Serena

by Ron Rash

“Pardon me,” he said. “I should never have doubted your knowledge of venom.”

Doctor Cheney smiled. “Another of nature’s paradoxes, the most beautiful creatures are so often the most injurious.

You must love that child dear as life.” “I tried not to,” Rachel said. “I just couldn’t find a way to stop myself.”

When a crew foreman asked Doctor Cheney what Mrs. Pemberton would want the snakes for, the physician replied that she milked the fangs and coated her tongue with the poison.

black satin bonnet that made her face recede as if peering from a cave mouth.

leaning road sign said Deep Creek, traversing what might have been a dry river bed for all its swerves and rocks and washouts.

Another local custom that fascinated Buchanan—taking a picture of the deceased, the photograph a keepsake for the bereaved to place on a wall or fireboard.

two sawyers came forward and placed the lid on the coffin, entombing Ledbetter in the very thing that had killed him.

“His eyes. He wouldn’t look our way, not once.” Serena smiled. “You men notice so little, Pemberton. Physical strength is your gender’s sole advantage.”

“These is some bully rats,” Ross said. “They’d likely haul the traps down to the commissary and turn them back in for a rebate, same as you would a sody bottle.”

instead placed her hand on top of his, her words whitened by the cold as she spoke.

A cold rain had fallen all day, and by mid-morning the workers resembled half-formed Adams dredged from the mud, not yet molded to human.

pasture spring that wouldn’t go dry, what older folks called lasting water.

It seemed that way to him now, as if time was no longer brisk measured increments but something more fluid, with its own currents and eddies.

Rachel knew that even had the two oil lamps been lit shadows would remain, like a root cellar where so much dark had gathered for so long it could never be gotten completely rid of.

brushed some snow flurries off his shoulders as he delayed his entrance a few more moments. Then he’d stepped inside, stepping toward this room as well, into this moment.

“Likes the marbles, does he?” “He plays with them every day.” “And doesn’t try to eat them?” “No, leastways not yet.”

These folks ain’t about you having any doubts concerning their meanness. They want it right out there in the open.”

They’s a feeling about a place where men died and the land died with them.”

Galloway opened the tote sack and removed a dozen ears of corn, placed them in a full circle as if to enclose the carcass.

Clock face?

“She said to tell you she thought you the one man ever strong and pure enough to be her equaling, but you wanting that child alive showed the otherwise of that.” Pemberton closed his eyes a few moments and tried to focus through

man. In the background lay a wasteland of stumps and downed limbs whose limits the frame could not encompass.