The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  The old woman went on looking at the fire and rocking gently back and forth.

  “I’m obliged,” Mina said, and the old woman nodded.

  Mina started combing her hair. She combed it, trying to get the burs and thistles out of it, and a rich warmth came into her scalp. The old woman got up and went to the cart, looked into it, then went over to one side and looked off into the woods. The man didn’t do more than watch her. She came to the cart once more and looked in, and she put her hands on her hips. “Jacob,” she said.

  He chewed on the pipe stem, but after a moment he got up, rising slowly but with power.

  “I need that chest,” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “We’ll be unpacking tomorrow, Mama.”

  “I was just looking at her there by the fire and thinking back and wondering, and I got the idea . . .” She hesitated.

  “Uh huh,” he said quietly. He chewed on the pipe stem; then he touched her arm, almost as if brushing past it, and climbed into the cart. He began to shove some of the stuff around.

  Mina combed at her hair and made faces at the dog, but she had to smile at him, too, for he was ugly. She didn’t notice what the others were doing until the woman came back over to the fire. She had a dress in her hand. It was a blue cotton dress with scarlet-thread handwork around the throat and hem, and it had a belt. It had not been worn much.

  Mina stood up slowly and backed off from it. The old woman sort of crumpled it into a wad and pushed it at her. “I don’t know what to do with this old dress, and you need covering.”

  “Why, I couldn’t take no dress from a stranger person,” Mina said.

  “I’ve got so many dresses, and some I’ve saved from way back. I’ve got so many.”

  “I couldn’t take no dress. No person ever give me a thing, till that piece of meat this morning, then that comb, and now you’re pushing a dress at me. You must think I’m a beggar woman.”

  From beside the ox cart the old man spoke up in his deep voice. “She wants you to take it, girl, don’t you know that?”

  The woman stooped by the fire and poked a stick into it and studied the fire as the smoke swelled up from it. The man went to the side of the road and started talking to his horse, and Mina was left with the dress in her hand. The cloth was so soft, so much softer than flax linen or linsey, and was so light, so much lighter than wool, and was so nicely dyed that she knew she would have to keep it. “Cotton certainly does take the dye well,” she said softly.

  “Don’t it?” the woman said. “It can’t be beat for colors. I’ve brought a bag of cotton with me. I’ve got enough wool cloth to last me for a spell, but I brought some balls of cotton and cottonseed, as well as flax. If I can find the right spot, I’ll grow a little field of cotton next year.”

  “Yes’m,” Mina said softly. The dress was dear to her already. It was as close to her now as it would be if it were put on her body, for it was pressed against her so tightly.

  “Why, I have so much goods,” the woman said. “He’s such a fine hunter and farmer, and he’s prospered. We’ve accumulated. When you’re my age you’ll be surprised how many things you’ve accumulated. I left a house full of goods at Watauga, just in case my boy comes back that way from the Cumberland one day. I bore two boys, but the other’n died when a baby of a coldness; it seemed to fell him in a day and night. I kept that dress and another’n might nigh like it, expecting Josh to need ’em someday if he found a woman to suit him. But Josh ain’t even looking, and he’s going more to the west all the time.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mina said, holding the dress close to her.

  “I’d be blessed if you’d take it,” the woman said.

  Mina stood there by the fire, lingering, not knowing what to say. Then she said, “I’m obliged.” She stood there for a while longer, then went up the road.

  Henry came with her, watching her. He wanted to see what she would look like in the dress, she guessed. She took off the old one and washed her arms and stomach in spring water. The dog lay down on the road and watched, cocked his head and growled in his throat once or twice, as if he sensed that an animal was close by.

  The old woman waited by the fire, feeling nervous enough to complain. She hadn’t given away much in her life and didn’t know how to do it casually. She had given away firelight to a neighbor whose hearth had run cold; she had given away meat when Jacob had killed a beef; she had given away wild deer, turkey and the like, but not before had she given away something pretty to a girl. But it was an act of kindness she had often thought about.

  Jacob came back to the fire and said the ox was all right, that he had done well on this journey and hadn’t lamed up much. “Not many settlers will find their way back into here, though,” he said. “It’s too rough a trail, nigh too rough for oxen, but I like this, Florence, this country. I like the new feel of it. It’s not been spoiled yet by traffic. It’s better’n Watauga.”

  “I wish we’d go to Morganton and get shet of these mountains entirely,” she said. “I’d like to have people around to talk to and a place to go to worship.”

  “Naw,” he said deeply, “I can’t go down there. It’s all finished there. They’ve got their answers. But this is new. I’ve got to be where there’s the start of things.”

  “You’ve always followed from too far away, and what do you say when your strength goes? Like an old bear looking for an animal that’s done been wounded by another beast—”

  “You talk too plain,” he said, aggravated with her.

  “You and me has been around a long time, and I know what you think because I think it the same time you do. So I know your strength’s started failing. And I know when you’re in pain.”

  “Do you? Well, do you know a man never stops, no matter what his trouble is? Do you know that?”

  “I know you ought to rest more than you do.”

  “Naw. Did you know the best way to rest is to start over? There’s always a place to start over some’ers. And only the old don’t know it.”

  She stared at him across the firelight. She frowned and leaned back on her stiff arms and looked at the blaze. “It’s in your chest, ain’t it, that it bothers you?”

  “I know what life is and death, too,” he said, “for I’ve seen it come and go in stock and wild things. And I know how an old bear is, but I tell myself it ain’t the same with me.”

  “Well, let’s not say no more,” she said.

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve not been proved wrong yet.” He reached out with the toe of his shoe and kicked at the wood. He took out his tobacco pouch, but he shoved it once more inside his hunting shirt.

  “Out of tobacco?” she asked.

  “No, but I soon will be, so I’ll save what I’ve got.”

  She nodded, then said slowly, “Was it because of the pain you come east, or was it because you couldn’t keep up with Josh no more?”

  “You like to talk, don’t you? You ask more questions than you ought to, even for an old woman.”

  “I was only asking out of interest,” she said quietly.

  They watched the fire burn, and he glanced off in the direction the girl had gone. “She takes her time.”

  “She’s getting prettied up. Got her hair to roll and all. You think she’ll be willing to come with us tomorrow?”

  “Henry’s coming back,” he said.

  Mina stopped down the trail a piece. The dog stopped, too, and waited for her. She came closer by only a step and stopped, as if afraid to show herself. The old people looked at the fire, so she came closer still, and when she was standing close enough, they looked up and saw her, a girl of medium height, full made of body, with long, flax-colored hair rolled up in a bun and caught by a bone comb, a pretty girl wearing a clean blue cotton dress with scarlet thread woven into it. And for some reason she was crying.

  15

  Mina lay awake that night thinking she might go back to the valley with Jacob and Florence. She would like more than anything
to be back home and to be their friends in that place, to go home leading the big ox, with Jacob walking out front. But she knew she had her father’s own deep pride, that she would not go back at all, now that she was a wayfarer.

  She ate breakfast with Jacob and Florence, and when they asked her to accompany them, she thanked them very much and said she would stay up on the ridge a while longer and for them to go on ahead. When they were out of sight, she turned toward the Watauga road, toward the broad river, and hurried on.

  Soon, though, she was tired, not from a body weariness, but from a mind weariness, for she wished she had been able to go home. She sat down on a big boulder and let time drizzle past; then she walked a little piece, then sat down again and pondered her predicament, caught like a prisoner between two worlds.

  She was sitting there considering her thoughts when she heard a horse; it was the second time in two days she had encountered travelers on this tiny trail coming from the lowland direction.

  It’s Black Jack, surely, she told herself, smiling at the notion.

  Around a curve the rider came, and she saw him, black-haired and black-eyed, dressed in black leather and fine white cotton, riding a great black horse that seemed to breathe smoke from its nose. “Law, I never thought I’d see you a riding on this ridge on such a day as this,” Mina said.

  The horse reared up. The man reined in, startled, and frowned at her from his twisting, stomping steed. “Hey, whoa there, whoa, whoa,” he said. “Whoa, boy.” The horse was stomping at the dust wisps, smoke spouting from his nose, and the rider stared down at her. He leaned toward her and smiled. “What say there?” he said.

  She felt awkward as could be. “I was all alone up here,” she said, “and so pleased to see a body come along.”

  He studied the eerie air about him, the twisted trees heavy with wetness and grayness.

  “I’ve been a picking berries,” she said.

  “I see ye have,” he said. “You have juice on your mouth yet.”

  She wiped at her mouth with her hand. “Where you a going?”

  He winked ever so quickly. “I rode the night thinking to myself, Now, if I keep going and watching, along sometime tomorrow I’ll likely come upon a pretty girl standing by the roadside with blackberry juice on her face and a little smile, and she’ll have a voice soft as flower dew.”

  “Huh. I never.”

  “I was thinking as I rode up that rise back there, Well, it’s high time for her to show herself.” He studied her. “You’re so high up, I imagine you’re an angel child.”

  “You got the wrong person in mind, I imagine, for I’m not aiming that way here lately.”

  He dismounted, watching her all the while, and, folding his arms, seemed to rest at ease, but, as she could tell, he was aware of the road and the woods, of everything that moved. She watched him, interested in his face and the steadiness of his dark eyes. He was not a big man; he was not as big as Mooney Wright. He was about the size of the German and was slender and tough of body. He was handsome and reminded her of a picture of a knight.

  “I was singing about Black Jack and then along you come, black as the inside of a keg.”

  “You figure yourself for that little girl he went off with, do ye?”

  “Law, I never thought no such a thing. I was singing that song for enjoyment and there you come, and you’re black-haired.”

  “Uh huh. And you’re sixteen.”

  “I’m older’n that by far.”

  “You might be at that, for you’ve got a right smart of shape on ye.”

  “I guess I’ve got all I’m going to get,” she said simply.

  “Might be sixteen and a half,” he said, winking at her.

  “I’m older’n that,” she said heatedly. “I’m older’n you think, if it’s any mind of yours.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “You must be awful anxious to find a beau to come this far.”

  “I was a picking berries, that’s all,” she said.

  “Come up here to find somebody to carry ye off, make love to ye on a straw pallet.”

  “I never heard such talk in my life—”

  “Hold ye tight, make ye soft and cuddly—”

  “You hush your mouth, talking to me like that—”

  “And there I come, here I am.”

  “No, sir, there you’re not, neither, and don’t you come nigh me.”

  He sat down on a rock, a big smile on his face. “I think this way—a girl that’ll come all that way to find me won’t mind crossing the few feet more to where I’m resting on a stone.” He glanced at her, but she didn’t move and appeared none too favorably inclined toward him. Suddenly he closed his eyes tightly. “I been riding all day and night, ma’am,” he said simply. “My horse was following a trail I couldn’t see. All night I rode, not sleeping, and I rode through mist all day, and now and then I heard a cat cry or a fox bark, and I said to myself, Where in the world are you, where you going, boy? And I said, Up ahead.”

  She sniffed. “Huh,” she said.

  “I wonder how close I am,” he said.

  “Close to what is it?”

  “To where I’m going.”

  “You talk so funny. While ago you was a pretty talker, but now you talk so strange.”

  He smiled at her. “No need of that.” He studied her. “You’re a pretty little thing. Do you have a name?”

  “Pearlamina,” she said. She wondered why she had told him all of it. It was so formal to say it all.

  “That’s pretty. Like you, like a song. Pearlamina. I once knew someone who had a little girl with that name.”

  He was one of the most likable persons she had known, but he was so foreign, like a Spaniard or a Frenchman—she didn’t know exactly, for she had never known one of them. “What got to be your name?” she said.

  “Lacey,” he said.

  She was so close to him she didn’t dare gasp aloud. She held her breath instead, and the breath almost stifled her to death. Maybe he didn’t even know she was startled, or that a weakness had come over her. Her stomach was nigh turned about from nervousness. “You going where?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “To the end of this trail, Pearlamina.”

  No, go back down that road, she thought. You ride away, ride away fast. Get on that black horse and let it take you away from here.

  His gaze came to her and was steady and boyish. “Where does the trail go, Pearlamina?”

  “Law, how do I know?”

  He smiled, as if he knew they were playing a game. He began to whistle softly. “Sing me a song.”

  “No, sir, I’m not a going to do any such of a thing.”

  He stood up, reached out easily and gently took her arm. She watched his face as he drew her closer. His arm went around her waist. His face touched her hair and she never wanted to think another thought or know what to do. “Sing something for me, Pearlamina.”

  “No, I won’t.” She felt like a child, the way he was and the way he held her close to him and nuzzled his chin into her hair. “I can’t think of nothing,” she said.

  “ ‘He came all so still,’  ” he said softly, not singing as much as talking kindly, “ ‘to his mother’s bower, as dew in April that falleth on the flower.’  ”

  He stood there, his head resting against her head. He laughed softly, then his arm was gone from around her and she heard him move away and when a while later she looked up, he was standing at his horse, his hand on the saddle, his head lowered.

  As she watched him, he lifted his head, sighed quietly, deeply. He looked over at her. “I asked where does this road go, Pearlamina?”

  “On until it comes to a river.”

  “Who lives there? Do you know a woman of brown hair who has a blond-haired and a black-haired son?”

  Mina knelt down before the fire and looked into its red heart. “Nobody lives there a’tall,” she said.

  “You lived there, didn’t you, Pearlamina?”

 
“No, I lived another place.”

  “Then my horse, where was she a going?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not able to know nothing about your horse.”

  He came to her. He stooped and his head was near hers. He touched her chin and turned her face so that she was looking at him.

  “We can ride out to the Watauga road,” she said softly. “We can go out of this country, Lacey Pollard.”

  “Lacey Pollard?” he said quietly. “You know me?” He smiled gently at her. “Who lives in the valley?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Is her father there, too? I remember him, for he knew hisself so well. A man that knows hisself is so simple to get to know. The world to her father was the place where he breathed in air and ate of food and set to rest or lay to sleep; beyond that it didn’t matter much to him. He didn’t see how a man could get lost, how a man likes to get lost, has to, yes, in a woods afore he knows the woods, in a road afore he knows the road, in his love of a woman afore he knows a woman.”

  She stared at him, strained and strangely.

  “I want to see her again, Pearlamina. I’ve been lost so long. I’m traveled out, Pearlamina. I’ve seen the long fields and the tall woods. I’ve hunted all I want to. I’ve killed so much. God help us all.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He was somber, but the boyish, playful glint was in his eyes yet. His hand came up slowly and he laid his palm alongside her face. “I remember so fondly now how it was with her, how gentle and pleasant in Virginia, back afore I went off looking. I’ve looked so far and deep. Is she well?”

  “Why, I reckon she is.”

  “Is she living with her father?”

  “Why—no, she’s not.”

  “Is she living alone?”

  “Why, don’t ye know she’s married?”

  It was evening when they reached the ledge that overlooked the valley. Below them, not far away, was the fire Jacob and Florence had made. On beyond that, far below, was the river. They could see the cabins and sheds. They could make out a Negro man working in the big Harrison field, and nearby a Negro woman was pulling beans. Beyond them a herd of long-horned cattle stood in a pasture. On this side of the river was the rolling sea of trees, with three little cabins spewing smoke, and beyond the river were six cabins, placed as if they had been set out by children.