Ron Rash - Chemistry and Other Stories

Pemberton took Serena’s hand for a moment, felt the calluses on her upper palm, the simple gold wedding band Serena wore in lieu of a diamond. Then he stood and retrieved two grips from the overhead compartment. He handed them to the porter, who stepped back and followed as Pemberton led his bride down the aisle and the steel steps to the platform. There was a gap of two feet between the metal and wood. Serena did not reach for his hand as she stepped onto the planks. Buchanan gave a stiff formal bow. Peabody nodded and tipped his fedora.

Pemberton knew aspects of her appearance surprised his partners, not just the lack of a cloche hat and dress but her hair, blond and thick, cut short in a bob — distinctly feminine yet also austere.

Serena went to the older man and held out her hand. Pemberton noted that at five-seven his wife stood tall as Peabody.

“Peabody, I assume.”

“Yes, yes, I am,” he stammered.

“Serena Pemberton,” she said, her hand extended so that he had no choice but to take it. She turned to the younger man.

“And Buchanan. Correct?”

“Yes,” Buchanan said. He took her proffered hand and cupped it awkwardly in his.

Serena smiled slightly.

“Don’t you know how to properly shake hands, Mr. Buchanan?”

Pemberton watched as Buchanan blushed and corrected his grip, withdrawing his hand quickly as he could. In the two years Boston Timber Company had been here, Buchanan’s wife had come only once, arriving in a taffeta gown that was soiled before she made it to her husband’s house on the other side of the street. She spent one night and left on the morning train. Now Buchanan and his wife met once a month for a weekend in Richmond, as far south as Mrs. Buchanan would travel. Peabody’s wife had never left Boston.

His partners appeared incapable of speech. Their eyes shifted to peruse the leather chaps Serena wore, the oxford shirt and black jodhpurs. Her British inflection and erect carriage confirmed that, as had their wives, she’d attended private boarding school in the Northeast. But Serena had been born in Colorado, the child of a timberman who taught her to shake hands and look men in the eye as well as to ride and hunt. The porter laid the grips on the platform and went back for the two trunks stored in the back train car.

“Any sighting of my mountain lion?” Pemberton asked.

“No,” Buchanan said. “A worker found tracks on Laurel Creek he thought belonged to one, but they were a bobcat’s.”

Peabody turned to Serena.

“Your husband hopes to kill the last panther in these mountains, but if there is one left, it’s not being very cooperative.”

“We will find it, won’t we, Pemberton?” Serena said.

Pemberton concurred, encircling his bride with an arm.

Serena looked over at the father and daughter, who now sat on the bench together, watchful and silent as actors awaiting their cues.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

The daughter continued to stare at Serena sullenly. It was the father who spoke.

“My business ain’t with you. It’s with him standing there beside you.”

“His business is mine,” Serena said, “just as mine is his.”

“Not this business. It was did before you got here.”

Harmon nodded at his daughter’s belly, then looked back at Serena.

Buchanan and Peabody stared at Pemberton, waiting for him to intervene. The porter set the trunks on the platform. Pemberton gave the man a quarter and dismissed him.

“You’re implying she’s carrying my husband’s child,” Serena said.

“I ain’t implying nothing,” Harmon replied.

“Then you’re a lucky man,” Serena said. “You’ll find no better sire to breed her with.” Serena turned her gaze and words to the daughter on the bench. “But that’s the only one. From now on, what children Pemberton has will be with me.”

Harmon pushed himself fully upright and Pemberton glimpsed the ivory handle of a bowie knife before the coat resettled over it. He wondered how a man like Harmon could possess such a fine weapon. Perhaps it was booty won in a poker game or an heirloom passed down from a more prosperous ancestor. Pemberton leaned and unclasped his calfskin grip, grabbled among its contents for the wedding present Serena had given him. He turned slightly and slipped the elk-bone hunting knife from its sheath. Harmon’s large freckled hand grasped the bench edge. He leaned forward but did not rise.

Several mountaineers watched expressionlessly from the courthouse steps. The only one Pemberton recognized was a crew foreman named Chaney, an older employee who’d spent five years in prison for killing two men in a card game dispute. Chaney shared his stringhouse with his blind mother, a woman given great deference in the camp as an oracle. Pemberton was glad to have him as a witness. The workers already understood Pemberton was as strong as any of them, had learned that last September when he stripped to his waist and helped unload the sawmill’s heaviest machinery. Now he’d give them something besides his strength to respect.

“Let’s go home, Daddy,” the daughter said, and laid her hand on her father’s wrist. Harmon flicked it away as if a bothersome fly and stood up.

“God damn the both of you,” he said.

Harmon opened the frock coat and freed the bowie knife from its leather sheath. The blade caught the late-afternoon sun, and for a moment it appeared the mountaineer held a glistening flame in his hand.

“Go get Sheriff McDowell,” Buchanan yelled toward the courthouse steps, but none of the men moved.

Pemberton unsheathed his knife as well. He felt the elk-bone handle against his palm, its roughness all the better for clasping. For a few moments he relished the knife’s balance and solidity, its blade, hilt, and handle precisely calibrated as the épées he’d fenced with at Princeton.

Buchanan made a move to step between the two men, but Pemberton waved him away with his free hand.

“This is best done now,” Pemberton said to Buchanan. He glanced at Serena. “Better to settle it now, right?”

“Yes,” Serena said. “Settle it now.”

Pemberton took a calculated step toward Harmon. The old man kept the knife head high and pointed toward the sky, and Pemberton knew he had done little fighting with a blade. Pemberton took a step closer and Harmon slashed the air between them. The man’s tobacco-yellowed teeth were clenched, the veins in his neck taut as guy wires. Pemberton kept his knife low and close to his side. He took another step forward and raised his left arm. The bowie knife swept forward but its arc stopped when Harmon’s forearm hit Pemberton’s. Harmon jerked down and the blade sliced Pemberton’s forearm. Pemberton took one final step, the blade flat as he slipped it inside Harmon’s coat and plunged half the blade’s length into the soft flesh above Harmon’s right hip bone. He grabbed Harmon’s shoulder with his free hand for leverage and quickly opened a thin smile across the mountaineer’s stomach. For a second there was no blood.

Harmon’s knife fell clattering onto the platform. The man placed both hands on his stomach and stepped back to the bench, slowly sat down. After a few moments he lifted his hands to see the damage, and his intestines spilled in gray ropes onto his lap. Harmon stared at them, studied the inner workings of his body as if for some further verification of his fate. He raised his head a last time, leaned it back against the depot’s graying boards. Pemberton watched the man’s eyes. The way they clouded over was no different than any other animal he’d watched die.

Serena stood beside him now.

“Your arm,” she said.

Pemberton saw that his poplin shirt was slashed below the elbow, the light blue cloth darkened by blood. Serena unclasped a silver cuff link and rolled up the shirtsleeve, examined the cut across his forearm.