Serena by Ron Rash

Serena by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780061470844
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2008-01-01T18:30:00+00:00


Tw ent y

Repairs on the cabin were needed, things that should have been done during the first warm days of spring, but Rachel had been so worn down by her camp work and caring for Jacob that she’d put it off for months. When she’d f lipped the Black Draught calendar in the kitchen to June, Rachel knew the repairs could wait no longer, so the following Sunday she and Jacob didn’t walk down to Waynesville and take the train to the camp. Instead, she put Jacob in the smock Widow Jenkins had sewn from overalls Rachel had taken from her father’s chest of drawers. Then she dressed herself in her raggiest gingham dress.

Rachel set Jacob on the grass with the toy train engine Joel had given him for a Christmas present. She leaned the Indian ladder against the cabin. Cowhide knotted the rungs to the two locust poles, and the dried leather lashing creaked with each upward step. Once on the roof, Rachel searched for what her father had taught her to look for. On the gable end, where last winter’s afternoon sun had melted the nighttime freeze, the sill showed signs of early rot. She took up the broad axe and balanced its weight in her hands.

Rachel carefully lifted the axe to hew the wide new sill, setting her feet as solidly as she could. The axe was heavy and became heavier with each stroke. Her muscles would ache come morning. After ten minutes she knelt to rest and caught sight of the gable’s half-dovetail notching, the precision of it. Her father had made this cabin with care, even where he’d placed it, searching until he’d found a lean slab of granite for a hearthstone and a pasture spring that wouldn’t go dry, what older folks called lasting water. Building the cabin itself with white oak logs and cedar shingles. What she’d liked best was that her father chose the west slope, the sun late arriving but holding its light longer into the day and early evening.

Rachel picked up the axe again. Her arms were leaden and watery blisters ridged her palms. She thought of how nice it would be if she was at church, not only because of the fellowship and how Preacher Bolick ’s words were a comfort but just the easefulness of sitting there, not having to do anything but hold Jacob, sometimes not even that because Widow Jenkins would always set him on her lap part of the service. Seven more days before I get that again, she thought.

Rachel did not stop until the hewing was done, then climbed down the ladder and sat beside Jacob. She studied the cabin as the sun finally made its way above the eastern ridgeline, sipping up the morning’s last shadows. The chinking was fractured in places, slivers of light passing through a few. Which was no surprise but just part of a cabin settling and a long winter of freezing and thawing. Rachel went to the woodshed and found the trowels and a feed bucket.



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