Ron Rash: Serena

They passed below a row of three dozen stringhouses set precariously on Bent Knob Ridge, their foundations propped by ragged locust poles. The stringhouses resembled cheap wooden boxcars, not just in size and appearance but also in the way cable connected each in the line to the other. On top of every one was an iron rung. Axes had gouged splintery holes through the wood to serve as windows.

"The workers' housing, I assume," Serena said.

"Yes, as soon as we're finished here we can set them on flat cars and haul them to our new site. The workers don't even have to move their belongings."

"Very efficient." Serena said, nodding as she spoke. "How much is the rent?"

"Eight dollars a month."

"And their pay."

"Two dollars a day right now, but Buchanan wants to raise it to two-ten."

"Why?"

"He claims we'll lose good men to other camps," Pemberton said as he pulled up in front of their house. "I say these government land grabs mean a surplus of workers, especially if Champion sells out."

"What does Wilkie think?"

"Wilkie agrees with me," Pemberton said. "He says the one good thing about this stock market crash is cheaper labor."

"I agree with you and Wilkie," Serena said.

A youth named Joel Vaughn waited on the front steps, beside him a cardboard box, in it meat and bread and cheese, a bottle of red wine. As Pemberton and Serena got out of the Packard, Vaughn stood and doffed his wool golf cap, revealing a thatch of carrot-colored hair. A mind equally bright, Campbell had quickly realized, and trusted Vaughn with responsibilities usually given to much older workers, including, as evidenced by the scraped forearms and purple swelling on his freckled left cheekbone, tussles with a horse as spirited as it was valuable. Vaughn retrieved the grips from the car and followed Pemberton and his bride onto the porch. Pemberton opened the door and nodded for the youth to enter first.

"I'd carry you over the threshold," Pemberton said, "but for the arm."

Serena smiled. "Don't worry, Pemberton. I can manage."

She stepped inside and he followed. Serena examined the light switch a moment as if skeptical it would work. Then she turned it on.

In the front room were two Coxwell chairs set in front of the fireplace, off to the left a small kitchen with its Homestead stove and ice box. A poplar table with four cane-bottom chairs stood beside 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 on the wrought iron bed, tested the mattress's firmness and seemed satisfied. Vaughn appeared at the doorway with the steamer trunk, which had belonged to Pemberton's father.

"Put it in the hall closet," Pemberton said.

Vaughn did as he was told and went out, came back with the food and wine.

"Mr. Buchanan thought you might be needful of something to eat."

"Put it on the table," 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 Doctor Cheney?"

"No," Serena said. "I'll dress it for him."

After Vaughn left, Serena stepped closer to the bedroom window and peered out at the stringhouses.

"Do the workers have electricity?"

"Just in the dining hall."

"It's best that way," Serena said, stepping back into the room's center. "Not just the money saved but for the men. They'll work harder if they live like Spartans."

Pemberton raised an open palm toward the room's bare rough-board walls.

"This is rather Spartan as well."

"Money freed to buy more timber tracts," Serena said. "If we'd wished our wealth spent otherwise we'd have stayed in Boston."

"True enough."

"Who lives next door?"

" Campbell. He's as valuable as any man in this camp. He can book keep, repair anything, and uses a Gunter's chain as well as any of the surveyors."

"And the last house?"

"Doctor Cheney."

"The wag from Wild Hog Gap."

"The only doctor we could get to live out here. Even to get him we had to offer a house and an automobile."

Serena opened the room's chifforobe and looked inside, perused the closet as well.

"And what of my wedding present, Pemberton?"

"In the stable."

"I've never seen a white Arabian."

"It's an impressive horse," Pemberton said.

"I'll take him for a ride first thing tomorrow."

When Vaughn had delivered the iodine and gauze, Serena sat on the bed and unbuttoned Pemberton's shirt, removed the weapon wedged behind his belt. She took the knife from the sheath, examined the dried blood on the blade before placing it on the bedside table. Serena opened the bottle of iodine.

"How does it feel, fighting a man like that? With a knife I mean. Is it like fencing or…more intimate."

Pemberton tried to think of how what he'd felt could be put in words.

"I don't know," he finally said, "except it feels utterly real and utterly unreal at the same time."

Serena gripped his arm harder but her voice softened.

"This will sting," she said, and slowly poured the auburn-colored liquid into the wound. "The cause of your notoriety in Boston, did that knife fight feel the same as the one today?"

"Actually, it was a beer stein in Boston," Pemberton replied. "More of an accident during a bar room brawl."

"The story that I heard involved a knife," Serena said, "and made the victim's demise sound anything but accidental."

As Serena paused to dab iodine leaking from the wound, Pemberton wondered if he detected a slight disappointment in Serena's tone or only imagined it.

"But this one, hardly an accident," Serena noted. "Myself will grip the sword-yea, though I die."

"I'm afraid I don't recognize the quote," Pemberton said. "I'm not the scholar you are."

"No matter. It's a maxim best learned the way you did, not from a book."

As Serena loosed gauze from its wooden spool, Pemberton smiled.

"Who knows?" he said lightly. "In a place this primitive I suspect knife-wielding is not the purview of one sex. You may do battle with some snuff-breathed harridan and learn the same way I have."

"I would do it," Serena said, her voice measured as she spoke, "if for no other reason than to share what you felt today. That's what I want, everything a part of you also a part of me."

Pemberton watched the cloth thicken as Serena wrapped it around his forearm, iodine soaking through the first layers, then blotted by the dressing. He remembered the Back Bay dinner party of a month ago when Mrs. Lowell, the hostess, came up to him. There's a woman here who wishes to be introduced to you, Mr. Pemberton, the matron had said. I should caution you, though. She has frightened off every other bachelor in Boston . Pemberton recalled how he'd assured the matron he was not a man easily frightened, that perhaps the woman in question might need to be cautioned about him as well. Mrs. Lowell had noted the justness of Pemberton's comment, matching his smile as she took his forearm. Let us go meet her then. Just remember you were warned, just as I've warned her.

"There," Serena said when she'd finished. "Three days and it should be healed."

Serena picked up the knife and took it into the kitchen, cleaned the blade with water and a cloth. She dried the knife and returned to the back room.

"I'll take a whetstone to the blade tomorrow," Serena said, setting the knife on the bedside table. "It's a weapon worthy of a man like you, and built to last a lifetime."

"To extend a lifetime as well," Pemberton noted, "as it has so fortuitously shown."

"Perhaps it shall again, so keep it close."

"I'll keep it in the office," Pemberton promised.

Serena sat down in a ladderback chair opposite the bed and pulled off her jodhpurs. She undressed, not looking at what she unfastened and let fall to the floor. All the while her eyes were fixed upon Pemberton. She took off her underclothing and stood before him. 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.