Ron Rash: Serena

Pemberton and Serena stepped off the platform and followed the track to where Wilkie and Buchanan waited. Cinders crunched under their feet, made gray wisps like snuffed matches. Pemberton gave a backward glance and saw Campbell leaning over Harmon's daughter, his hand on her shoulder as he spoke to her. Sheriff McDowell, dressed in his Sunday finery, stood beside the bench as well. He and Campbell helped the girl to her feet and led her into the depot.

"Is my Packard here?" Pemberton asked Buchanan.

Buchanan nodded and Pemberton addressed the baggage boy, who was still on the platform.

"Get the grips and put them in the back seat, then tie the smaller trunk onto the rack. The train can bring the bigger one later."

"Don't you think you'd better speak to the sheriff?" Buchanan asked after he handed Pemberton the Packard's key.

"Why should I explain anything to that son-of-a-bitch?" Pemberton said. "You saw what happened."

He and Serena were getting in the Packard when McDowell walked up briskly behind them. When he turned, Pemberton saw that despite the Sunday finery the sheriff wore his holster. Like so many of the highlanders, the sheriff's age was hard to estimate. Pemberton supposed near fifty, though the sheriff's jet-black hair and taut body befitted a younger man.

"We're going to my office," McDowell said.

"Why?" Pemberton asked. "It was self-defense. A dozen men will verify that."

"I'm charging you with disorderly conduct. That's a ten-dollar fine or a week in jail."

Pemberton pulled out his billfold and handed McDowell two fives.

"We're still going to my office," McDowell said. "You're not leaving Waynesville until you write out a statement attesting you acted in self-defense."

They stood less than a yard apart, neither man stepping back. Pemberton decided a fight wasn't worth it.

"Do you need a statement from me as well?" Serena said.

McDowell looked at Serena as if he hadn't noticed her until now.

"No."

"I would offer you my hand, Sheriff," Serena said, "but from what my husband has told me you probably wouldn't take it."

"He's right," McDowell replied.

"I'll wait for you in the car," Serena told Pemberton.

When Pemberton returned, he got in the Packard and turned the key. He pressed the starter button and released the hand brake, and they began the six-mile drive to the camp. Outside Waynesville, Pemberton slowed as they approached the saw mill's five-acre splash pond, its surface hidden by logs bunched and intertwined like kindling. Pemberton braked and slipped the Packard out of gear but kept the engine running.

"Wilkie wanted the saw mill close to town," Pemberton said. "It wouldn't have been my choice, but it's worked out well enough."

They looked past the splash pond's stalled flotilla of logs awaiting dawn when they'd be untangled and poled onto the log buggy and sawn. Serena gave the mill a cursory look, as well as the small A-frame building Wilkie and Buchanan used as an office. Pemberton pointed to an immense tree rising out of the woods behind the saw mill. An orange growth furred the bark, and the upper branches were withered, unleafed.

"Chestnut blight."

"Good that it takes them years to die completely," Serena said. "That gives us all the time we need, but also a reason to prefer mahogany."

Pemberton let his hand settle on the hard rubber ball topping the gear shift. He put the car into gear and they drove on.

"I'm surprised the roads are paved," Serena said.

"Not many are. This one is, at least for a few miles. The road to Asheville as well. The train would get us to camp quicker, even at fifteen miles an hour, but I can show you our holdings this way."

They were soon out of Waynesville, the land increasingly mountainous, less inhabited, the occasional slant of pasture like green felt woven to a rougher fabric. Almost full summer now, Pemberton realized, the dogwood's white blossoms withered on the ground, the hardwood's branches thickened green. They passed a cabin, in the side yard a woman drawing water from a well. She wore no shoes and the towheaded child beside her wore pants cinched tight by twine.

"These highlanders," Serena said as she looked out the window. "I've read they've been so isolated that their speech harks back to Elizabethan times."

"Buchanan believes so," Pemberton said. "He keeps a journal of such words and phrases."

The land began a steep ascent, and soon there were no more farms. Pressure built in Pemberton's ears and he swallowed. He turned off the blacktop onto a dirt road that curved upward almost a mile before making a final sharp rise. Pemberton stopped the car and they got out. A granite outcrop leaned over the road's right side, water trickling down the rock face. To the left only a long falling away, that and a pale round moon impatient for the night.

Pemberton reached for Serena's hand and they walked to the drop-off's edge. Below, Cove Creek Valley pressed back the mountains, opening a square mile of level land. At the valley's center was the camp, surrounded by a wasteland of stumps and branches. To the left, Half Acre Ridge had been cut bare as well. On the right, the razed lower quarter of Noland Mountain. As it crossed the valley, the railroad track appeared sewn into the lowland like stitches.

"Nine months' work," Pemberton said.

"We'd have done this much in six out west," Serena replied.

"We get four times the amount of rain here. Plus we had to lay down track into the valley."

"That would make a difference," Serena acknowledged. "How far do our holdings go?"

Pemberton pointed north. "The mountain beyond where we're logging now."

"And west."

" Balsam Mountain," Pemberton said, pointing it out as well. "Horse Pen Ridge to the south, and you can see where we quit cutting to the east."

"Thirty-four thousand acres."

"There were seven thousand more east of Waynesville that we've already logged."

"And to the west, Champion Paper owns that?"

"All the way to the Tennessee line," Pemberton said.

"That's the land they're after for the park?"

Pemberton nodded. "And if Champion sells, they'll be coming after our land next."

"But we'll not let them have it," Serena said.

"No, at least not until we're done with it. Harris, our local copper and kaolin magnate, was at the meeting I told you about, and he made clear he's against this national park scheme as much as we are. Not a bad thing to have the wealthiest man in the county on our side."

"Or as a future partner," Serena added.

"You'll like him," Pemberton said. "He's shrewd and he doesn't suffer fools."

Serena touched his shoulder above the wound.

"We need to go and dress your arm."

"A kiss first," Pemberton said, moving their joined hands to the small of Serena's back and pulling her closer.

Serena raised her lips to Pemberton's and pressed them firm against his. Her free hand clutched the back of his head to bring him nearer, a soft exaltation of her breath into his mouth as she unpursed her lips and kissed fiercer, her teeth and tongue touching his. Serena pressed her body fully into his. Incapable of coyness, as always, even the first time they'd met. Pemberton felt again what he'd never known with another woman-a sense of being unshackled into some limitless possibility, limitless though at the same time somehow contained within the two of them.

They got in the Packard and descended into the valley. The road became rockier, the gullies and washouts more pronounced. They drove through a creek clogged with silt, then more woods until the woods were gone and they were driving across the valley floor. There was no road now, just a wide sprawl of mud and dirt. They passed a stable and a shotgun frame building whose front room served as the payroll office, the back room a bar and dining area. To the right were the workers' dining hall and the commissary. They crossed over the railroad track, passing the line of flat cars waiting for morning. A caboose that served as a doctor's office sat next to the track, its rusting wheels sunk into the valley floor.