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.”
“We’ve done well then. Twenty men lost out of a hundred and ten. I’ll take that any winter.”
“Especially this one. Campbell claims he’s never seen a worse one.”
Serena’s horse stamped impatiently.
“What brings you out this morning, Pemberton?”
“Harmon’s daughter is in the dining hall. She wants her old job back.”
Serena leaned slightly forward, her left hand stroking the Morgan’s neck. The horse calmed.
“What kind of worker was she in the past?”
“Good.”
“And given no favors because you bedded her?”
“Not then nor will she now.”
“What of her child? I assume that it’s alive.”
“Campbell saw her with a child in town.”
“What I said to her at the depot, about her getting nothing else from us.”
“Yes, same wages as before.”
Serena’s eyes were full upon him now.
“The child. It won’t be living in camp. Correct?”
“She’ll live in her father’s house, not one of ours.”
“And when she works, who will keep the child?”
“Campbell said an aunt will take him in.”
“Him. A male then.”
“Campbell said so.”
The sawing paused for a few moments as the lead chopper placed another wedge behind the blade. The Morgan stamped the ground again and Serena tightened her fist around the reins.
“You be the one to tell her that she’s hired,” Serena said. “Just make it clear she has no claim on us. Her son either. Nothing ours is his. We will have our own child soon enough.”
Pemberton nodded and shifted his weight in the saddle. The crosscut saw resumed, the blade’s rapid back-and-forth like inhalations and exhalations, a sound as if the tree itself were panting.
“One other thing,” Serena said. “Make sure she’s not allowed around our food. She might attempt to poison you. Or me.”
Serena turned the horse and made her way through drifts of fallen wood toward the crew.
When Pemberton got back to the camp he went into the dining hall, where Harmon’s daughter waited. She wore a pair of polished but well-worn black oxford shoes and a blue and white calico dress Pemberton suspected was the nicest piece of clothing she owned. When he’d had his say Pemberton asked if she understood.
“Yes sir,” she said.
“And what happened with your father. You saw it yourself, so you know I was defending myself.”
A few moments of silence passed between them. She finally nodded, not meeting his eyes. Pemberton tried to remember what had attracted him to her in the first place. Perhaps her blue eyes and blond hair. Perhaps that she’d been the only woman at the camp who wasn’t already haggard. Aging in these mountains, especially among the women, happened early. Pemberton had seen women twenty-five here who would pass for fifty in Boston.
She kept her head slightly bowed as he studied her mouth and chin, her waist and the white length of ankle showing below her threadbare dress. Whatever had attracted him to her was now gone. Attraction to every other woman besides Serena as well, he suddenly realized. He could not remember the last time he’d thought of a past consort, or watched a young beauty in Boston or Waynesville and imagined what her body would be like joined to his. He knew such constancy was rare, and before meeting Serena would have believed it impossible. Now it seemed inevitable, wondrous but also disconcerting in its finality.
“You can start tomorrow,” Pemberton said.
She got up to leave and was almost to the door when he stopped her.
“The child, what’s his name?”
“Esau,” she said. “It comes from the Bible.”
Pemberton nodded, and Harmon’s daughter took this as a sign she was excused. The name was typical of the mountain people, particularly in its Old Testament derivation. Campbell’s first name was Ezekiel and there was an Absalom and a Solomon in the camp. But no Lukes or Matthews, which Buchanan had once noted to Dr. Carlyle. Carlyle’s response had been that the highlanders tended to live more by the Old Testament than the New.
THE EAGLE ARRIVED the following week. Serena had notified the depot master it would be coming and must be brought immediately to camp, and so it was, the six-foot-by-six-foot wooden crate and its inhabitant placed on a flatcar with two youths in attendance, the train making a slow trek up from Waynesville as if delivering a visiting dignitary.
The bird’s arrival was an immediate source of rumor and speculation, especially among the crews. The men had come out of the dining hall to watch the two boys lift their charge off the flatcar, the youths solemn and ceremonious as they carried the crate into the stable.
Serena had them place the eagle in the back stall, where Campbell had built a block perch out of wood and steel and sisal rope. Serena then dismissed the two boys and they walked out of the stable side by side, each matching his stride to his fellow’s. They marched back to the waiting train, eyes straight ahead and impervious to the men who implored them to tell what they knew of the eagle’s sudden appearance. The boys climbed onto the flatcar and sat with legs crossed and faces shorn of expression, much in the manner of the Buddha. Several workers had followed them, but the youths ignored all imprecations. Only when the train wheels began rolling did the two boys allow themselves tightlipped condescending smiles aimed at the lesser mortals still clamoring and running after them — the preterite who could never be entrusted as the guardians of things original and rare.