The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  They were fiery men by nature, all right, known to be that, and if Charley hadn’t injured that man at the Yadkin, they wouldn’t have had to leave in the dead of night. It wasn’t the court which he feared so much as the man’s family—though he feared the court, too, the possibility of a trial, the stern, eyeless judge, the sentencing, the sermon, maybe even the hanging. Lord, she had seen a hanging when she was a girl, and it was pitiful, was a sight to lodge in the mind.

  Charley had injured a man, had almost killed him, then had come to Mildred’s husband, who was a friend and who had often idly talked of going west for better land. The two of them had got Frank into it and all three had left that night, bringing her along and the cow, which followed up the long road through Old Fort and along the Swannanoa, the road which went to Watauga.

  Charley had got her into this, but he was so handsome and was such a happy man that she never could grow as angry with him as he deserved. He had been in trouble before and had got out of it, trouble with both women and men. All his life he had gone his own way like a stallion that wouldn’t be tamed, and behind him was a trail of incidents to make a body’s head swim with wonder, but he showed no scars. He sat on one of the best horses south of Virginia, carried a rifle with inlay on the stock, had a knife first honed in Philadelphia, and on his belt was a Cherokee tomahawk (he who had never seen an Indian in his life). The leggings, boots, pants and hunting shirt he wore were made by different women and that little hat he wore aside his head, where his black hair curled, was made for him by this latest girl, and it was her brother he had wounded in a knife fight.

  The three men had fallen in line for this valley; they liked it well and had said so, but Tinkler Harrison didn’t take to them. He complained about their drinking and the shooting and said he didn’t think he would sell any land just then to anybody. He was angry for a fact, and stayed angry even when Charley Turpin showed he carried cash money and offered to buy a thousand acres, said he, Amos and Frank would pay one hundred dollars for it. Cash money seemed to catch Mr. Harrison’s eye, all right, but even so he said he wouldn’t sell to them, that he wanted the settlement to be more orderly than they had proved to be.

  Mildred told him she had two daughters and four sons back in the Yadkin Valley and that Frank was a family man. Charley was the only one who didn’t have a family, she said. “We’re going to bring all our youngins and stock up here soon’s we get cabins,” she said.

  When Harrison remained adamant, Charley started talking about what a pretty horse Mr. Harrison rode and how they had heard about him all the way to the Yadkin Valley and about Harristown—though they had never heard a thing, except that there was a knotty little settlement starting far up near the top of a river—and how they had traveled all this way and felt at home here. Harrison remained unimpressed, so Charley said wouldn’t it be a shame if the reputation of the place should be hurt by somebody passing the word that Harristown was so sick with diseases that nobody could safely live there.

  Harrison listened to that more attentively, Mildred saw, and thought about it. Charley smiled graciously and began talking about how the settlement looked like it needed a pastor. He said he could preach and had preached many times on the Yadkin, which surprised everybody (Mildred had seen him walk girls home from meetings but had never seen him inside a church). He told about how he had a way of curing sickness with prayer without the use of herbs at all. Harrison listened, thinking deeply now. Charley said he taught school on the Yadkin, too (Mildred didn’t think he could read). And every once in a while he would return to the idea about the reputation of the valley. Finally, when everything had been said, Charley told Mr. Harrison, “Why don’t you go on home and pray over it,” and he led Mr. Harrison’s horse out of the campsite onto the road, and there was nothing for Tinkler Harrison to do except ride home.

  That night the three men shot at wolves and sang all night. When morning came, they ate everything Mildred cooked; then Charley got on his coal-black horse and rode down the trail to the Harrison place, the hundred dollars in cash money in his belt. When he got back, after visiting the cabins in the settlement and making himself at home, he was talking about where his cabin was to go. Also he talked about a clearing off to the side of the road where there were more pretty girls in one family than he had ever seen before, and one of them had been hanging around the Mooney Wright cabin that morning, the one who went by the name of Pearlamina, and he said he told her he would bring her a horse to ride home on that night, for he wouldn’t want pretty legs to have to walk so far.

  He sat down by Mildred’s fire, took out a piece of deer meat he had brought back with him, which the German’s wife, Anna, had given him, and warmed it on a stick, turning it frequently. He hunched over toward the blaze, talking all the while about how he wanted his cabin near the river where he could fish from his front door, and how he didn’t want much land cleared near his place for he wanted to fight wolves every night, and how he would eat bear meat and deer meat and coon and cross the river for loving, as well as when he wanted to teach school or preach.

  “You’re a fool, Charley,” Mildred told him. “You’re so promising a man, and you fool your life away.”

  “Got to keep moving, honey,” he said.

  “Yes, you have, or the law will get you, or any one of half a dozen husbands.”

  “Hush, hush,” he said, whispering to her and glancing awkwardly at Amos, which made her laugh.

  “You fool,” she told him, laughing at him.

  “I told that Harrison I was going to clear land and settle down.” He nodded emphatically. “I am, too. I’m going to cut down a tree.” He propped the broiling stick with rocks and went around looking for an ax; he found one in a cart and started roving about the campsite studying trees. He stopped near the biggest one he could find, walked up to it and hit it a mighty blow, sunk the axhead well into it. Then he couldn’t get it out. He looked at the ax, then up at the tree.

  He backed off a ways, studying the tree. He went back to his steak and turned it. “I better stay with preaching,” he said.

  Mildred laughed. Amos asked him what he was going to use as a text for his first sermon. He thought about that and a big grin came over his face. He stood and looked down at them as if they were his congregation. “Friends,” he said. “Dearly beloved. My text today comes from the pages of the Holy Writ and was selected with brother Harrison in mind. It reads: ‘He was a stranger and I took him in.’  ”

  That night he saddled his own horse and Amos’, too, tied Mildred’s blue ribbon to the saddle of Amos’, and rode off with a great clatter, dashing down the trail as if the world wouldn’t wait until he got to wherever it was he was going. He didn’t get back until late and he was singing out at the top of his voice a song Mildred had never in all her life heard him sing:

  Oh, for a glance of heavenly day

  To take this stubborn stone away,

  And thaw with beams of love divine

  This heart, this frozen heart of mine.

  He dismounted and swung around by the fire and didn’t seem to pay any attention to Amos, who was waking up unhappily. He had been smitten, Mildred decided, as much as ever in his life before, if looks would tell.

  “Found that pretty girl,” Charley said. “I promised to take her to see the old country.” He nodded emphatically. “But I didn’t say when.”

  “What did you tell her, Charley?” Mildred asked, jealousy going through her, as it always did whenever he talked of his women friends.

  “Lord, she’s pretty, and she can run. Ran all the way home, and I almost killed myself trying to catch her.”

  “Well, doesn’t sound right to me,” Mildred said.

  “She led me on. I thought everything was ready. Then she said something about having seen one baby born, and she commenced to run. I couldn’t catch her and fell in a brook trying.” He laughed out loud and kicked at the burning logs. “Hell, she’s all right. You remember that Thompson girl down
at the Yadkin, Amos?”

  Amos glanced uneasily at Mildred. “I saw her around,” he said.

  Saw her around, Mildred thought. He saw her around, all right.

  “Well, this one’s as pretty, but she’s not had as much experience, the best I can judge, except in running.”

  “Her father’ll get hold of you with a gun,” Mildred said.

  “I don’t think he’s got one,” Charley said, and laughed again. Then slowly the smile went off his face. “But Mooney Wright, he’s got one, and he was there at the cabin where Mina was hanging out. He was standing by the sheep pen when I got there.”

  “Which man is he?” Amos asked.

  “That big one. This girl’s not his’n, but I don’t know for sure just what their history is. He told me clear as a bell that he expected the girl to get home speedily and safe, and I thought right then the wise thing to do was give her one horse and let her go one way and me go the other, for that man must be eight foot tall when he’s leaning over.” He laughed and smiled at Mildred. “But I saw Pearlamina. She come to the door of that cabin up there, and she was like a tamed wild thing, all pretty, even in her faded dress, and she had a smile that flirted with her face, not sure it wanted to show itself. She looked up at me as if this was her first date and she had been thinking about it all day long. There she was, barefoot, and I’ll bet you with nothing on under that dress except her natural hair.”

  “The way you talk,” Mildred said. “You ought to be beat with a stick.”

  “She looked up at me as if she had been memorizing my face. I got off and helped her mount her horse, and held her ankle in my hand until that big man cleared his throat. So I got on my horse and we rode down the path, my shoulders hunched over waiting for that gun blast, but it never come, and I said to her, ‘Pearlamina, you told him you was coming out with me?’ And she said yes, and that he didn’t want her to come, neither. And I said, ‘Why did you decide to come—is it because you like me?’ And she said it was because she liked to ride horses and didn’t have one.” He commenced to laugh, and Mildred laughed, too, and grinned at Amos and Frank.

  “Sounds like she’s got wit,” Mildred said.

  “I said, ‘I’ll get you a horse to keep.’  ” He ground his boot heel in the ground. “ ‘Get you one when I next go to Morganton,’ I said, and she said she wanted a white one.” He laughed again, his laughter rolling out through the woods. “My Lord, I was done out a horse and we wasn’t out of sight of the chimney sparks. I said, ‘What you going to pay for it with?’ And before she could answer, I said, ‘The best way to pay is with loving,’ and she said it would take too much loving to pay for a horse, and she kicked her mount in the flanks and rode on a ways. I waited for a while, then rode up beside her again, reached over and caught her hand, and she let me hold it. I said, ‘I’ll give you the horse for nothing,’ and she seemed to know what she was supposed to say then, about giving me her love free. She blushed and kicked her horse on ahead again, and after a while she stopped the horse by a brook and sat there on it while the horse drank. ‘It’s thirsty,’ she told me. I let my horse drink and got off my horse and hitched it to wait. She got off hers after a while and tied her horse and sat down on a mossy patch. I went to her and began to talk about the owl hooting nearby, and she talked about the music in the woods and commenced to sing me a song, and I sang one, and we sang and I kissed her lightly a time or two, and pretty soon I was getting warm as a hearth bug, and she was still singing and letting me put my arm around her, so I got a grip on her and got around to seeking a closer understanding. Right when I was damn near overcome, she got up, leaving me lying on the ground, and said about how she had once witnessed a baby being born, and took off running. I was so surprised I couldn’t think. I ran, too, as best I could, but a man’s not swift in such a season, and she knew the path and I didn’t, and she left me behind. So I went back and found the horses and come home.” He sat there, staring at the men and nodding, as if he had never had such a yarn to tell. He crossed his arms and rocked back and forth slowly, letting the fire warm him. “I never knew but one other that would go so far and wouldn’t go no further,” he said.

  A wave of anger suddenly came over him. “She had no right to lead me on like that.” He got up and stomped off, but the anger left him soon, and he went over to Amos’ horse and patted it gently. “Do you remember her?” he asked the horse.

  Mildred went to the horse, too, jealousy bubbling in her yet. “Where’s my ribbon, Charley?” she said.

  “She’s wearing it in her hair,” he said. “It looks pretty on her, Mildred.” He went back to the fire and stood looking down at it. “I tell you men the truth. I’d do well to forget that girl.”

  Soon there was a world of building going on in the settlement. Three cabins were put up on the unsettled side of the river, and a bench was put across it. The bench, or bridge, was no more than a series of sawhorses that Harrison and the other men built; there were four of them, and planks were laid across them. The span was only one plank wide, and Mina wouldn’t dare go across it for a long while. When she learned to use it, she didn’t dare stay on the other side because of Charley, who was always chasing her.

  Even so, in spite of his temperament, she liked him and sometimes when she heard him singing, she would come down to her side of the river and sing songs across the water to him. She would even go to walk with him on short occasions, and in traveled places, but she was afraid of him and of herself when she was with him, lest she lose out on such a future as she had. The German boy had perked up interest in her and often of late would come by her father’s clearing, when he had a spell off from work. Grover, too, would ride up on one of his father’s big bay horses and talk and laugh about something, and listen to her sing. So it wasn’t as it had been the year before, when she hadn’t seen a hope in the world of a family of her own, but she wasn’t certain of anything, for Grover never so much as touched her hand, and the German boy was moody.

  As for Charley Turpin, so far as she could tell, he was like the song person, Black Jack Davie, that’s what he was exactly, and he wouldn’t ever have anything except a bed to lie on. But she guessed it would be a right nice bed.

  She thought about lying in it more than she wanted to. She sang Charley the Black Jack Davie ballad sometimes when she went down to the river. But she wished he wasn’t so footloose and free.

  One night when he came to visit her at Lorry’s house, she even went so far as to show him all that Mooney had done, and to talk about family ways. He nodded seriously and acted impressed, but at the last he let his snickering get the better of him. “Nobody’s going to hog-tie me,” he said, and laughed until she thought he was a fool for certain—as if he had a right in this world to think she was trying to get him to change his ways so that she could get a hold on him and marry him.

  She told him she planned to stay that night at Lorry’s house, that he needn’t think about seeing her home, and went off, riding darkly out of the clearing without looking back. She went inside the cabin, curled up before the fireplace and gave way to the disappointment that was in her.

  It was Lorry, who had so many work cares, who took the patience to comfort her with talk about how a woman gets her heart tangled up in cords of care, and how a woman can’t ever be free of them entirely and has to learn to live with them. Mina guessed she had so many cords on her heart she could hardly breathe, with the German boy and Grover, and Charley calling to her from across the water, and the German looking like he would die whenever she came near him. He had even left her a comb. She had broken it in two and put it back on the gift rock. A week later, when she went to walk, she found another comb. She broke it, too, and stomped in into the ground. A week later, she fell asleep in the woods, and when she awoke, beside her was a comb. She left it there and went home.

  Mooney Wright, she thought about him, too, and would creep up near his clearing of a daytime and watch him, listen to him talk with his family, and she re
membered him often of a day and night both, and felt angry with herself for longing for the man that had married her cousin.

  So there were currents moving at her from every way. She had no place to stand in that stream she was in, she thought; she was pushed here and there, and she couldn’t see any real hope at all. The more men who came around, and the more she filled out in body and filled out in her mind with thoughts about herself and them, the more her father got to fussing with her and nagging at her and carrying on about her. Charley was the only man visitor he didn’t seem to object to, and the only reason in the world for that, she had decided, was that Charley usually had whiskey with him. Ernest swore at Charley until he got drunk; then he would praise the boy and stagger up and down before the outdoors fire, speaking at length about Charley’s exploits, confusing them with his own.

  When Ernest was sober again, he would curse Charley’s name. But later he would tell Mina to go down to the river and invite Charley over. When she wouldn’t, he would tell Fancy. Fancy would go to this side of the bridge and call over that her father wanted Charley to come by. She always took her little sister with her and held her hand.

  13

  One day that spring, Tinkler Harrison took a chair down to the river and set it near a beech tree, but apart from the shade so that he could get the full warmth of the early-year sun. He enjoyed sitting of a late afternoon in the sun, sweating, feeling the fat of his body dissolve out into pure water. He had a theory which he had perhaps too often expressed to Grover that not only was it healthy to sit in the sun and lose fat, but, if one sat near the river, which was bubbling and noisy, the sound and presence of the river water would assist the fats of the body in seeking a way out, in order to join the greater body of its own kind.