Serena by Ron Rash Page A

pasture, Rachel heard dogs barking somewhere in the far woods and wondered if they were the same ones she’d seen at the cemetery. She walked faster, remembering a story she’d heard about wild dogs carrying off a child set down at a field edge. The child had never been found, only the bloody tatters of its blanket. Rachel watched the tree line until they were out of the pasture. She leaned the mattock against the shed, and they walked on to the Widow’s cabin.
    “I brought you some bloodroot,” Rachel said, “for keeping Jacob the other day.”
    “That’s sweet of you,” Widow Jenkins said, accepting the handful of plants and placing them in the sink.
    “I’ve got witch hazel too if you’ve got need of it.”
    “No, I’ve got a gracious plenty of witch hazel,” the older woman said. “Did you dig up much sang?”
    Rachel opened the sack and showed her the roots.
    “How much you figure it worth when it dries?”
    “I’d reckon Scott to give you ten dollars,” Widow Jenkins said. “Maybe twelve if his lumbago ain’t acting up.”
    “I was thinking it would be more than that,” Rachel said.
    “Before that stock market busted up north it might have been, but cash money’s rare these days as sang.”
    Rachel stared at the hearth a few moments. The Widow always put some apple wood on the fire, not because it burned good but for the rosy color it gave off. A fire with apple wood in it is pretty to look at as any painting, the Widow claimed. Rachel felt the weight of Jacob in her arms and compared it to the cabbage sack’s lightness. The weariness of carrying the child across the pasture and ridge, hardly noticed before, overwhelmed her. She set Jacob on the floor.
    “That’ll barely get us to spring,” Rachel said. “As soon as I wean Jacob, I’ll have to go back to work at the camp.”
    “I don’t think you ought to do that,” Widow Jenkins said. “I don’t even like it that you go down there for Sunday church.”
    “I’ve sold the cow and horse and the saddle,” Rachel said, “and now some varmint’s stealing my eggs. There’s nothing else I can do.”
    “What makes you think you can get your job back when there’s folks lined up for every job in that camp.”
    “I done good work when I was there,” Rachel replied. “They’ll remember that.”
    Widow Jenkins leaned over, grunted softly as she lifted Jacob from the floor. She sat down in the cane back chair she kept by the hearth and settled the child in her lap. The fire’s hue reflected in the old woman’s spectacles, wavering in the glass like rose petals.
    “You think that man is going to help you and this young one out,” Widow Jenkins said, speaking in a soft flat way so it wasn’t like a question or opinion but something that was simply the truth.
    “Even if I was to think that, it don’t matter as far as me going back,” Rachel said. “I got to have some money to live on. That camp’s the only place I know where there might be a job.”
    Widow Jenkins sighed and shifted Jacob deeper into her lap. She stared at the fire, her chapped lips pressed tight as she gave the slightest nod.
    “So you’ll keep Jacob if they’ll hire me?” Rachel said, then paused. “If you don’t, I’ll find someone else to.”
    “I helped raise you so I can help with this one too,” Widow Jenkins said, “but only if you wait till this boy’s a year old. That way he’ll be proper weaned. I won’t take no pay for keeping him either.”
    “I wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t take some pay,” Rachel said.
    “Well, we’ll worry about that when the time comes, if it comes. Maybe things will get better before then.”
    Widow Jenkins jostled Jacob with her knees. The child giggled, raised his arms outward as if balancing himself.
    “But if it comes to that, this chap won’t be no bother,” Widow Jenkins said. “Me and him will get along fine.”
    When Rachel got back to the cabin, she spread the ginseng out on the cabbage