The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  He gazed about the renewed place, then backed off from the door and studied the cabin; he had found it easier to consider change if he got away from it and looked back on it; he couldn’t judge a change when it was all around him.

  The woman had come to visit him, not Mina but the Harrison daughter. She hadn’t waited a single day to go by. She must have come early in the morning, too, to have finished so much work. Those boys must have run their legs off to get that much leaves and clay gathered and placed.

  She had more advantages with every passing thought. She knew house-tending, that was plain. She had a handy little flock of sheep; it was a foolish notion, maybe, to bring sheep into such wild country, but now that they were here, he might as well get a big sheep flock out of them. Wool and flax together made strong linsey. They could clothe those boys well with that, and clothe her and himself. Linsey never wore out, seemed like. She had no cow, but she had chickens. She had more chickens than he had. She had ten or more. Come a season soon, he might see the chickens hatch, the sheep bear lambs, the hogs bear pigs, see life start in this place.

  He felt better all in a moment. He felt like he was winning out at last, finding a proper way. He glanced up at the mountain. “I’ll snatch you clean yet; proud, damn you, standing there lording over. How old are you? You older than Mina Plover?”

  Yeh, he thought, and quieter than Mina, too.

  He milked the cow and took the milk into the cabin and poured it into the clay jug. He had a jugful. Seemed like he hadn’t had so much milk in a long while. He set the jug on a bed of coals and peeked into the pot. Deer meat was mushy with herb-cooking and brown gravy.

  He took a chunk of meat in his fingers and licked it dry, laid it on his knee. He blew on it, then drank some of the milk.

  He would floor in the rest of the loft tomorrow, he thought, and make a chair or two as soon as he could get to it.

  Ah, you’re dreaming, he told himself. She’s a rich man’s daughter; she was doing you a favor in return for that quarter of deer, that’s all. Do you think she’ll come up here and live in this pigsty, with a dirt floor where the chickens peck for food?

  The question brought him up short. He gazed disconcertedly at the cabin, and the sapling bed, but also at the bed leaves and at the beeswax candle. No, he assured himself, the woman lit the candle for a reason. He examined the hearth broom she had made. She could have stropped one together unevenly if she had wanted to, but this one was made to last a long while; she had put the strop through the twigs to make them all the tighter and firmer, and she had wound the leather neatly around the handle. It was better than Imy’s broom, that was the truth of the matter.

  He reached for Imy’s broom to compare them and found that it wasn’t by the hearth. He looked for it; he searched that entire cabin, but he couldn’t find it, and he grew elated then. He got to laughing happily. He went outdoors and breathed in deeply of the fresh air and felt good, for he knew Harrison’s daughter had thrown Imy’s broom away.

  He made a trap and baited it with berries. He caught a hen turkey in it and took it to her. He stood out in the yard and told her how he had trapped it, and she listened attentively and, when he was done, asked him in. It was all as if it had been expected, even rehearsed by the both of them.

  He sat down in the only chair. The boys were at the other end of the cabin, and they watched him guardedly. They were awed of him yet, he noticed.

  She told the older one, Fate, to get under the bed and find four sweet potatoes. “And watch for snakes,” she said. The boy went under and came out with a little fiber-webbed sack, which had only three potatoes in it. “Just need three,” she told him quick as anything. “Wipe some grease on them,” she told him and he did, but he used the grease in the slut, which was a piece of wood she had gouged out to hold fuel for candle-burning. She scolded him for that and told him to get it out of the grease gourd.

  She got the salt herself. She had it hid from the boys in a gourd; she had to break the gourd to get the salt out, for it had caked in there. Mooney’s mouth watered at once when he saw it. “I like salt better’n anything on a piece of meat,” he told her, speaking up suddenly. He leaned back in the chair, tilted it against the wall. “The Plovers had salt for a while,” he said. “Now they’re all out of salt, and everything else, seems like. So am I.”

  “I’ve got a bit of meal, too,” she said, and glanced at him to catch his approval. “If you’ll stay for supper, I’ll make a bite of bread.” Before he could answer, she said, “Here, Fate, you get down to the spring and fetch a pail of water.”

  Fate was gone at once. He always did what she said, as if he were waiting for instructions from her, and she always seemed to call on him, leaving the other boy to make his own way.

  “Hey, boy,” Mooney said to him.

  The boy’s lips pouted out.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Verlin is his name,” she told him.

  “Does he know his name?”

  “Why, I reckon he does,” she said, straightening up, surprised.

  “Let him answer then. Come here, boy, and I’ll show you something.” He felt in his belt and got out his piece of a knife. It wasn’t much, but it would do to show a boy.

  “You do what he says, Verlin,” she said.

  “Let him be,” Mooney said, wishing she would hush. “Come here, fellow.” He showed him the knife, but the boy held back. “Huh,” Mooney said, studying the knife, as if he saw a stain or a mark on it. “Look a there. Huh. Must a done that when I was off Injun-hunting.”

  Verlin strained forward. His mother cast a critical glance at Mooney, but held quiet this time.

  “Uh huh. Got an Indian hair on it.” He held the knife up close to his face.

  Verlin inched closer to him, trying to see. He came so close he got his head between Mooney’s head and the knife; he was trying to see the Indian hair.

  Lorry said, “You ever been Indian-hunting, for a fact?”

  He winked at her, but the boy didn’t see him, and he didn’t pay any attention to her frown. She doesn’t have as keen a sense of humor as she ought to, he thought. “I’ll get you a knife, Verlin,” he said.

  The boy’s eyes darted up to his. The boy didn’t believe him, seemed like, couldn’t quite accept it.

  “I will, I promise ye.”

  Fate came inside with the water. Lorry mixed the meal, and soon the cabin was smelling of corn bread baking. She was a busy woman, never wasted a motion of her hand; she never moved except for a reason. She knew exactly what she was doing with every scratch of time, and that little black-headed boy stayed as close to her as her skirt hem. “What’s his name?” Mooney asked her.

  “Fate,” she said.

  The other one, the tow-headed boy, was still standing near Mooney, still holding the knife, and now he watched his older brother critically.

  “Where’s your papa?” Mooney asked. He said it simply. The question came to him and he asked it naturally. He hadn’t worried about it, for it was so that the man was gone, and that was the fact of the matter, that was what mattered to him. But Lorry seemed to get cold and taut at once, and she got to stirring the stew in the pot faster than before.

  “Ain’t he dead?”

  “No,” she said, stirring faster still.

  “Did he get lost?”

  “Might a got lost.”

  Mooney waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “A man can go hunting and something happen he not get back,” he suggested, helping her along.

  She turned to him. “He left home to go to Kentucky and see what was there in the way of a new chance for us, but he didn’t come back, and after a year, Papa sent a man to find him, and the man said Lacey had gone on to Watauga. Papa told me that and I said, ‘Well, Papa, Lacey must not a liked me much to have gone so far.’  ”

  She said it simply, but firmly. No, she wasn’t evading anything she would be better off to face. “He put in a crop of corn and sorghum afore h
e left, I’ll say that for him. He wasn’t a lazy man, but he liked work that didn’t delay long to do, not work over the seasons, not to wait like you have to wait for crops and stock. He was always anxious to have it now, so his idea was to take the spring lambs over to Papa’s place and bargain with them to get grown sheep.” She shook her head in aggravation at that idea. “You ever hear tell of that afore?”

  “No,” Mooney said.

  “He would bet my father with them lambs. He was always trading. When he got home of a night, I never could say whether he’d have an ox or a pig in tow, for he traded for whatever he wanted, regardless of what he needed. He never had the same horse long enough for it to foal. And ride it—he would come down the road, his coat blowing out behind, and jump the gate. He never opened a gate. He could take even an old horse, and it would jump a gate for him, and he would come into the yard yelling and laughing and calling for me.”

  She had let fondness creep into her voice, and she was pensive when she finished. She realized Mooney was watching her and she got flustered. She went quickly to the door and stepped outside.

  Fate started to go after her, but Mooney stopped him, and the boy, resentful of the interference, backed into a cabin corner and glared at him. “Verlin, how long’s your papa been gone?” Mooney asked.

  Verlin shrugged.

  “Can you remember yer father?”

  Verlin shook his head, but Fate made a noise, almost like an angry growl.

  “Do you remember yer papa, Fate?” Mooney asked him.

  Fate stared at him intently, then suddenly nodded, his chin trembling.

  Lorry came back inside. “You must be hungry as a bear,” she said, and busily went about her work. “I know a man gets hungry.” She crouched before the fire and looked to what was there. “I didn’t mean to make you think it was all Lacey Pollard’s fault for his leaving, or for his having so little accumulated, for my father took full advantage of him. My father is a strong-willed man, and he wants to own it all.”

  “Uh huh,” Mooney said, not caring to hear any more about it. The husband was gone, that was the only important thing. He began to whittle on a stick of firewood, and Verlin came close to watch him.

  “I told Papa I would come with him here to this valley, but only if he would build me a cabin, for I had a cabin in Virginia, which was about all I did have left, so he agreed. That was fair, he said. But this was all the cabin he made for me, this place, which he wouldn’t sleep in of a night hisself.”

  Mooney grinned at Verlin, who was trying to see what he was carving.

  “I had to come with Papa, for a woman can’t stay alone entirely, so I agreed to come, and he said, ‘Lorry, what you going to pay me for passage for your goods?’ And I said, ‘Ain’t you my father? Talk about passage!’ And he said, ‘Nothing’s free in this world.’  ”

  Mooney put a sliver of wood in his mouth and chewed on it. The woman could really talk when she got started on something she knew about, he thought, could talk as much as Mina. She was a pretty woman, and quick to work; she was doubtless determined, yet was gentle in her ways.

  “He said he would have to bring my two pots, and my wheel and chest, the loom pieces, the table and four chairs, and I asked him what he wanted of it for passage fare, and he said he’d take the chairs. I said, ‘Papa, I got to have something to set on,’ and he said, ‘Well, keep one of them then.’ So he took three chairs for the passage fare. I thought he was done, but he come back a second time and he said, ‘What ye going to offer me for transporting you and the boys?’  ”

  She looked at Mooney to judge his evaluation of such a question. He grunted unconcernedly; he had heard the like before; it didn’t bother him.

  “So I give Papa my cherry chest, which was the only thing I had that Lacey had give me, and he took it, and he’s got it now down at his place.”

  “Some men get like that,” Mooney said easily, not letting Verlin see what he was whittling, and the boy was trying to. “That bread smells good,” he said. “Is it done?”

  She glanced at him, mildly annoyed because of his unconcern, but she knelt before the fire and felt of the bread with her fingers. “It’s ready to be broke,” she said.

  “Then you boys move that table over to the bed.”

  Neither boy moved. Mooney went on carving, and the woman had to tell the boys to move the table. When they had done that, he stood his chair near the fire so that she could use it, and he sat down on the bed and pulled the table in close. He commenced to whittle again, using the table top to brace the wood. Verlin came so near he got his head in the way of Mooney’s sight, and Mooney pushed the boy away; then he began talking softly. “Going to try to get some furs to trade for salt. I can trade furs in Morganton, but they don’t get thick and worth much till cold weather.” He whittled on the wood and was quiet for a while. “I need salt, if I hope to cure pork next year.”

  She set a bowl full of turkey meat and the pone of bread on the table. She went back to the fireplace and ash-looked for the sweet potatoes.

  “Hope to clear bushes out this winter, get that horse earning its keep. Girdle those trees below the house while the leaves are off. I girdled trees last winter afore Imy died, and I noticed the sap dripped out of them in the spring. It rose like it was pushed up from a sulphur pit and oozed out and coated the ground.”

  She brought the three potatoes and put them on the table. “I believe that’s all we have,” she said.

  “Here, boy,” he said to Verlin, “here’s you a knife to hold.” He gave him the piece of wood he had whittled on, which was a sort of knife with a long blade that was sharpened and pointed. Verlin took it and seemed well pleased with it, but Mooney saw at once he had made a mistake, for Fate clouded over all the deeper. “I’ll make you one later, Fate,” he said.

  Fate’s jaw was stiff, and he glared sternly at him.

  “Law, Fate don’t need a knife,” Lorry said.

  The boy kept glaring at Mooney, his feelings hurt.

  “I’ll get you one, boy. I was only fooling around here with Verlin—”

  “You boys stand up here to the table,” Lorry said.

  The boys came closer, Fate hurt and scowling, Verlin pleased, with his knife in his hand to eat with.

  “Here, Fate, you take a potato,” Lorry said.

  She gave each boy one, and she put the other one before Mooney’s place. She had none herself. Such self-sacrificing made Mooney weary whenever he encountered it, for it always created an annoyance. He wiped his knife on the edge of the table, reached far forward, cut a piece off of each potato she had given the boys and slid the pieces into her bowl. She looked up, surprised, and so did the boys, but he acted like he didn’t notice; he supposed she was annoyed about his interference, but he paid no mind. She might as well learn now as later that if this was going to be his family, things were going to be done his way.

  That night after supper he sat out on the step in the dark. The woman was in the cabin burning sweepings, and he was thinking about how prompt and orderly and generally how pleasant she was. He hoped she was a pleasant woman in bed. It left him a bit uncomfortable to think of marrying a woman he didn’t know in any intimate way. He had heard from others that women responded differently. He had been told in Pennsylvania that some women didn’t respond at all, and he wouldn’t have much use for one of those. He supposed Lorry wasn’t like that. He guessed he ought to try to make sure before he committed himself, but it wasn’t his way to press in on a person, to make demands. Better to take a risk than press for a judgment which would offend her.

  A man couldn’t have it all, anyway, he thought. A man could choose a woman who was like a sister to him, which Imy was, or a woman who was like a mistress to him, which Mina might become when she got older, or a woman like Lorry, who would mother the children and comfort him and make a home.

  Verlin came outside and was hanging around nearby. “If I had some worn ground,” Mooney said to him, “I could grow a
patch of wheat. You know how to grow it?”

  Verlin shook his head.

  “I’m aiming to try to see if tobacco will grow up here, too. What do you think?”

  Verlin smiled weakly at him, not daring to state a view.

  Lorry came out and stood nearby, looking off at her father’s place, where a fire was burning in the yard. “Must be scalding a hog,” she said. “I went over there yesterday evening and fetched a side of bacon without Papa knowing it. Belle said they was low on pork.”

  “It’s early in the season for killing pork,” Mooney said. He stretched his legs and studied his thonged shoes. It was time, he knew, to mention the matter of marriage to her, but it wasn’t the easiest subject in the world to catch hold of.

  “It’s a wet-breathed night,” she said.

  “It is,” he said. There was no church and no preacher up here, but they could post their bonds and could hold a service when a preacher came through. “Is that your black pot there in the yard?” he asked her.

  She said it was.

  “Verlin, you go get your clothes out of the cabin and put them in that pot.”

  Verlin stared at him incredulously, then at his mother, who gazed off at her father’s house, no doubt as surprised as Verlin. Slowly Verlin went into the cabin, Fate glaring at him, and slowly he came back out, carrying his clothes. He went to the black pot and stood there considering his mission. He looked back at Mooney. Mooney nodded encouragingly. He looked at his mother, but she was stiff and solemn and acted as if she hadn’t noticed he was anywhere about.

  Verlin shrugged, stepped up to the pot and threw the clothes into it, then stood stiffly still, waiting for the rebuke he was sure would come.

  “Fate, you go get your clothes now,” Mooney said, “and put them in the pot.”

  Fate held his place there at the cabin door; he didn’t budge. Lorry stared off at her papa’s house.

  “Very well. Verlin,” Mooney said, “get the bags of seeds off the wall pegs and put them in the pot.”

  Verlin fetched the bags of seeds, went straight to the pot and dropped them in.