Ron Rash - Serena

Rachel crossed the street. On the other side, a policeman with a nightstick walked his beat. Farther down the block, a group of dispirited men lined up outside the Salvation Army building, waiting to go inside for a meal of beans and white bread, a soiled tick mattress to lay on the building's basement floor. A shock of curly red hair caught her eye at the front of the line. Rachel looked closer and saw the tall gangly body, no gray golf cap but the blue and black mackinaw coat. She hoisted Jacob in her arms and walked quickly down the street, but by the time she got there he was already inside. If it was him, because Rachel was already beginning to doubt what her eyes had seen, or thought they'd seen. She considered trying to get inside, but as she stepped closer to the entrance several of the men in line stared hard at her.

"The women's mission is over on Pike Street," a man with his front teeth missing said gruffly.

Rachel looked across the street at the theatre and checked the big clock at the center of the movie marquee, saw she had to leave or be late for work. As she walked back up the sidewalk toward the café, Rachel told herself she was just imagining things. Passing in front of the Esso station, she stepped over a puddle where gas and water swirled together to make an oily rainbow. The rain began to fall harder, and she quickened her pace, made it to the café door just as the bottom of the sky fell out and the rain came so hard she couldn't see the other side of the street.

"Let me hold Jacob for you so you can get your coat off," Mr. Bjorkland said as she came inside.

Mr. Bjorkland and his wife pronounced the child's name with an extra emphasis on the first syllable, as they did Rachel's own name. The names sounded gentler that way, and it seemed right to Rachel for the Bjorklands to speak in such a way, because it fit the kind of people they were.

"Here, to dry off with," Mrs. Bjorkland said, placing a towel on Rachel's shoulder.

Rachel went on into the kitchen and laid Jacob on the quilt. She opened her pocketbook and set the toy train engine beside the child. As she was about to snap shut her pocketbook, Rachel saw the folded piece of paper with a phone number and address. She opened the note and looked at the small precise handwriting you'd not expect from such a man. How much could you feel for someone you'd only spent six or seven hours with, she wondered. You couldn't call it love, but Rachel knew she felt something more than just gratitude. Rachel remembered the week she'd called the number night after night with no answer until, finally, the operator picked up and told Rachel the party she was trying to get in touch with was deceased. She held the note a moment longer and then placed it in a trashcan. She looked at Jacob. After I'm dead, she told herself, at least there'll be one other in the world who knows what Sheriff McDowell done for us.

She changed Jacob and gave him the warm bottle of milk she knew would soon slip from his mouth. Rachel took the cloth apron off the nail on the wall, tied it around her waist. For a moment she paused, feeling the kitchen's warmth, understanding something placid in it. A dry warm place on a cold rainy day and the smell of food and the slow soft breaths of a child drifting toward sleep. A safe harbor , Rachel told herself, and as she spoke those words to herself she remembered Miss Stephens describing Seattle while pointing to the far right side of the classroom's wide bright map.

Mr. Bjorkland came through the swinging doors.

"Get your dishwater ready," he said. "Saturday nights are the worst, so you'll earn your money this evening."

There was a clatter of pots and pans as Mr. Bjorkland readied the kitchen for the first order. Rachel glanced over at Jacob, his eyes already closed. He'd sleep soon, despite the din of pots and pans, the shouted orders and and all the other commotion.

IT WAS SNIPES' CREW WHO CUT THE LAST TREE. When a thirty-foot hickory succumbed to Ross and Henryson's cross-cut saw, the valley and ridges resembled the skinned hide of some huge animal. The men gathered their saws and wedges, the blocks and axes and go-devils. They paused a moment, then walked a winding path down Shanty Mountain. It was late October, and the workers' multi-hued overalls appeared woven from the valley's last leaves.

Once on level ground, the men stopped to rest beside Rough Fork Creek before trudging the mile back to camp. Stewart kneeled beside the stream and raised a handful of water to his lips, spit it out.

"Tastes like mud."

"Used to be this creek held some of the sweetest water in these parts," Ross said. "The chestnut trees that was up at the spring head give it a taste near sweet as honey."

"Soon you won't find one chestnut in these mountains," Henryson noted, "and there'll be nary a drop of water that sweet again."

For a few moments no one spoke. A flock of goldfinches flew into view, their feathers bright against the valley's floor as they winged southward. They swooped low and the flock contracted, perhaps in memory. For a few seconds they appeared suspended there, then the flock expanded like gold cloth unraveling. They circled the valley once before disappearing over Shanty Mountain, their passage through the charred valley as ephemeral as a candle flame waved over an abyss.

"Sheriff McDowell, he was a good man," Stewart said.

Ross nodded. He took out his papers and tobacco and began rolling a cigarette.

"We'll likely not see one better."

"That's the God's truth," Snipes agreed. "He never gave quarter when near about any other man would of. He fought them to the end."

A bemused smile settled on Henryson's face. He nodded his head as he looked west toward Tennessee, spoke softly.

"And to think the only ones ever to get away from them was a eighteen-year-old girl and a child. That's the wonder of it."

Ross looked up from his cigarette.

"Makes you think God glances this way every once in a while."

"So they got away for sure?" Stewart asked.

"Galloway ain't gone back out after them," Henryson said. "The light's been on at his stringhouse for a week now, and I seen him my ownself yesterday evening at the commissary."

"He wasn't of a mind to explain the whyever of his face being tore up, was he?" Snipes asked.

"No, he wasn't, and folks wasn't lining up to ask him about it neither."

Henryson studied the silted stream for a few moments before turning to Ross.

"Used to be thick with trout too, this here stream. There was many a day you and me took our supper from it. Now you'd not catch a knottyhead."

"There was game too," Ross said, "deer and rabbit and coons."

"Squirrels and bear and beaver and bobcats," Henryson added.

"And panthers," Ross said. "I seen one ten year ago on this very creek, but I'll never see ever a one on it again."

Ross paused and lit his cigarette. He took a deep draw and let the smoke slowly wisp from his mouth.

"And I had my part in the doing of it."

"We had to feed our families," Henryson said.

"Yes, we did," Ross agreed. "What I'm wondering is how we'll feed them once all the trees is cut and the jobs leave."

"At least what critters are left have a place they can run to," Henryson said.

"The park, you mean?" Stewart asked.

"Yes sir. Trouble is they ain't going to let us stay in there with them."

"They told my uncle over on Horsetrough Ridge he's got to be off his land by next spring," Stewart said, "and he's farther on the North Carolina side than us standing right here."

"Running folks out so you can run the critters in," Ross said. "That's a hell of a thing."

Snipes, who'd listened attentively but without comment, put on his glasses and looked out over the valley.