Ross took out his tobacco and rolling papers but found them too wet to hold fire even in the unlikely event he could find a dry match.
"I got enough mud daubed on my ass to grow a peck of corn," Ross said miserably.
"I got enough just in my hair to chink a cabin," Henryson said.
"Makes me wish I was a big boar hog, cause at least then I'd enjoy slopping around in it," Stewart sighed. "There can't be a worser job in the world."
Dunbar nodded toward the camp where several job seekers sat on the commissary porch steps, enduring the rain in hopes of proving their fortitude as potential hires.
"Yet there's folks wanting them."
"And more coming every day," Henryson said. "They's jumping off them boxcars passing through Waynesville like fleas off a hound."
"Coming from far and near too," Ross said. "I used to think hard times rooted best in these hills, but this depression seems to have laid a fair crop of them most everywhere."
The men did not speak for a few minutes. Ross continued to stare sullenly at his drowned cigarette while Snipes scraped mud off his overalls, trying to reveal some remnants of brightness amid the muck. Stewart took out the pocket Bible he'd wrapped in a square of oilcloth, shielded the book from the rain with the cloth. He mouthed the words as he read.
"Is McIntyre doing any better?" Dunbar asked when Stewart put the Bible back in his pocket.
"Not a lick," Stewart said. "His missus took him back over to the nervous hospital and for a while they was favoring electrocuting him."
"Electrocuting him?" Dunbar exclaimed.
Stewart nodded. "That's what them doctors said. Claimed it for a new thing they been talking up big in Boston and New York. They get some cables same as you'd spark a car battery off with and pinch them on his ears and run lectricity all up and down through him."
"Lord have mercy," Dunbar said, "they figure McIntyre for a man or a light bulb."
"His missus don't like the idea one bit neither, and I'm with her," Stewart said. "How could you argue such a thing would do anybody good?"
"They's a scientific principle involved in it," Snipes said, speaking for the first time since the men had stopped work. "Your body needs a certain amount of electricity to keep going, same as a radio or a telephone or even the universe itself. A man like McIntyre, it's like he's got a low battery and needs sparked back up. Electricity, like the dog, is one of man's best friends."
Stewart pondered Snipes' words a few moments.
"Then how come they use it down there in Raleigh to kill them murderers and such?"
Snipes looked at Stewart and shook his head, much in the manner of a teacher who knows his fate is to always have a Stewart in his class.
"Electricity is like most everything else in nature, Stewart. They's two kinds of humans, your good and bad, just like you got two kinds of weather, your good and bad, right?"
"What about days it rains and that's good for a man's bean crop but bad because the feller was wanting to go fishing?" Ross interjected.
"That ain't relevant to this particular discussion," Snipes retorted, turning back to Stewart.
"So you understand what I'm a getting at, there being the good and the bad in all manner of things."
Stewart nodded.
"Well," Snipes said. "That's your scientific principle in action. Anyways, what they'd use on McIntyre is the good kind of electricity because it just goes into you and gets everything back to flowing good. What they use on them criminals fries your brains and innards up. Now that's the bad kind."
THE rain had not lessened by afternoon, but despite Pemberton's protests Serena mounted the Arabian and rode to check the southern front where Galloway's crew cut on the sloping land above Straight Creek. The angled ground would have made footing tenuous on a sunny day, but in the rain the workers labored with the slipfootedness of seamen. To make matters more difficult, Galloway's crew had a new lead chopper, a boy of seventeen stout enough but inexperienced. Galloway was showing where to make the undercut on a barrel-thick white oak when the youth's knee buckled as the axe swung forward.
The blade's entry made a soft fleshy sound as Galloway and his left hand parted. The hand fell first, hitting the ground palm down, fingers curling inward like the legs of a dying spider. Galloway backed up and leaned against the white oak, blood leaping from the upraised wrist onto his shirt and denim breeches. The other sawyer stared at Galloway's wrist, then at the severed hand as if unable to reconcile that one had once been part of the other. The youth let the axe handle slip from his hands. The two workers appeared incapable of movement, even when Galloway's legs folded. His back was still against the tree, and the bark scraped audibly against Galloway's flannel shirt as he slid into a sitting position.
Serena dismounted and took off her coat, revealing the condition it had concealed for months. She lifted a pocketknife from her saddle pack and slashed free the Arabian's rein and tied it around the stricken man's forearm. She tightened the leather, and blood ceased pouring from Galloway's wrist. The men lifted their wounded foreman and held him upright on the horse until Serena mounted behind him. She rode back to camp, one arm around Galloway's waist, pressing the worker against her swollen belly.
Once at camp, Campbell and another man lifted Galloway off the gelding and carried him into Doctor Cheney's caboose. Pemberton came in a few moments later and believed he looked at a dead man. Galloway's face was pale as chalk, and his eyes rolled as if unmoored, his breathing sharp pants. Cheney emptied a bottle of iodine on the wound. He wiped blood off the forearm to check the tourniquet.
"Damn good job whoever tied this," Doctor Cheney said, and turned to Pemberton.
"You'll have to get him to the hospital if he's to have a chance," the doctor said. "Do you want the bother of that or not?"
"We need the train here," Pemberton said.
"I'll take him in my car," Campbell said.
Pemberton turned to Serena, who watched from the caboose door. She nodded. Campbell motioned to the worker who'd helped bring Galloway in. Together they lifted the injured man off the table. They placed his arms around their shoulders and dragged him to Campbell's Dodge, Galloway's boot toes plowing two small furrows in the soaked earth. Only when they got to the car did Galloway rouse himself enough to speak, turning his head toward the caboose door where Pemberton and Doctor Cheney watched.
"I'll live," Galloway gasped. "It's done been prophesied."
As Campbell's car sped off, Pemberton looked for Serena and saw her on the Arabian, already on her way back to Straight Creek. Serena's coat had been left in the woods, and Pemberton noticed several men stared at her stomach in amazement. He suspected the workers thought of Serena as beyond gender, the same as they might some phenomenon of nature such as rain or lightning. Doctor Cheney had been as oblivious to her pregnancy as the rest of the camp, reaffirming Pemberton's belief that the physician's medical knowledge was pedestrian at best.