Ron Rash - Serena

Wilkie frowned. "Yet that is the hardest place to see them, Mrs. Pemberton. They blend in so well as to be nearly invisible."

"Better eyes are needed then," Serena said.

"Cold weather will be here soon and send them up to the rock cliffs," Pemberton said. " Galloway says that after the first frost they never venture far from their dens."

"Until spring," Wilkie fretted. "Then they'll be back, every bit as bad as before."

"Perhaps not," Serena said.

WINTER CAME EARLY. ONE SATURDAY MORNING men awoke in their stringhouses to find a half-foot of snow on the ground. Wool union suits and quilts were pulled from beneath beds, the makeshift windows boarded up with oilcloths, scraps of wood and tin, the splayed hides of bear and deer, other pelts including the tattered remains of a wolverine. Smaller gaps were bunged with rags and newspaper, daubs of tobacco and mud. Before stepping outside, the workers donned coats and jackets that had sagged on nails for six months. They walked down to the dining hall tugging at sleeves and re-forming collars. Most wore mackinaws, though others wore wide-pocketed hunting jackets, black frocks or leather jerkins. Some donned what they'd once worn in more prosperous or martial times-lined submarine coats and Chesterfields, moleskin suit tops, coats from the Great War. Some wore what had been passed down from their forbearers, frayed work coats of pre-twentieth-century vintage, including ones made of raccoon and buckskin, even older cloaks whose butternut and blue colors bespoke long-ago divisions in the county.

Snipes' crew worked the crest of Noland Mountain where snow lay deepest and the wind surged across the ridge, bending the upper halves of the biggest hardwoods. Dunbar lost his stetson when a gust sent it sailing off the mountain toward Tennessee, the hat spinning and turning, falling then rising like a wounded bird.

"I should have tied it to my head," Dunbar said glumly. "That hat cost me two dollars."

"Best that you didn't," Ross said. "You might have gone sailing off with it and not touched ground till Knoxville."

The crews ate lunch around a brush pile they'd cleared snow off and set fire to. The men huddled close, not just for warmth but to protect the flames from gusts of snowdrift that stung their faces like sand. They shed their gloves and held their numbed hands toward the fire as if surrendering to it.

"Listen to that wind howl," Dunbar said. "For the sound of it you'd think it could lift this whole mountain."

"Barely October and snow already on the ground," Ross said. "A hard winter's coming."

"My daddy said the wooly worms was wearing a thicker coat all summer and we're sure enough seeing the truth of it," Stewart said. "Daddy allowed that wasn't the only sign. He said the hornets was building their nests close to the ground."

"Them's pagan believings, Stewart," McIntyre said to his congregant, "and you best stay clear of them."

"There's some science in it," Snipes said. "Those wooly worms was growing thicker hair for to stand a hard winter. There ain't no pagan in that. Wooly worms is just using the knowledge God give them. The hornets the same."

"The only signs you need to follow is in the Bible," McIntyre said.

"What about that sign that says No Smoking on the dynamite shed," Ross noted. "You saying we don't need to follow that one?"

"You can make sport of it," McIntyre said to Ross, "but this unnatural weather is a certain sign we're in the last days. The sun will be darkened and the moon shall not give her light ."

McIntyre looked up at the gray-slate sky as if it were some Gnostic text only he was capable of deciphering. He tipped his black preacher's hat heavenward, seemingly satisfied at what he'd seen.

"There will be famines and pestilences coming after that," McIntyre proclaimed. "There'll be nary a plant sprout out of the ground but thorns and you'll have grasshoppers big as rabbits eating everything else, even the wood on your house, and snakes and scorpions and all such terrible things falling out of the sky."

"And you think all this is going to happen any day now?" Ross asked.

"Yes, I do," McIntyre replied. "I'm certain of it as old Noah himself was when he built that boat."

"Then I reckon we better start bringing umbrellas with us to work," Ross said.

"Ain't no we to it," McIntyre said. "I'll be raptured up the day before it starts. It'll be you and the other infidels has to deal with it."

The men watched the fire for a few moments, then Dunbar looked down the south slope at the valley. Snow hid the stumps, but slash piles raised white humps across the landscape like burial mounds.

"Ain't as many critter tracks as you'd think."

"They've hightailed on over to Tennessee," Ross said. "That's the direction we're herding them and they've give up fighting it."

"Maybe they got word of the new park over that way," Snipes said, "figured they'd be left alone there since all the two-legged critters have near been run out."

"They run my uncle off his place last week," Dunbar said. "Said it was eminent domain."

"What does eminent domain mean?" Stewart asked.

"It means you're shit out of luck," Ross said.

"What's the name of the hermit fellow down in Deep Creek," Dunbar asked, "the one who writes the books?"

"Kephart," Ross said.

"Yeah," Dunbar said, "him and that newspaperman in Asheville is hep on this land for the park too. Got some big bugs up in Washington on their side."

"They'll need them," Ross said. "You can count on Harris and the Pembertons fattening every wallet from the county courthouse up to the governor's mansion."

"Not Sheriff McDowell's pocket," Dunbar argued. "He never kowtowed to them from the very start. I helped lay the track, so I was here the morning Sheriff McDowell come and arrested Pemberton for driving too fast through town."

"I never knew you to have witnessed that," Stewart said. "He really threatened to handcuff him?"

"You're damn right he did," Dunbar said. "He was going to haul Pemberton off in his police car too but for Buchanan saying he'd drive him."

"I heard he kept Pemberton in that cell overnight," Snipes said.

"Not overnight," Dunbar replied. "No more than a hour before the magistrate got him out. But he put him in there, and there's not another in this county would of done that."

The flames began to wither, so Ross and Snipes got up and found more wood. They shook free the snow and gently placed the limbs crosswise on what lingered. The fire slowly revived, climbing the wood webbing like a plant ascending a trellis, flames coiling, coming forth then retreating, finally holding fast on one limb, then one more. The men watched the orange blossoming, not moving or speaking until all the branches had caught. McIntyre stared especially intently, as though awaiting another prophecy.

The snow came in thicker flakes, whitening Dunbar 's bare head. He raked his fingers through his hair, held out to the others what flakes clung to his hand.

"It'd be a good day to see that panther's tracks with snow thick and soft as this," Dunbar said.

"If there's really a panther left up here," Ross said. "Nobody's killed one in nine year."

"But folks claims to see it right regular," Stewart noted.

"Revelations says they'll be lions here when the judgment day comes," McIntyre said, still staring into the flames. "Leastways their heads will be. The yonder half of them will have legs no different than human people like us."

"Will they be wearing pants?" Ross asked. "Or is that just the whore of Babylon?"

Stewart stepped away from the fire, making sure the wind was at his back before freeing the copper buttons on his overalls.

"Be careful there, Stewart," Snipes said, "or you'll piss on Dunbar 's hat."