Ron Rash - Serena

The older woman came to her, the toy train engine and sock of marbles in her veiny hands.

"Don't forget these," Mrs. Sloan said, stuffing the toy train engine in the sock as well and knotting it. "He'd be put out something awful if you left them."

Rachel placed the sock in her dress pocket, and she and Jacob were quickly out of the house and crossing the tracks to the boxcar, the best place to wait because she could see both the house and the depot. See but not be seen, Rachel told herself. She crossed the last rail and looked over her shoulder toward town and saw no one. Jacob whimpered.

"Hush now," she said.

Rachel stepped quickly through the blackberry bushes, not pausing when briars clutched her dress. She lifted Jacob and the carpetbag into the boxcar before getting in herself.

At first there was only gloaming. As her eyes slowly adjusted, Rachel saw a mattress made from corn shucks stuffed between two rotting quilts, beside it yellowing newspapers and an empty sardine can. Whoever he is, he'll not come back till it cools off some, Rachel thought. She set Jacob and the carpetbag down, then stepped to the back of the boxcar and pinched the quilts between her thumbs and forefingers to slide the makeshift mattress closer to the doorway. A gray blur shot out of the pallet, its body and long tail brushing an ankle as it passed between her legs and then on through the doorway. A rustling in the briars and then nothing.

Rachel prodded the pallet with her shoe. Nothing else emerged and she slid the pallet the rest of the way. She sat down, the shucks rasping as she leaned and lifted Jacob onto her lap. The boxcar rattled as a freight train passed, moving so slow Rachel could read the words and numbers on each car as it passed wide and high before her. Several of the freight cars' sliding metal doors were open. From one of them a hobo peered out.

After the caboose glided by, Rachel fixed her gaze on the house. Soon Mrs. Sloan came out, a suitcase in her hand. The old woman walked with a steadfast stride toward town. A few minutes later a man went inside the depot, came out and walked toward town as well. The day had been warm for early fall, and the boxcar had stored the day's heat like a kiln. Beads of sweat formed on Rachel's brow, the dress cloth beginning to stick between her shoulder blades.

Jacob leaned forward and pointed at a lizard clinging to the doorway. The lizard's back and legs were as bright green as a cinnamon fern. On its throat a red bubble of flesh expanded and contracted, but otherwise the creature lay completely still.

"Pretty ain't it," Rachel told Jacob.

After a few moments, the lizard crawled farther up the rusty metal and paused again. The lizard's green dulled to a light brown, and it soon blended so perfectly with the rusty metal as to be invisible. There's a trick we could sure use, Rachel thought.

Jacob settled deeper into her lap, sleepy enough not to fret about the boxcar's heat. His breath took on the cadence of sleep, and not long after that twilight settled in. A pale swollen moon appeared in the sky, crowding out the lesser stars as it pressed closer to earth. A thin whiteness spread over the ground like hoarfrost. Another freight train passed. Less than an hour, Rachel told herself, eyes shifting from the house to the depot.

The boxcar finally began to cool, the day's heat leaking away with the light. A man and woman stepped into the depot, came out and sat on the wooden bench to await the train. Soon several other travelers joined the couple. Lights flickered on and cast the depot in a yellow light. No one approached Mrs. Sloan's house. Something rustled near the boxcar door, and Rachel saw a rat's snout tentatively emerge.

"Shoo," she said and pulled a shuck from the pallet to throw if the rodent ventured closer, but at the sound of her voice it disappeared back into the undergrowth.

Jacob woke and began to fuss. Rachel checked his swaddlings but they were dry. Hungry then, she told herself, and set the child on the pallet. She took one of the graham crackers from the carpetbag and gave it to him. The moonlight continued to thicken, the train tracks gleaming as if gilded in silver. Not a wisp of cloud passed overhead. Rachel looked up at the sky and saw the moon was no longer white but deepening into an orange hue.

A smudge of light came on in the back room of Mrs. Sloan's house. The light disappeared and Rachel hoped it might be her imagining, but then it was in the kitchen, moving around like foxfire before briefly reappearing in the back room. Rachel squinted her eyes and watched for the glow of a flashlight crossing Mrs. Sloan's yard, if not that for some denser shadow.

But she saw nothing. Galloway had vanished as completely as the light held in his hand. Could be walking straight toward town or the depot or straight toward us, Rachel thought, and moved Jacob and herself deeper into the boxcar. Minutes passed though she'd not have believed so except she heard the passenger train coming. Rachel gathered up the carpetbag and Jacob. Briars grabbed her legs, and each time there was an instant she thought Galloway had her.

Rachel finally felt cinders beneath her feet. She did not step onto the glimmering tracks but walked the edge. The train whistle blew and she took a few more steps. A big oak rose near the depot, and its limbs snared some of the moonlight. Rachel stood beneath where the dark pooled, a few yards outside the depot light's glow. She studied the travelers gathered on the platform, looked through one of the depot's wide windows but saw no one. The train pulled into the station and shuddered to a stop.

Two men got off but that was all, and soon the train began to load its new passengers. Rachel took the tickets from her pocket and moved closer, almost ready to step onto the depot's porch when something stopped her. It was not something seen but something sensed, like the time as a child when she'd started to lift the spring guard and stopped, a black widow spider big as a quarter where her fingers would have gone. The last passengers boarded, but still Rachel did not move. Then she saw him, in the shadows on the depot's far side. The last ticket holder boarded and the train pulled away, the flagman's brass lantern sweeping back and forth in farewell.

Rachel turned from the depot's glow and could not see her feet in the oak's thick shade. If I trip and fall and this young one starts squalling, we'll be goners for sure, Rachel thought. Imaginings began to get the best of her, thinking how one wrong step to the left or right and there could be a ditch or a rusty stob that would trip her. You've got to follow the same path you come here on, she told herself. She took a step into the darkness because there was no choice. Rachel took another step, the foot set tentatively before her. Like crossing a pond on thin ice, she thought, and it seemed a part of her listened for that first crackle. Seven steps and she was out of the tree's shade.

Rachel walked on toward the boxcar, quicker now, hunched low so that she was little taller than the briars and weeds. The only thing she could think to do was try to get to town and find the town's lawman, but Sheriff McDowell had warned her to trust no one but his cousin, even if that someone wore a badge. The moonlight was so stark and intense now she could see Mrs. Sloan's house clearly. She remembered then that it was October, remembered how her father called this a hunter's moon and claimed blood on the moon meant blood on the land. Rachel walked faster and got herself and Jacob into the boxcar as quickly as she could, unable to shake the feeling that Mrs. Pemberton and Galloway held sway over even the moon and stars and clouds. That they'd waited for this night and this night alone to find her and Jacob. Don't look up and see it, she told herself. Rachel pushed farther into the boxcar, clutched Jacob more tightly in her arms.