s gurney as it rolled away. He still heard their one breath, the pulsing engine of blood inside their veins.

PEMBERTON WAS STILL on the gurney when he awoke. The doctor loomed above, an orderly beside him.

“Let us help you up,” the doctor said, and the two men raised Pemberton to a sitting position. He felt the room darken for a few moments, then lighten.

“Where is Serena?” he asked. The words came out halting and raspy, as if he had not spoken in months. He directed his eyes toward the clock until he was able to focus enough to read it. Had one been on the wall, he would have checked a calendar to know the day and month. He closed his eyes a few moments and raised forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes and things seemed clearer.

“Where is Serena?” Pemberton said again.

“In the other wing,” the doctor said.

Pemberton gripped the gurney’s edge, prepared to stand up, but the orderly placed a firm hand on Pemberton’s knee.

“Her constitution is quite remarkable,” the doctor said, “so unless something unforeseen occurs, she’ll live. But the baby is dead. And your wife’s uterus, it’s lacerated through the cervix.”

“And that means what?” Pemberton asked.

“That you and she can have no more children.”

“But she will live?”

“Yes,” the doctor said. “She will live.”

The orderly and doctor helped Pemberton off the gurney.

“You gave a lot of blood,” the doctor said. “Too much, so be careful. You could pass out.”

“Which room?” Pemberton asked.

“Forty-one,” the doctor said. “Crenshaw here can go with you.”

“I can find it,” Pemberton said and walked slowly toward the door, past the corner table where nothing now lay.

He stepped out of the emergency room and down the corridor. The hospital’s two wings were connected by the main lobby, and as Pemberton passed through he saw Campbell sitting by the front doorway. The highlander rose from his chair as Pemberton approached.

“Leave the car here for me and take the train back to camp,” Pemberton said. “Make sure the crews are working and then go by the sawmill, make sure there are no problems there.”

Campbell took the Packard’s keys from his pocket. As Pemberton turned to leave Campbell spoke.

“If there’s someone asks about how Mrs. Pemberton and the young one is doing, what do you want me to say?”

“That Mrs. Pemberton is going to be fine.”

Campbell nodded but did not move.

“What else?” Pemberton asked.

“Dr. Carlyle, he rode into town with me,” Campbell said.

Pemberton tried to keep his voice level.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He said he was going to get Mrs. Pemberton some flowers but he ain’t come back.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Three hours.”

“I’ve got some business with him I’ll settle later,” Pemberton said.

“You ain’t the only one,” Campbell said as he reached to open the door.

Pemberton stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Who else?”

“Chaney. He come by a hour ago asking where Dr. Carlyle was.”

Pemberton took his hand off Campbell’s shoulder and the worker went on out the door. Pemberton walked across the lobby and up the opposite corridor, reading the black door numbers until he reached Serena’s room.

She was still unconscious when he came in, so he pulled up a chair beside her bed and waited. As late morning and afternoon passed, Pemberton listened to her breath, watched the slow return of color to her face. The drugs kept Serena in a drifting stupor, her eyes occasionally opening but unfocused. A nurse brought him lunch and then supper. Only when the last sunlight had drained from the room’s one window did Serena’s eyes open and find Pemberton’s. She seemed fully cognizant, which surprised the nurse because the morphine drip was still in her arm. The nurse checked the drip to make sure it was operating and then left. Pemberton turned in his chair to face her. He slid his right hand under Serena’s wrist, let his fingers clasp around it like a bracelet.

She turned her head to better see him, her words a whisper.

“The child is dead?”

“Yes.”

Serena studied Pemberton’s face a few moments.

“What else?”

“We won’t be able to have another child.”

She remained silent a few moments, and Pemberton wondered if the drugs were taking hold again but then Serena spoke.

“Better this way, just us. We should have known so from the very start.”

Pemberton nodded and squeezed Serena’s wrist, felt again the strong pulse of their blood.

V

On an evening three weeks later the sun’s last light soaked into the western ridgetops. Night thickened but offered no stars, only a rising moon pale as bone. Pemberton and Serena ate alone in the office’s back room. Serena had ridden out to supervise the crews for five days now. Her face was haggard evenings when she returned, but the clothes no longer hung loose. She’d taken the eagle with her that morning, which Pemberton believed the surest sign of her recovery.

When they’d finished their coffee, Pemberton pushed back his chair and stood but Serena remained seated.

“I have a bit more work to do tonight.”

“I or we?”

“I,” Serena said.

“And it can’t wait till morning?”

“No, better to go ahead and get it done.”

“You’re not well yet,” Pemberton said. “Not completely.”

Serena rose and came around the table and stood before him. She reached her hand behind Pemberton’s head, clutching his hair as she pressed his mouth to hers. She held the kiss, settled her free hand on his lower back and pressed him closer. A full minute passed before she stepped away.

“Still believe I’m not completely well, Pemberton?”

“I’m convinced,” he said. “But still …”

“Go on to the house,” Serena said. “Chaney will be around if I need help.”

Serena took him by the upper arm, led him toward the office.

“Go on, Pemberton,” she said softly. “I’ll join you in just a little while.”

Chaney waited on the porch. As soon as Pemberton went by, Chaney stepped into the office, where Serena had remained. Pemberton walked past Dr. Carlyle’s house, empty since its former inhabitant was found in the Asheville train station’s bathroom with a peppermint between his death-locked teeth. Pemberton mounted the steps to his house and went inside. A counteroffer for the Jackson County tract lay on the kitchen table. He sat down and began to read.

When an hour had gone by Pemberton left the kitchen and stood on the front porch. The office lights were off, dark in the barn and stable as well. He walked over to the porch edge, stared up the ridge and found Chaney’s stringhouse. It was dark. Just as Pemberton was about to go back inside, the moon emerged from behind a cloud. The first full moon of October, what the mountaineers called a hunter’s moon, and at the same moment a stooped figure emerged on Chaney’s porch like something rising out of deep water. The old woman faced not toward the camp but westward.

Serena returned at dawn. She undressed and got in bed, pressed her body against Pemberton’s. He felt the night’s chill in the hand she rested on his side. Serena’s lips lightly touched his, then she settled her head into the feather pillow and slept.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON Sheriff McDowell knocked on the office door and waited for Pemberton to acknowledge him before entering. Pemberton motioned for the sheriff to come in. He did not offer the man a seat, nor did the sheriff ask for one.

“What brings you to the camp that a telephone call couldn’t convey, Sheriff McDowell?” Pemberton said, looking over at the clock for emphasis. “I’ve got too much work to entertain uninvited guests.”

McDowell did not speak until Pemberton’s gaze again focused on him.

“Sarah Harmon and her son were found in the river this morning.”

The sheriff’s eyes absorbed Pemberton’s surprise.

The only sound for a few moments was the Franklin clock ticking on the credenza.

“So they drowned?” Pemberton asked.

“The mother did, or so Saul Parton claims, though he’s not filling out his coroner’s report until someone from Raleigh has a look at her.”

“And the child?”

“His throat was cut. Left to right, so whoever did it was a lefty.”

Pemberton told himself not to look in the direction of the gun rack until McDowell was out of the office. What else not to do, he asked himself, but could think of nothing else. He checked the clock but the minute hand had not moved.

“How long were the bodies in the water?” Pemberton said.

“Parton believes since around midnight.”

“Perhaps the river caused the cut throat,” Pemberton said. “That river is rocky and fast. A body could be tumbled about, cut by a sharp rock.”

The sheriff looked at the floor a few moments as if studying the grain of the wood. He slowly raised his eyes to look directly at Pemberton.

“Do you think we’re utter fools down here?” McDowell said. “Or just so afraid we’ll let you do anything?”

Pemberton resisted the urge to answer.

“I went over to Asheville last week,” McDowell continued. “It’s not my jurisdiction but I talked to the coroner about Carlyle. He said once he got Carlyle’s clothes off he found five possible causes of death. Whoever killed Carlyle had it in for him. I can’t do anything about Abe Harmon or Buchanan or Carlyle, but I vow I’ll do something about the murder of a mother and her child.”

McDowell paused, his voice softer, more reflective.

“There’s something about it,” he said, “seeing a child laid out in a morgue. It takes root in the mind and nothing can get it out.”

McDowell splayed his fingers and ran them through his hair, revealing a few streaks of silver Pemberton had not noticed before. He had no idea how old the man was, though he would have guessed forty-five, maybe fifty.

“When was the last time you saw that child?” McDowell asked, looking at Pemberton now.

“Are you expecting me to say last night, Sheriff?”

McDowell waited.

“June. She brought him to one of Bolick’s services.”

“I seen him about that time as well. He’d grown a lot since then. His face had filled out more, become a lot more like yours.”

McDowell paused, then stared into Pemberton’s eyes as if trying to look through them deep into the brain that lay behind.

“The eye color too,” he said softly, “not blue like his mama’s but molasses brown, not a whit’s difference between that child’s eyes and the eyes I’m looking at right now.”

“I’ve got work to do, Sheriff,” Pemberton said. He peered at an invoice on the desk, raised it slightly as if to better read the numbers.

“I measured a boot print left on the sandbar,” McDowell said. “A distinctive type of boot from the narrow toe, nothing you’d buy around here. From the size and shape I’m betting it’s a woman’s. Now all I’ve got to do is find my Cinderella.”

Pemberton did not raise his eyes from the invoice but knew the sheriff watched for a reaction. After a few more moments McDowell turned and walked out the door. Pemberton watched from his window as the sheriff got in his car and drove back across the ridge toward Waynesville. He locked the office door and went to the gun rack, opened the drawer beneath the mounted rifles.

The hunting knife was in the same place as before, but when he pulled it from the sheath blood stained the blade. The blood was black and appeared to be clotted, but when Pemberton scratched a fleck free and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, he felt a residue of moisture.

The phone rang and Pemberton picked it up. Campbell was calling from the sawmill. Almost all the train cars had been loaded. Pemberton’s voice seemed hardly a part of him as he told Campbell he’d be there in a few minutes.

He hung up the phone. The knife lay on the desk, and Pemberton picked it up.

He considered taking the knife to the sawmill and throwing it in the splash pond. He realized that for the first time in memory he felt vulnerable, almost afraid. For a few moments he did nothing. Then Pemberton rubbed the blade clean with a handkerchief, slid the knife in the sheath, and returned it to the gun rack’s drawer.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

The story “Speckled Trout,” which won a 2005 O. Henry Award, was later altered and extended to become the 2006 novel The World Made Straight. What follows is the story in its original form.