Ron Rash - Serena

"I've got my own ideas about why she'd do this, but I'd be interested in yours."

"I think it's because I could give him the one thing that she couldn't," Rachel said.

The sheriff gave a nod so slight it seemed to Rachel more an acknowledgment that he'd heard her than a sign of agreement. He turned back around, seemingly lost in his own musings. Somewhere in the trees Rachel heard a yellowhammer tapping at a tree. It started up, then paused, then started again, like someone knocking on a door and waiting for a response.

"You're sure she's dead?" Rachel said, "not just hurt bad?"

"She's dead."

They did not speak for a few moments. Jacob fussed again but when Rachel checked his swaddling it was dry.

"If he's hungry I can get out and give you some privacy," Sheriff McDowell said.

"It's too soon for him to be hungry. He's just put out because I forgot to bring him some play-pretties."

"We'll stay here a couple more minutes," McDowell said, checking his watch, "just to be sure we weren't followed. Then we can walk down to Kephart's place. It's not far."

Jacob fussed some more, and she took the sugar teat from the carpetbag, put it in his mouth. The child calmed, a soft kissing sound as he worked the cheesecloth and sugar between his gums.

"What it was that happened," Rachel asked. "They done it to her in her house?"

"Yes."

Rachel thought about Widow Jenkins, how the old woman had loved this child in her arms. As far as Rachel knew, the one other person in the world who loved him. She thought of the old woman in her chair by the hearth, knitting or just watching the fire and hearing a knock on the door and probably thinking it could only be Rachel, thinking that maybe Jacob had the flux or a fever and Rachel needed her help.

"They had no cause to kill her," Rachel said, as much to herself as to Sheriff McDowell.

"No, they didn't," the sheriff replied, and reached for his door handle. "We can go now."

McDowell carried the carpetbag and Rachel carried the child. The trail was steep and narrow, and she watched for roots that could send her and Jacob sprawling. Purple-tinged pokeberry clustered beside the path, the berries shiny-dark as water beetles. Come the first frost, Rachel knew the stems would sag and the berries wither. Where will me and this young one be then, she wondered. They crossed a weathered plank that wobbled over a tight rush of whitewater, and the land leveled out.

The cabin was small but well built, the wattle and clay daubing packed with care between the hand-hewn logs, not so different from her and Jacob's cabin. A drift of smoke rose from the corbelled chimney, the door partway open.

"Kephart," the sheriff said, addressing not just the cabin but the nearby woods.

A man Rachel guessed to be in his late sixties appeared in the doorway. He wore denim breeches and a wrinkled chambray work shirt. His gallouses were unstrapped from his shoulders, and a gray stubble showed he hadn't shaved in several days. The skin below his eyes was puffy and jaundiced looking, the eyes themselves bloodshot. Rachel knew from being around her father what that meant.

"I need a favor," Sheriff McDowell said, and nodded toward Rachel and Jacob. "They need to stay here, maybe just till this evening, maybe till morning."

Kephart looked not at Rachel but at the child, who'd fallen back asleep. His tan weathered face revealed neither pleasure nor irritation as he nodded and said all right. Sheriff McDowell stepped onto the porch and set the carpetbag down, turned and looked at Rachel.

"I'll get back soon as I can," he said, and walked down the trail and soon disappeared.

"I have a bed you can lay him on if you like," Kephart said after an awkward minute had passed.

Kephart's voice sounded different from any she'd heard before. Flatter, leveled out as if every word had been sanded to a smooth sameness. Rachel wondered where he was from.

"Thank you," Rachel said and followed him into the cabin. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then she saw the bed in the back corner. Rachel laid the child on the bed and opened the carpetbag, removed first Jacob's bottle and then the pins and clean swaddlings. Shadows cloaked the cabin's corners, and Rachel knew that even had the two oil lamps been lit shadows would remain, like a root cellar where so much dark had gathered for so long it could never be gotten completely rid of.

"When's the last time you two ate?' Kephart asked.

"I fed him near noon."

"And you?"

It took Rachel a few moments to remember.

"Supper last night."

"I've got beans simmering in that kettle," Kephart said. "That's about all I have but you're welcome to it."

"Beans is fine."

He filled a bowl and placed it on the table with a tin of cornbread.

"You partial to sweet milk or buttermilk?"

"Buttermilk would be my rathering," Rachel said.

Kephart took two pint jelly glasses outside. He came back with one brimmed with buttermilk, the other sweet milk.

"I figure that chap will be hungry again before too long," he said. "I got another pot to put on the fire if you want to warm him a bottle."

"That's alright. He's learned to drink it cold."

"Get your bottle then. I'll pour this in and set it in the springhouse so it'll be ready when he wakes up. Got some graham crackers too if he wants something to nibble."

Rachel did what he suggested, knowing he'd done these things before, maybe a long time ago, but sometime. She wondered where his wife and children were and almost asked.

"Have a seat," Kephart said, and nodded at the table's one chair.

Rachel looked around the room. Another chair and table were in the corner opposite the hearth. On the table was one of the room's oil lamps, beside it paper and a typewriter, the words REMINGTON STANDARD stamped in white beneath the keys. A mason jar filled with a clear liquid was also on the table. The lid lay beside the jar.

While she ate, Kephart took Jacob's bottle to the springhouse. Rachel was ravenous and ate every bean in the bowl. Kephart refilled her jelly jar and she drank half, then crumbled a square of cornbread in it. It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you'd eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did.

When Rachel finished, she went out to the creek with the bowl and spoon. She laid them on the mossy bank and went into the woods to squat. She came back to the creek and cleaned the bowl and spoon with water and sand and brought them inside. Jacob was awake, clutching the bottle to his mouth. Kephart sat on the bed beside the child.

"He wasn't of a mind to wait for you, so I figured I'd oblige him."

Kephart lingered a few moments longer and then went outside. When Jacob finished the bottle, Rachel burped him and changed his swaddlings. The room felt cozy, but it didn't seem right to be in the cabin without Kephart there, so she took Jacob outside. Rachel sat on the lowest porch step and placed the child on the grass. Kephart came and perched on the top step. Rachel tried to think of something to make conversation, hoping it'd take at least some of her thinking off Widow Jenkins, them that would do the same to her and Jacob.

"You live here all the time?" Rachel asked.

"No, I got a place in Bryson City," Kephart answered. "I come out here when I'm tired of being around people."

He hadn't said the words in a mean sort of way, the way he would have if he meant to make her feel bad, but they made Rachel feel even more like a bother. Half an hour passed and they didn't speak again. Then Jacob began to fuss. Rachel checked his swaddlings and set him on her lap, but he continued to whine.