The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  “Keep the horses tame,” the old man called back to the boys, and one of them darted to where the horses were shying.

  A cart wheel sank into a wet spot of earth and the old man began to curse. He darted forward, calling for the Negroes, alerting everyone to the matter; always he had a way of alerting everybody to whatever problem occupied him. One of the Negro men got a hold on the corner of the cart and lifted it, and the oxen pulled it free from the pit. “Watch more careful,” Harrison said, “or we’ll lose another wheel, or lose an axle. I don’t want delays, for there it lies down there.”

  Downward they went into the misty place, in the grayness, where the biggest of the trees were, the old man’s eyes sharp and his ears listening, seeking challenges to his final, complete authority. They crossed the first creek, then crossed another. At the third creek, the cart on which the sash glass rode got mired down, and Harrison said to leave it where it was and come back later, that they must move on. He ordered one of the Negro boys to stay with it, and the boy, trembling at being left alone in that wilderness, climbed onto the cart and looked after the others longingly.

  “Ay, God, we come at last,” the old man said. His eyes flashed and his teeth were white and he shook the hair of his head and his beard anxiously, yes, and even in pleasure, for he felt deep pleasure sweep through him. He was home; for the first time in his life, he was home, to a place that was his own completely.

  “Ain’t that a dog?” a Negro man called to him.

  The words drifted in to Harrison’s thoughts and brought him up short. A dog sound meant a homestead of some sort, meant human beings on hand. He stood stock still, listening; then he heard the sound of something else, of a thumping, a regular thumping noise. “Hush them up,” he said suddenly. A Negro boy struck the geese cart, and the geese, which had been noisy, huddled down and were quiet, and the carts, groaning, stopped.

  “Come here, Grover,” Harrison said.

  Grover came down along the trail, laurel branches slapping at his face, the dew-wetness of the place clinging to his wool clothes and to his body like a chill. Lorry followed him. The child-wife, Belle, stuck her head around a cart and watched, but she didn’t follow; she was fearful of anything unknown, for she had discovered that what was known about and explained to her could be fearful enough. She was pretty, with blue eyes which were the color of her bonnet, and a doll-like, round face. She had on a high, frill collar, for Tinkler Harrison liked her to wear frills, he had told her.

  “What do you hear, Lorry?” Harrison asked his daughter.

  She listened for a moment. The sound came at her from the mountains on all sides. “It’s an animal beating apart a tree trunk,” she said. She spoke with a soft voice, which had many minor tones in it; she sounded almost like a sad melody. She pushed her brown hair back from her eyes, which were brown, too. She was composed and gentle, seemed like.

  Grover said, “I’ve known a bear to beat apart a tree.”

  “In the winter?” Tinker Harrison asked flatly, his eyes flashing.

  Grover flushed. “No, sir,” he said.

  “They beat a trunk in breeding time maybe, but that’s in spring. And bears is in a hole in the ground this time of year.”

  Lorry said, “It’s a person digging.”

  Tinkler Harrison grunted. “You say so, do ye?” He gazed off critically, his mouth moistening a piece of tobacco. He concentrated intently now on the sounds, as he always concentrated on whatever it was he did. “It’s a piece of metal striking clay,” he said finally. He looked at Grover, as if demanding that he deny it if he wanted to. The young man said nothing.

  Harrison wiped his hands on his wool pants, then wiped them on the leather shirt he wore. “Where’s it coming from, Grover?”

  Grover glanced about uneasily, seeking a hint from Lorry. “The east,” he said.

  “No,” Tinker Harrison said flatly. “It’s from the west. How far away is it?”

  Grover wiped perspiration from his face. “I don’t know, Papa.”

  “You have to learn this country, don’t you know it? How far?”

  Grover stared at the ground. “I’d say it’s nigh,” he said.

  “Would you?” the old man said. “I’d say it’s far.” He leaned back on his heels and squinted into the woods. “Not but one reason for a person to be digging this time of year, is there, Grover?”

  Grover swallowed. “No, sir.”

  “What is the reason?”

  Grover looked helplessly at Lorry. “It’s that man that’s maybe here, the one the storekeeper said was up here some’ers; it’s him and his wife, most likely.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Digging.”

  “What?”

  “In the ground.”

  “Of course it’s in the ground.” He sucked at a tooth and pressed his lips together tightly. “Well, come on.” He went down the trail, the Negroes getting out of his way swiftly. He found a break in the laurel and went through it, and Grover followed.

  Lorry turned at once and went along the line of carts to one of the larger of them, which she climbed into. Her two sons were huddled inside. They were only twelve and thirteen years old, and neither of them knew the meaning of this journey, how it was that in the coldest days of January they found themselves riding down rocky paths, fording creeks and rivers, climbing high into mountains along treacherous ledges, under the ominous, black and warted, wrinkled, vine-cloaked trees, rising from sleep in darkness, striking the trail at dawn, driving on under the whip and rule of their grandfather until darkness caught hold once more, this every day for two long weeks. “Is he gone?” the older boy, Fate, asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “You can climb down now.”

  The younger boy, whose name was Verlin, climbed down and offered to help her, but she ignored his offer and climbed down herself, then helped Fate down, though he didn’t need help. Though older than Verlin, he was not as big-bodied. He was a moody boy, dark of hair and eyes, the only dark member of that family. His full name was Lafayette, which his father had pronounced La-fate, and now he was called Fate. He was unusually handsome, as if he had been molded and fashioned by a French artist.

  “You boys stay close by, you hear me?” she said. “Go talk with Belle.”

  She put on a bonnet and a leather jacket. Quickly she moved down the trail to the same laurel opening her father and Grover had used, and went into the woods, moving slowly.

  The dampness of the soft moss got into her shoes, which squished and complained. The leather soles might part from the tops, she thought; this place will need new shoes, new clothes. The bushes snagged at the skirt of her soft, wool dress.

  She saw her father down the path and stopped, a wave of resentment going through her as it ordinarily did whenever she saw the old man. He and Grover were kneeling, each on his left knee, near a small gum tree. They were looking at something not far away. Near them, laurel leaves, which had curled to protect themselves from the coldness, tilted in the wind.

  She moved quietly toward them. Her father waved her back irritably, but she went on and knelt beside Grover. She held aside a laurel limb and peeked out, and so she saw the clearing for the first time. Toward the far side was a cabin built of barked logs, its roof boards yellow yet, with a single door and no window, with high walls so that perhaps there was a low-ceiling loft above the main room. A stone chimney had been built to the roof peak. There was very little smoke coming from it and nobody was about. But there was the noise, close on her now, of metal on clay and rock, striking.

  “You see him?” her father whispered. “There,” he said, pointing up the hill toward the top of the clearing. “A big one.”

  She saw the man then. He stood waist deep in the earth, half buried in the mountainside. The sun, which was beyond the ridge beyond the river, glistened on his massive shoulders and arms as he lifted the ax each time.

  He stopped now and studied the woods. His gaze shifted to the cabin; he studied it as if measu
ring the distance to it, comparing that with the distance to the spot in the woods which bothered him, which was where Lorry hid. She realized he must feel this country and sense its dangers, for he apprehended not only its sounds but its silences.

  The man looked once more at the cabin. A dog came to the door and, whimpering, lay down in the sun there. The man shrugged; he lifted his arms and a rifle gun was in his hands. Lorry had not seen the gun before, nor did she know how he had changed the ax for the gun without her knowing. He laid the gun down at the upper side of the hole, took up the ax and began to cut away the earth from around the rock. Then he worked with his hands and later with the pole. All the while she watched him, as her father and brother did. She watched when he gripped the rock from the bottom and hoisted it, a rock as large as a big man’s chest, forced it upward to the edge of the hole, then pushed it solidly. The rock bounded down the hill, gathering speed, leaped over a fallen log, and smashed into a tree trunk.

  Tinker Harrison sat back on his heels and shook his head in wonder. “He’s a strong ’un, ain’t he?” He grunted. “Did ye see that?”

  Lorry nodded.

  “That man you married couldn’t lift his shoes off the floor, compared to that’un.”

  The man climbed out of the hole. He rolled his shoulders, as if feeling the warmth in them, and picked up the gun, shook loose the dirt off of it.

  Tinker Harrison rose slowly from his crouch. “I’ll speak to him,” he said. He entered the clearing, which was as definitely marked off from the forest as if it had been a room, and raised his arm in greeting. “How air ye?” he called.

  The man froze in place, stood stock still, looking down at him, the rifle held in his hands.

  “I’m a friend. I just come up,” Harrison said. “Air ye troubled?”

  There was a long pause. “Aye.”

  “I thought ye might be. You’re burying something, ain’t ye?”

  “Aye.”

  “I thought so. Not a critter, is it?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not, for I saw nobody at the cabin, so I guessed it was something more than a critter. It’s a human, ain’t it?”

  “Aye.”

  “I thought so. When I saw nobody come out of the cabin I thought, Well, he’s lost his woman right here at the start. It’s too bad, I’ll say that.” He turned his head to the woods. “Grover, go get the men and help him dig a grave.”

  * * *

  That evening they were still there, making a coffin. The chatter of their talking got on Mooney’s nerves. There was no quiet time for his mind to rest and consider its own thoughts; there was a continual pestering of ideas from other people, and sympathy. Not since the summer had he heard a voice except his own and Imy’s, and the two of them were not given to talking much. Even at night when they lay down, they had not talked on and on about their plans, and of a morning when she got up, she rarely said a word, except, “It’s morning, might nigh,” or something like that to tell him it was coming day. How she knew he didn’t know, but always as she got the fire blazing well, dawn began to appear upriver, as if she were the one who had awakened it. But it was not her doing, he knew. The dawn was constant; it was an old thing and come on its own. Not even the will and whispers of the mountain could change it. The truth was not that Imy called it but that she had lived so close to the order of life that she heard it called.

  Imy was the one who had shaped and cleared the rocks down here near the spring. She had brushed them clean for sitting. Now he sat on one of them while the busy people up in the clearing made her a grave and a bury box.

  The old Negro woman had milked the cow. Mooney would have milked it himself, but the woman had shooed him off. He would rather do Imy’s chores than for a stranger to do them, but these other people had taken over; they had taken the work and all he had left was the worrying. They were working and answering to the old man, who was everywhere, his moist mouth chewing, his tongue spitting out words, orders, questions which he never needed answers to, for he never asked what he didn’t already know.

  They didn’t often come down here, though, not to the spring. The young Negro woman came down once, carrying Imy’s pail, which Mooney and Imy had made of maple and bound together with elm bark. The Negro stood at the spring and looked at him with deep feeling, and moaned so sorrowfully he felt uneasy. He had never known Negroes before, and he was surprised this one knew sorrow and sympathy so comfortingly. When she left she walked so swiftly that water sloshed out of the bucket, where ice floated on top.

  Mooney heard the old man approaching and saw the white swish of his beard. The old man stopped near the spring and gazed thoughtfully at him, then took up the gourd and filled it and drank deeply. “I suspect we’re bound to be neighbors, if you decide to stay on.”

  “Are they done?” Mooney asked.

  “They’re pegging up,” Harrison answered.

  Mooney could hear the mallet on the maple pegs, and after a while the sound stopped.

  The old man stirred. “Ahhhh, my,” he said, “I buried a woman, too. A man gets to living in a woman’s life and it’s a sorrow to bury one. It’s an emptiness, ain’t it? It’s not the woman that’s noticed; it’s the emptiness when the woman ain’t there, like as if a man needed his tongue and found it was cut out of his mouth.”

  Mooney said nothing, though Harrison was waiting for him to comment.

  “Ain’t that so?”

  Mooney said nothing. He walked up past him, entered the clearing and saw the two Negro men and the old man’s wife waiting near the cabin door, a coffin near them. One of the Negro men held the lid of the coffin. The big Negro held the mallet and pegs.

  Mooney stopped at the cabin door and listened, anxious for the sound of her again, for she always knew what was proper to say and do. What was proper to do now? Would she tell him how to mourn for her?

  He went inside. The older Negro woman was standing near the back wall. Lorry was near the fireside, fire sweat on her face. She was calm and watchful, and there was reasonableness and competence about her. She didn’t seem to feel sorrow for Imy’s death, but she understood his sorrow, that was what she seemed to say to him.

  “You want me to carry her for you?” she said.

  Imy’s body was on the bed; her arms were folded and her face was washed. She had on the same faded brown dress she had worn into this valley. She was a long woman, too long for the bury box, he thought; they should have measured her, for she was longer than most women.

  He went closer to her, stood above her, so close he could have heard her breathing if she had had breath left. “Imy,” he said, knowing she heard him, knowing she was dead but still could hear him. “It’s all over,” he said, “and it’s lonely here now.”

  He bent over her. He lifted her easily in his arms and turned with her, but pity welled up in him so thickly that he had to stop, and he cursed for a moment and the older Negro began to moan, but Lorry watched him gently, as if she knew. He stood there in the middle of the cabin he and Imy had made and held her. He started for the door, but his eyes misted over. Lorry took his arm and guided him. Almost at once, it seemed to him, he was in the bright light outside.

  He went past where the men were standing and went up the hill to where the bury hole was. Behind him he heard the men dragging the oak casket. The open grave was a cruel mouth, he thought, with teeth of stone and water for spittle, with red clay for gums; the mountain had chilled her and killed her, and now through this mouth it would take her in.

  The men left the casket beside the hole. Harrison came up, holding Belle by the arm, and he told the Negro men to drop the casket into the hole. They did as he ordered, then stood back. One of them had the wooden mallet still in his hand. “Put her in it,” the old man said.

  Mooney, with Imy’s body in his arms, sat down at the edge of the hole. He put one leg over the edge of the hole and sought the casket with his foot. He stepped down into the casket; slowly he crouched there, the body in
his arms. He and the body were in the casket.

  He laid her down, her head on his foot, and he bent her legs so that she would fit in the box. He was done, but he stayed with her, trying not to break to the sorrow he felt.

  The old man said, “I’ll have a woman strip her, if you want the dress.”

  “No,” he said. He stayed bent over, not wanting to leave her, but knowing Imy would not want him to be so low, would tell him, if she could, to climb out of the hole and stand straight above it, for there was nothing to be done.

  He pulled himself from the hole and sat on the edge of it. He crawled away from the hole and stood and turned his back to it as the big Negro man began to peg the box. Then there was the sound of dirt thudding down on the box, and the old Negro woman began to pray.

  There would be no more touching her, he knew, no more seeing her by the fire, no more holding her of a night or feeling the softness, then the tightening of her body; they would not plant together the torn rows of their own making. The dirt was closing over her now; the mountain had received them with noisy challenges and now had taken her. The mountain wanted the old way still, and he who changes what is ordered and old and set is a man who grasps the lion’s jaw.

  He looked down at the hole as the men finished filling it, and he heard the sound of ice breaking on a tree far above them, then the crumbling, rumbling noise of ice sliding from a rock cliff, coming down on tree limbs below it.

  The mountain is talking, he thought. It has her in its jaw and it’s talking to me now. It sees me here yet, and sees these others who have come here. It hovers over us and tells us that this is only the beginning for those who stay in this valley.

  1780

  3

  Tinkler Harrison found the plot of land he wanted for his house and fields, one near the river, and he and his men undertook day-long toil, working into the night and often through the night. The family slept in and under the carts, but Harrison rarely slept at all. At all hours he sent out orders to the slaves and to the family, except for Belle, who was a silent witness, whose opinion was never asked, whose help was never sought. She was a stranger in her own household, an outsider in her own home who might be told to scat out of the way, even by a slave. She was, by fact of being Harrison’s wife, removed from the category of the child, but she had not been admitted to any other, except when for a short while each night Tinkler Harrison would come to her, would crawl into the cart. She would awaken to feel him beside her, his arms around her and his hands on her, impatiently turning and touching her, and then his beard might tickle her face and she would feel the hard appendage of him as he pushed it into place, and she would squirm and move as he had taught her, and groan, for he had taught her to do that, and she would hear with embarrassment the cart creak as it responded to his movements and to hers, and she would think that everybody must hear it, that the sound must go out to where the men were, and where Grover and Lorry were, and to the walls of mountains.