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the nine-pound hammers called go-devils and the six-pound hammers called grab skips. Some of these implements had initials burned in their handles, and some were given names as might be allowed a horse or rifle. All but the newest had their handles worn slick by flesh much in the manner of stones smoothed by water.
    As the men made their way through the stumps and brush they called slash, their eyes considered where they stepped, for though snakes rarely stirred until the sun fell full on the slopes, the yellow jackets and hornets offered no such respite. Nor did the mountain itself, which could send a man tumbling, especially on a day such as this when recent rains made the ground slick and yielding to feet and grasping hands. Most of the loggers were still exhausted from last week’s six eleven-hour shifts. Some were hung over and some were injured. As they made their way up the mountain, the men had already drunk four or five cups of coffee, and all carried with them cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Some used cocaine to keep going and stay alert, because once the cutting began a man had to watch for axe blades glancing off trees and saw teeth grabbing a knee and the tongs on the cable swinging free or the cable snapping. Most of all the sharded limbs called widow makers that waited minutes or hours or even days before falling earthward like javelins.
    Pemberton stood on the porch as Serena followed the crews into the woods. Even at a distance he could see the sway of her hips and archedback. Though they’d coupled that morning as well as last night, Pemberton felt desire quicken his pulse, summon the image of the first time he’d watched her ride at the New England Hunt Club. That morning he’d sat on the clubhouse veranda and watched Serena and her horse leap the hedges and railings. He’d never been a man easily awed, but that was the only word for what he’d felt as Serena and the horse lifted and then hung aloft for what seemed seconds before falling on the barriers’ far sides. He’d felt incredibly lucky they’d found one another, though Serena had already told him their meeting wasn’t mere good fortune but inevitability.
    That morning at the club two women had come out on the veranda and sat nearby, dressed, unlike Serena, in red swallowtail hunting blazers and black derbies, hot tea set before them to ward against the morning’s chill. I suppose she imagines riding without a coat and cap de rigueur, the younger of the women had said, to which the other replied that it probably was in Colorado. My brother’s wife attended Miss Porter’s with her, the older woman said. She just showed up one day, an orphan from the western hinterlands. A wealthy orphan albeit, better educated than you’d imagine, but even Sarah Porter had no luck teaching her any social graces. Rather too proud, my sister-in-law claims, even for that haughty bunch. A couple of the girls pitied her enough to invite her home with them for the holidays and she not only refused but in a very ungracious manner. She stayed there with those old school marms instead. The younger woman had noticed Pemberton listening and had turned to him. Do you know her? she’d asked. Yes , he’d replied. She’s my fiancée. The younger woman had blushed, but her companion had turned to Pemberton with a smile. Well, she’d said frostily, she at least deems you worthy of her company.
    Except for Mrs. Lowell’s brief comment about previous suitors, that morning had been the only time he’d heard Serena’s past spoken of by anyone besides Serena. She’d volunteered little herself. When Pemberton asked about her time in Colorado or New England, Serena’s answers were almost always cursory, telling him that she and Pemberton needed the past no more than it needed them.
    Yet Serena’s bad dreams continued. She never spoke of them, even when Pemberton asked, even in those moments he pulled her thrashing body out of them as if pulling her from a treacherous