The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  Going to leave the valley, going to leave them all behind, and probably not see them again till judgment time.

  Well, her father had so many children he wouldn’t know she’d gone away till sometime when he was in a counting mood. He’d have to count two or three times to make sure, and he’d look around and say, “Inez, one’s missing.” Her mother would stick her head out of the cabin, which wasn’t nothing but a children’s trough, and she would say, “What size is it that’s gone?” And he’d say, “Lord knows.” They’d line them all up by the cabin door and figure out that the one missing was the one named Pearlamina. “Why, where you reckon she is?” her mother would say. “I thought I saw her just the other day.” “I thought I saw her,” her father would say, “walking up the road, singing ‘Heavenly Day.’  ”

  They’d know she was gone inside a week, but they’d never know what happened to her.

  I had a piece of pie

  And I had a piece of puddin’.

  I gave it all away

  To hug Sally Goodin.

  That tickled her.

  I went on a hillside,

  Saw my Sally comin’.

  Thought to my soul

  I’d kill myself a runnin’.

  She giggled. That little song was nice, though “Black Jack Davie” was the best.

  Black Jack Davie came ridin’ through the woods,

  Singin’ so loud and merry

  That the green hills all around him rang,

  And he charmed the heart of a lady,

  And he charmed the heart of a lady.

  “How old are you, my pretty little miss,

  How old are you, my lady?”

  She answered him with a “Hee, he, he.

  I’ll be sixteen next summer,

  I’ll be sixteen next summer.”

  “Come go with me, my pretty little miss,

  Come go with me, my lady.

  I’ll take you across the deep blue sea,

  Where you never shall want for money,

  Where you never shall want for money.”

  She stopped in the road and listened, just in case he was that very minute coming along on a horse, a big black horse and him black-haired hisself. She wished he would stop that horse and ask her to go off across the deep blue sea with him.

  She’d go. She’d like more than anything to get back over there where her grandpa had been. Why he ever left over there she didn’t know.

  She kicked at a pack of dust and found that it was a turtle. “Well, I say to my soul,” she said, grabbing her toe and frowning. “You find you a place to lie that ain’t in the middle of the road, afore you get tromped.”

  She climbed on up the trail toward the gap, fussing and singing. She stopped once and looked back, and the valley was so pretty she thought about going on home, but she didn’t, and soon she came to the top of the high ridge.

  It got dark on the trail. The trail was still soft and dusty, but rocks were present, too, and they got to pressing on her feet; she got bruises on the arches and soles, and got her toes stumped. It was getting chilly, too, and still she wasn’t nowhere. And hungry—law, she reckoned she could eat elm bark if she could get it busted up to chew on.

  Somewhere off to the side there was sometimes a breaking of bushes, like the sound of an animal making its way on unknown ground. She had to sing to keep her courage up. She sang the whole story of Black Jack Davie, up to where the woman was sorry she’d gone off with Black Jack because she didn’t have nothing finally but him and an old straw pad to lie on. Seemed like she had aged past sixteen, and she had come to regret not having stayed at home with a rich husband, who would give her velvet shoes and a gold ring.

  Well, a body couldn’t have it all, Mina thought.

  Now there it went, that moving through brush. Something was in there. Must be a big animal. She knew the animals at home; they doubtless knew her, anyway, for she had walked through the woods so much. But this was strange country. She guessed if she sang, the animals would leave her alone, but she was tired of singing. She had sung all the verses she was going to, and if it was a beast, she would have to let it take her. Everybody had to die sometime; might as well be soon as late.

  It was so dark she couldn’t see the trail at all well.

  That sound again. Something was behind her now, out on the trail.

  She turned slowly and saw him standing in the road, down the hill. “Why, I declare, you following me all this way?” she said, her voice trembling.

  He looked black as night in the darkness, and his eyes shone. A bear’s eyes always shone so brightly, anyway. He was the big bear from the valley, she suspected.

  “Want me to whistle a tune? I’ll sing you a song. You want me to?”

  He stood without moving, listening.

  “You want me to sing ‘Heavenly Day’?” she said, and hummed the music of it. The bear stood motionless, listening. Then abruptly he left the trail, went off into the woods.

  Mina waited, fearful and lonely. “I don’t know,” she said softly. A person could hardly think of what to do.

  She went limping up the road, moving slowly and listening from time to time. A wolf howled off to her right and was answered by another. Her teeth started chattering and she clamped her jaw shut. She kept climbing. Seemed like when she got to the top she’d be somewhere, to heaven if nowheres else. She’d never walked such a long distance upwards in her life.

  The moon appeared, and it was close to where she was. A cloud was passing, and the cloud closed off the moonlight. She had to stop, for she couldn’t see the trail.

  She stood looking up at that big cloud. My, it was something. It was like a living thing; it was so close and it moved so fast. It was going faster than a horse trottin’, right across the top of that mountain range. The moon was somewhere back up there, now so dim she couldn’t see it. Suddenly it was there again; then it was covered over by the cloud, which looked exactly like a pearl that a man had showed her once in Virginia.

  She watched the cloud go on by; then the moon was clear again. “Law, that’s something,” she whispered, and realized she could see the trail and went on.

  Farther along she saw below her in the left, the east valley, a body of clouds, going off to the shoulders of far-off mountains, and she stopped to consider it. The scene was like a picture, and she loved to look at it.

  She stood there long enough to realize how cold she was, though. It was chilly up there, she’d say that, cold as a baby’s tail when it had wet itself in a cold loft. She clutched her arms around herself and wished she had a fire.

  She should move on, she knew, but she liked the sight too well. It was all rolling clouds, billowing and changing as if a giant were underneath them, blowing them around. He was lying on his back in the valley, she thought, breathing in big gasps of air, and when he had his fourteen lungs full, he blew and the clouds rolled as the breaths came through.

  He had a family of giants down there with him, and he just did it to pleasure the little giants. He just did it of a night afore they had to go to sleep. He told them stories and blew, so they’d have big notions in their heads by the time of sleep.

  And those little mountain peaks jutting up here and there in the clouds were his toes.

  He was snoring now. She laughed at the idea of that.

  The clouds began billowing differently, and the sight beat the feather stuffin’ out of anything she had ever seen, or that anybody had seen, she guessed, for she’d never heard tell of anything like this in her life.

  The light went away and she looked up and another one of those racing clouds was going across the moon. Law, it was almost within touch. What a wonder to be up here on this high place tonight. Where in all this country could a body be to equal it, with the clouds putting on a show, and the moon hiding and coming out again, and the tall, black pine-sap trees jutting up so high. It was more’n a person could stand to think about.

  A rumble came louder than before. A bolt of
lightning struck and she stared, her eyes wide, for the lightning was below her. It had come out of that sea of clouds in the valley and had struck downward toward the ground. She was standing up there above the storm, and the storm below was brewing like pot likker over an oak fire, and she shouted out. She shouted as loud as she could. She was up there above the storm and she wanted somebody to know it afore she got carried off. She had never been above a storm before in her life. There was nobody she knew who had ever done it. There went more lightning, and thunder rolled down and up and around her; it caught her and shook her; it scared her heart and made her hold herself tight as a bear hug. It was seething and roaring down on that giant down there. It was bubbling with fury.

  She laughed. She’d tell about it someday, if she could. “The rocks can rend”—the words went through her mind suddenly—“the earth can quake;/The seas can roar, the mountains shake . . .

  Of feeling, all things show some sign,

  But this unfeeling heart of mine.

  * * *

  She awoke in daylight. She lay without moving for a moment, for she had awakened strangely, she knew, and she thought at first she was up high on the mountain in back of her cabin and that it was afternoon, that on a walk she had bathed herself and had gone to sleep.

  She remembered about the giant and looked down into the valley, but there was a thick mist, so that she couldn’t see far in it. There was the trail, not dusty but settled down with dew, and maybe a rain had fallen.

  She felt her dress. Yes, a little rain had fallen.

  She jumped up, agile and lithe, stretched her arms and yawned. She rubbed her nose. She was hungry as a bear. She yawned again, not even wanting to, and sniffed in the cool, pine-scented air. She rubbed her eyes.

  Law, it was morning.

  She ran her hand through her hair. She rolled her hair up, pinched it tight and fastened it with a vine, but the vine broke, so she let it hang loose.

  She guessed she was ready to go, but where she was going she didn’t know. As far as she could see through the mist there was no clearing. Nothing but the tall trees and endless land her grandpa had got her into.

  She brushed her hair back out of her face. Didn’t even have a comb. Here she was seventeen years old and her dowry was a length of broken vine. She didn’t have a sheep to her name, much less a calf. A man marrying her would just have her and a bed, like that Black Jack gave his girl. He wouldn’t have a gold ring from her hand, that was for certain, and not much food, either.

  Her stomach growled. “Hush,” she said. It was going to be growling loud as her father’s fiddle playing by noon, she suspected.

  Her mind stopped on a thought. Surprised as anything, she looked down at the road beside her. There in the soft earth were the tracks of a bear.

  Her gaze moved along the tracks. They led to a dry place about the size of a huge bear’s body, not more than ten feet from where she had slept. There were tracks that led from that place into the forest, that had been made since the rain.

  She rubbed her stomach and looked about reflectively. “Well, I’m obliged,” she said aloud. “You staying out here in the cold and keeping watch was the nicest thing you could a done for me.”

  There was not an answering sign in that great forest, except the green, heavy leaves blowing on the hardwood trees and the evergreens bowing their limbs slowly up and down.

  She found a berry patch in mid-morning and ate berries until she guessed her stomach was surprised as anything. She was still in the berry patch when she heard a horse coming, and she knew at once her Uncle Tinkler had sent someone to bring her back, or had come himself.

  She hid behind a tree. Soon she saw a horse loom out of the fog, Grover on it. She wanted to laugh right out, she was so pleased to see a living body.

  Grover came past where she was, no more than ten feet from her, and his head was high and his back was stiff and straight, and his horse was so pretty with the fog billowing around him.

  “Grover,” she said, but not loud enough for him to hear her. She had meant to be loud enough, but she had stopped her own voice.

  She crouched behind the tree until the last thud of his horse’s hoofs was gone; then she came out onto the road, feeling more lonely than ever. She was so far from humankind that if she had a need to cry out, no one would hear her or give her help; if she needed care, no one would tend her; if she needed meat, no one would serve her. There was no tray with a bread loaf in it, no pen with a pig in it, no coop with a chicken in it, no field with a lamb in it, no stall with a horse in it to take her far away.

  She walked until her feet were so sore she had to sit down. She hadn’t known her feet could ever get sore. She had thought they were like a muscle in a horse’s side. She hadn’t even known she had feeling in her feet, except for fire. It was her stomach that ought to be hurting more than her feet, she thought, and her stomach did complain right smart.

  It was weakening to her, that was the trouble, weakening not to have more’n berries, which went straight through the stomach like a pack of wolves in a race with a ewe. She wished this were chestnut time. In chestnut time she could stuff herself with nuts till she was fat as a gourd.

  She started walking again, and her feet hurt worse than before, in spite of her rubbing them. It was like that with the children at home, she’d noticed, particularly with that little Frances. When you petted her, she got to needing more and more petting. ’Course, that was all right if a person didn’t have anything else to do all day and night except pet Frances, but if a person wanted to have variety for her life, she had to put Frances aside. And it broke her heart. If you didn’t pet Frances at all, she would only pout, but if you petted her, she would bawl when you stopped, so which was better, Mina wanted to know—to have her pout or to have her bawl?

  She stopped on the trail. Frowning, she looked back the way she had come, then off to the sides into the woods. She was closed in by trees and couldn’t see a sight, and couldn’t see any hope, either. Rising about her to the right she saw a mountain, black as pitch on the top, and beyond it several more peaks, all black on the top, as if the rocks or trees were painted black; they held up the sky, she thought.

  The fog came in around her again and she couldn’t see a thing. Why, I ain’t sung all day, she remembered suddenly.

  She decided to sing, but nothing came to mind, nothing she really wanted to sing in that foggy place, and thunder rumbled way off somewhere.

  She went walking along, walking on the outsides of her feet, and she got to humming; then she sang softly. “ ‘To hear the sorrows thou has felt, O Lord, the stern of mind would melt.’  ”

  She hoped that may be around this bend there would be the road.

  “ ‘But I can read each moving line / And nothing moves this heart of mine.’  ”

  The trail was going down now, heading down the hill, looked like. A spring dashed from a rock to her left and she stopped and drank. She rubbed her nose and scratched with her fingers at her thighs where she itched from bites and walked on. It felt better to scratch than not to, she thought. Let the bites get red and itch all the more; it didn’t look like she was ever going to come to a road, anyway.

  A wolf howled close and she stopped. It was just to her left a short ways. She’d never known a wolf to be so close when it howled.

  A wisp of wind broke through the fog. Lightning flashed and thunder answered. It was above her somewhere now. All she needed was a bath of rain to bury her spirit deep down, she thought.

  The wolf howled and she stopped again on the trail, for it was right on her, so that she could almost feel its breath. She was startled by another sound, for from the other side of the road there came the trembling, clear breaking cry of a panther. She couldn’t move because of that sound, it was so full of warning and fog and terror; danger was caught prisoner in it like thunder was caught in the air.

  Then came a gruff sound, a growl more than anything else. It was not as far-carrying or ominous
as the cry of the panther had been, but it had more strength in it. She turned slowly and saw the great bear lumbering up the trail toward her, hurrying. As he came toward her, she heard bushes breaking in the woods to each side, for the wolves and the panther were leaving, and the bear stopped not far from her and growled again, as if clearing his great throat, and one of his paws came up to wipe slobber from his face. He gruffly spoke again.

  “I appreciate your help,” she said. She sniffed nervously and self-consciously. She wished she could do some kindness for him, to occupy his mind in gentleness. “You want me to sing ‘Black Jack Davie’ for you? I would, but I’m so tired I can’t remember the verses. I got to walking and forgot even to bring a handful of bread, and it’s so high and cold up here, all day walking in the fogginess, why it burdens me down.” She suddenly laughed softly, pleased by an idea. “You got four feet, and I’m the one that’s worrying. You got four feet to pain you.”

  The bear stood close by now. Slowly, without hurry or any quareness, it stretched out on the ground.

  It smelled sweaty, she noticed, and musty and musky, like a fur rug that had got dank.

  Far above them a bolt of lightning broke and thunder rolled across the top of the range. The bear sniffed the air. Unconcernedly it lay its head down on the road.

  The air abruptly, shatteringly was filled with light; then a crash came as the thunder sounded, and soon rain splattered down, cold on her skin. The bear didn’t seem to notice the rain. Ordinarily the tree limbs would have saved her from the worst of it, she knew, but look at them being harshly blown about, as if the wind intended to tear them off and whip them into the valleys. She huddled down, soggy and cold and tired and fretful, near the bear.

  She heard the wagon before she ever heard the voices. It’s the giant’s wagon, she thought. She looked up and saw that the sun was looking at her, and she smiled. She liked the sun so much of a day. The fog yesterday had shrouded her down. “Somebody’s coming,” she said, and looked toward the big bear, but it was gone.