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Robinson Jeffers - Thurso’s Landing
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When one of those long gray desert lizards that run
With heads raised highly, scudded through the white sand,
He flung the wrench suddenly and broke its back
And said "He won`t come then. My God, Helen,
Was he tired of you? He won`t come." She watched her husband
Pick up the wrench and batter that broken life,
Still lifting up its head at him, into the sand. He saw the yellow
Grains of fat in the red flesh and said,
"Come here, Helen. Yellow you see, yellow you see.
Your friend makes us all vile." She understood
That "yellow" meant cowardly, and that this was Armstrong
Battered to a cake of blood.

IX
                                              They drove west
Through the white land; the heat and the light increased,
At length around a ridge of ancient black lava
Appeared a place of dust where food could be bought, but Helen
Would eat nothing. In the evening they came
293
THURSO`S LANDING
Among fantastic Joshua-trees to a neat
Framed square of cabins at the foot of a mountain
Like a skeleton; seeing Helen so white and sick,
And the motor misfiring, Reave chose to lodge at this camp.
He`d tinker the engine while there was daylight. He found the timer
Choked up with drift of the desert; having washed it with gasoline
and heard the cylinders
Roar cheerfully again, he returned to Helen.

                                                                      She was not in the cabin,
But sat with chance companions on a painted bench under the
boughs of one of those reptilian trees
Near the camp entrance; no longer white and morose, her face
was flushed, her eyes sparkling with darkness
In the purple evening that washed the mountain. Before he came
she was saying, "My husband just doesn`t care
What anyone thinks: he said, all right, if I wanted to see the
desert, but he wouldn`t take either one
Of our new cars to be spoiled, he`d drive the old farmtruck . . ."
Seeing Reave approaching, greased black to the elbows, "Oh, Oh,
What`s he been doing? Oh: it`s black, I think? Dear, I felt better
When the sun went down." He, staring at her companions:
"That`s good." "They call it desert fever," she stammered.
"The heat`s the cause." She stood up, giggling and swaying.
"Was nearly exhausted, they gave me a little medicine.
Nice people." "What did you give her?" "She begged for a tablespoonful,"
the old woman answered, "Texas corn-whiskey.
Are you going west?" Helen said gravely, "A spoonful a night:
O God!" "She`s eaten nothing," Reave said,
"Since yesterday. Come and lie down, Helen." She obeyed, walking
unsteadily beside him, with terrified eyes.
"Dear, please don`t touch me, your hands are terrible," she said.
"They think you killed him."
He made her lie down on the bed while he washed himself.
She wept and said, "I always make friends easily.
I used to be full of joy. Now my wishes
Or your own soul will destroy you when you get home.
I`d give my life to save you." He groaned angrily,
But she was unable to be silent and said:
"I think you`re even worse hurt than I am. Were you ever on a ship?
This place is like a ship, everything smells
In spite of neatness, and I am desert-sick.
Oh, Reave, I never dreamed that you`d be deep-wounded.
Forgive me dear." He violently: "Lick your own sores.
The man was my friend and that degrades me: but you’ve
Slept with him. You couldn`t help but have learned him
In a year`s familiar life and I`ve been thinking
That whores you, because no woman can love a coward,
And still you stayed . . ." "For his money, for his money you know,"
She answered through chattering teeth, "and the fine house
You found me in among the rich gardens, the jewels and furs,
Necklaces of pearls like round zeroes, all these hangings of gold
That make me heavy . . ." "Ah," he said, "be quiet." He went
out, and returning after a time with a tray of food
Lighted the lamp and cut meat in small bites and forced her to
eat. "Dear," she mourned, "I can`t swallow
Though I chew and chew. The rocking of the ship and the hot
smell close up my throat. Oh be patient with me.
When we land I`ll feel better," her deep-colored eyes moving in
sickly rhythm to the roll of the ship,
He said "You`re in the desert: an auto-camp by the road. Wake
up and eat." She sat up on the bed
And looked anxiously about the bleak lamplight, then took the tray
And obeyed his will. "I thought you were my dad.
Once we travelled on a boat from the south
To San Francisco. I expect I saw from the deck the Mill Creek
mountains and never
Guessed," she said, shuddering. While she ate she began to fear
That people who were going to die dreamed of a ship
The night before. The truck would be overturned
And crush her body in the sand like that lizard`s,
A tire would have burst.
Against the black horror of death
All living miseries looked sweet; in a moment of aimless
Wild anguish she was unable not to cry out, and said:
"Ah, Ah, what have you done, tearing me from him? I love him,
you know.
Maybe he`s cowardly or maybe he`s only tired of me, but if he`s
yellow to the bones, if he`s yellower than gold,
I love him, you know.
If I were crushed in the sand like that lizard you killed, to a cake
of blood why not? for I think you`ll
Do it sometime the sun would dry me and my dust would blow
to his feet: if I were dead in the desert
And he drowned in the middle ocean toward Asia, yet something
and something from us would climb like white
Fires up the sky and twine high shining wings in the hollow sky:
while you in your grave lie stuck
Like a stone in a ditch." He, frowning: "Have you finished?"
He took the tray and said, "Have you had enough?"
"Never enough. Dear, give me back to him. I can`t think yet
That you understand," she said slyly and trembling.
"Don`t you care, that he and I have made love together
In the mountains and in the city and in the desert,
And once at a Navajo shepherd`s camp in the desert in a storm of
lightnings
Playing through the cracks of the shed: can you wink and
swallow
All that?" "I can`t help it. You`ve played the beast.
But you are my goods and you`ll be guarded, your filthy time
Has closed. Now keep still."
                                   She was silent and restless for a good while.
He said, "You`ll be sleeping soon, and you need sleep.
I`ll go outside while you get ready for bed."
"Let me speak, just a little," she said humbly.
"Please, Reave, won`t you leave me here in the morning, I`ll
manage somehow.
You`re too strong for us, but, dear, be merciful.
I think you don`t greatly want me: what you love really
Is something to track down: your mountains are full of deer:
Oh, hunt some bleeding doe. I truly love you.
I always thought of you as a dear, dear friend
When even we were hiding from you." He was astonished
To see her undress while she was speaking to him,
She seemed to regard him as a mere object, a keeper,
But nothing human. "And Rick Armstrong," she said,
"I can`t be sure that I love him: dear, I don`t know
That I`ll go back to him; but I must have freedom, I must have
freedom
If only to die in, it comes too late . . ."
She turned her back and slipped off the undergarment
And glided into the bed. She was beautiful still,
The smooth fluted back and lovely long tapering legs not
changed,
Nor the supple motions; nor that recklessness
Of what Thurso called modesty was any change;
She never tried to conceal her body from him
Since they were married, but always thoughtless and natural;
And nestled her head in the pillow when she lay down
With little nods, the tender way he remembered:
So that a wave of compassionate love
Dissolved his heart: he thought, "Dearest, I`ve done
Brutally: I`ll not keep you against your will.
But you must promise to write to me for help
When you leave that cur." He made the words in his mind
And began to say: "Dearest . . ." but nothing further
Had meaning in it, mere jargon of mutterings, the mouth`s refusal
Of the mind`s surrender; and his mind flung up a memory
Of that poor dead man, his father, with the sad beaten face
When the lime-kilns failed: that man yielded and was beaten,
A man mustn`t be beaten. But Helen hearing
The "dearest," and the changed voice, wishfully
Lifted her head, and the great violet eyes
Sucked at Reave`s face. "No," he said. He blew out the lamp,
Resolved to make this night a new marriage night
And undo their separation. She bitterly submitted;
"I can bear this: it doesn`t matter: I`ll never tell him.
I feel the ship sailing to a bad place. Reave, I`m so tired
That I shall die. If my wrist were broken
You wouldn`t take my hand and arm in your hands
And wriggle the bones for pleasure? You`re doing that
With a worse wound." Her mind had many layers;
The vocal one was busy with anguish, and others
Finding a satisfaction in martyrdom
Enjoyed its outcry; the mass of her mind
Remained apparently quite neutral, under a familiar
Embrace without sting, without savor, without significance,
Except that this breast was hairier.

X
                                                        They drove through the two
deserts and arrived home. Helen went in
With whetted nerves for the war with Reave`s mother, resolving
Not to be humble at least; but instead of the sharp old woman a
little creature
With yellow hair and pleated excess of clothing stood up in the
room; and blushed and whitened, anxiously
Gazing, clasping thin hands together. Reave said, "It`s Hester
Clark." And to Hester Clark: "Tell Olvidia
To count two more for supper; my wife and I have come home."
She answered, "Oh yes," fleeing. Then Helen:
"What`s this little thing? Why does it wear my dress?" "She`s
only hemmed it over," he said, "at the edges.
Have it again if you want, I had to find something for her." His
mother was heard on the stair, and entering
Looked hard at Helen and went and kissed Reave. Who said, "I
shall stay at home now, mother: Helen`s come home."
"Yes. How do you do." Her red-brown eyes brushed Helen`s
body from the neck to the ankles, "I`ll have them heat
Bathwater." Helen trembled and said, "How kind. There are
showers in all the camps: if you mean anything else:
Reave seems content." "Very well. He`s easily of course contented.
He picks up things by the road: one of them
I`ve allowed to live here: to speak honestly
In hope to keep his mind off another woman: but that cramps
and can`t change." "If I knew what I want!"
Helen cried suddenly. "The girl is a servant here," Reave said.
"I hate the spitefulness of women. The housework
Needed help when you were not here." Then Helen: "She`s quite
sick I think: she`ll have to clear out I think.
Yet something in me felt kindly toward that little wax face
In my old clothes. I came home against my will. Why isn`t Mark
here?" The far door opened for Olvidia,
Unable to imagine any pretext for entrance, but unable to bridle
her need
Of coming, to stare and smile from flat black eyes. Behind her
Johnny Luna was seen peering, but dared not enter.
Then Helen wondered, where was that thin little thing?
Crying somewhere? And Reave`s mother said: "Now you`ll cut down
The old cable, as you promised, Reave. We`re tired of seeing it.
You`ll have time now." He answered, "Where`s Mark, mother?
Helen just asked you." "I heard her.
Sitting under a bush on the hill, probably. Your wife`s adventures
Stick in his throat." Then Helen, trembling, and the words marred
By sudden twitchings of her lips: "I`m not ashamed. No reason
to be. I tried to take myself out of here
And am brought back by threats and by force, to a gray place like a
jail, where the sea-fog blows up and down
From the hill to the rock, around a house where no one ever
loved or was glad. But your spite`s nothing,
Pour it out, I`ll swim in it: and fear Reave but not you, and maybe
after while . . . That`s all. Reave, I`ll go up
And change my dress before supper, if your ... if little wax-face
you know . . . has left me any
Clothes in the closet."
                                     She went upstairs; the others were silent,
Until the old woman: "Ah why, why," she said, "Reave,
Did you have to bring back ... I know. You had to. Your mind
Sticks in its own iron: when you`ve said `I will
Then you`re insane, the cold madness begins.
It`s better than weakness,"
He answered with shamefast look shunning her eyes, "I must tell
you, mother,
Though it may seem strange: I love her, you know. Some accident,
Or my neglect, changed her; I`ll change her over
And bring the gold back." "You talk like poor Mark. Oh, worse.
Mark at least feels disgust. A woman that can`t it seems
Even have babies. . . . About the old cable:
He`s been seeing lately . . . your father: the man who`s dead . . .
Pitifully staring up at it in the evenings.
He broods on that. The shock of your disgrace I believe
Started his mind swarming, and he hobbles out
In the starlight. I wish you to keep your promise
And cut that ruin from our sky. It`s bad for Mark
To remember his father; and I`ve a feeling
The memory slacks us all, something unlucky will clear
When that cord`s cut. Don`t you hate seeing it?" "Oh, yes,
Like anything else that`s no use. It`d fall by itself
Some winter. I`ll cut it down. There are trees under it
That have to be saved. Mother, I won`t ask you
To make friends with my wife: you`re not to fuss either.
And don`t prod her with Hester. We`ll have some peace in the house,
Or I`ll growl too."

XI
                               Mark`s lameness appeared more painful than
formerly; Helen from the window seeing him
Limping across the dooryard, she went and followed. He stood
by the sycamore, under great yellowing leaves,
And Helen: "You hardly spoke to me last night, though a year
had passed. Have I lost your love, my brother? I valued it.
I need it more than in happier times." "That . . ." he answered,
"Oh Helen!" "Because I could hardly think how to live here,"
she said, "without it." "I have no color of words
To say how dearly . . . When I seem dark: you must think of
me as a foolish day-dreamer
Whose indulgence turns and clouds him, so that he sees a dead man
Walk on the deck, and feels the ship sailing
Through darkness to a bad place." She, astonished with memory:
"The ship, the ship?" "You see. My foolish dreams
Twine into my common talk. Maybe it`s my hearing at night
The watery noises and hoarse whisper of the shore that sets me
Into that dream, I feel the see-sawing keel, my mind tries darkly
ahead under the stars
What destiny we`re driving toward. . . . Do you think, Helen,
a dead man`s
Soul can flit back to his scene long afterwards?" "Your father,
you mean? But I was lying in the scrawny desert,
A thousand miles from any noise of the shore. It scared me because
I seem to remember hearing
That to dream of a ship means death . . ." "If that`s all," he
smiled meagerly:
"If we both dream it. I, for one, shan`t trouble
My survivors with any starlight returns, but stick to peace
Like a hungry tick." "Oh," she said eagerly, "hush.
It`s wicked to talk like that." He was silent, then said,
"Did you love him, Helen?" She clenched her hands, and turning
Her head from him, "I thought you`d ask that. What`s love?"
And laid her hand on the leaning pillar of the tree
To turn herself back to his face, to study no higher
Than the lean jaw and strained mouth, lower than the eyes,
And carefully said, "Of course I loved him; but I believe
My shining terror of Reave was the cause.
For now that desert stalk`s cut, the old root of fear
Seems aching to a new flowering. Why do I fear him? I know for
certain
He`ll neither kill me nor beat me, I`ve proved it: and I even
tricked him out of his vengeance, you know, he came home
With nothing but me. . . . Where did he get that Hester? No,
tell me after while. . . , Listen. I used to think
That the only good thing is a good time: I`ve got past that . . .
Into the dark. I need something, I can`t know what it is." She
thought in her heart: "I know.
To humble your strong man, that`s what I need." And said: "To
be free. He called me a harlot, Marie. I am a
Harlot of a rare nature. The flesh is only a symbol. Oh, can`t you
see me
Beaten back and forth between the two poles, between you and
Reave?"
She watched, that his lips moved like a plucked string,
So that she thought "It can be done," and said,
"The one pole`s power, that I tried to escape: that strong man,
you know:
And have been . . . retrieved, and can`t tell whether I hate him
Or what. The second, you can name better than I:
The power behind power, that makes what the other can only
Direct or destroy. See how wise I`ve grown. Dear: in the desert
I cried a good deal at night: it wasn`t for Reave,
Nor for his mother! my eyelids rained in the dusty
Country where rain`s not natural. I`d look up the night
And see the sharp dry stars like great bubbles
Blown up and swollen, full of most bitter rainbows,
Float on the wave of the world: it was for you
My tears ran down."

                                   She watched his mouth, in the thought
That if she stretched romance to laughter, or his doubting point,
She`d be warned by his lips: but Mark perhaps had not even
heard her; he said, "I used to thank God
Whatever it is that`s coming, Helen`s not here. If even she`s crying
in the night somewhere: she`s flown
Like a bird out of the hands of our catcher. Now you`ve come
home! . . . Oh, at better times
I think my fears are only a flaw of the mind;
Or else that the dark ship driving to its drowning
Is only my own poor life: that might go down
Without a bubble." She angrily: "Reave at least
Is something solid to fear . . . You and your shadows!
I was going to make love to you, Mark,
All to spite Reave and because he bores me, but your nonsense
Has run mine out of breath. You`ve missed something.
Tell me about this . . . what`s her name? Reave`s wisp,
All eyes and hair." Mark failed to answer; she looked
And saw his face fixed and anxious. "What`s the matter now?"
"Is that Reave?" he whispered. "Exactly. What`s in Reave
To make you dome out your eyes like a caught fish?"
"He`s staring up at the cable, Helen! The old man stands in
That same place and stares up at the cable
Every night." "Soon to miss his amusement, poor ghost.
Reave`s planning to take it down. Be sure when Reave looks up
He has a purpose."

                                 He approached and said, "To-morrow morning
We`ll cut it down. But the best trees in the canyon
Stand in the shadow of its fall.
I`ve planned a way to tie the cut end with rope
And steer it west in its fall, and I hope clear them.
They must take their chance." He looked at Mark and said,
"We`ll feel better
After the old advertisement of failure`s down.
It`s cobwebbed the canyon for twenty years." He looked at
Helen:
"We`ll start a new life to-morrow." She marvelled secretly
At the reasonless anger that ran through her dry nerves like a
summer grass-fire, and shrilly, "You and I?" she answered,
"Or you and your . . . little floozie, that whittled match?"
He frowned, his temples darkened with the heavy muscle
Setting the jaw, he said in a moment: "I`ve given Hester notice
to go. She`s going to-morrow.
You`re staying. So rest your mind." "Ah, Ah," she said, "be
proud of strength while you can. Cut the cable
And forget your father. Whatever fails, cut it down. Whatever
gets old or weakens. Send Hester packing
Because a bigger woman`s brought home. If a dog or a horse
have been faithful, kill them on the shore of age
Before they slacken. See to keep everything around you as strong
and stupid
As Reave Thurso." And turning suddenly:
"Oh, Mark, tell me what`s good, I don`t know which way to
turn. Is there anything good? Whisper, whisper.
That mould of hard beef and bone never asks,
He never wonders, took it ready-made when he was a baby,
never changes, carft change. You and I
Have to wonder at the world and stand between choices. That`s
why we`re weak and ruled. If we could ever
Find out what`s good, we`d do it. He`d be surprised.
What a rebellion!" She changed and said, "Reave?
Let that girl stay a week; you might need her yet.
In any case I`d like to know her a little.
She keeps out of my way, I haven`t had time.
A week or two." He, staring: "That`s a sickly thing
For a man`s wife to want. No. She`s going
At the set time. If you can`t tell what`s good:
It`s lucky I have a compass and can steer the ship."
"Oh, Oh. That ship again?" she cried laughing,
"Maybe there`s something in it, if even Reave . . .
Can you feel it straining through the dark night? Mark: you heard him:
He`s a dreamer too. You`d never imagine it,
To see him stand there so fleshy, shaking his head
Like a bull in fly-time: if he dreams he`ll fall yet. We`ll try."
She turned and went toward the house.

                                                              Reave said, "What was all that?
There was a time when I`d have stared at myself
For bringing home . . . and letting it talk and talk
As if it had rights in the world. It`s her colored abounding life
That makes her lovely." "She`s tied to you," Mark answered,
"Like a falcon tied up short to a stone, a fierce one,
Fluttering and striking in ten inches of air. I believe deeply
You`re precious to each other." "Hm. I bear clawing
As well as anyone." Mark, earnestly: "Oh be good to her,
Not to let her be hurt in the coming time."
"No more of that, Mark. You know these forebodings
Date from our time in France and the muddy splinter
That wrecked your ankle. You must make allowances." He answered,
"You`d think
This rocked-in gorge would be the last place in the world to bear
the brunt: but it`s not so: they told me
This is the prow and plunging cutwater,
This rock shore here, bound to strike first, and the world behind
will watch us endure prophetical things
And learn its fate from our ends." "Booh. We`ll end well," he answered,
laughing, "the world won`t watch.
When you and I toast long white beards and old freckled hands,
and Helen
Like a little shrivelled apple by the fire between us
Still faintly glows, in the late evenings of life,
We`ll have the fun that old people know, guessing
Which of us three will die first. I dare say the world
Will be quite changed then." "You`re very hopeful. But even you
I think feel the steep time build like a wave, towering to break,
Higher and higher; and they`ve trimmed the ship top-heavy.
. . . Do you take it down to-morrow?" "Ah? The cable you mean?
I told you: in the morning. You must all come and watch.
The fall will be grand. Those things have weight."

XII
                                                                        Helen had gone
As if she carried news in her mind through the house to the
kitchen; there dark Olvidia
Stood big and ominous in a steam of beef boiling. "Where`s your
helper, Olvidia, the little mop
That pares potatoes?" She answered sadly, "Is cabbage too." "I
say where`s the elf-child,
The inch with the yellow hair? Ought to be helping you."
"Oh, that? She going away." "To-morrow, maybe.
Where is she now?" The Indian rolled her dun eyes
Toward the open door of the laundry, and Helen passing
Looked all about among piled tubs and behind
An old desk of Reave`s father`s; the girl she sought
Stood up in a corner. "What enormous eyes you have.
Why were you hiding?" Helen said. "Oh no. I`d done my work,"
She answered plaintively,
"I was just thinking here.
I have to go away to-morrow." "Wearing my dress," Helen said.
"Did you come here without any clothes at all?" "He . . . Mr.
Thurso . . . mine were worn out,
He burned them up." "A handkerchief would cover you, though.
I don`t believe you weigh ninety pounds
Without the weight of my clothes. Oh, you`re welcome.
I think I`ll take the prettiest one in the closet
And cut it to fit you like finch`s feathers.
Is your name Hester? How can you bear Reave`s weight,
Your body`s the width of my arm?" The girl trembled
And twisted herself sidewise. "Aren`t you angry at me?"
"Oh no," Helen said; and anxiously: "I don`t know. I`m lost.
Oh why should I be angry, nothing is worth . . .
Nothing, I believe.
Do you want to stay here? Don`t you hate Reave? I do.
Madly." The other with a begging whine: "I`d work.
You are so kind." And whispered, "I might do all
The old Spanish woman`s work, you could let her go."
Then Helen suddenly, her lips withering
From the white teeth: "Olvidia, come here. This scrap
Wants us to fire you: she wants to be with my husband:
Take both our places, how`s that for treachery? Because she`s
nothing earthly but a stack of hair and enormous
Gray eyes, thinks I`ll stand anything. . . . Wives hate your
trade, don`t you know that?" "I ... didn`t understand. I
thought you
Meant me to stay. I never felt safe before, but here I had my own
room and was warm enough,
And Mr. Thurso was never drunk." "Oh, that was something.
Where did you come from?" She looked at Olvidia`s dark expressionless
face, and sidling a little nearer
To Helen for shelter: "Hymettus, Nebraska: I lived with my
aunt Margaret, she was always punishing me
Because my uncle wouldn`t let me alone. She was big and thin.
I ran away with a boy but he soon left me.
I tried to get rides west, people would keep me awhile
And turn me out. I think I was going to die
When Mr. Thurso saw me beside the road."
"And loaded you into the farm-truck, ah?
Go on." "He gave me some bread and got some coffee
At the next place. I`ve been happy here. Oh,
What will become of me now?" "I can`t guess," Helen said. "My
husband
Can`t change his mind: so you`ll have to go, whatever you and
I want. It jams in the slot; nothing
Will budge it after that, not with a crowbar. What will he be at
fifty, ah? How old are you, Hester?"
"Eighteen . . . nineteen." "I expect it`s true: that stack of hair,
Olvidia, took time to grow." Olvidia
Scowled and said darkly to Hester: "You set the table.
It`s time for dinner." The girl moved quickly to obey, but Helen:
    "Stay here."
                         She stood then in white anxiety
Between the two, and suddenly began to weep.
Helen went near her and said, "I want awfully
To know you, Hester. There`s deep strangeness in your
Wanting to stay in this place. . . . Olvidia, I`m still your mistress:
Make us two sandwiches: set the table yourself.
Sandwiches: meat between bread." She said to Hester:
"You`re not false, I think. Helpless; perfectly;
A person without any will: mine`s only hiding.
If I could just imagine what`s good, or even
What`s bad, you`d see the machine move like a ship.
You mustn`t fear Reave, either.
He has a great will, frittered away on trifles,
Farm things, and you and me. And unable to strike a woman:
So we needn`t fear to take food in our hands
And go and play on the shore. Yes, I command you.
That makes it easy."

                                    They walked under the alders that pave the
gorge, and Helen: "Does it taste mouldy,
The meat of this house? But you must eat and not waste it or
you`ll be sorry, for freedom, Hester, that`s coming,
Is a hungry condition. . . . Where will you go to?" "He says
I must go to San Francisco." Helen looked, and laughed
To see tears in her eyes. "You`re crazy to cry about that. You
wouldn`t stay in this wretched crack
Between two rocks? Come along, walk faster. Hester: that first time,
When you ran away with a boy: did you want a boy,
Or only you didn`t dare go alone? Ah? I think that`s
What makes you cry. It keeps grinding in my mind
That maybe I too ... just to break jail . . .
It would be a dirty discovery."

                                                   The creek-bank path
Straightened a moment, so that a great aisle of bright breathing ocean
Stood clear ahead, and Helen: "Hester: do you know what?
I`m going with you. I`ll cut my hair to the bone
And borrow Johnny Luna`s greasy black hat,
We`ll fly away. I`ll work for you, beg if we have to,
We`ll try all the roads in America
And never quarrel; no disgust and no bullying. . . . Dear, it won`t do.
You`d obey orders, we know: but look at these hips
And breasts of mine: these bulges in a man`s blue-jeans
Would bulge the laws of nature, ah? My affections
Go with my build, we`re talking froth, dear,
Only to poultice the inner bitterness: taste me and you`d call
Quinine honey."
Suddenly emerging at the creek-mouth beach
they breathed and stood still. The narrow crescent
Of dark gravel, sundered away from the world by its walls of
cliff, smoked in a burst of sun
And murmured in the high tide through its polished pebbles. The
surf broke dazzling on fins of rock far out,
And foam flowed on the ankles of the precipice. Helen looked
up, cliff over cliff, the great naked hill
All of one rifted rock covering the northwest sky; and said: "It`s
called Thurso`s Landing. That`s something,
To have the standing sea-cliffs named after you. His father used
to swing down the barrels of lime
From the head of that to the hulls of ships. The old wrecks of
rusting engines are still to be seen up there,
And the great concrete block that anchors the cable. I hope you`ll stay
To see it come down. He said, in the morning. You`ll ride the
mail-stage, I think:
Passes at noon. . . . Will you have the willow or the rock, Hester,
To undress beside?" "What . . . what is it?" "For a swim.
Didn`t they have a swimming-pool in Nebraska?
Here`s ours." "I can`t. Oh, Oh." "You can duck up and down
In the long waves," Helen said, laughing. "Undress.
What do you think we came down for, to see cormorants?"
"The cold will kill me." She answered, "You by this rock
And I by that one. I`ve been ruled with dull iron,
Now I`ll rule you at least."

                                            She went, and returned
In a moment, clean of clothing, but her small companion
Stood shivering in a worn cotton under-shift
And quavered, "I`ll go down like this." Helen suddenly
Anxious and haggard, standing far off, with a screaming voice:
"I told you I want to see you: if I die of it.
Nothing can be worse than what I imagine.
Take off that rag." She sobbing and obedient
Dropped it to the ankles and stepped out and stood
Furled like a sail to the mast, the straw-thin arms
Crossed on her breast, the hands hugging the tiny
Bones of her crooked shoulders in the golden under-spray
Of coiled-up hair. Helen stared and sighed, "Nothing
But a white bony doll"; and turning to the sea: "We`re all monstrous
Under the skins, but nothing is real I think
Even if you can’t see it. Come on, poor thing, let`s be launched;
the foam-ripple`s
Like running cream and the clouds gather."

                                                                      She went down and
Hester followed helplessly a few sad steps,
But when the steel chill of the wave ached in her feet stood still,
whining between hammering teeth, then Helen
Caught her by the hand and dragged her thigh-deep, still keeping
her face averse from her victim, like one compelled
To handle a loathsome thing she made her dance in the waves.
"Don`t you love it, Hester, isn`t this cold
More noble than the heat of a sleeping man? Here comes a foamhead.
I hate the man, yet I can hardly
Keep back my hands from holding you down and drowning
you; why`s that, why`s that?" while Hester childlike lamenting
Danced up and down as the seas deepened. Helen said, "He killed
my friend
In the bitter desert, a beautiful youth
Yellow-haired like you, like you a wanderer. He flung a hammer,"
She said, seeing in her mind the running lizard
That Reave had killed, "My dear friend fell, and that man
Who seems so quiet and controlled wallowed like a boar
Gnashing and trampling. There was no help anywhere
In all the abominable flat lifeless plain. When Reave stood up
A crooked red stump that had no eyes was dying in the sand,
instead of the blond beautiful body
I had often hugged in my arms. I heard it die. We travelled on,
blinded with thirst and sun,
And left it blackening; there are no tears in the desert,
Water`s too precious there."

                                              A greater wave came, gathering
The mottled lit blue water in a bladed heap, then Helen braced
well apart
Her straight white legs, and lifted her little nearly fainting companion
over the comb of the wave,
So that the face was clear and the yellow hair felt but the spray.
In the trough behind the white wave
Helen shook her dark head, the water sluiced from her shoulders
And rose-tipped breasts. "Fear nothing, Hester, I`m strong enough.
That deadly secret I told you: if you should dare
To tell it again, think what might happen: a hanging.
I might be freed. . . . Look up: there he comes now: can`t live
without us." She jeered, "Look at him,
Stolid on the wild colt." They were looking shoreward and a
wave covered them,
Then Helen drew her companion from the roaring foam and
carried her ashore.
Thurso`s half-broken mount
Danced on the sea`s edge in beaten terror, the thin black whip
streaked the brown flanks; and Helen Thurso
Like a myth of dawn born in the west for once, glowing rose
through white all her smooth streaming body
Came through the foam, and dragged beside her for a morning
star fainting and dull in the rose of dawn
That wisp of silver flesh and the water-darkened burden of hair;
She stood panting, unable to speak, and Thurso
Felt through his underconsciousness something morbid and menacing
In blue-shadowed silver foiled upon glowing rose, against the livid
Foam, the tongues of cobalt water, and the shark-fin gray
Rocks of the inlet, for now the sun was clouded,
All colors found their significance; then Helen wrestling for
breath:
"Ah, Reave. Here, Reave.
I knew you`d come, I left word with Olvidia.
Here`s your wet honey: without my dress to pad her life-size
Compare us two." His face wried and dark red,
He twitched the whip in his hand, choking with anger, and
Helen:
"That`s for your colt: not me you daren`t. You haven`t the
courage, simply you haven`t the courage. This peeled thing"
She held Hester by the wrist not to escape "this peeled and
breastless willow-twig here feared you
Until I told her . . . Strike, strike. Let her see you." He shuddered
and blackened, laboring for words, and groaned, "Go home.
Get on your clothes." "Now I’ve learned something," she answered,
"that even a thin slip like this is a better lover
Than any . . . strike me, not her!" She let Hester go, who vanished
instantly, and Helen raised both round arms
To unguard her smooth flanks and said writhing, "That whip of yours
Might do what no love nor strength . . . you`ve never let yourself go,
You`ve never ... I always bitterly feared you:
Give me cause. I could bear much. I`d not move nor scream
While you wrote the red stripes:
But there`s no nature in you, nothing but . . . noble . . .
Nothing but . . . one of those predestined stone men
For women to respect and cheat . . ." She was suddenly weeping
And shivering; she leaned her face toward his knee
And the horse danced sidewise, with a dull clashing sound
Of unshod hooves in the pebbles, curving its body
Away from her and against the whip; she stood back,
Saying, "He thinks I`m a monster out of the sea.
I`m not like . . . what you think. I`d have kissed your stirrup:
But that`s not sense either." She limped like an old woman
Across the gravel toward her clothing, bent over,
Stroking the sea-water off.

XIII
                                           It is certain that too violent
Self-control is unlucky, it attracts hard events
As height does lightning; so Thurso rode up the canyon with a
little death in himself,
Seeing in his mind Helen`s naked body like a red bird-cage
Welted with whip-stripes; and having refused the precious relief
of brutality, and being by chance or trick
Cheated of revenge on her desert lover, he endured small deaths
in his mind, atrophied spots, like mouse-holes
For the casual malice of things to creep in uncountered: so
shortened by refusal of a fair act, Thurso
Rode up from the shore in the frown of fortune. The cress-paved
pools of the stream, the fortifying beauty on the north
Of the rock rampart, and toward the south of the forested slope,
and the brave clouds with flashing bellies
Crossing the gorge like a fleet of salmon, were as nothing to him.
Once he jerked back the colt`s
Bit-spread jaws to its breast and half turned back
To the shore again, but sat bewildered a moment
And snapped his teeth together and rode on, imagining
Some work to do.

                                He tied the colt by the house-door
And went through the house to a closet where hunting-gear,
Guns, traps and vermin-poisons were kept, he fetched some
pounds of bitter barley in the butt of a sack
To abate the pest of ground-squirrels. Returning through the
still rooms
He met his mother and said, "I`ve been to the beach, where they
were bathing. I`m going to the upper field
With squirrel-poison." She said, "In October?" "Nobody else
Seems to have kept them down, in my absences.
Without some killing they`ll breed armies in spring."
"Mark isn`t able to kill, Luna`s too lazy:
I ought to have driven him: I didn`t think of it, Reave,
Not being often in the fields." He sighed and said,
"I wish it would rain. Mother, you have been right
To dislike that woman. I guess you`re right." She turned
Her reddish flint eyes from his face to the window,
Thinking "What now has she done?" and saying, "Nobody
Can praise your choices. Soft pliable men have the luck in love.
Maybe you can get rid of her without much trouble."
He answered fiercely, "Why did you let Luna
Bridle the brown colt while I was away?
He broke it with a whip: it was gente-natured.
Don`t speak, mother, of Helen.
I never will let her go until she is dead."
The old woman, sharply eyeing him again: "If you could stand her
Under the iron skip when you cut the cable
To-morrow morning." He looked down at the flat
White hair on the gray forehead and laughed doubtfully
Without knowing why. "Our ship sails when I cut the cable.
He ought to be whipped himself: Johnny a horse-breaker!
The colt is spoilt. ... I must ask you, mother,
Not to interfere between mine and me.
Whatever you say about the stock or the fields
I`ll see to very patiently: my wife is my own concern,
You must not meddle." "I have no desire to: as you know clearly,
Reave,
In your mind`s quiet time." "What does that mean, that I seem
excited: drunk, hm? Wrong, mother, quite wrong.
I`ve noticed in other autumns, when the earth bakes brittle and
the rains
lag, I become gloomy and quarrelsome,
But not this year. Cheerful. Squirrel-poison`s
What I came in for,
To sow it in the fields above: they increased out of all bounds in
my absences."

                           He left the house
And rode up the hill to the gray stubble-field, where many
ground-squirrels scampered away before him, or erected
Like pegs on mounds of dug earth before their house-doors
barked shrill warning to each other in the sunny air,
While Thurso, leading his horse about the borders of the field,
laid at the mouth of each burrow and carefully
In the little trackways light treacherous gifts; he mounted and
rode to the lower plowland. From thence returning
Above the path of dazzle on the burnished sea, he heard one of
his vermin singing its terror
In the first pain of death; its chirping voice was muffled in the
earth; and Thurso likewise went down
Out of the tension of the sun to the shadowed canyon. Where the
path from the hill
Joined one that wound into the redwoods, he saw his brother
Cross hastily and glance toward him, and labor down
Like a hobbled horse, the plunge and drag of lame haste.
Reave overtook him. Mark said, "Look. Now he stands.
I was talking to him until he drifted away
As if a wind had come up. Reave, I beg you
Ride some way around, or he`ll glide off again
And never tell me the rest." Reave leaned in the saddle
And took his brother by the shoulder: "Come up from dreams,
old fellow.
This won`t do, you`ll be sick again. These fancies
Are nothing if you don`t yield." "Keep your hand off me."
He said angrily. "If you can`t see him clear
Against the dark leaves of laurel: blindness is all.
He`s wearing a different coat, and his tie-pin`s
A small jade mask I never noticed before.
Ss: quiet; he`s coming towards us. ... You told me, father . . .
Ah, Ah." The deranged man`s trembling excitement
Infected the ill-tamed colt, it sweated and shuddered
Between Reave`s knees, with hard breathings
Cupping its ears toward the image that Mark imagined,
But the bit and the knees held it.

                                                   Mark, mournfully: "Then death`s
No nearer peace. No dreamlessness. That`s bad." He listened
again,
And shrewdly answered, "Harmonized: happier, happier?
I do wish to have faith: but your voice, father,
Sounds flat of happiness, and all the woes of the world
Seem hosting behind your smile. For God`s sake tell me
The honest truth." He listened, and said painfully,
"Make me sure of it. For if the blind tugging here
And self-contempt continue, and death`s no peace,
It would be better to live forever . . . but best, best,
Never`ve been born." He listened again and said,
"I`ll try ..." Then turning to Reave; who sat like bronze,
Half his mind grieving to hear his brother`s madness, and half
Busied with its own bitterness: "He says to warn you,
Let his work stand. He says honor your father
That your days may ... I have it wrong. Shortened?
Shortened? Because death`s better, I suppose.
. . . Not to pull down his work." Reave laughed impatiently,
Saying, "Tell that imagination I honor as much
As I can see of him: that`s nothing. A perfect ground-squirrel,
Pop out of life for the first dog that barked
Into the shady earth. Come down to the house
And rest, brother. We owe him no duties
If he were really in the wind here." He laid his hand again on
Mark`s shoulder,
Whose loaded nerves suddenly discharging at the touch of restraint
struck his clenched bony fist
To the neck of the colt; that flew a leap sidewise and three
forward in the crackling brushwood, then breathed itself
With vertical flights and humped bone-rigid landings. Reave
hurt it with whip and bridle, he squeezed it tame
Between his two knees and angrily returned.

                                                                      Mark meanwhile,
following his vision,
With no mind for this world, questioned it hard
About that other, he ate its fallacious answers
Together with his own doubts, like a starved man gulping
The meal with the weevils. "Life`s all a dream," it said,
"And death is a better more vivid immortal dream
But love is real; both are made out of love,
That`s never perfect in life, and the voids in it
Are the pains of life; but when our ungainly loads
Of blood and bone are thrown down, then the voids close,
Love becomes perfect, all`s favor and immediate joy,
For then we are what we love." So the false prophet
Sang sweetly, Mark was drunken with the easy ecstasy,
But while he listened his eyes kept wavering down
From the face to the throat of his vision, to that tie-pin
Tipped with white jade: that also had a face, carved
In the bright waxy stone, and was grown bigger,
The face was Helen`s. The spectre sang that love
Must become conscious of itself and claim its own,
Mark`s gaze drifting again to the stone at its throat
Found a cleft whiteness, for the carving reversed
Was now the beautiful fork of female thighs,
And the little hill: because the seer was virgin,
Knowing only pictures of women, he saw smooth white
What`s rough in nature; but very smooth was too rough
For that intolerant sick mind. He fled back in terror,
Crying shrilly,
"I can`t. I can`t. Oh, Reave, the cunning devil
Was making traps to take me, and I have conceived
A monstrous thing, poisoning the soul with flesh.
Either our dead hate us or the living devil
Was here instead." Reave followed him and coaxed him home,
Where Helen stood in the room. They nodded to her
Like two effigies.

                               In the night Reave dreamed that Helen
Lay with him in the deep grave, he awoke loathing her,
But when the weak moment between sleep and waking
Was past, his need of her and his judgment of her
Knew their suspended duel; and he heard her breathing,
Irregularly, gently in the dark.

XIV
To save the redwoods under it, a rope was drawn
From the old cable, near the end to be cut,
To an oak a little higher than the cable-anchorage
And fifty yards to the west; so in their falling
The heavy steel serpent and the hanging iron skip
Should be deflected enough to miss those highest
And best-grown trees; the cable would be swung west
Before the inch rope should take the whole weight and snap,
Or, holding, be cut at leisure.
Reave had brought up a hack-saw,
But the blades broke on the strained steel; he wedged a wood block
In the rusty angle between the black cable and the brown concrete,
and worked against it with a slim file
Until four strands were gored through and his palm bleeding; he
pried the wires back and put Luna to work,
Himself walking aside, testing the guide-rope`s tautness, and
somewhat wondering
What engines his father used to sling so great weight so high:
a man capable of that, blow out
In the first draught of bad luck like a poor candle!
In the open, in the fresh morning, high up the precipitous hill, his
spirit mounted to a kind of cheerfulness;
He had work to do; and now the sea-wind began, the wool-white
fog on the ocean detached clouds
Flying up the gorge of the gulf underfoot, so Thurso felt for a
moment a little laughably godlike,
Above the cloud-stream, hewing an old failure from the face of
nature. Down in the gorge, from the house dooryard
The cable and the skip could be seen high up the east, the rapid
mist-wreaths flowing in the sky below them
Like ice-cakes under a spidery bridge. Mark and his mother stood
on the path to the porch, she`d brought him
Out of his bedroom to watch the cable go down, hoping it might
cure sick thoughts. Hester and Olvidia
Stood, each alone, at some distance; but Helen came down from
among the trees. Then Mark remembering
His lawless vision trembled at her approach.
She came and said, "Reave left the gate open,
And the horses were coming out when I happened past.
I never knew him to be forgetful before.
What was he thinking of?" They looked at her, Mark with eyes
That mutely implored pardon and fled away,
His mother made a carefully disinterested
Stare, and no answer. Helen stood wilfully near them,
And said, "How long has it hung?" After a moment
Mark answered hoarsely. And Helen: "Not more? Eighteen?
I thought it had always hung on these hills. I`ve seen it myself
Through an earthquake and some big winds, and that brush-fire
Three years ago. When Reave tackles it,
Down it shall come. Not the mountain-backed earth bucking like
a bad horse, nor fire`s
Red fox-tail on the hills at midnight, nor the mad southeasters:
nothing can do it
But Reave Thurso, ah? That`s the man we`re measured against."
The old woman considered her once more, smiled, and to Mark:
"An inch to the mile. Dear, are you tired standing?
Surely it will not be long now." Mark whispered to her,
"Do you think he cares?" "Who?" "Father: his old work
Falling from the air at last." "We`ll credit the dead
With a little more intelligence than to be troubled
About old iron." Helen overheard her,
And out of the uneasy malice of unhappiness: "Why credit them?
Very likely their minds like their spoiled bodies
Decay and go down the scale, through childish mutterings
To poisonous imbecility, and things that seem
Worthless to us might be to them like playthings
Precious to children, worth spite, all they`ve got left . . ."
"You-"
The old woman felt Mark`s anguish, and pushing by him
Stood against Helen "weren`t asked. When we`re dull and want
laughter
We`ll ask you to tell us your thoughts." Helen retreated
With looks of startled innocence, "Oh, how have I made you
angry? I was praising your son, the other one,
A man who masters earthquake, storm and bad horses, and has no
fear of the dead, and can drive a truck
With his wife in it; never reached out his hand for anything yet
but down it came. Look up: he`s there
By the oak-tree, your strong man of this hollow, his feet on a
cloud. He`d never falter if a thousand ghosts
Were camped against him: but look at the size of the man: one
of those tiny
Black ants that come to dead things could carry him
With the oak too. Mark, you hate cruelty and killers: do you
know that he spent yesterday
Poisoning squirrels? Olvidia told me.
Poor little dusty monkeys whipped for my sins,
Dying in agony." Mark answered hollow and slow,
"It has to be done, I suppose. Once he told me,
No poison no farms. He said that strychnin`s
What civilized California: there`d still be grizzlies
And timber-wolves." "So all your sweet starts of mercy
Tune down to that meek end. Well, Mark: some time
San Francisco and New York and Chicago will fall
On the heads of their ghosts, so will that cable."

                                                                         A small bright falcon,
Invisible from the floor of the gorge, but Reave saw it
Above the cloud-stream, shot down the shiny sky
And lighted on the long cable above the skip,
Folded its wings, and veered its vizarded face
With sharp looks north and south. Reave thought, "All the birds
Count on this ironware for as fixed as mountains,
It was here before they were hatched in the high nests,
Now I`ll surprise him." He said, "Hand me the axe,"
For all the weight was hanging on a few cords
Of twisted wire. He lifted the dinted axe,
An old one for rough work. "Stand clear, Johnny," but the wires
Were not chewed deep enough yet; the edge nicked and bent them
Into the block, the whole cable like a hive of bees
Source
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