The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  A twig broke beyond the wagon, and they stopped talking and waited. “Pearlamina,” Lorry said quietly.

  Mina came forward out of the shadows.

  “Come on into the light where I can see you.”

  Mina stepped into the light.

  “You trying to listen to us talk? Why do you do that?” She touched the girl’s face, and a pang of wonder went through Mooney to see Mina, so gentle, so pretty, waiting so close by.

  Lorry smiled at her. “Papa brought your mama some more corn meal. It’s on his horse, and some bacon is on mine. I sneaked it out of the house for you.”

  “I won’t take the meal, Cousin Lorry, or anything else from him, after he’s taken Belle off and made her so sad.”

  “Let your mama take it then, but you get the bacon right now and hide it till he’s gone.” She touched her face again, “Go on, Pearlamina.”

  The girl backed away, still looking at them, first at one, then the other. She turned when she got to the corner of the cart and stepped into the shadows; they heard the horse move as she unstrapped the bacon.

  Lorry straightened. “I’d best join him,” she said.

  He watched her walk to the fire, saw her stop near her father. “Where you been?” the old man said to her.

  He stepped around the wagon and went on down to the branch, where he washed out the bowl. He was resting there, waiting for the night to get still and his mind to settle down. After a while he felt he was being watched. He turned and saw her then, standing near the wagon looking down at him. The firelight was behind her, so he could see the outline of her plainly, but he couldn’t tell which woman it was.

  * * *

  Mina came once more to his place. He was working the corn. He had been so often to her clearing that his own crops were being choked out by weeds, so there he was waist deep in weeds and corn when he sensed somebody was close by. Maybe he smelled the flowers she had crushed in her hands, or crushed against her dress sleeves, for she did it that way sometimes. She smelled most often like flowers; she smelled better than any woman he had ever been close to, that was the truth of it. She came on him softy, appeared near Imy’s grave, and commenced to talk, telling him about a pond of water she had found and how good it was to warm in a piece of sunlight now that the summer leaves had blanketed over most everything. Her skin was shiny from the swim, and her hair was wet and was hanging long and loose as she warmed and dried it. She ran her long fingers through it as she talked.

  He asked her if she wanted to have a bite of dinner with him.

  “I expect I’d better go home to eat my dinner,” she said.

  “They won’t miss you.”

  “They might not,” she said, smiling, “unless they stop to count how many’s there.”

  “I have some turkey meat,” he said. “Got that and milk. Got an egg to eat.” He was nervous and uneasy, lest she go away. He was concerned about himself, too, for he couldn’t tell what he might try to do, what he intended, what he might get himself involved in.

  “You can come on over to my place and eat with us,” she said, “if you’re short.”

  “No, you stay here.” He turned at once and went down the hill to the cabin, where he commenced to stir the fire. Directly when he looked up, she was standing in the doorway watching him. The light was bright behind her, shimmering on the top of her head and shoulders. He got up stiffly, his hands trembling, and went to her and touched her hair. She didn’t move away. He took a sheaf of hair in his hand and held it and touched her head, and she smiled at him, warmly and faintly, as if she didn’t know why in the world he was doing what he was, but it felt nice to her.

  “Don’t it make your scalp feel good to be rubbed by somebody?” she said. “My mama used to rub my scalp in Virginia; she had knuckles on her hand hard as ironwood, and she would rub me till I hollered, but it felt so good, and she would tell me to rub her head then, and I would do it, but I didn’t have so much strength. Your hands are certainly strong, did you know it? They feel so strong on my head and neck. You want me to show you how my mama done?”

  His hand fell away from her and he turned back to the fire, squatted down before it. A child, talking about her mama, he thought.

  She came near and knelt beside him and watched him cook the meat on a green-wood skewer. She sniffed the smell of it and smiled wistfully, delighted with it.

  He punched the hickory ashes up closer. “I wisht I had a handful of meal, I sure do,” he said.

  “Why did you run out of meal? I never heard tell of that.”

  “I didn’t care. I had the stock indoors and I give it to the chickens. I didn’t care about anything till here lately.”

  “What you care about now? The crops?”

  “I don’t care about them too much.”

  “Don’t care about cutting down any more trees, do you? I cut so much on that big tree my back feels sprung like a cracked wheel rung. Now the tree stands there graying, but it’s beat us all.”

  The chunks of meat were dripping now. “You cut pretty well.”

  “You’re the one that cuts well. You can make a chip fly that’s dangerous to a body. You can make the ax sound like a crack of ice breaking on the river skim. I’ve never saw the like.”

  “A man is stronger than a woman most often.”

  He took the stick of wood off the fire and she blew on it to cool the meat. She took a chunk of meat off and chewed on it; the juice dripped out of the corners of her mouth and she smiled contentedly. “Law, it’s better’n pumpkin on a rainy day.”

  He burned his hand on a piece of meat and licked his fingers. He didn’t like to cook, he wasn’t any count at it, but he had it to do.

  She pulled off another chunk and plopped it into her mouth. It was a mouthful again, and the juice slipped through her lips.

  “You’re a funny face,” he said to her. “You’re getting juice on your dress.”

  She wiped her dress with her hand. “I like juicy meat better’n anything. I heard a man at the blacksmith shop in Virginia tell me that it wasn’t right to eat meat that come off of an animal, that he ate cabbages and collards, and I never felt so low. I wouldn’t eat a piece of meat for two, three days after that, and my stomach would growl like a dog’s. I got so’s I couldn’t hardly sleep for the noise it was making, so next chance I got I snuck a bite of meat up to my mouth like I didn’t know it was coming up there, and I’ve not heard it growl much since.”

  She’s a funny one, he thought. She’s like a freshet that gushes out of the ground, pure as can be. He touched her hair and felt the fineness of it, and she smiled at him. Suddenly a sway of longing caught him and he took hold of her and drew her close. He looked down at her face and it was tense and her eyes were closed tightly; he felt her body start to tremble, and he held her and leaned over and kissed her left breast through the dress, and suddenly she pulled away from him fiercely and crawled backward over the floor to the cabin corner and sat there, staring at him like a young, wild thing, her hair stringy and in her face now. It was not only in anger that she looked at him, he thought, but in surprise and dismay, too.

  He had not expected this. He knew a woman had cares about love-making, about baby birth and being pressed down by a man, but she ought to know that was her lot and not blame a man for it.

  He wiped his hands on his pants and crawled over to her. He sat down with his back to the wall near her. Her legs were poked out stiffly in front of her, and he reached over and patted one leg. “I didn’t aim to come on ye unawares,” he said.

  She scrooched up her face and brushed her hair back from her eyes. She seemed to be wary, like a young thing that has been caught.

  “I’m stronger’n I need to be, I know. I’m a hard worker when I got to working, like helping your papa; I got to working there for a while and I got to feeling that I ought to do some work here again. I been all to myself here for a long time, except for what company is left in the way it was, in remembering her, and I do. I talk to
her, but she’s not here. I don’t know were she is, but I know within reason she’s not here.” He glanced at her to see how she was accepting what he said. She was still put out with him, seemed like. “Do you know where they go?”

  The big blue eyes of the girl, doe eyes like her father’s, turned toward him and her lips pouted out. She was calmer now but was trembling yet.

  “She’s not in that bury hole,” he said. “She was in it, but she wasn’t there, neither, and sometimes I think she’s in this cabin here, like now she’s here and maybe she’s madder’n you, mad at me for what I done, grabbing ahold of you. She might be madder’n a rained-on hen, I don’t know, for she never saw me go after another woman afore, and the truth is I never done it afore, for Imy and me was growing up about the same time and in the same place.”

  She was still looking at him with her eyes wide. “You almost busted my collarbone twisting me around,” she said.

  “I know. I’m stronger’n I ought to be. I know it.”

  “You took a hold on me that just about broke me in two, twisting me around.”

  “Well, I know it’s something, all right. Imy used to tell me I was too strong. I just got strong like this, and then when it comes over you that you want a woman, strength rises in you, that’s all.”

  “You hurt my arm. Look a there.”

  It was bruised, he saw. It was swelling now near the elbow. “I was so afeared you’d try to get away I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You had no right to come on me like that. I was eating my piece of meat and you made me swallow if afore it was half chewed.” Angrily she swept her hair back from her face. “You almost tore my dress, and it’s all in the world I got to wear.”

  “Oh, hush,” he said suddenly, having heard all he wanted to about it.

  They sat there, each staring at the far wall. Suddenly she got up, hurt by his abruptness, and stepped over his legs, went to the door, stood there as if waiting for him to say he was sorry for talking so rough to her, but he was quiet.

  She swung on him. “You just stay away from me if you got to act like them men in Virginia. If you’re like them you stay away.”

  “Hush up, I told ye.”

  “A pinching and a pulling, so’s I had to fight for ever’ breath I took to live by. I like people to be gentle and nice and to smile and be kind to one another, not to be pawing at one another, hair-pulling all the time. You twisted my collarbone so much it’s swolled up already.”

  “God damn it,” he said.

  She turned.

  “Don’t you go,” he said.

  “I’m a going this minute.” She started up across the clearing past the shed.

  He moved quickly to the door. “Mina, come here, damn ye. What are ye, a little girl that don’t know about being growed up, about being in a cabin alone with a man? Now don’t go home yet, you hear me?”

  She went on.

  “Don’t you know what it’s like for a body to want another’n?”

  She went to the corn patch, cut through there.

  “Mina!” he shouted at her, but she went on. He turned back into the cabin, frustrated, his throat dry, his hands knotted up. “God damn,” he murmured. “God damn,” he said and moved about anxiously, breathing deeply. No right, he thought, for she knew; there in the firelight with that fiddle playing, she knew. They all knew. They were born with the seed of knowing in them, and when they got big enough to attract an eye, they knew how to turn their wrists before a man’s face, how to walk and how to look at a man, how to giggle and laugh.

  He went to the door and glared at the woods where she had gone. Those days of being with her, the nights there with Ernest playing the fiddle, the food meals eaten at her clearing, then she was uppity to a fault. All right for a woman to be private, to let it be known she was not to be taken by a man, but to come into a man’s cabin when he was alone and had been alone for all these months, and was so lonely he could taste loneliness, and was too hungry for a person to live without a person any longer.

  He went to the fire, where the skewer of meat was, and kicked it away.

  She was a woman—don’t tell him. She knew.

  Yet what could he do? He would not for the world harm her. He would not hurt her at all. He would not cause her arm to bruise. Her mouth he loved. He would not crush her. He would not hold her if she wanted to be gone. He would not tear the sleeve of her dress.

  But he had torn her dress and he had bruised her arm, he knew, and it all left him with a worry.

  Wearily he took the bucket and went down to the spring to get water. He washed his face and hands, then sat down to let the day grow warm and tired. The dog was with him, and after a while it began to growl.

  He looked up and saw Mina standing there near the cabin. She saw him, too, and came on down to stand near where he was. “Mina,” he said deeply, “I’m a fool for this world.”

  She sat down on a rock nearby and calmly folded her hands on her lap. She stirred herself to shrug and said, “I got to worrying about you.”

  “I was wondering,” he said.

  “I was nigh to my papa’s clearing, but I come back.”

  There were crickets way off and close by, too, talking to one another. Far down the river valley a fox barked. She’s just a girl, he thought. What was I doing to a young girl like that, here in this wild country. “It’s the warmest night we’ve had,” he said.

  “I told my papa it was so warm I’d spent the morning sitting in a pool of water. I found a pool of water the sun can get to.”

  “You told me,” he said. He wondered what in the world his life was coming to, getting himself mixed up with a young thing. He had had a longing for her, for she was clean and pretty and had such fine bones, and had a nice manner about her. But, Lord, he was worried now about himself as well as her. “You hear the river?” he said.

  “You can’t help hearing it,” she said.

  He went to her, touched her shoulder, rested his hand there to comfort her. She stood and his hand stayed on her shoulder. She stood close to him, as if near him was a safe place for her to be. “I’ll go on home now,” she said.

  “I’ll walk ye,” he said.

  She came back whenever she wanted to. Or he went to her place. Or they would meet at the pool she had found, which was high up on the mountain. She sang a good deal to him, songs she had heard her father sing.

  My father and mother were Irish,

  My father and mother were Irish,

  My father and mother were Irish,

  And I am Irish, too.

  We put a pig in the parlor,

  We put a pig in the parlor,

  We put a pig in the parlor,

  And it is Irish, too.

  She would sing and nod her pretty head and giggle.

  Oh, the miller boy that tends to the mill,

  He takes the toll with his own free will.

  One hand in the hopper and the other in the sack,

  He takes too much, but never puts back.

  They would lie on their backs with their hands behind their heads and look at the passing clouds and consider the words.

  Here we go in mourning,

  In mourning is my cry.

  I have gone and lost my true love,

  And surely I must die.

  He didn’t get much work done. They would sometimes start in hoeing a few hills of corn, but soon they were singing or carrying on. The girl was like a drug to him. She called him away from what he knew he ought to do. Seemed like she knew whenever he planned to work, and she would come around. He got up before dawn one morning to get a head start on a day’s work, but he had no more than struck the first blow before she was standing there. One day he was splitting off floor boards; he had a notion to floor in the loft. He had cut three boards, and he looked up and there she was.

  Sometimes he would get off to himself and settle down to wonder about himself, what he was coming to, but he would forget all the worries when she came around. Mi
na, Pearlamina, little Mina.

  They got to fussing more and more often, though, for he couldn’t help but be irritated with himself and the way his life was turning out. One night they were cooking supper at his cabin and he began telling her what he and Imy had planned for the cabin, how there was to have been a table built long before this. “We planned to have the loft floored in by now. There’s three or four boards split off and nothing else done about it. We planned to have white clay laid on the hearth and baked hard by now. We planned to clear an acre in the early summer for late corn, but it’s not done. We planned to have two chairs made. We planned to get flax in, so she could spin threads on cold evenings this winter, but the flax is not worth taking now because of the burs.”

  She crouched near the fire and watched him, hurt and confused by his complaints. When at last he was done, she glanced about her, as if to see from what direction another unexpected, unwanted wave of worry might come. “My papa says he’s going to build his cabin come the first touch of cold weather,” she said. “He says he’s going to make a two-room cabin with a dog trot. He’s not going to use no pine to smell up the place forever, neither. Just going to use nice hard woods like elms. He says he’s going to drag the whitest clay from the deepest part of the river to chink the logs. He says there’s colored stones in the river, too, that he’s going to set in the clay, so’s the cabin will show all the colors in the rainbow to a body walking toward it through the woods.”

  Her papa, her papa. She always was talking about what her papa was going to do, but Ernest didn’t do anything except fish, trap a wild turkey or two, and shoot doves out of their roosting trees. “Your papa’s going to do all this, is he?”

  “Afore cold weather.”

  “Huh. If words was walls, your papa could make a fortress.”

  She glared at him. “You think you’re the only one that can make plans for building? My family has allus had plans for growing and changing about. My papa would already be a wealthy man ’cept he’s got so many youngins, and they’s ever’ one girls. He’s got nobody to help him ’cept me and Fancy, now that Belle’s gone.”