Something, Rachel thought.
As she rode back down the trail, she remembered the days after the funeral, how the house’s silence was a palpable thing and she couldn’t endure a day without visiting Widow Jenkins for something borrowed or returned. Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left—that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood.
And now this brown-eyed child. Don’t love it, Rachel told herself. Don’t love anything that can be taken away.
Four
W HEN THEY’D LAID THE TRAIN TRACK THE PREVIOUS September, Pemberton worked alongside the three dozen men hired for the job. He was as broad shouldered and thick armed as any of the highlanders, but Pemberton knew his fine clothes and Boston accent counted against him. So he’d taken off his black tweed coat, stripped to his waist and joined them, first working with the lead crews as they used picks and shovels and wheelbarrows to move earth and remove stumps, make the fills and cuts and ditching. Pemberton cut trees for crossties and set them on the proper gradient, unloaded flat cars stacked with rails and angle bars and switch gear, laid down relay rails and hammered spikes and never took a break unless the other men did. They worked eleven hour days, six days a week, moving across the valley floor in a fixed line. What obstacles not dug up or filled in were leveled with dynamite or trestles.When a new piece of track was set down, the Shay engine lurched forward immediately to cover it, as though the wilderness might seize the rails if they weren’t gripped and held by the iron wheels. From a distance, train and men appeared a single bustling entity, the steel rails left in their passing like a narrow gleaming wake.
He’d enjoyed the challenge of working with the men, the way they’d watched for a first sign of weakness, for Pemberton to linger by the water pail or lean too long on a shovel or sledge hammer. To see how soon he joined Buchanan and Wilkie on the porch of the newly built office. When a month had passed and all but the spur lines were built, Pemberton put his shirt back on and went to the office where he’d spend most of his time from that point on. By then he’d gained more than just the workers’ respect. He’d found among them a capable lieutenant in Campbell, and Pemberton knew first-hand which men to keep and which to let go when Boston Lumber Company hired the actual cutting crews.
Among those Pemberton insisted be retained was an older man named Galloway. Already in his forties, Galloway was at an age when most loggers were too worn down and damaged to do the job, but despite his graying hair, small stature and wiry build, he outworked men half his age. He was also an expert tracker and woodsman who knew the region’s forests and ridges as well as anyone in the county. A man who could track a grasshopper across caprock, workers claimed, as Pemberton himself had learned when he’d used Galloway as a hunting guide. But Galloway had spent five years in prison for killing two men during a card-game dispute. Other workers, many with violent tendencies of
As she rode back down the trail, she remembered the days after the funeral, how the house’s silence was a palpable thing and she couldn’t endure a day without visiting Widow Jenkins for something borrowed or returned. Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left—that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood.
And now this brown-eyed child. Don’t love it, Rachel told herself. Don’t love anything that can be taken away.
Four
W HEN THEY’D LAID THE TRAIN TRACK THE PREVIOUS September, Pemberton worked alongside the three dozen men hired for the job. He was as broad shouldered and thick armed as any of the highlanders, but Pemberton knew his fine clothes and Boston accent counted against him. So he’d taken off his black tweed coat, stripped to his waist and joined them, first working with the lead crews as they used picks and shovels and wheelbarrows to move earth and remove stumps, make the fills and cuts and ditching. Pemberton cut trees for crossties and set them on the proper gradient, unloaded flat cars stacked with rails and angle bars and switch gear, laid down relay rails and hammered spikes and never took a break unless the other men did. They worked eleven hour days, six days a week, moving across the valley floor in a fixed line. What obstacles not dug up or filled in were leveled with dynamite or trestles.When a new piece of track was set down, the Shay engine lurched forward immediately to cover it, as though the wilderness might seize the rails if they weren’t gripped and held by the iron wheels. From a distance, train and men appeared a single bustling entity, the steel rails left in their passing like a narrow gleaming wake.
He’d enjoyed the challenge of working with the men, the way they’d watched for a first sign of weakness, for Pemberton to linger by the water pail or lean too long on a shovel or sledge hammer. To see how soon he joined Buchanan and Wilkie on the porch of the newly built office. When a month had passed and all but the spur lines were built, Pemberton put his shirt back on and went to the office where he’d spend most of his time from that point on. By then he’d gained more than just the workers’ respect. He’d found among them a capable lieutenant in Campbell, and Pemberton knew first-hand which men to keep and which to let go when Boston Lumber Company hired the actual cutting crews.
Among those Pemberton insisted be retained was an older man named Galloway. Already in his forties, Galloway was at an age when most loggers were too worn down and damaged to do the job, but despite his graying hair, small stature and wiry build, he outworked men half his age. He was also an expert tracker and woodsman who knew the region’s forests and ridges as well as anyone in the county. A man who could track a grasshopper across caprock, workers claimed, as Pemberton himself had learned when he’d used Galloway as a hunting guide. But Galloway had spent five years in prison for killing two men during a card-game dispute. Other workers, many with violent tendencies of
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