The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

A dry stick broke behind him. He felt Imy’s hand come into his own, and he gripped her fingers tightly. “He stands there as friendly,” he said. But the bear was not friendly. The bear was austere, was a lonely superior figure, the master of the place, of the spring, of the mountain, of the woods, of whatever his red eyes saw. He looked at them with dumb-minded contemplations.

How she knew he didn’t know, but always as she got the fire blazing well, dawn began to appear upriver, as if she were the one who had awakened it. But it was not her doing, he knew. The dawn was constant; it was an old thing and come on its own. Not even the will and whispers of the mountain could change it.

He had never known Negroes before, and he was surprised this one knew sorrow and sympathy so comfortingly.

The open grave was a cruel mouth, he thought, with teeth of stone and water for spittle, with red clay for gums; the mountain had chilled her and killed her, and now through this mouth it would take her in.

The mountain wanted the old way still, and he who changes what is ordered and old and set is a man who grasps the lion’s jaw.

He breathed the coldness and the tingling freshness of the pine sap. The air was clean and alive with frozen soundlessness and cleanliness, and it pained the chest to breathe the air for long. He crept back to his fireplace and fed on deer meat and waited for a thought, some idea of what he was to do.

Even so, he received life as a pleasing adventure, deeply saddening but marvelously worthwhile, a miracle spread upon the earth, a mystery which he never sought to solve, for the glory was in its complexities. To him life shimmered brightly as it evolved and slithered out of the future and went on off.

Here we go in mourning, In mourning is my cry. I have gone and lost my true love, And surely I must die.

She was so provoked she chased him, and they ended up far down the path, their goods, except for his rifle, strewn behind. He let her catch him, and they fell into each other’s arms there in a quiet place and rested, breathing deeply, laughing and waiting, not waiting for any sound or action or arrival or anything at all, but letting their lives stay suspended for the moment.

Soul mates.

They had come to be a family, she thought, more here than in Virginia, more here than she had known a family could be part of itself, safe unto itself, in a house that smelled of cooking and herbs and wool and wine vinegar, each one in its special season, as the family made for itself comfort and protection. All that lies about us is foreign to us yet, she thought, but here we are, come together, and closer will we come.

We are set in the world, Nicholas thought, we are set not adrift as on a sea, for the sea supports whatever floats on it; we are adrift in the air and move like dried leaves whisked about, subject any moment to the falling to the ground, to age-olding, to the open grave or leaf-molding.

‘He was a stranger and I took him in.’ ”

She felt not a body-longing for him so much as a meeting of herself as a person with him as a person, and it was stranger than a red pumpkin in a row of yellow pumpkins in a field.

“There’s nothing proper about starting a country. Anything having to do with a birthing is bloody. A birthing pains. Even getting a homestead started pains, for nature doesn’t allow births without suffering.”

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.

"Armless debt" the intangible obligation Mooney now feels towards Lacey. The contrast between the physical danger of the bear and now, the moral debt Mooney owes Lacey for saving him despite the conflict over their relations with Lorry.

“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.”

“You can’t build a settlement here if you go alone.”

And I come to see as I get old that life is too much for any of us, and all of us will end up in the flow.”

A joy, she thought, to have them happy. It had all been so hard and long, and now their life was coming to an opening. It would be rewarding now.

The valley waits, she thought. The mountain waits. There is no sound of the wind tonight. The mountain from far off can see the glimmer of their campfires on the ridge beyond the river. The house does not creak tonight.

He looked up at the mountain. It had a snow topping tonight, and the moon cast a warm light on it. There’s no prettier sight, he thought, and no prettier place than this one. It traps a man into staying, into building here; then it shows him that he doesn’t even possess his own cabin and fields. The valley is it own, he knew now. The valley and the beasts and the mountain and the snows and the water and the cliffs owned themselves yet. If he left here, in a few years there would be little sign that he had even come. The vines would cover the buildings and pull them down; they would pull over even the tombstone here at Imy’s grave. The trees would spring up in the fields and gnarl again with roots the yielding land. The clearing he had made on the hill would become again part of the whole, as the bear had been part of the whole and now in its grave was part of the whole, unprotestingly.

It was only man that was always moving, trying to get more than he had.

“A man’s mind is a strange creature for a man to have to live with; God knows, it don’t make sense most of the time. No telling what a man will dream, or what he will think, either.”

“A man dreams what he dreams, that’s all, and might be anything at all, for he’s all tied up with lies, anyhow, and worries. My Lord, we come out of a narrow opening in a woman and try to get our eyes to see something, not knowing at all what the world is, or our parents are, or we are. And now I’m nigh to old-age death and I don’t know yet what the world is, or I am. I know it’s been a pleasure to be alive for these years, though I don’t know what being alive is. I might very well die in this chair afore I ever stop looking at that river, but I don’t know what death is. Some say it’s angels in Heaven, but I don’t have any more use for angels than I have for a lame horse. Sometimes I hear tell about angel voices singing. What do they sing? Do they sing about work, about the plowing and planting? Do they sing about this valley when the blooms open out? Do they sing about that river? Can they sing better than that river can? Do they plant crops and watch it rain and watch growth come? Do they harrow the fields with a pine bough, like you, or use a harrow with locust teeth like me, or do they use a harrow with gold teeth, or some such foolish contraption, or turn soil with a gold-tipped plow?”

I’m going on out of here, and I’ve come to wondering what I’m leaving and who I’m leaving it to. A man likes to die in order, if he can, and I see now that all I got is here in this valley, and it was about this valley I used to have my dreams.” He fidgeted with the riding crop. “They’re not coming true, air they?”

“There’s no better river than that one, no better land than that you stand on now, no prettier sight than them hills over there, but something’s wrong with it all. Is it me? I know it might be, for nothing I’ve ever done has been of the best quality.”

A person becomes part of what he does, he thought, grows into what grows around him, and if he works the land, he comes to be the land, and owner of and slave to it.