Marshall had run to meet him, swatting the hornets with the paper, picking them off the boy’s skin and hair. He’d been stung several times himself, but Brad had been stung a dozen times, all on the face and neck. Linda hadn’t been home, so Marshall had laid Brad in the backseat of the Plymouth station wagon.
“It’s going to be all right,” he’d reassured his son that morning twenty years earlier. He said those same words now, willing himself and Brad to believe them as they rode together toward a place where the injured came to be healed.
Pemberton’s Bride
I
When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after four months in Boston settling his father’s estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a woman pregnant with Pemberton’s child. She was accompanied by her father, a man named Harmon who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton’s heart.
The conductor shouted “Waynesville” as the train came to a shuddering halt. Pemberton looked out the window and saw his partners on the platform, both dressed in suits to meet his bride of three days, an unexpected bonus from his time in Boston. Buchanan, ever the dandy, had waxed his mustache and oiled his hair. Peabody wore a fedora, as he often did to protect his bald head from the sun. Pemberton took out his gold pocket watch and saw the train was on time to the exact minute. He turned to his bride.
“Not the best place for a honeymoon.”
“It will suit us well enough,” Serena said, leaning into his shoulder. As she did so, he smelled the bright aroma of Ivory soap and remembered tasting that brightness on her skin earlier that morning. A porter came up the aisle, whistling a song Pemberton did not recognize. His gaze returned to the window.
Next to the ticket booth Harmon and his daughter waited, Harmon slouched against the chestnut wall. It struck Pemberton that males in these mountains never stood upright but rather slouched or leaned into some tree or wall whenever possible. If none were available they squatted, buttocks against the backs of their heels. The daughter sat on the bench, her posture upright to better reveal her condition. Pemberton could not recall her first name. He was not surprised to see them. Buchanan had phoned him the night before he left Boston. “Abe Harmon is down here threatening to kill you,” Buchanan had said, “and I suspect you know the reason.”
“Well, my dear,” Pemberton said to his bride. “Our welcoming party includes some of the natives. This will make for a colorful arrival.”
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.