Serena by Ron Rash Read Free Book Online Page A

cause to be fussy.”
    Rachel tucked the blanket tighter. She ran her index finger across the ridge of his gums, Jacob’s mouth closing around the finger to suckle. She wondered when his teeth would come in, something else to ask the widow.
    Rachel followed the road as it began its long curve toward the river. On the edges, Queen Anne’s lace still held beaded blossoms of dew. A big yellow and black writing spider hung in its web’s center, and Rachel remembered how her father had claimed seeing your initial sewn into the web meant you’d soon die. She did not look closely at the web, instead glanced at the sky to make sure no clouds gathered in the west over Clingman’s Dome. She stepped onto the Widow’s porch and knocked.
    “It ain’t bolted,” the old woman said, and Rachel stepped inside. The greasy odor of fry pan lard filled the cabin, a scrim of smoke eddying around the room’s borders. Widow Jenkins rose slowly from a caneback chair pulled close to the hearth.
    “Let me hold that chap.”
    Rachel bent her knees and laid down her tote sack. She shifted the child in her arms and handed him over.
    “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 intown 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