Ron Rash - Serena

"So I see the castle at last," Serena said. "What else did Harris say about them?"

"The Calhouns are old-money Charleston. They summer in Asheville and stay part of the time with the Cecils, which is why we're meeting there. Lowenstein's a businessman in New York City, a very successful one."

"Why is he here?"

"His wife has tuberculosis."

Pemberton paused and watched the workers as they walked into the deeper woods, still watching them as he spoke again.

"As far as Brazil, Harris told me they're only considering investments in this region."

"Then we'll have to change their minds," Serena said.

For a few moments neither of them spoke. The eagle's jesses and swivels rustled as the bird raised its wings. Serena stroked the eagle's keel with the back of her index finger and the bird calmed.

"We lost a man at the saw mill today," Pemberton said. "One of the new hires Scruggs was high on."

"If Scruggs liked him, then it is a loss. He's a good judge of workers," Serena said, pausing as she glanced east towards camp. "Has Campbell shown up?"

"No," Pemberton said. "I sent Vaughn to look for him, but he didn't have any luck."

"Then it's true."

"What's true?"

"A sawyer claimed that he's deserted us," Serena said. "We'll give him until morning before we send Galloway after him."

"Why bring him back? If he doesn't want to work for us, the hell with him."

"He knows who we've paid off and what for," Serena said, "which might become a problem. Besides, the workers need to understand the necessity of loyalty."

"Campbell will keep his mouth shut. If Galloway does bring him back, it'll look to the men like we can't run this place ourselves."

"He won't be bringing him back," Serena said, addressing both Pemberton and the man behind him.

Galloway leaned against a chestnut tree whose trunk outspanned his narrow shoulders. Despite wearing a blue denim shirt, Galloway had been so still Pemberton hadn't seen him. He didn't acknowledge Pemberton, but Pemberton knew Galloway had been listening all the while. Still listening. Pemberton looked down for a moment. His left hand folded inward slightly, and he saw that his thumb rubbed the index finger's gold. An image came to him from his childhood of a turbaned genie rubbing a lamp. He closed the hand completely and looked up.

"All right," Pemberton said.

"MCINTYRE'S doing some better," Stewart said that evening as the men set their tools down for the day, rested a minute before walking the half-mile back to camp. "Me and his missus done what you all suggested."

"Hung him up on a stick?" Ross asked.

"No, got him in the sunlight. He wouldn't leave his bed so me and his missus had to tote him out on it. We set him and that bed in the cow pasture where there ain't no shadows."

"Help any?" Henryson asked.

"Seemed to for a while," Stewart said. "He wasn't talking none but did get to where he'd pick up his axe and cut some firewood, but then a big hoot owl flapped over the pasture and give him the fantods again. He figured it for a portent of something bad a-coming."

Ross cleared his throat and spit, nodded across the quarter-mile of stumps and slash to the south where the Pembertons and Galloway had appeared. Galloway was on foot but the Pembertons rode on horseback, the eagle rigid as a sentinel as it perched on Serena's arm.

"You want a portent of something bad a-coming there it is," Ross said.

Henryson nodded. "They say death always comes in threes, and if that ain't the thing itself then I'm the king of England."

The men paused and stared out at the wasteland and watched the Pembertons and Galloway pass below them, Serena's white gelding gleaming against the stark backdrop, Galloway trailing the procession, his hat brim low against the evening sun.

"Look at them rattles on Stub's hat," Ross said. "They's tilted up like a satinback ready to pour its teeth into you."

Henryson leaned over and raised his pant leg, examined a fist-sized bruise left by a limb whipping against it.

"I'm of a mind it's a good thing for Stub to have them rattles," he said, "especially if they give a little shake once in a while. Leastways you'd know he was around. That fellow could hide from his own shadow."

The men were silent a few moments.

"Campbell didn't come to work today," Henryson said.

"And that ain't like him," Stewart added.

"It ain't like him to haul a grip full of clothes and leave his front door open either," Henryson said, rolling down his pants leg. "Vaughn got up late last night to piss and seen him packing his car and heading out. I reckon Campbell read the writing on the wall. He was ever always a clever man."

"Like I told you," Ross noted, "Campbell's going to look after number one when things get too hot, like any other man."

"I think he was sick of being part of all their meanness," Stewart said. "You could tell he never cottoned to them, even if he never said so."

"They'll not abide his taking off like that," Henryson said, his eyes on the Pembertons and Galloway as he spoke.

"No," Ross agreed. "If you book keep, you know where the checks go, including the ones them senators in Raleigh stuff in their pockets."

"How long you figure her to give Campbell before she sics Stub there after him?" Henryson asked.

"I'd guess a day," Ross said, "just to give some sport to it."

"Some claims Galloway's mama helps him with his murderings," Stewart said. "All she's got to do is get a good look at you. Then she tells Galloway what he needs to do. That's what some say."

"There's some likely in that conclusion," Snipes said, finding a segue into the discussion. "Even your scientists and such argue some folks got uncertain ways of knowing things."

"Which is why you'll not hear me calling him Stub," Ross said to Henryson, "and I'd advise you not to call him that unless you're wanting to join the others he's taken a disliking to."

They watched the party enter the fold of land where Rough Fork Creek flowed into the valley. Their vanishing forms appeared to wobble and haze, miragelike. Then they were gone as if consumed by the air itself.

ON SATURDAY EVENING PEMBERTON FOLLOWED the blacktop through the declining hills and into the Pigeon River valley. A month earlier the last dogwood blossoms had wilted and fallen in the passing forests, the understory now the bright green of dogwood leaves and scrub oak, the denser green of mountain laurel and rhododendron. Pemberton suspected someday soon there'd be a poison to eradicate such valueless trees and shrubs and make it easier to cut and haul out hardwoods.

Pemberton raised his index finger and loosened the silk tie around his collar. He'd dressed up for the first time since his wedding. The white Indian cotton suit lay light over his body, but it still felt constrictive. Yet worth it to see Serena in the same dress she'd worn the first evening they'd met. Now as then the dress seemed in motion as it revealed her body's clefts and curves, its thin green current of silk coursing from neck to ankle. Pemberton placed his right hand on Serena's knee. As he felt the smooth skin beneath the smoothness of the silk, Pemberton tried to make its promise of later pleasure eclipse other concerns. But it didn't. As the road began its ascent from the valley, Pemberton lifted his hand and shifted the Packard into a lower gear.

"I heard McDowell came into the commissary last evening," Pemberton said, keeping his hand on the knob. "He was asking the men about Campbell."

"If he's asking questions, he must not have the answers," Serena replied, turning so her body angled toward Pemberton. "How is Meeks working out?"

"Considering it was his first week, pretty well. He has trouble with the local brogue, but he got the payroll numbers right."