The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  Lacey surveyed it all. His expression was steady and plain, but directly he closed his eyes and irritation seemed to come over him; he trembled and was older all in a moment, and he made an angry noise deep in his throat.

  “That cabin beyond Uncle Tinkler’s plantation house is where once she was living,” Mina said, “but it’s empty now, for he come and took her off.”

  “Where’s his place?” Lacey said.

  “That one, with the two sheds in the yard and the pig pens below.”

  He saw a boy making his way through a flock of sheep. Verlin, his own boy, was walking there.

  He saw Verlin sit down near the cabin.

  “The man walking on the valley trail is the German,” Mina said, pointing. She went on to tell how he had lost his stock to the wolves and about how he pined away. Lacey let her talk, for she did it naturally, but his mind was roving across his own worries, and before long he commenced to pace fretfully.

  By now it was growing dark, so Mina made a fire. He saw her take meal and salt from his saddlebag, and he said nothing. She began to pile damp wood near the fire to dry. “I guess they’re looking at us from the valley by now,” she said.

  “Are they?” he said.

  “I saw once afore a fire up here, and ever’body was worrying about Injuns.”

  They saw somebody come out of the woods at the top of the Mooney Wright clearing. A woman. It was Lorry, he saw. He moved to the edge of the ledge. Then came a boy, Fate it must be. When he had last seen Fate, the boy had been a child holding to his hand, crying like his heart would break.

  Now he saw the man with them. He was walking with ease, taking long steps.

  Lorry stopped in the cornfield. Verlin walked toward her, peeked into a basket that she carried.

  God help me, Lacey thought, regret sweeping through him. After six years he had come home to find he was the stranger in his own family.

  He watched Lorry and Fate walk down from the corn patch, taking their time, enjoying the day. She went into the cabin. The man and Verlin walked along the path toward the pens, moving confidently, and went off into the woods together.

  Lacey stared at the deserted clearing; then meekly, wearily he crept to the fire and crouched there.

  “They’ve gone inside?” Mina asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Is he fond of her, Pearlamina? Tell me that.”

  “I ain’t saying nothing about it.”

  “Now you tell me what I want to know. Is he fond of her?”

  “I ain’t—”

  “Is he fond of her?”

  She glared at him, shocked by the sternness of his voice. “Yes,” she said. “He’s more fond of her than he might be of another.”

  “What do you mean? What other?” He moved around the fire to get close to her. “Look at me, Pearlamina.”

  “I said he’s fond of her.”

  “Pearlamina—”

  “I ain’t a going to look at nothing I don’t want to.”

  “If you lie to me, I’ll skin you. Now here, put your hand on mine.”

  “I will not.”

  “Put your hand on mine.”

  She laid her hand on his palm.

  “Does he have a deep fondness for her?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Lacey, still watching her, crept back around the fire and stretched out on the cold stone. “And she of him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Mina said.

  It grew dark and he lay there still.

  “They can see our fire as clear as a star by now,” Mina said. She huddled near the back of the big rock they were on, shivering in spite of the fire heat. “They’re wondering who you are.”

  “Maybe they know.”

  “The German probably thinks it’s his own kin come to fetch him home to his big house. Uncle Tinkler maybe thinks it’s a blood son come back to him, for he talks of that. He wants to see a son of his agin, he says.”

  “Grover is there aside him.”

  “He don’t like Grover. He don’t like the way Grover never does a thing, except look moo eyes at Belle.”

  “Who’s Belle?”

  “My sister, and the one that’s married to Uncle Tinkler now.”

  “Lord in Heaven,” Lacey said quietly.

  “He talks about his sons a coming home to him, though he’s the one that driv them ever’ one away by his cussedness.”

  “Does Lorry know it’s me up here? Does she know who I am?”

  “She’s probably not noticed. She has worries enough with that there baby she’s a carrying.”

  The words shook Lacey to trembling.

  “It’ll be born this summer, I expect,” Mina said.

  He tightly closed his eyes.

  A while later he began to hum a sad song to himself, a lonely sound up there where they were; then he started talking softly, rambling on. “She wasn’t so much sought after as you might think, Pearlamina. Most boys didn’t like her papa well enough to ask for her hand, and she was an aloof woman by nature. I married her in late summer in seventy-two at a little church, the Presbyterian church. We was married by a preacher. Nigh a year later Fate was born; then a year or two more and there was Verlin a living. I was so proud I damn near busted. I said to myself, Lacey Pollard, you’ve found out the meaning of life; you’ll never need to run off agin; here you got it all, a woman handy, a baby to work for, to teach something to, aplenty of land, and all the comfort you need. Live and die here, I said, don’t go nowheres more. So I told myself, but Lord, I kept strewing my thoughts, and one evening I couldn’t hold off any longer and I left, not meaning to be gone long.”

  “You was gone for many a year. I remember when you left.”

  “I left in seventy-seven, started to Kentucky to find better land, but on the Wilderness Road I met settlers coming back, black-socketed in fear, scrawny of fat. The savages had cut them down, captured some, driv them out. Not a one wanted to stay in that wild place, and they said to get away, that nothing civilized could live up there. So I decided to go some’ers else to find a place for Lorry and the boys. I rode south and found nothing worth more’n what I’d left. I crossed the long trail to Watauga and found many a fugitive living there. It was not the place I wanted, and the best land was gone, anyway. There was a group of settlers in Watauga organizing to go where no settlers had ever gone, to cross the Cumberland Mountains and pitch their tents near French Lick. I offered to go with them. That was in seventy-nine. I went and helped them fight Injuns and beasts, and then I come back to Watauga for salt, and the word come to us about the war and I went with the Watauga men back across the big mountains to fight at Kings Mountain, some’ers south of Morganton. I aimed then to go back to Virginia and get Lorry and take her to the Cumberland, even though it was still a bloody place to fight Injuns in, but on the way to Virginia I went up the Wilderness Road to see how Kentucky was getting on, and I found it had all been tamed and was owned, all the blue-grass country, by speculator men. The Cumberland would be tamed the same way, I knew, and soon enough, so I went to my farm in Virginia to get Lorry, and I found it was owned by a man I never saw afore. He said he didn’t even know a woman by the name of Lorry Pollard. Lord, I was tired then. I had been so far and had come to nothing. I took up and wandered south again, looking for my own people. Over a year I traveled lonely; then a man in Morganton in the hotel told me old man Harrison now owned a valley, and to reach it a man must ride the Watauga road to the fourth fording of the broad river, then ride up a narrow, ridgy trail marked by a locust post. I thanked the man and went out to the livery stable, paid my horse board, and I rode lathery that night. The next day I come to the mountains. I clum them and on I rode, and I kept thinking, Lorry, I’m coming closer. I rode on until on the proper crossing I saw the ridge trail and my horse seemed to know it, and we went on into the dark. All that night I rode. And that was just last night. Think o’ that. Last night.”

  She considered him solemnly. “She might be thinking of you this minu
te as strong as you’re thinking of her. Was she fond of you?”

  “She was. I’ll say that. She wasn’t never a loving person by type, but she took to me foolish.”

  “She ain’t likely to have forgot you. Law, if you ain’t forgot, why should she? A woman has a better memory for love feelings than a man, don’t she?”

  “I think so,” he said hopefully. “I think she does.”

  “She’s probably down there pining away, expecting you’ll come back.”

  “Do ye think so, Pearlamina?” He lay there, his eyes tightly closed, the firelight fluttering on his face. “Pearlamina, I been lost so long,” he said.

  “You go on to sleep,” she said. “Tomorrow you can ride down there, and more’n likely she’ll meet you on the road. I’m bound she’ll come to you. You can live in that empty cabin, for it’s yours, the cabin she was using. And there’s plenty of furs to be trapped in these parts. No trouble making a living. I wouldn’t worry another minute about her or them boys.”

  He went to the edge of the cliff and stood for a long while, his back to the fire, looking down at the valley. There was nothing to be seen down there now, Mina guessed, except a few sparks coming up from the chimneys. Suddenly he turned and went toward his horse, not hurrying but going there directly.

  “Are you a leaving here?” she called out, but he didn’t answer, and directly she heard the hoofs of his horse on the trail.

  She ran away from the light of the fire in order to see him, but he was gone, was out of sight. She couldn’t even tell which direction he was taking, for the sound of the horse’s hoofs came at her from all directions and splattered on the rocks around her, and she was too far away.

  Then she heard him singing. He was singing quietly, keeping himself company on the dark, steep trail below her.

  He came all so still

  To his mother’s bower,

  As dew in April

  That falleth on the flower.

  16

  Lacey Quincy Pollard moved like a secret-minded beast in the valley. He turned up at the German’s house, stepped out of the woods while Nicholas was woodcutting, smiled and said, “I wonder if you know the way to Lorry Harrison’s new cabin?”

  The German, who didn’t have any idea who he was, told him the way. Still Lacey lingered, showed no interest in going there. He sat down on a stump and let the hot sun trouble him. “You like it here?”

  The German sat down on a stump, too. “I have lost more than I’ve gained,” he said simply.

  “That’s the way I used to do when I farmed,” Lacey said. They talked for a long while about the losses one could encounter in farming; then Lacey told about his travels in the west and how the endless trails were like the patterns of a man’s life, always progressing but not going anywhere that could be predicted, yet pleasant. It was almost dusk when he started up the path, not toward Lorry’s cabin at all, but away from it.

  The next night he came by the Plover place. Ernest, who was preparing himself to go across the river in search of replenishment, thought he was a ghost. He came close to him and gazed deeply into his eyes. “Lord help us,” he said. “You have your own true features yet.”

  “Looks like you been breeding well,” Lacey said, looking approvingly at the string of little blonde girls.

  “Lacey, is it you in the flesh?” Ernest said.

  Lacey said it was, and he started to joke and talk. He visited for the evening, entertaining the girls, giving them songs he had heard in Watauga, the Cumberland and Kentucky, holding two little girls on his lap and bouncing them up and down as he sang to them.

  Then, when the party was no more than sighing along toward a close, he disappeared into the black woods, his black horse following.

  By morning it was known throughout that valley that he was somewhere about. It was known everywhere except at Lorry’s place. Nobody went there, for they were certain Lacey had gone there. All day Ernest kept looking for Lorry to return to her valley cabin to take up housekeeping with Lacey again, and he was surprised there was no chimney smoke or other sign of life there by sunset.

  That evening Tinkler Harrison, who had looked the day through for a sight of Lacey, prepared a feast. He had a pig and a chicken killed, and he cooked everything over a yard fire, all the better to fetch him. He told Belle to put on her best most frilly clothes, and he and Grover put on clean clothes and fastened their brass-buckle belts in place. All three of them had taken their places near the fire and Belle had begun nervously fluttering a fan before her face when they heard horse’s hoofs striking the path, and directly they heard a man dismount. Lacey walked in close to the fire.

  “I knowed pork and chicken would fetch you,” Harrison said jubilantly.

  “Either one would have fetched me,” Lacey said, smiling. He laughed softly, not at what he had said but at the good feeling he had at being there. “You the young wife?” he said to Belle.

  She was too speechless to do more than nod, for her mind was dizzy with the sight of him.

  “I believe I’ll stay to eat,” he said, and sat down not far from her and winked at her, so quickly and easily that she wasn’t certain he had winked at all; then he smiled, disarmingly and simply. “My, it’s cool tonight.” He reached over and patted her hand. “How you like it here in this valley?”

  He and Harrison talked well into the late night about the valley’s hopes, and they saw visions of the settlement that would surely develop. “A thousand houses and two thousand sheds,” Lacey prophesied. He made glowing predictions for the region, one flowing after another, and along at the time when the fire waned, he got up to go. “Which way is Lorry’s cabin?” he asked.

  “Why, have ye not been there?” Tinkler Harrison said, astounded.

  “No, not yet,” Lacey said solemnly. Lacey left, and Harrison stood as if in a trance listening to the walking of his horse. When the sound had entirely gone, he suddenly turned to Belle. “He’s not going there now, is he?”

  “It doesn’t sound like it,” she said.

  Harrison moved past her, and called to one of the men to bring him a horse.

  He rode toward Lorry’s place, exultation rising in him, carrying him forward, making him spur the horse faster. He rode into the clearing. “Lacey’s home!” he shouted. “Lacey’s come back!”

  The house door stayed shut. Not an answer came from within. Once more he called the news, but there was no answer to him, not even an added spark came from the chimney.

  He sat on the horse, looking at the night cabin, animosity and resentment and affection coursing through him.

  Inside the cabin there was quiet so deep Lorry could hear her own heartbeat. The cry of her father had awakened her, and even before she had oriented herself to wakefulness or knew who had spoken, she knew what had been said. The meaning had come to her, as if her skin had absorbed it, her flesh had heard it.

  Beside her she heard Mooney breathe softly. He was awake and waiting. He knew, too, now.

  She could not decide what to do or say. After years of waiting, caring for the belief that he would return, she was ill prepared for the announcement of his arrival. A tide of wanting, hating, fearing unloosed itself in her.

  She heard the boys stir upstairs. What were they thinking now? What reaction did they have to the announcement so starkly given. Surely for them the security of the place was shaken more certainly than if her father had called out the presence of a dozen bears, or a pack of wolves, than if he had announced a pestilence to attack their summer crops.

  After a while she said, “It won’t matter a bit in this world.”

  “No,” Mooney said. He lay there reviewing every thought his mind had ever held about her and the boys, and the farm they were making. He had not felt so lonely, not felt so thrown away from his life moorings since he had been put out of his mother’s care when a boy, put on a ship and sent to sea. This land is like the sea, he thought, untamed like it, rolling high like it, curling in heavy waves like it, and
he knew his life here had now come crashing down, like the sea, shattering about him. “It won’t matter to me at all,” he said. “He won’t come nigh here.”

  “He might come nigh. They are his boys. He has a right to talk to them.”

  “No, he won’t come here.”

  “He’s not a dangerous man by type,” she said.

  “Does he know you’re bearing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has he been watching us, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” She touched his arm lightly, comfortingly. “There’s nothing to be done now,” she said.

  She got out of bed before the break of day. She stirred the fire and put on wood. She combed her hair, aware that Mooney was watching her, and she knew he was wondering if she would show signs of nervousness, reveal that the night news had affected her. She rolled up her hair as calmly and firmly as she could and went to the door. She took down the poles, wondering all the while if on the other side of that door Lacey Pollard stood. Or maybe up the hill he would be sitting, waiting.

  She threw open the door. All she saw that moved was the cow pushing against the side of the stall.

  She let her breath escape easily. She stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her.

  On the way to the spring, she kept looking to see if he was anywhere about. She reached the spring, had even started to kneel, when she saw his footprints in the damp earth.

  She swung toward the woods. “Lacey,” she said.

  The woods were bare and lifeless; there was not even any motion in the trees.

  She turned and knelt by the spring, moving carefully and awkwardly because of the bulky unborn baby inside her. She filled the pail, then pushed herself back to her feet. All the while she knew he was watching.

  Without glancing at the woods, she walked up the hill to the cabin.