The congregation shifted uneasily on the benches, many of their eyes on Pemberton as Bolick turned the Bible’s pages in search of a passage. When Pemberton realized he was being watched, he made his way to the back of the hall, where the kitchen workers waited.
The cook and server went on to the kitchen, but Pemberton lingered a few more moments. Bolick found the passage he’d been searching for and looked out at his audience, settling his eyes on Pemberton. For a few seconds the only sound was a spring-back knife’s soft click as a worker prepared to pare his nails while listening.
“From the book of Obadiah,” Bolick said, and began reading. “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the cleft of the rock, whose habitation is high, that saith in his heart, who shall bring me down.”
Bolick closed the Bible with a slow and profound delicacy, as if the ink were fresh-pressed on the onionskin and susceptible to smearing.
“The word of the Lord,” Bolick said.
Pemberton went to the house with his dinner. He set the dishes on the table and stepped into the bedroom. Serena was asleep and Pemberton did not wake her. Instead, he softly closed the bedroom door. He did not go to the kitchen and eat, instead went to the hall closet and opened his father’s trunk, rummaged through the stocks and bonds and various other legal documents until he found the cowhide-covered photograph album his aunt had insisted he pack as well. He shut the trunk softly and walked down to the office.
Campbell still worked on the payroll but left without a word when Pemberton said he wished to be alone. Embers glowed in the hearth and Pemberton set kindling and a log on the andirons and felt the heat strengthen against his back. He opened the album, the desiccated binding creaking with each turned cardboard page. When he found a photograph of himself at ten months, he stopped turning.
WITH THE PURCHASE of the second skidder, the men now worked westward on two fronts. By June the northern crews had crossed Davidson Branch and made their way to Shanty Mountain while the crews to the south followed Straight Creek west. Recent rains had slowed the progress, not just forcing the men to slog through mud but causing more accidents as well.
On Monday morning Serena mounted the Morgan and rode out to check the work on the northern front. Chaney’s crew was cutting timber on the slope after a night of heavy rain. The slanting ground made footing tenuous. To make matters more difficult, Chaney’s crew had a new lead chopper, a boy of seventeen stout enough but inexperienced. Chaney was showing where to make the undercut when the boy slipped as the ax swung forward.
The blade’s entry made a soft, fleshy sound as Chaney and his left hand parted. The hand fell first, hitting the ground palm down, fingers curling inward like the legs of a dying spider. Chaney backed up and leaned against the white oak, blood leaping from the upraised wrist onto his shirt and denim breeches. The other sawyer stared at Chaney’s wrist, then at the severed hand as if unable to reconcile the two. The boy let the ax handle slip from his hands. The two men appeared incapable of movement, even when Chaney’s legs gave way and he fell sideways into the mud.
Serena dismounted and took off her coat, revealing the condition it had concealed for over a month. She kneeled beside Chaney, quickly stripped the leather string from a boot, and tied it around the man’s wrist. The blood spout became a trickle.
“Get him on the horse,” Serena said.
Two men lifted their wounded foreman and held him upright on the stallion until Serena mounted behind him. She rode back to camp, one arm around Chaney’s waist, pressing the man against her swollen belly.
At camp Campbell and another man lifted Chaney off the horse and carried him into Dr. Carlyle’s caboose. Pemberton came in a few moments later and believed he looked at a dead man. The face was pale as chalk, and Chaney’s eyes rolled as if unmoored, his breathing sharp quick pants. Carlyle emptied a bottle of iodine on the wound. He finished and checked the tourniquet.
“Damn good job whoever tied this,” Carlyle said. He turned to Pemberton. “You’ll have to get him to the hospital quick if you want him to have a chance.” The doctor paused and looked up at Pemberton. “Do you want the bother of that or not?”
“I’ll take him in my car,” Campbell said before Pemberton could reply. Campbell motioned to the worker who’d helped bring Chaney in and they lifted the injured man off the table, set his arms around their shoulders, and began dragging him to the car. Only then did Chaney speak.
“I’ll live,” he gasped. “It’s done been prophesied.”
Pemberton followed the men outside. He looked for Serena and saw her riding back up the ridge where Chaney’s crew waited leaderless. As Pemberton went to get his own horse, he glanced toward the stringhouses and saw Mrs. Chaney on the porch, her clouded eyes turned in the direction of all that had just transpired.
A WEEK LATER Chaney walked back into camp. He had witnessed enough men hurt to know Pemberton Lumber Company took no charity cases, especially when every day men arrived begging for work. Pemberton assumed Chaney had come to get his mother, take her back to their old home on Cove Creek. But when Chaney came to his stringhouse, he did not pause but kept walking out of the camp and across the ridge to where the timber crews worked. For a few moments Pemberton contemplated the possibility that Chaney planned to avenge the loss of his left hand. That would not be a bad thing since it might make other workers more careful in the future.
Pemberton was in the back room with Dr. Carlyle when Chaney returned, walking beside Serena and the stallion. It was almost full dark and Pemberton had been watching out the window for her. She was later than usual. The food had been brought, and Carlyle had already eaten. Serena and Chaney walked toward the stable, Chaney adjusting his gait so he stayed between the saddle and the horse’s rump.
They came out a few minutes later, Chaney still lagging behind Serena in the manner of a dog taught to heel. She spoke briefly to the man, who then walked toward the stringhouse where his mother was.
“We need to keep Chaney on the payroll,” Serena said as she sat down at the dinner table.
“What good will he do for us with just one hand?” Pemberton asked.
“Anything I bid him do.”
Dr. Carlyle looked up from his supper.
“Because you saved his life?” he asked. “As one who has saved numerous lives, dear lady, I can assure you such gratitude is fleeting.”
“Not in this instance,” Serena said. “His mother prophesied a time when he would lose much but be saved.”
Carlyle smiled.
“No doubt a reference to some brush arbor meeting where his soul would be saved for the contents of his billfold.”
“Saved by a woman,” Serena added, “and thus honor bound to protect that woman and do her bidding the rest of his life.”
“And you believe you are that woman?” Dr. Carlyle said. “I assumed you one to deny belief in augury.”
“I don’t believe in it,” Serena said, “but Chaney does.”
IV
In her eighth month Serena awoke with pain in her lower abdomen. Pemberton found Carlyle in the caboose ministering to a worker who had a three-inch splinter embedded in the sclera of his eye. The doctor used a pair of tweezers to work the splinter free, washed the wound out with disinfectant, and sent the man back to his crew.
“Probably something has not lain on her stomach well,” Carlyle said as they walked to the house.
Chaney waited on the porch, Serena’s horse saddled and tethered to the lower banister.
“Mrs. Pemberton will be staying in today,” Pemberton said.