The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  “The yarn,” Mooney said to him.

  Verlin got it and put it in the pot.

  “The bowls and trenchers,” Mooney said.

  Verlin put them in the pot.

  “Fate,” Mooney said, turning once more to him, “get that quilt off the bed and bundle it so’s you can carry it.”

  Fate didn’t move.

  Mooney waited, then got up slowly. He moved past the boy and went to where the quilt was. He folded it into a square, then folded that. Fate was standing near the door, watching him. Mooney laid the quilt by, then in a single motion brought his hand around and slapped the boy on the face, and the boy, knocked back, stunned, stared at him, hurt and frightened and angry.

  Mooney saw Lorry in the yard; she almost cried out, but she stayed quiet.

  “Next time I send you for something, go get it,” Mooney said. He went outside, confused, unnerved by the boy, who was crying. He could hear him. “Verlin, get that wheel down from the rafters,” he said, feeling miserable, and he went off to the lambing pens and locked the sheep in for the night.

  When he got back, he said, “We’ll fetch the stock and the table in the morning.” He saw that Verlin had the wheel, and Lorry had the fireplace pot and her own rifle and spare clothes; Fate had nothing. Mooney considered him briefly. “We’ll leave the quilt till morning, too,” he said, and, lifting the big pot, led the way up the path toward his own home.

  His dog began to bark before they got to the cabin, and he went inside alone and collared it and led it down to the dogwood tree below the house, where he tied it for the night. It could keep watch over the stock better from there, anyway. When he got back to the house, Lorry was building up the fire, and the boys were huddled on the edge of the bed, glaring at Mooney and their mother, evidently none too secure in this new place. “I finished up most of the loft by now,” Mooney said, “but I don’t have a ladder made yet.”

  “They can climb up that far,” Lorry said. She crouched near the fire and peeked about at the room, which was not furnished at all well, which was no better than the shack her father had made her. This room was a long way poorer than what she had known in Virginia.

  She glanced at Mooney, wondering about him. He was a big-bodied man and seemed to be a proud person. The previous winter she had sensed his grief for his first wife, so she knew he had loved her; maybe now that same love would stand between them like a wall, or maybe it would be given to her instead. Was he gruff or patient as a person, she wondered.

  “If you boys got to go outside afore you go to sleep, now’s the time to do it,” he said.

  “Where we go?” Verlin asked.

  “Out in the woods.”

  Verlin got off the bed and went to the door. As he opened it, a panther up on the mountain cried, and the boy shut the door and put his back against it. Lorry almost cried out, yet almost laughed, to see the terror on his face. “Here now,” she said, “it’s not close. You can tell that it’s not close.”

  Verlin sought assurance from Mooney, too, who nodded. Even so, the boy hesitated until Fate came forward, opened the door and stepped outside.

  Verlin followed and pulled the door shut. Through a place where the chinking was gone, Lorry could see that they were standing near the door, and she suspected they wouldn’t go as far into the woods as they ought to. “Are the bears a nuisance up here?” she said, seeking a subject to talk about.

  “They come by now and then. The dog lets us know.”

  “Does she ever fight one?”

  “No. I never let her. I keep her housed up.”

  Lorry crouched near the fire near him and stared into the fire, as he did. She glanced at him and tried to record in her mind the way he looked, how his features were and what his manner was.

  The boys knocked on the door, so she moved the lock poles to let them in. She went outside then, and the boys locked the door, then sat down on the bed and stared before them.

  “We got work to do tomorrow,” Mooney said to them. “While I drive those sheep up here, you boys can tend what stock I got and hoe the corn.”

  The boys gazed unhappily at the bare, smoky walls of the room.

  “Not any leaves or straw in the loft to sleep on, and that last loft board’s not pegged yet, so you better let it be. Find a warm place and curl up and you’ll fall asleep, I’ll warrant ye.”

  The boys looked up at the loft, then looked back disconsolately at the fire.

  “Your mama and me will sleep down here.” He could sense the stiffness come into both of them, especially into Fate, but neither boy said a word. “If there’s many beasts tonight, you’ll want to jump down here in the night and build up the fire. One night a panther got on the roof and tried to get the boards loose so it could get in. I could see its paw working at them, and it got its paw through, and it was working at getting its arm inside.”

  The boys were listening attentively now.

  “That night I had to keep the fire going bright to keep from having him come down the chimney on me.”

  “Did he come inside?” Verlin asked.

  “No. He might a managed it, but I got a lighted piece of wood and held it up to his paw, and he got his paw singed. Of a day you can see the hole he made or see it even of a night if you sight a star through it. When you get up in the loft, it’ll be easy to see it.”

  Lorry knocked on the door and he let her in; then he went outside and she propped the door closed and took what water was left in the pail and moistened a scrap of cloth and told the boys to wash their faces. She started to have them wash their hands, but on seeing how dirty they were, she gave up on that. “Soon as I can, I’m going to make soap,” she said. “Then we’ll get that grime out of your finger skin. My goodness, look at how dirty you are. Maybe I can get some from Belle, sneak it out of the house without your grandpa knowing it.” She considered that. “Of course, when he finds out where I’m living, he’s going to be even more upset than before.” She sighed wearily, as if the thought troubled her deeply. “Well, you boys get on up there to bed.”

  She helped them up to the loft.

  “If there’s a snake about, you call down,” she said. “Do you see one?”

  Neither boy answered.

  “Fate?”

  “No’m,” he said.

  “All right then, go to sleep now, and don’t worry. I hope this is the last time you’ll need to move to a new house.”

  She waited by the door until Mooney knocked; she let him in and locked the door for the night. “I checked the stock,” he said, “and it’s all right. There was a weasel out there, but it run.”

  “They’re a nuisance,” she said. She crouched by the fire, for she didn’t know where to sit; she didn’t think she ought to sit down on the bed. That would be unseemly; also it would be deceptive, for she wasn’t anxious in her body yet. She had come to the place not for body affection so much as a need to have father care given her boys, to find a protected place for a family again, which is what she craved deeply.

  She heard him taking off his clothes. Upstairs she guessed the boys were watching through cracks in the loft floor, and no doubt they were in a toil of wonder about what was going on tonight. Fate, more than the other, would be concerned, for he had been given a blow and a command already; that wouldn’t set well with him. Fate had the fiery spirit of his father, a high-walking pride that set him apart from others and made him special somehow, as his father had been, even in his own eyes.

  She began to take off her clothes. She took her dress off and found a wall peg near the fire and hung it up. She went over to the bed, wearing her undergown, which was thin and body-clinging. He was glancing at her; she wasn’t surprised at that. She wasn’t ashamed, either, for she had been well made from the start, and the bearing of two boys had cost her only slightly of her shape.

  He was undressed now and was standing over in the corner of the room, beyond the table.

  She could hear the boys breathing upstairs. She wished she
could assure them that she wasn’t afraid. She was uneasy, though, for the place was new to her, and he, standing over near the corner, didn’t seem to be at ease himself, and she didn’t know him at all well.

  She crawled onto the bed and pulled the ragged quilt over herself. She didn’t look at him when he went to the fire. She heard him pick up the pail of water and she heard the water splash onto the fire. There came a hissing, a sizzling, a roar of steam up the chimney, and she heard the boys gasp. Then the room was dark except for the gray smoke that the chimney was sucking up, and except for the few bright coals that were left.

  “How you going to start another fire?” she said softly.

  “I have the gun flint,” he said. He didn’t move that she could tell, and she said no more in criticism, for she was grateful for the darkness, too.

  She heard nothing now, except the fire. She saw his outline as he crossed before the fireplace. He stopped near the table, and she could make out the figure of his body, the strong lines of it, the bigness of him and the upright manner he had and the set of his head. He stood there naked by the table, as if thinking about what he was to do. She saw him move toward her. He became part of the shadows around her, then she felt his hand grope along the bed and touch her shoulder. It moved along her shoulder to her neck, and his hand, coarse and hard as shoe leather, touched her face, her cheek and chin, and his fingers moved along the outline of her chin.

  He sat down on the bed and leaned forward and his chin touched her forehead. He rested his head on her head, and she felt his hands seek to hold her.

  She remembered the times before in the years before when Lacey Pollard had been with her in their room, in the house his father had left him, and how the trees were wind-shaken outdoors that night and the grate fire was warming, and how he, a young lord and master of that country, sought, touched her and awakened her; so quietly he would speak to her and confidently come to her with gentleness and firmness, seeking her in the darkened room.

  He knelt beside her on the floor and his hands moved over her breasts and shoulders, and he spoke to her, and his voice was deeper than Lacey’s, and she was trembling and waiting. Then he was lying beside her, and he came to her, and it was the most natural act in the world, seemed like, to take him unto herself and into her own body and seek with him the moment of longing and the planting of the birth of their own kind, here in their own house.

  6

  Tinkler Harrison rode out into the fields the next morning to see how the night fires had burned, to judge how many old trunks had been pared down by the heat. He was out there talking to one of the Negro men, a huge-bodied man named Suckly, when he saw the deserted cabin with the door left open, with the black kettle gone. He stopped talking in the middle of a thought and spurred his horse sharply, so that it almost bolted from under him, and drove hard to the cabin. It was empty as a robbed room, except that a folded quilt lay on the plank bed.

  He went outdoors, panicked with the thought of her absence, by the loss he suspected, which he was not sure about yet. He called to the big Negro, who came hurrying across the field.

  Then he saw Mooney Wright, walking down the path from the trail, his long strides carrying him confidently, and he knew then, he figured out where she was, for once before she had tricked him proper, had gone off with a man. Seemed like she was quiet-tempered in public, but was subject to sudden foolishness and man needs.

  He watched as Mooney let the sheep out of the pen and began to gather them into a flock.

  Suddenly Harrison turned roughly from him, mounted and rode off, kicking at the horse.

  Lorry was waiting for him outdoors, bonneted and composed. “Well, have you lost your senses?” he demanded of her.

  “No, Papa, I have not,” she said.

  “You’ve got one husband a’ready.”

  “He’s not about of late, Papa. He’s gone, and I suspect he’s dead.”

  “You don’t know he is. Can’t ye live without a man to pester ye?” She said nothing to that, and he stared angrily about the clearing. He looked critically at the shed. He looked at the cabin, which had been made of green wood and had warped; the door was closed, and since he saw no chickens about, he suspected they were housed in there to keep them out of mischief for the moment. “If you have to have man care, at least you can get the man to come to you,” he said.

  She moved away from him, furious and hurt, but he didn’t care. He handed the reins to Fate and walked up into the clearing. It was all rough, coarse work, and the grave was a proper marking for it.

  “He’s barely got enough to call it something,” he called to her. He looked about, shading his eyes from the low, early-morning sun. “You had best come home with me afore he gets back.”

  She shook her head and walked down toward the cabin and stood there near the closed door.

  He went down to where she was. “Where’s his other cow?” he said.

  “He has only the one,” she answered.

  “What’ll he do for milk when it’s dry?”

  “She’s likely to bear a calf in the spring if you let us put her to your bull.”

  “You’ll need another one for milk while she’s bearing and nursing, won’t you?” He was trying to be reasonable, but anger was cruelly troubling him. He moved abruptly past her to the closed cabin, went inside, swinging the door back. Chickens flew up all around him, and he stopped, stiff and frightened, as they came out of the room.

  He heard Lorry call out, “Now we’ll never get them caught again.” She came inside, her face flushed from anger.

  “Dirt floor,” he said bluntly, turning to her. “Where’s the comfort in this place? Where you going to weave at?”

  “Now you listen to me,” she said, pushing the boys outside, closing the door, shoving the door rock against it. “You come up here running down what we’ve got, now you hush, Papa. I know you want us down there in that valley, but we’re up here, and I’m not hearing another word.”

  He sank down on the bed, for he saw no chairs, and stared up at her, his eyes bewildered. A chicken which hadn’t got out the door came close to him and pecked at seeds that had dew-stuck to his boots.

  “If you’d be willing, you could help us,” she said more gently.

  He grunted again.

  “But no, you have a price for everything. You killed my mama with your price on everything.”

  His sharp eyes glistened, a warning to her.

  “And ever’ boy you got has left you, except that one that hushes when you say hush and sleeps when you say sleep and works when you say work, and is around you waiting till you die so he can take the possessions and sell the land and be gone.”

  “You talk, you talk,” he said, hurt and baffled by her. “Just live up here then. Live on this dirt floor, cook in that fireplace, in that skillet there. Make a stew. Yea, put a piece of deer in it and cook it with a potato and call it a meal, with a piece of pone and a glass of milk, if the cow ain’t bearing. You go on with your ways, and you raise them boys to be a sight on a hillside.”

  “You started no better—”

  “God damn it, you don’t have to start where I started; that’s what one generation does, is to build on another, but you won’t. Well, start where I started. Start over in a pigsty for all I care, start so low you can’t never get your fingers clean of cow dung and your mind clean of worry of a night; stay up here and be an animal by fighting them, and put your chickens in the cabin to protect them from the weasels and the snakes, and shake your bed of a night to be sure there are no snakes in it to lie with you, or with your boys. What do you think goes on inside my mind when I see my grandsons here and you here, for you’re the only one I ever felt affection for, the only one since I was a boy I ever give a care for, the only one like me, with gumption to her. Not like your mother.” He glared at her out of his anger and hurt. He moved irritably to the loft hole and looked at the wall logs, which the boys climbed to go to bed of a night. “His first woman died here,
right here, working for him.”

  “It was a croup she got of a wintertime.”

  “No, it wasn’t a croup. It was a frontier fever, a doubt that started small and grew to fester and wouldn’t come out, like a goiter on the throat. It comes from the work, and from asking what’s it for, what’s it all to come to, for there’s easier places.” He shook his head in aggravation. “It’s got no cure that I know of.”

  “You’re talking wild,” she said, watching him for a sign of weakness.

  “Your mama got it, had it all her life, after it contacted her back when we was poor—”

  “Leave my mama be—”

  “The truth is that she never—”

  “Let her lie in the grave at least. Let her have some peace now.”

  He fell silent. Helplessly he shrugged and looked about the room, his habit disconsolate and worn through. “My lord,” he said. “If I had knowed you was going to take up with him, I would have stopped it, for you’re not a common woman.”

  “Don’t talk to him, Papa,” she said.

  “I won’t talk to him, not now or ever. If I was to, though, I could remind him that you are a reader, that you can write a letter to anybody in the country, that your husband is a proper man with schooling, that you are used to having a servant to care for you. I could tell him you are above the pack and herd.”

  “I ask you not to talk with him at all.”

  “Who are you to ask about something which festers in me. I care, don’t you know that? Don’t tell me I don’t have the right to care, for what a man’s mind broods on, he can’t knife out. His feelings ain’t like a wart on his thumb, to be took off with ashes.”

  He scratched at his bony chest and waited for a reply. He belched and went to the door and opened it and the sunlight struck his face. She was close to him and could see his face, and he was close to tears. She had not thought he would ever cry. She saw the boys standing just outside, looking up at him. He seemed not to notice them at all. Before him lay the raw and ragged hillside where the dead trees stood, and scattered over the cabin yard now were the chickens eating.