The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  Even so, even though Harrison claimed to be disappointed, he was pleased, too, and felt a sort of elation, for he had always liked to have Ernest about, to have him ask for help, which he did often and with a fine wit and manner. He was Belle’s father, too, and that had to be considered.

  So Harrison gave him a plot of land and told him where his corner markings were. Then he invited him and Inez and children over to his plantation for supper, so that they could eat a good meal, the first good meal of that long journey from Virginia.

  To his surprise, however, Ernest refused the invitation. He who had come to beg for land and had accepted it would not come to share supper with the old man. Tinkler went away, unable to figure it all out, not realizing that Ernest Plover never asked for help unless he was in need of it, and never accepted help unless he had first asked.

  * * *

  Mooney, from a grove of trees, watched this new, blonde band. He was drawn to them out of curiosity, having heard the old dog howl one night and realizing the howl was not from Harrison’s pack. The oldest girl caught his eye at once. She was beginning to fill out nicely; her breasts were poking out under her loose, thin dress so that he gasped on seeing them. She had neat ankles and wrists and was always happy, seemed like, and now and again could be heard singing. It was she who spent much time entertaining the youngest children, and was their favorite sister, he decided. Once or twice he started to go down and say a word to her, but he had known no people-company since the burial and he didn’t want any now. He would let his eyes rove over her, his ears listen, his nose smell the odor of cooking food. And when he left their place, sometimes he would stop by Tinkler Harrison’s clearing and would squat in the woods and watch the women there move from the cabin to the outdoors fire, which was always burning, day and night. The moving bodies of the women drew his eye. Seldom did he get a glimpse of Belle, but Lorry could be seen often of a day, walking about, working at the fire, boiling clothes or roasting meat, moving a big black pot, shoving her ashes under it, pouring river water into it. One afternoon he watched her pound clothes on a level-topped stump, using a battling stick; her arms would whack the hickory paddle down with a whop, her body moving to the rhythm of the work. He licked the trail dust from his lips and sniffed, smiled with his teeth showing, and stared at her across the wide clearing. He had been a long time without woman care.

  Also he watched, fascinated by their strength and the effortlessness of their labor, as the Negro men built a cabin in the northwest corner of the Harrison clearing. It was to this place that Lorry and her two sons moved. He could watch her more easily after that, for the woods came down close to her house, close to the black pot in which she boiled clothes, to her garden spot where she pulled weeds and crushed beetles, to the shanty pen where her chickens were kept of a night, to the shed where her ewes and ram stayed.

  But he didn’t go near her or say anything to her, or to that young thing at the Plover place, either.

  He did little work around his own place. He had not yet made hames for the plowshares, so he had to dig the earth with a stick. He punched holes between the roots here and there, away from the stumps, and put in a patch of corn. He and Imy had planned to clear much land that winter, but he had not done any such work. He burned over a patch below the cabin and put in a bed of flax. Why, he didn’t know; who would break it, he didn’t know. He wouldn’t break it. Or what he needed linen for, except a bit for gun tow, he didn’t know, but he planted it. He planted beans in the corn hills and planted sweet potatoes in a long row that wound in and out among the girdled trees. He also put some beans near the stumps, so that they could grow up on them. He planted a few cabbages. He put in three hills of pumpkins. And near Imy’s grave he planted four apple seeds and two peach pits, all he had. He guessed they would grow all right there.

  He had no hoe, so he took a piece of hickory wood and whittled on it, carved it to an edge at one side and fire-charred the edge to sharpen and harden it. The hoe might split if he hit a rock with it—he didn’t know. He could not quite come to terms with work again. He who had worked always, who had liked work more than resting, who had once gone to bed each night thinking of what work he might do tomorrow, who had come to this land with daily plans for it, did little with the land. He had no ambitions for it. He kept the wild things from his stock, for he didn’t like to see young life killed, as Imy had been killed, but he had no heart for work.

  He was hoeing one morning. It was getting on toward mid-day, for his shadow was short, and he thought he might go cook a piece of meat. The day before he had trapped a wild turkey hen near the river and he had a piece of the white part of it left yet, it was dry meat and made bread, or what passed for bread, for he had no other. He was wondering if there was an egg to be found that the snakes hadn’t got. He was thinking in such random fashion when on the ground appeared the shadow of a person. He looked up, startled, and there before him was the oldest of the girls from the Plover clearing. She was smiling, more quizzically than warmly, and had her hands behind her back, so that her small breasts were standing out even more than ordinarily, and she was scratching with the bottom of her foot at a mosquito bite that was bothering her left leg. She had on a plain, patched, linsey dress; a length of vine was tied around her waist; her hair also was tied in a vine.

  He scratched at his stubbled face. He hadn’t shaved for a while.

  “I declare,” she said, suddenly, quietly, perfectly at ease, “at least you could say hello.”

  He nodded slowly. “I—you’re quiet when you walk,” he said.

  “I am, I know. My mama says I can walk up on her and she not know it, and nothing else can do it ’cept a snake.” She smiled and seemed to giggle to herself, and she twisted her shoulders so that the dress caught itself tighter around her, and then she looked off at the cabin. “You build that by yourself?”

  “Might nigh,” he said.

  “You must be stronger’n a horse then.”

  “Huh? I don’t know.”

  “I knowed a man in Virginia that could throw a horse.”

  He stared at her, intrigued by the guilelessness of her, of her coming on a strange man in a field alone, being unfearful of him, coming through the woods without a gun, and barefoot, too.

  “He was a blacksmith for most of his life, and Papa said he could throw an ox, but I never saw him do it, but I was down to his place one day when I was a little girl. He would let me hold the tongs for him as he pounded and struck the shoes or the plowshares or the scythe, whatever it was he was letting me hold, and the sparks would fly up from him and he would be almost covered with sparks. I would blink my eyes and pull back a ways and he would get to laughing at me, bellowing, with those two big hammers pounding down, and one day he was shoeing a horse and the horse kicked him hard, so he turned around and caught that horse with his shoulder under his belly and lifted him off the ground. There was a flying of hoofs for certain, but he dumped the horse onto the water trough. It was a wonder he didn’t git hisself kicked again.”

  She was still staring off at the river valley below, her arms folded, the fingers of her right hand idly scratching at her left arm, and she was smiling with that simple way she had, an unadorned manner that was part of how she spoke and acted. She was bubbling with life and feeling all the while.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I’m one of the Plover girls that’s moved in. We’re kin to the Harrisons.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They live in the river bottom. Don’t you know a thing? I thought you must a seen them, since they was here all winter, cutting at the woods and burning brush. They burn all the time, and they’ve got a big place now. He’s a rich man, my mama says. He’s my mama’s youngest brother, and the only one that’s ’cumulated riches.”

  She was quiet again. She would bubble into speech, then simmer down. When she talked, she was smiling but pensive, and there was a lonely sound in her voice; her voice lilted more than it spo
ke; it had a singing to it. She was younger than Imy had been when she died; she was smaller and more brittle of body. She was prettier than Imy, too, and maybe had more humor to her.

  “What’s your first name?” he said.

  “Mina. Though I tell you, my name’s not that. It’s Pearlamina. Nobody’s got time for to say it all, though, not around our place, ’cause we got so many youngins you just got to pin the one you want when you want her and not go on talking so much. A person can’t do much talking around my house, though you can sing whenever you want to. You almost got to sing to hear yourself, ’cause all those youngins are squalling and bawling and flurrying at one another, and there’s always hair-pulling, so you have to make a noise to find yourself. Nobody ever has called me Pearlamina that I know of.”

  He laughed softly and looked down at the cabin. When he looked back at her she was studying him, trying to make him out.

  She looked away quickly and smiled warmly. “You got a pretty laugh,” she said. “I expect you’ll have a nice wit about you, if you ever learn to talk.” For a moment longer she was serious, then she laughed, and he laughed.

  All of a sudden she turned and said, “I better get on home and eat my dinner.” She started across the clearing, her hips moving under the thin dress cloth.

  “Wait there,” he said.

  She stopped, surprised.

  His throat was clogged with wonder at her and his heart was changing inside him and his mind was opening. He looked at her with a hunger for her as a woman and for her as company and most of all for the lightness of her spirit. “You coming back sometime?” he said.

  “Law, I reckon so. We just live across the brook run a piece. I expect you can hear us yelling when my mama gets to fussing and saying everybody is too loud and ornery. I’d think you’d a heard us by now, or smelled the pork cooking.”

  He went closer to her. He thought about touching her, maybe touching her hair, to see what she would do, but he decided it might make her dart away.

  “I better go,” she said slowly, cautious of the way he was looking at her. She moved down the corn row again, and he watched her, the grace of her, a child not quite a woman yet, or a woman still lingering, part child.

  When she was gone, he walked to the cabin and cooked the meat and ate. He had wanted to be alone before, but now he was dissatisfied with the way he was living, and when he was done eating, he took his razor from the shelf and went down to the spring and shaved.

  4

  He met her on the path one day. She was carrying her youngest sister along the path and was barefooted and held the baby close to her breasts. She walked toward him, her manner grave and serious, but she laughed softly in greeting him, so surprising him that he stopped. When he turned, he saw that she was watching him from farther along the path, and now she took the baby’s hand and waved it at him. “Hello. Say hello,” she said to the child.

  In a flash, as if she remembered something, she turned and hurried up the path.

  He found himself growing anxious about her. He would think of her as he worked his land. Whenever his work was done, or even before it was done, he would hurry down the trail to the river and walk along it to where the Harrison clearing was, and he would walk around the edges of it, watching the men work, to the Plover place.

  One day at dusk Ernest discovered him, standing on the trail looking on as the little girls played, and invited him to come to visit, so they met that way. They went into the small clearing, where only a few trees had been girdled and none had been cut down. Mooney was introduced to Inez, who stopped her work to smile at him and wonder about him. “You been living here all along?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said amiably, sitting down near the fire. Not far away, Mina was showing the children how to sing and dance about. She saw him and smiled, freely and yet wistfully, as if he reminded her of a fond idea.

  Ernest took up the ax and coughed importantly, strutted to a huge hickory tree, one fourteen feet through, studied it, considered a gash he had made in it. “You ever felled a bigger tree than this?” he asked.

  The tree was the largest on the place, and the most useless, for never could it be made into a house or into furniture or into anything at all.

  Better to girdle it and let it dry out. “I never have seen one cut this big afore,” Mooney said.

  Ernest winked. “I have it to do.” He went to work at once, and the girls stopped their playing and gathered around to watch him. He was a slender, wiry man, not strong particularly; he was built something like a spring, and his limber arms sent the ax whiplike into the trunk. Almost with every blow a damp chip fell. The daughters gazed at him worshipfully, and Mina glanced back at Mooney, proud of the marvelous actions of her father, who proved at such times as this that he, like other men, could work.

  Inez watched, too, eating corn mush from a bowl, mumbling about the uselessness of such a tree. She counted off her daily chores in time to the chopping, told Mooney that she had to tend the young, make house in the cart and under the cart and under a lean-to, cook the meals on an open hearth, tend to the dog, for Ernest wouldn’t do even that, make cornbread for the dog both morning and night, as well as for the family, tend to stock, and mend the clothing as best she could, all while he gave his attention to the tree. “You want some mush?” she asked him.

  He accepted a wooden bowlful of it. The Plovers had only a few bowls, he noticed, but enough to make out with, provided everybody didn’t eat at the same time.

  Ernest Plover’s blows got more and more slight. Soon he stopped entirely, and with a deep sigh threw down the ax. He came over to where Mooney was and flopped on the ground.

  Mina took up the ax and went to the tree, set one foot in the cut in the trunk, and began to hack. Mooney couldn’t help but watch her; with each stroke her dress caught nicely across her body. Not long before she would be fully grown, he thought, and responsive to the proper touch and look and word and whisper. It was all he could do to eat the corn mush for the interest he had in watching her, the way she would set herself just right, the way her hips would swing and her shoulders move.

  Ernest picked up his fiddle and began to strum the bow across it. Mina flashed him a smile and the little girls began to prance about. Ernest began to play, and the fiddle music got as hot as the fire before which they sat, near which she cut on the great tree, and it boiled Mooney’s temper and made him wary, even of his own thoughts, there in a state of near-starvation for a woman.

  Abruptly the music stopped. The end was so sharply done, so unexpected, that he was dizzy from the return to quiet.

  Ernest turned to Inez. “Is that the sound of a horse a coming?”

  “It’s at least two horses. Can’t you hear?”

  “Oh, hush up,” he said. “She’s got a mouth on her like a miller’s paddle.” He turned without rising and tried to see the trail. Inez, with her bowl in her hand, moved toward the cart, where all her things were, the sorry lot of her possessions. The dog, which was lying on its belly on the ground, raised its head and sniffed the air, then lowered its head again.

  Riders came in among the trees, there near the fire, and stopped. Inez came back to the fireside, fanning herself with a willow-limb fan.

  “It’s your brother, ain’t it?” Ernest said.

  Inez grunted and sat down. Mina leaned on the ax handle, waiting. When she saw her uncle, she let the ax drop and went off through the woods.

  The old man stepped into the firelight. He was shorter than Mooney had remembered him being, and was more pixie-like. “Well, air ye never to get cabin trees felled, Inez?” he said.

  She shifted her weight and frowned testily. “There’s the big tree to work on,” she said. “Ernest wants it down.”

  Harrison looked at the tree speculatively. He shook his head wearily and turned to Mooney. Mooney went on eating, chewing the mush. The old man said, “If you’d married a man with gumption, Inez, you’d have something by now besides a brood of youngins and a d
ull ax.”

  “Marry a good man like your own first wife done,” Ernest said simply, “and she could be in her grave by now.”

  A flash of anger crossed Harrison’s face, a fierceness appeared there, but quickly he controlled himself and turned to talk to Inez, ignoring Ernest, just as Ernest made a point of ignoring him.

  Mooney, feeling ill at ease there, went to take his bowl to the branch and rinse it out. When he got to the wagons he stopped short, for he saw Lorry there, leaning against the cart. She seemed not to be unsettled by his staring at her. “Have you forgot her yet?” she said gently.

  “Forgot her?” he said. He realized then what she meant. “Most of what’s around the house reminds me of her.”

  “I thought you might come down to see us sometime in the valley, but you never did.”

  “The winter closed in. I looked in on you once or twice from beyond the clearing.”

  She considered that.

  “I see you have a house off to yourself now,” he said.

  “Not much of one. Papa put my cabin so near his I can hear him shouting at the field hands.” She smiled wanly. “I guess I’m as much dependent on him now as everybody else.”

  “That so?” The moonlight fell gently on her face, molding it, and she had a wistfulness about her. He liked the way she looked and talked. She had the lilt in her voice, like Mina. She had a firm body on her, too; he could tell that, for the moonlight fell on her, rounding her, and a flicker of the lights of the fire touched her.

  “I never do see a man around your cabin,” he said.

  “No. He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He left our place in Virginia. I don’t know where he is.”