The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  He considered that, and without answering turned and went up past a stand of bushes, and stayed up there on the mountain until it was so dark Mina had to lead him and his horse down the trail to the cabin in Harrison’s field, which he agreed to use that night.

  * * *

  When he awoke, it was morning, and she was there.

  “I never saw anybody sleep so much in my life,” she said. A fire was made and she crouched before it, heating water in a skillet she must have borrowed. “I was a telling myself a while ago that it looked like you wasn’t going to wake up today at all, but would cuddle yourself to nightfall.”

  He watched her, suspicious of her kindness to him.

  “I’ve been hoping the birds wouldn’t out do theirselves a singing so loud. They’re so noisy they seem to think they’re part bobcat. There’s a mockingbird not more’n a stone’s throw from the spring that thinks it’s a lawyer in a courtroom.” She put more wood on the fire. “I talked to it a while ago and said you was sleeping and for it to quiet its singing. I said you was making enough noise your ownself. I never heard a man make so much noise sleeping. You was a moaning and groaning your soul away. You was a cradling your head and sighing like a heartsick sheep.”

  “Maybe we’re not all cheerful as you,” he said gravely. He put his feet over the edge of the bed.

  “ ‘Oh myyyyyyy,’ you was moaning; then you would groan and then you would say, ‘Loo-rrrrrrrrry.’  ”

  “What was I saying to Lorry?”

  “Not so much to her as to your own bed. You was hugging it and talking to it.”

  He grunted and went to the door, where he looked out at the weather and his father-in-law’s cleared fields. Mina rested back on her heels and studied him thoughtfully. “I know how it is to be sad,” she said.

  “Do you now?” he said.

  “I’ve been sad afore. Not many people lives to be as old as me and not get sad.”

  “That’s so,” he said.

  “Many a time I’ve had disappointment stuck in me like a thorn, and it’s not the sort of pain a cup of sour adder tea will cure.” She smiled up at him. “Wouldn’t it be better’n a creek full of sirup if there was a tea that would cure a person’s sorrows?”

  “Yes, I suppose it would,” he said.

  “I would have drunk my fill many a time. I’d a drowned myself with it, if the truth was known, that time three year ago when so much worry struck me all in a season.”

  “When was that?” he said, crouching beside her, watching appreciatively the quick, flowing changes of her expressions.

  “I won’t say who it was, nor who it wasn’t, but a man left me for another, and it certainly did get the better of me. I expect I would a hugged my bed at night, myself, if I’d had a bed.”

  “Was it Grover?”

  “Law no! I don’t think he cares for me.”

  “Was it that German boy?”

  “Who, Felix?” She laughed out loud. “You think I’d look more’n a second time at a German boy?”

  “I’ve known good Germans back in the fighting places.”

  “I wouldn’t any more go courting a German boy than I would turn over on my back on the floor and roll in the dirt. And that Felix is so fat in his legs that he looks like he’s standing on gateposts.”

  “He’s stout, strong for work, that’s all.”

  “I’ll have to say this for myself: I never have wanted to rob the cradle to get a boyfriend.”

  “Felix is old enough to court, seems to me.”

  “If he could bring his mama with him.”

  “No, he’s old enough.”

  “He’s got such a round face his wife’d wake up in the night and think the moon had got into the room, and he’s got such a thick tongue on him that a body has to piece together what he says long after he’s done with it.”

  He was about to tell her it didn’t matter who had deserted her years before, when he realized all in a moment who it must have been. A pang of friendship instantly came over him. “I know now,” he said gently. He touched her hair, brushed it back from her face. “I understand,” he said. He felt a kinship, a nearness to her. “My, my,” he said, then smiled. “You and me suffer for the same cause.”

  They ate for breakfast four hen eggs which Mina had brought with her, and she suggested he interest himself in what noon dinner might be. Instead of that he started talking about Lorry. “She cut me off from myself,” he said, “and my boys will grow up to be like him, be mountain farmers, that’s all. There’s more to life than that, God knows, and they’ll guess about it sometimes. They’ll come across a new thought now and then when they’re plowing. A voice inside them will ask if it’s not strange how life is, how it goes on. Here you are out in a field; how did you get here, a voice will say.”

  She studied him curiously.

  “A man might sometimes stop his ox or horse, and pinch himself to be sure he’s real. Like now, here in this cabin with you, I might pinch myself to be certain I’m here and real, and not dreaming or caught up in some idea I had once, or a story somebody told me.”

  She tried her best to think of something reasonable to say. It had always been her nature to be polite to a person. “I don’t go around pinching myself, trying to find out where the fields come from,” she said.

  “Then where do they come from?”

  “Why, they was here when my papa came into this valley.”

  “How did they get here?”

  “Why, they was put here.”

  “For you?”

  “More’n likely put here for him.” Lacey frowned at her so critically that she felt uncomfortable. “Well, I’m not accustomed to being asked such as that,” she said defensively. “I come across that field this morning, gathering wood, and I never the one time asked myself how it come to be there.”

  “But a man will ask.”

  “My papa never has said one word—”

  “But he has, inside his mind, he has asked.”

  “Law, my papa don’t care one bit how that field got there—”

  “He does, I tell you,” he said, so intensely that Mina was halfway convinced of it in spite of her own true knowledge. “And my boys someday out plowing will stop their horses and be aware of themselves, strange creatures in a strange world.”

  “I’m not going to listen to a word you say,” she said, looking at him suspiciously. “I never heard such talk afore.”

  “And later each boy will see others to be the strange creatures they be, and to see women meaningfully. That attraction will get hold of him so that he’ll stop his life progress and go fleeing after a girl. And later he’ll come to fear dying; that thought will come to him in middle age, and it will throw his mind into a cavern where all the echoes of his life are.”

  He was lonely himself, she saw. His head was drooped and his face was sad. She touched his face, his forehead, where small drops of sweat were.

  He seemed to come out of his private thoughts. Slowly he smiled and took her hand and pressed it. “I’ll shoot a deer later on this morning,” he said, “or a whistle-pig.”

  “Maybe we can make us some bacon out of it,” she said.

  “It takes salt for that, and we’ve got none,” he said.

  “Law, when I think of how many possessions it takes to set up housekeeping, I wonder if I’ll ever get a start.”

  “You will,” he said. He was looking at her so tenderly, she drew back from him, almost frightened of him and of herself, wondering what the change was inside her which was drawing her so close to him. She felt not a body-longing for him so much as a meeting of herself as a person with him as a person, and it was stranger than a red pumpkin in a row of yellow pumpkins in a field.

  Later that day while their dinner cooked, Lacey paced the cabin. He often asked questions about Lorry and Mooney, and he considered every answer thoughtfully. Toward evening he started to tell about the West. His mind seemed to be drawing him there again. He said all the explo
ring was opening up the country, and behind the explorers were the farmers moving in to make homesteads. Before long they would join into settlements. A country is being made, he said, more by the farmers than by anybody else. He told about a battle that had been fought at Kings Mountain, when the farmers had gathered at the foot of a ridge where a British army was. “We was all there, and all ready to start the fight and end it, and General Cleveland turned to us and shouted out over the big fire-dotted field, ‘Every man is his own officer.’ He said it twice and we passed that message back, then went up that hill and killed and captured ever’ one.”

  “Ever’ one?”

  “There was a woman there, a pretty red-haired woman. Captured her, too. She was the mistress of the British general.”

  “What came of her?”

  “We killed her.”

  “Not proper, seems to me.”

  “There’s nothing proper about starting a country. Anything having to do with a birthing is bloody. A birthing pains. Even getting a homestead started pains, for nature doesn’t allow births without suffering.”

  Late that afternoon, she decided to take him to the pool where three years before she had often taken Mooney, to the place far above Lorry’s clearing. They walked along leisurely, and it was getting on late when she came to the pool and flopped down on the rocks. She watched a snake go curling away into the bushes. “This is where I come to bathe most often,” she said.

  He sat down nearby. “It’s a pretty place,” he said. “These mountains are full of surprises.”

  “Are they in Watauga, too?”

  “They’re not high there,” he said.

  “In the Cumberland how are they?”

  “No mountains there,” he said.

  She couldn’t easily imagine that. “I wish I could get out of these here mountains myself.”

  “No, you’re part of them,” he said. “You even talk like the mountains talk, bubble like the brooks, go running on like the river—”

  “I never—”

  “You coo like a dove, you whisper like a coon—”

  “Why—”

  “You weep like a wolf pup.”

  “I never do weep.”

  “Did you when that man left you alone?”

  “Not even then.”

  “Have you never cried?”

  “Not since I was a skirt-length girl.”

  “Why did you cry then?”

  “I fell down on a cold morning and hit my hands flat on the frozen ground. I let out a cry that almost overturned the trees, and I remember my mama was so kind to me, and patted my back and comforted with me so much. I never have knowed her to be so tender.”

  “You never cried because your heart would break?”

  “My heart’s got nothing in the world to do with my eyes. My heart’s down here and my eyes are up here.”

  “I’ve cried,” he said. “Did you know that?”

  “When?”

  “The night after Lorry said nothing to me in that cabin of hers.”

  “Huh. Looks like a growed person wouldn’t cry.”

  “I cried one time when I was foot-caught in rocks, too, way off from here, and buzzards gathered. They had big wings, Mina, and was so little in body, they was like Death, I thought. I watched Death sailing toward me, then turning aside when it saw I wasn’t going to yield yet, I could see its hooked bill and round eyes. Death was coming in little bundles of feathers, I thought. I cursed them all and told them I wasn’t going to die, that I hadn’t yet made my mark, or even decided what my mark would be, that I had been searching for the place to make it.”

  “Have ye found it yet?”

  “That stretch of land at the Cumberland is the best place I’ve found. But I’m not a farmer.”

  “What are ye then?”

  “All I’ve ever liked to do is look,” he said, suddenly smiling.

  “You’re a looker? Well, law, I never heard tell of one of those. I’ve knowed of smiths, potters, tinkers, farmers, shysters, judges, but I never met a looker afore now. What in the world does it amount to when you’ve done a day’s work?”

  He laughed. “You’re a crazy little thing,” he said.

  “I’m not as crazy as I ought to be, or I’d run away from you. Anybody that is a looker is bound to be a danger to a person.”

  “Yes, that’s so,” he said, “I know that’s so.” He took her arm and turned it and kissed her elbow. “Can you kiss your own elbow?” he said.

  “I reckon not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve tried it afore. My papa told me when I was little that if I could kiss my elbow, I’d turn into a boy.”

  “So you tried?”

  “I tried ever’ way I could. I clamped my elbow in a tree crotch and tried to get my lips over to it, but I couldn’t.”

  He kissed her elbow again. He kissed her arm. The deepest longing went through her, and she got up, left him aways, and began to examine her own reflection in the pool, wondering about the feelings she had. She had sung many a song about love, but she had never had personal encounter with it before, and she wasn’t certain of its nature.

  He was looking at her now, she saw, his eyes soft as a deer’s.

  He came up close to her. “We could go on out there to the West,” he said, “if I could free myself from here, from what holds me. Maybe we could make a place out there, if you was able to go with me.”

  They were almost to the valley floor when they heard a shot. They heard yelling then and directly saw in the woods off to their right the slobbery great body of the big bear, carrying a pig in its arms. The bear moved on up the mountain, whoofing and puffing from the load. Almost at once they saw Mooney moving up from his clearing, shouting at the bear, hurrying after it.

  Lorry began calling to him from down at the clearing. One of the boys, probably Verlin, began to call out, too—Lacey and Mina couldn’t tell what. Soon Mooney called back that the bear had stopped and killed the pig and had gone on with most of it.

  There was quiet; then Lorry after a time called out, “Are you coming back?”

  There was no answer, even when she called again.

  “I declare,” they heard Lorry say, “he’s gone on and it evening.”

  Mina and Lacey were staring at the path and listening to every sound. He turned to her, seemed to remember that she was there. He was strained and tired all of a sudden, she noticed, worry had come over him. “I’ll be back directly, Mina,” he said, and started up the mountain.

  It seemed natural to her that he would go. Only as she walked back to the same valley cabin did she begin to wonder why he had gone.

  21

  It was the second time in three days that this bear had raided the pig lot and done much damage both to stock and pens, breaking and destroying, doing damage the first visit which went beyond the taking of what it wanted for food, being more in the nature of an attack on the place itself.

  As it happened, late this afternoon Lorry went to the spring for water. The dog followed her to the door; that was as far as the dog could go, being as heavy as she was with pups. Lorry walked on toward the spring alone.

  It was quiet, she noticed. There was not a bird singing. Not even a boomer was chirping in the trees.

  She filled the water pail and walked back up the hill. She was near the cabin when she heard a squeal, loud and frightening, from the pens. She ran as fast as she could back down the path, the pail still in her hand, and coming around the corner of the pens, she came face to face with the great bear. It was standing on its hind legs, and in its arms was a pig.

  Lorry swung the full pail with all her might and struck the bear in the head. The bear growled and shook itself. She picked up a piece of cordwood and flung it. The bear turned, the pig still in his arms, and started on off. She saw the dog then, moving across the clearing; the dog caught hold of the bear’s left back leg, bit into it. A gun fired somewhere near the house, and Lorry was near overcome by all the c
ommotion. She called to the dog, but the dog held on. She saw the bear turn and, holding the pig with one arm, slash at the dog, and she heard the dog cry out in pain and saw her roll over and over on the ground.

  Lorry closed her eyes, and when she next looked up, the bear was gone, and far off she heard Mooney call. She called to him, then picked up the dog, carried her to the cabin and laid her on the floor near the fire. She sat down on the floor near her and examined the tear down the length of the dog’s belly. The dog whimpered and licked at her hand, wanting help.

  The boys came to the door of the cabin and watched. She cut open the dog’s womb and took out the pups and breathed into each one until it began breathing on its own, and then, because of the pain it was in, she killed the dog.

  Toward nightfall they heard the sound of a gunshot. She and the boys hurried to the top of the clearing and waited for the second shot, Lorry counting to herself, her lips moving as she counted, as she stood tensely. But there was no other shot, and she came back at once to the cabin, hurrying so that the boys could not see the worry on her face.

  When they had locked up the stock, she told them to cut firewood, but they found that the ax was gone; Mooney had it with him, Verlin said. So she had them bring what firewood there was and stack it inside the cabin. The pups were lying where the wood was usually kept, so she had it stacked near the ladder. Then she closed the cabin door and slid the locust posts across it, securing it.

  After supper she had the boys feed the pups milk, using a cloth sugar tit she made. The room was busy now with activity; there was motion in it, and nervousness. She was afraid, and not of the unknown, either. She had seen the bear close enough, even the white slobbery bubbles that had formed around its teeth. “It was brown-haired,” she said suddenly. The boys looked up from the hearth. “It wasn’t black at all.” It was a beast accustomed to killing and doing as it wanted to, she knew.

  What if Mooney didn’t come back, she thought, what would she do then? The man set the flavor and weather of the home, whether he was Ernest Plover or was her father or was Nicholas Bentz or was Jacob or was Mooney; the home took on the nature of the man, and there was nothing a woman could do about that, except comfort as she was able and prepare the food and make the cloth. If he did not come back, the farm would be a shell of itself. What might she do with the stock; what use could she make of them, or of the fields, or of the corn in the cribs?