The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  Fate heard it then, a husky voice in the hound pack.

  “That’s Henry. He’s with him yet,” Jacob said.

  They found the horse and came on around the south face of the mountain, above the settlement, even though the dogs were now on the far side. The men were too tired to talk, too tired to joke, even. Once Nicholas slipped on a loose rock. He caught a laurel bush and held himself, and Jacob and Fate helped him back onto the path, but even as they helped him, they said nothing. They were too tired to say a word.

  They went on around the mountain toward the gap, and when they heard the dogs coming uphill, Nicholas and Jacob began to run again, and Fate began to run, trying to keep up.

  But the bear changed course, so they stopped and sank to the ground and listened. “He’s smart as a whip,” Jacob said.

  “Yes, he’s cunning,” Nicholas said.

  The bear had crossed the ridge, but not at the gap. Now he was rolling and tumbling on toward the valley.

  About two miles down, he treed, probably not far from where he had treed the time before, and Nicholas was off running at once. Jacob got up wearily. “Well, Fate, try to bring the horse far as you can,” he said, and he started out, walking, then trotting. Fate led the horse and tried to keep up, gasping for breath, and all the while the dogs sent up their barks. The men got closer, and Fate saw Nicholas waving him back. He tied the horse and crept up on a big rock, where he could see.

  He saw the bear. The bear was coming down a tree, moving swiftly from limb to limb, climbing as fast as a cat. The boy saw that Nicholas was hurrying to get near enough to shoot. The bear started off, but Henry caught him; then the others leaped on. The bear was covered with dogs hanging to him, and he flailed at them. He was weary now; Fate could see him well enough to know that, and could see Nicholas coming up behind him, but Nicholas couldn’t fire because of the dogs covering him.

  The bear threw off the dogs and began to run. Nicholas fired. The bear staggered, his legs went weak under him, and he whirled wrathfully, driven to the limits of his tolerance, achingly weary of the chase. He hurled a dog aside and moved toward Nicholas, who drew his knife. Then another man appeared, came up behind the bear and shouted. The bear turned. The other man had an ax in his hand and he dragged one leg as he walked. It was Mooney, Fate saw, now grimy and bloody, and the bear, dazed and uncertain, growling heavily, moved toward him.

  A gun fired. It was Jacob’s, Fate knew. The bear stopped, and his eyes closed, as if he could not clear his mind now for all the noise. The dogs were on him again. He opened his eyes and watched as Mooney came toward him, his hands bloody where he held the ax. The bear threw a dog aside and faced him, lifted his paws, waiting. Mooney came close, the ax lifted. The bear’s paw flew out sharply, suddenly, but Mooney drove the ax downward with all his might.

  The ax lodged in the bear’s shoulder, and blood spurted out. The axhead was buried in the fur and flesh. The bear slapped at Mooney. Both of them were blinded by the bear’s blood. The bear waddled close to Mooney, grasped him, hugged him close to his own bleeding fur. Mooney wrestled against him. The bear drew Mooney closer, until Fate heard the snapping of Mooney’s ribs, which sounded like shots firing. Closer the bear drew him and blood gushed over them.

  Fate stood there, horror-bound; his life swayed recklessly in the image of death that shadowed them all. He saw Jacob dive forward, grab a club from the ground. In the same instant he saw another man appear at the edge of the clearing, a rifle in hand. It was Lacey, and instantly he fired.

  The head of the bear and the head of the man were close together; the sound of the gun was loud, reverberated sharply, and the bear released its hold and stepped back. The bullet had entered its head; blood started spouting from one of its eyes. The great beast turned to look at Lacey Pollard, and with a deep groan moved forward, caught Lacey and lifted him and held him high and hurled him away, as if disposing of him, as if Lacey were a dog that had annoyed him.

  The boy saw Lacey’s body bash against a tree trunk and fall to the ground, roll to the edge of a drop, and fall into the bushes and creek bed below.

  The bear sank to the ground. It lay on its belly on the soppy ground. The ax still was in its shoulder and the hole in its head dripped a freshet of blood. Nearby, Mooney lay, moaning. Nearby, too, the dogs stood, silent, dismayed, awed by the shower of death they had helped bring about. They hovered back a ways and growled in frightened throat sounds.

  Fate knelt near Mooney and touched his face. Mooney’s eyes were open and the boy wanted to speak to him, but Jacob lifted the boy and turned him away. Jacob began treating Mooney for his breaks and ills, the two of them moaning as if they shared the pain.

  The German took a dog and went down the mountainside to try to find Lacey. He came back later and said he had not found him, but that there was a bloody trail leading off from there that they could come back and follow, once they had Mooney home. Jacob grunted assent and went on working.

  Nicholas worked the ax free of the bear’s body; with his knife and the ax, he began to cut the hide free.

  * * *

  That night they carried Mooney home; they got the bearskin down to the valley, too, and tied it to the side of Mooney’s cabin. The skin was thirteen feet long from the tip of the tail to the tip of the nose. Pretty soon everybody was coming to have a look at it, and there were pieces of bear meat for those who wanted a sliver to suck on.

  To Mina, as she arrived, the celebration was a grim affair. A single yard fire was throwing dark shadow figures of the people against the cabin and crib and shed and hillside. Some faces were dark and corpselike; others were brightly lighted. Everybody moved slowly, wonderingly.

  She saw that much of Mooney’s body was wrapped with cloth; one of his legs was held from the hip down in saplings and vines. When he turned to face her, she saw that he had new lines in his face, and his eyes were in hollow sockets, yes, in bruised sockets which were black; his flesh had been torn by claws and rocks and thorns. She stood before him, stunned to see him in such a way, shocked to a stillness, except that her mind moved fast ahead to the chief point of her worry. “Where’s Lacey?” she said.

  The dark-socketed eyes stared at her. “He was up there.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s up there yet,” he said.

  “Dead?” she said, whispering.

  The eyes closed. “Not likely,” he said.

  There was no music here. The bear was dead, but the toll it had cost was not fully counted, so nobody sang or danced yet. On the wall of the cabin was the bear’s hide, but the strength of the bear had not been evaluated yet. How long would it take Mooney to heal? they asked. Nobody could say. And where was Lacey? How many dogs were dead? they asked. Four were dead, and three more were torn and crushed and would not hunt any more.

  There was one more loss, even more difficult to evaluate. That was the knowledge that Mooney’s life had almost been lost, and had been saved through the actions of another man. Now Mooney was beholden for his own life’s safety, was beholden to the husband of his wife, the father of his children. The man he could not accept into friendship was the man who had made it possible for him to continue living. How could he respond to that? Such a sacrifice was unnatural, yet it was an act of friendship.

  Mooney walked from one group to the other, hobbling on his bound leg, breathing in slight puffs, for he could not bear to breathe deeply, moving slowly, his face the token of his body agony, the dimensions of his previous power never more clearly known than now in his near helplessness; wherever he went a silence followed.

  He had been set free of the bear, and had been taken captive by the man. So quick had been the trade that he had not even made a decision in the matter. From the arms of the beast into the armless debt of Lacey Pollard, he had moved without deciding.

  A sightless beast, he thought, had hold of him now. It was not to be seen, not to be tracked and followed. A most shadowy beast had crept over him, and hugged him
closely to itself.

  He had fallen into a trap that had not been set by hunters, nor set by beasts or the mountain or by anything natural, but set by the fateful invisible forces which moved through the air.

  He picked up a sapling and broke off one end, and this he used as a staff. He walked heavily to Imy’s grave, the rocky place he had dug out at a time when his spirit was no higher than it was tonight; at that other time he had lost his family; tonight he had a debt to pay which would be fully paid only with his family.

  A twig broke not far away. He tried to swing swiftly and almost toppled to the ground. He stared into the darkness. It was Lacey Pollard, he suspected. Let him come out and ask for payment. Wounded of body let him ask, and let Mooney, wounded of body, answer. “Who’s out there?” he said.

  There was no answer. Angrily he hurled the staff. A small animal leaped toward the woods, darted to cover.

  He sank down at the rock on Imy’s grave and rested his head forward in his torn hands.

  A while later Lorry came up the hill and sat down nearby. He knew it was she without looking up, for she walked so confidently always, yet softly. She walked between the way Mina walked, which was so softly it could not be heard, which was daintily, and the way a man walked; she walked almost like a boy walked if one judged the walk by sound alone.

  She sat down near him on the rock. “It’s like a dream, seeing them all standing around the fire, and not hearing a single note of celebration.”

  He looked down at the sight, the black figures in several groups, and over to one side the troupe of Plover girls.

  “Jacob told me what went on up there today, and I said to him, ‘I declare, Jacob, Lacey always was one to do what he did at the last minute.’  ”

  Mooney turned to her.

  “Jacob told me he had done a brave thing, and I said, ‘Yes, it was brave, and Lacey usually decides the proper way; he always takes the proper course, given time, but he’s most often too late.’  ”

  “Don’t you care that he’s hurt, Lorry?”

  “I do. I care. But after waiting for a person so long, a woman gets callous. In six absent years love gets to be a worry, that’s all, a worry lest he come back and start the love again.”

  “You don’t care now, even though he’s back?”

  “I worry, that’s all,” she said.

  * * *

  Mina hurried along now. Far behind her she could hear the men at Mooney Wright’s house. An animal fled before her, a small beast, and she heard it splash across the branch and flee into the brush. She splashed across the branch, too, and welcomed a piece of moonlighted road, for she was tired of the dark.

  She came to Harrison’s field and approached the small cabin where she had gone earlier in the day to feed Lacey Pollard’s horse and to sit by the fireside to wait for him. She saw that the door had opened on its own, and near the door a creature moved, then fled from her; a fox, she realized.

  She pushed the door open, careful lest another fox be inside. The small fire was bright ashes now, and she stacked wood on it, for she was chilly, and she locked the door. She turned from the door and saw Lacey Pollard.

  He was standing in the corner of the room, his shoulders pressed back against the walls, and he was breathing deeply, watching her.

  Slowly, afraid to believe he stood there, she went to him. “Lacey?” she whispered.

  “I been waiting for you,” he said.

  “You come lie down,” she said, “for you look to be sick.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t lie down.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  “No,” he said.

  “You tore your clothes all to pieces. Look at that jacket. It’s not worth making gate ties out of. And look at that shirt.” She touched it and it was damp with blood. “I’ll help ye,” she said, her voice soft.

  “I come a long way down the mountain to see you,” he said.

  “To take me on to the place you said, to the river?”

  “Yes, we’ll go to the Cumberland. That’s our resting place, Pearlamina, with fields so broad and deep they can’t be measured. We’ll go there.”

  “I’d like it better’n anything.”

  “We’ll make a cabin near a brook, build it tight and fire its hearth and drag up a baking rock.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And we ever want to roam from there, you and me, we’ll walk down to the river, and I will say to you, Pearlamina, we can make us a raft someday and set it in the water and let the drift carry it down through all this wilderness. We’ll see red men on a hundred banks, we’ll see beasts come down to the water to drink, we’ll lie on the raft and watch the stars and moon change and hold to one another to be safe with one another, and come at last to Frenchmen’s country, to a town called New Orleans.”

  “I never heard tell of such a place.”

  “I’ll tell you about it, though I’ve not seen it and most likely never will, for the river is the road we won’t take, and New Orleans is the place we won’t go. But when we want to roam out, you and me can go down to the river and talk about New Orleans, and make it what we want it to be.”

  “What will it be like?”

  A pain came over him and he closed his eyes tightly; then it passed; it was like a pain in childbirth, Mina thought. Death was like a pain in birth, she thought.

  “It will have golden streets,” he said.

  “You come lie down,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “You’d better be on a bed, if you’re so sick.”

  “I lay on the rocks once, did I ever tell you?”

  “And the birds come.”

  “I found if I sat up, they wouldn’t come close, and if I stood up, they wouldn’t come nigh at all.”

  “There are no birds here,” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, “the birds are here.”

  “I locked that door when I come in, and the smoke keeps birds out of the chimney.”

  “I feel their wings. Listen to them fly?”

  She listened. “I hear the fire, that’s all.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, knowing he would die.

  He lay down on the bed late at night. He breathed steadily for a while, and she sat on the floor beside him and in the little bit of light that reached the bed she saw to wash his face.

  By dawn his face was cold to her touch. “We could a been partway to the Cumberland, if we had left yesterday evening,” she said. She put her arm under his cold head and let his head rest against her breasts; she rocked him in her arms. We could a made a cabin, she thought, and peopled it with the handsome wild boys we could a had.

  Later in the morning, after the fire was out, she began to weep, weeping without sound, the tears falling on his face.

  1783

  23

  It was Verlin, who more than anybody else, labored devotedly at Mooney’s place. The boy was big-bodied and strong, and he could be seen of the morning driving the horse to harder labor, rolling rocks from the fields, cutting roots out of the way of his plow. He slashed and cut and dug and tore and dragged and burned and planted, and as he worked, Fate came to him and Lorry came to help him.

  Mooney’s leg still troubled him, but each day, it seemed, he worked a longer time, and after a while he was in the field at dawn and worked until light was gone, punching his staff into the ground to make beds for the seed, planting corn and sorghum, flax and potatoes and cabbages, then helping Verlin work the horse in the upper field, pulling more rock from the ground. He used locust posts and the chain, and he and the boys hauled the rock out of the planting places.

  At nightfall he would eat his supper without speaking; then he would rise, a powerful figure, and holding to the staff would walk across the half-darkened room to the bed and would lie down clothed and sleep. And by the first light of morning, he would rise and tap the floor with his staff. “Get along, boys,” he would say. And he would throw open the door to see what the weather o
ffered, then would stalk out on clear mornings to count the pigs and the spring lambs, and he would come back for breakfast, then would join the boys for work, splitting boards and cutting holes with the auger, pegging together a springhouse door, for they had piled so many rocks near the spring that a springhouse could be made soon.

  New life came back to him in the spring season, as always before, but this year found him older than by a year, and more anxious to break through the wall which separated him from success for his life. The toll of losses in this place had sapped his strength and confidence, had made him wary.

  He filled his time with work, which is what he knew best. He covered up his hesitancy and doubt by work. He told himself he must keep working, that he somehow must work until autumn and then, after five autumns in this place, he must break free, and the place itself must break free.

  The boys from across the river would sometimes come over to watch him, for they had not seen much good man-work in their lives. They squatted on their haunches like their fathers and stared about speculatively. After a while they would go bubbling down the road, enthusiastically talking to others about what they had seen, the marvels of new work at Mooney Wright’s place.

  Fate and Verlin would sometimes ask the dark-haired boy, Amos’ oldest, if his father was over at the house. The boy would return their stares, but he would not answer. So they knew his father was not back. Amos had been gone since the day of Lorry’s baby’s birth.

  Mooney, one afternoon, did the questioning. “I was wondering,” he said, “if you’ve got a rifle at your place as pretty as mine.” He showed him his rifle, which was well carved and polished on the stock.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Don’t you have a rifle at home?”

  “Got two,” the boy said defensively.

  “Your mama’s and your papa’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got two now?”