"He's acting fussy this morning," Rachel said. "I'm of a mind he might be starting to teethe."
"Child, a baby don't teethe till six months," Widow Jenkins scoffed. "It could be the colic or the rash or the ragweed. There's many a thing to make a young one like this feel out of sorts, but it ain't his teeth."
The Widow raised Jacob and peered into the child's face. Gold-wire spectacles made her eyes bulge as if loosed from their sockets.
"I told your daddy to marry again so you'd have a momma, but he wouldn't listen," Widow Jenkins said to Rachel. "If he had you'd know some things about babies, maybe enough to where you'd not have let the first man who gave you a wink and a smile lead you into a fool's paradise. You're still a child and don't know nothing of the world yet, girl."
Rachel stared at the puncheon floor and listened, the way she'd done for two months now. Folks at her Daddy's funeral had told her much the same, as had the granny woman who'd delivered Jacob and women in town who'd never given Rachel any notice before. Telling her for her own good, they all claimed, because they cared about her. Some of them like Widow Jenkins did care, but Rachel knew some just did it for spite. She'd watch their lips turn downward, trying to look sad and serious, but a mean kind of smile would be in their eyes.
Widow Jenkins sat back down in her chair and laid Jacob in her lap.
"A child ought to carry his daddy's name," she said, still speaking like Rachel was five instead of almost seventeen. "That way he'll have a last name and not have to go through his life explaining why he don't."
"He's got a last name, Mrs. Jenkins," Rachel said, lifting her gaze from the floor to meet the older woman's eyes, "and Harmon is as good a one as I know."
For a few moments there was no sound but the fire. A hiss and crackle, then the gray shell of a log collapsing in on itself, spilling a slush of spark and ash beneath the andirons. When Widow Jenkins spoke again, her voice was softer.
"You're right. Harmon is a good name, and an old woman ought not have to be reminded of that."
Rachel took the sugar teat and fresh swaddlings from the tote sack, the glass bottle of milk she'd drawn earlier. She laid them on the table.
"I'll be back soon as I can."
"You having to sell that horse and cow just to get by, and him that's the cause of it richer than a king," Widow Jenkins said sadly. "It's a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming into it. Tears from the very start."
Rachel walked back up the road to the barn and took a step inside. She paused and let her gaze scan the loft and rafters, remembering, as she always did, the bat that had so frightened her years ago. She heard the chickens in the far back clucking in their nesting boxes and reminded herself to gather the eggs soon as she returned. Her eyes adjusted to the barn's darkness, and objects slowly gained form and solidity-a rusting milk can, the sack of lice powder to dust the chickens with, a rotting wagon wheel. She looked up a final time and stepped all the way inside, lifted the saddle and its pad off the rack and went to the middle stall. The draft horse was asleep, his weight shifted so the right hoof was at an angle. Rachel patted his rear haunches to let him know she was there before placing the cabbage sack in the pack. She tethered the mattock to the saddle as well.
"We got us a trip to make Dan," she told the horse.
Rachel didn't take the road past Widow Jenkins' house but instead followed Rudisell Creek down the mountain to where it entered the Pigeon River, the path narrowed by sprawling poke stalks that drooped under the weight of their purple berries and goldenrod bright as caught sunshine. Enough dew yet remained on the leaves to dampen her legs and dress. Rachel knew in the deeper woods the ginseng leaves would soon begin to show their brightness as well. The prettiest time of year, she'd always believed, prettier than fall or even spring when the dogwood branches swayed and brightened as if harboring clouds of white butterflies.
Dan moved with care down the trail, gentle and watchful with Rachel as he'd always been. Her father had bought the horse a year before Rachel was born. Even when he'd been at his drunkest or angriest, her father had never mistreated the animal, never kicked or cursed it, never forgotten to give it feed or water. Selling the horse was another lost link to her father.
She and Dan came to the dirt road and followed the river south toward Waynesville, the sun rising over her right shoulder. A few minutes later Rachel heard an automobile in the distance, her heart stammering when she glanced up and saw the vehicle coming toward her was green. It wasn't the Packard, and she felt ashamed that a part of herself, even now, could have wished it was Mr. Pemberton coming to Colt Ridge to somehow set things right. The same as when she'd gone to the camp's church service the last two Sundays, dawdling outside the dining hall with Jacob in her arms, hoping Mr. Pemberton would walk by.
The automobile sputtered past, leaving its wake of gray dust. Soon she passed a stone farmhouse, hearth smoke wisping from the chimney, in the fields plump heads of cabbage and corn stalks taller than she was, closer to the road pumpkins and squash brightening a smother of weeds. All of which promised the kind of harvest they might have had on Colt Ridge come fall if her father had lived long enough to tend his crops. A wagon came the other direction, two children dangling their legs off the back. They stared at Rachel gravely, as if sensing all that had befallen her in the last months. The road leveled and nudged close to the Pigeon River. In the morning's slanted light, the river gleamed like a vein of flowing gold. Fool's gold, she thought.
Rachel remembered the previous August, how at noon-dinner time she'd take a meal to Mr. Pemberton's house and Joel Vaughn, who'd grown up with her on Colt Ridge, would be waiting on the porch. Joel's job was to make sure no one interrupted her and Mr. Pemberton, and though Joel never said a word there'd always be a troubled look on his face when he opened the front door. Mr. Pemberton was always in the back room, and as Rachel walked through the house she looked around at the electric lights and the ice box and fancy table and cushioned chairs. Being in a place so wondrous, even for just a half hour, made her feel the same way as when she pored over the Sears wish book. Only better, because it wasn't a picture or description but the very things themselves. But that wasn't what had brought her to Mr. Pemberton's bed. He'd made notice of her, chosen Rachel over the other girls in the camp, including her friends Bonny and Rebecca, who were young like her. Rachel had believed she was in love, though since he'd been the first man she'd ever kissed, much less lain down with, how could she know. Rachel thought how maybe the Widow was right. If she'd had a mother who'd not left when Rachel was five, maybe she would have known better.
But maybe not, Rachel told herself. After all, she'd ignored the warning looks of not only Joel but also Mr. Campbell, who'd shook his head No at Rachel when he saw her going to the house with the tray one noon. Rachel had just smiled back at the hard stares the older women in the kitchen gave her each time she returned. When one of the men who cooked said something smart to her like don't look like he had much of an appetite today, for food at least, she'd blush and lower her eyes, but even then a part of her felt proud all the same. It was no different than when Bonny or Rebecca whispered Your hair's mussed up, and the three of them giggled like they were back in grammar school and a boy had tried to kiss one of them.