Ron Rash - Chemistry and Other Stories

The amount gave Hartley pause.

“There ain’t no trick to it? I win I get two weeks’ extra pay.”

“Correct,” Serena said. “And if you lose you work two weeks for free.”

She offered the pad and pen to Hartley, but he did not raise a hand to take it.

A lumberman behind him snickered.

“Perhaps you want me to go first then?”

“Yeah,” Hartley said after a few moments.

Serena turned toward the tree and studied it almost a minute before lifting the pen with her left hand, writing down her number. She tore the page out of the pad and folded it.

“Your turn,” she said and handed pad and pen to Hartley. He walked up to the cane ash to better judge its girth, then came back and looked at the tree awhile longer before writing down his own number.

AT DINNERTIME, EVERY worker in camp gathered in front of the office. The Pembertons and their partners were there as well, watching from the porch as a sawmill boss named Campbell mounted the ash tree’s stump and took a pad from his coat pocket, announced the estimates and then the total board feet.

“Mrs. Pemberton the winner by thirty board feet,” Campbell said, and he stepped down without further comment.

The workers began to disperse up the ridge to their stringhouses, those who had bet and won stepping more lightly than the losers. As Pemberton followed their progress, he saw Mrs. Chaney on her porch. Her white hair was knotted in a tight bun and she wore a black front-buttoned dress Pemberton suspected was sewn in the previous century. She raised her milky eyes and though he knew the old woman was blind, Pemberton could not shake the sense that she was staring directly at him. She can see things other folks can’t, Pemberton had heard one worker tell another, and she don’t need eyes to do it.

“Time for dinner,” Buchanan announced, “and a celebratory drink of our best scotch.”

He and Peabody followed Carlyle and the Pembertons through the office and into the small back room whose sole furnishings were a bar on one wall and a fourteen-foot dining table, a dozen well-padded captain’s chairs surrounding it. They had barely sat down when Campbell, who’d been bent over the adding machine in the office, appeared at the door. He did not speak until Pemberton asked if there was a problem.

“I just need to know if you and Mrs. Pemberton are going to hold Hartley to the bet.” He gestured behind him. “For the payroll.”

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”

“He has a wife and three children.”

The words were delivered with no inflection and Campbell’s face was an absolute blank. Pemberton wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to play poker with this man.

“His having a family is all for the better,” Pemberton said. “It will make a more effective lesson for the other workers.”

“Will he still be a foreman?” Campbell asked.

“What do you think?” Pemberton asked his bride.

“Yes,” Serena replied. “For the next two weeks. Then he’ll be fired. Another lesson for the men.”

Campbell nodded and stepped back into the office, closing the door behind him. A few moments later the clacking, ratchet, and pause of the adding machine resumed.

Pemberton turned to Carlyle.

“I understand we had another rattlesnake bite today.”

“Yes,” the doctor replied. “He’ll live but lose his leg.”

“How many men have been bitten since the camp opened?” Serena asked.

“Five before today,” Buchanan said. “Only one has died, but every man who’s been bitten save one had to be let go.”

The doctor turned to Serena.

“A timber rattlesnake’s venom destroys blood vessels and tissue. Even if the victim is fortunate enough to survive the initial bite, lasting damage is often incurred.”

“I am aware of what happens when someone is bitten by a rattlesnake, Doctor,” Serena said. “Out west we have diamondbacks, which are even deadlier.”

Carlyle gave a brief half bow in Serena’s direction.

“I yield to the lady’s superior knowledge.”

Peabody, who’d seemed lost in some internal reverie, spoke.

“The rattlesnakes cost us money, and not just when a crew is halted by a bite. Men get overcautious, and progress is slowed.”

“The snakes are a problem,” Serena said, “and so they must be killed off, especially in the slash.”

Peabody frowned.

“Yet that is the hardest place to see them, Mrs. Pemberton. They blend so well with brush and limbs as to be invisible.”

“Better eyes are needed then,” Serena said.

“Cold weather will be here soon and will send them up into the rock cliffs,” Buchanan said.

“Until spring,” Peabody said. “Then they’ll be back, every bit as bad as before.”

“Perhaps not,” Serena said.

II

It was in early spring that Harmon’s daughter returned to camp. By then Boston Lumber Company had become Pemberton Lumber Company. Peabody had suffered a stroke during a Christmas visit to New England, allowing the Pembertons to buy his share. In February, Pemberton and Buchanan went bear hunting alone near the headwaters of Hazel Creek. Buchanan had been shot. An accident, Pemberton had claimed, but Sheriff McDowell had been openly skeptical.

It was Campbell who told Pemberton about Harmon’s daughter.

“She’s sitting there in the dining hall,” Campbell said. “She wants her old job in the kitchen back.”

“Where has she been all this time?” Pemberton asked.

“Living with her sister over in Cullowhee the last eight months. But now she’s moved back into her daddy’s place on Colt Ridge.”

“I don’t know where that is,” Pemberton said.

“No more than a mile west of here,” Campbell said.

Pemberton raised himself from his office chair, looked out the window toward the dining hall.

“Does she have a child with her?”

“No,” Campbell said.

“She say anything about having a child?”

“No, but I seen her in town last week and she had one with her.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Looked to be a boy.”

“Who’s going to look after that baby if she’s working?” Pemberton asked.

“Her aunt lives up there on Colt Ridge. She may be of a mind to have her look after it.”

Pemberton turned from the window, sat back down.

“She was a good worker before she left last summer,” Campbell added.

Pemberton looked at the man. Like so many of the highlanders, Campbell tended to never quite come out and say what he meant, or wanted. But Campbell was an intelligent man, brilliant in his way. He could fix any piece of equipment in the camp or at the sawmill, and his suggestions on new hires were invaluable.

“You know she claims that child is mine,” Pemberton said.

Campbell nodded.

“You think I owe her a job because of that, or because I killed her father?”

“That ain’t for me to think,” Campbell said. “All I’m saying is she’s a good worker.”

Pemberton pushed some papers farther toward the center of his desk. “I’ll have to talk with Mrs. Pemberton first.”

“You want me to tell her to stay?” Campbell asked.

“Yes, I’ll be back in an hour.”

Pemberton got his horse and rode up the skid trail that crossed Davidson Branch and on through the stumps and slash to the wood’s edge, where Serena sat on her horse, giving instructions to a cutting crew. The men slumped in various attitudes of repose, but they were attentive. When she’d finished Pemberton rode over to her.

Serena nodded at the crew as they prepared to cut a looming tulip poplar.

“The men say winter’s almost over now.”

“I suspect it is.”