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Robinson Jeffers - Give Your Heart To The Hawks
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talk to you. I saw you ride by the water-trough."
He shuddered and said, "What? I`ll watch the fire." "Fayne
doesn`t like me so well I think
Since Michael . . . indeed I`m ashamed to be always around your house."
"I noticed you there," he said, carefully regarding
The dark braids of her hair, and the pale brown face
Seen from above. "I don`t know," she said.
"My father says to go away for a time,
His sister lives on a place in Idaho.
But I wouldn`t want to forget. But I told Fayne . . .
So I don`t know. We could see that you grieved for him
More deeply than anyone else, and all these great hills are empty."
He said, "Is that all?" "Ah . . . ? Yes," she answered,
And turned away and looked back. Lance found that the bridle-leather
Had broken suddenly between his hands, and said "You won`t get
anything from Fayne; she`s hard as iron.
Why do you follow us around? What do you think you`ll find
out?" She said, "Your grief is greater perhaps,
For you knew him longer. But you have Fayne and I have nobody:
speak kindly to me. As I remember,
At first it came from seeing you and Fayne so happy in each other,
I wanted to be like that. I can`t talk well, like Fayne,
But I read a great deal." He stared at her face and began to knot
the bridle, his hands relaxing,
And said, "I must ride around by the oak-scrub and see that the
fire has checked. I`ve got to be watchful always.
Will you stay here?" He went and returned and said, "Come
down to our place whenever you are lonely, Mary.
My mother`s quite well again. His death was ... do people talk
much about it?" She looked in wonder at his face,
And he with numbed lips: "What lies do they . . . can`t you
speak out?" "I never
Talked about it with anyone, since Nina Dolman
Told us that day. Truly there`s nothing to be said by anyone
Except, he was bright with life and suddenly nothing, nothing,
nothing, darkness."
Lance breathed and said sharply, "I wouldn`t bet on it
If I were you. Mary, you are tender and merciful:
Don`t come to the house; Fayne is like iron. You`d better
Run home and forget about us. Unless you should hear something
I ought to know." "What do you mean?" "Good-bye."
She saw his bridle-hand lift, she said "I`ve no pride,
I pray you not to leave me yet, Lance.
I loved him greatly, and now that bond hangs cut,
Bleeding on the empty world, it reaches after
You that were near him, Fayne and you. I was always
Without companions, and now I`d give anything
To be in your friendship a little." "Anything?" he said.
"You faithful women.
Fayne was five days. Mmhm, I have seen a vision.
My eyes are opened I believe."
                                                 He rode across the burnt hill,
Watching the wind swirl up the ashes and flatten
The spits of smoke. Past the singed oak-scrub he began to wonder,
If there was honey in the little tree, had . . . the dead
Tasted it before he died? "You`d better be off to Idaho.
... I shy from his name like a scared horse.
By God, I`d better get used to it; I`ve got to live with it."
He looked sharply all about the burnt solitude
To be sure of no hearers, and recited aloud:
"I killed Michael. My name is Lance Fraser.
I murdered my brother Michael. I was plastered,
But I caught `em at it. I killed my brother Michael.
I`m not afraid to sleep in his room or even
Take over his girl if I choose. I am a dog,
But so are all."
                           The tall man riding the little bay horse
Along the burnt ridge, talking loudly to nothing but the ash-drifting
wind; a shadow passed his right shoulder;
He turned on it with slitted eyes, and saw through the strained
lashes against the gray wind a ghastly old woman
Pursuing him, bent double with age and fury, her brown cloak
wild on the wind, but when she turned up the wind
It was only a redtail hawk that hunted
On the burnt borders, making her profit in the trouble of field-mice.
Lance groaned in his throat "Go up you devil.
Ask your high places whether they can save you next time."

VIII
Leo Ramirez rode down on business
About redwood for fence-posts; he asked in vain
For Lance, and had to deal with old Eraser. When he went out
He saw red hair around the corner of the house
And found Fayne in the garden, and asked for Lance.
"I couldn`t tell you. I saw him ride to the south.
He`ll be home soon for supper." Ramirez stood
In troubled silence, looking at the earth, and said
"I wonder ought I to tell him . . ." Fayne`s body quivered
Ever so slightly, her face grew carefully blank.
`What, Leo?" "Will Howard, for instance. Mouths that can`t
Shut up for the love of God." "He drives the coast-stage,"
Fayne answered carefully. Ramirez looked over the creek
At the branded flanks of the south hill, and no rain had come
To streak them with gray relentings. "He didn`t see it,"
He said; "and those two janes on vacation
Went back to town the next day." He giggled, remembering
The sailing-ship stippled on the white skin,
And fixed his mind smooth again. Fayne said, "How dares he
Lie about us?" Ramirez`s brown soft eyes
Regarded her with mournful wonder and slid away.
He said, "You was very quick-thinking." "What?" she said, "You
were there.
And when I cried to him to be careful you looked
And saw him larking on the rock, and you saw him fall,
You could see very plainly in the awful moonlight.
These are things, Leo, that you could swear to." He nodded,
And slid his red tongue along his dry lips and answered,
"Yes`m." "So Howard`s a liar," she said. "But don`t tell Lance;
He`d break him in two. We`ll all do very well,
All wicked stories will die, long long before
Our ache of loss." "Yes`m." She walked beside him
To his tethered horse, and charmed him with an impulsive handclasp
After he was in the saddle.
                                             She stood with her face high, the
great sponge of red hair
Lying like a helmet-plume on her shoulders, and thought she was
sure of conquering security but she was tired;
She was not afraid of the enemy world, but Michael would never
be here laughing again. On the hill,
In the hill he lay; it was stranger than that, and sharper. And his killer
Ought to be hated a little in the much love. The smells in the
wind were of ocean, the reedy creek-mouth,
Cows, and wood-smoke, and chile-con-carne on the kitchen stove;
it was harder to analyze thoughts in the mind.
She looked at the dear house and its gables
Darkening so low against the hill and wide sky and the evening
color commencing; it was Lance`s nest
Where he was born, and his great white body grew high and
beautiful. Old Davie shuffled up from the calf-pens
Into the house; then far and high, like a tiny horn on the hill
against the green-saffron heaven
Lance grew into sight, the man and the horse and the evening
peace. He was well again; he was sometimes cheerful
Since the early plowing; his muscles needed strong labor. He was
like this mountain coast,
All beautiful, with chances of brutal violence; precipitous, dark-natured,
beautiful; without humor, without ever
A glimmer of gayety; blind gray headland and arid mountain,
and trailing from his shoulders the infinite ocean.
So love, that hunts always outside the human for his choice of metaphors,
Pictured her man on her mind. He dropped from sight
In the hill thickets. She thought, "That`s the direction
From the Abbeys` or farther south. Mary Abbey`s
Quit haunting our house." The sky grew ever more luminous pale,
The hills more solid purple. At the valley sea-mouth pale rose
layered over amber, and over the rose
Pale violet, high over the lifted hawk-wings of divided hills, to
one fine twist of flamingo-feather
Cloud flying in the wind and arch of the world.
                                                                          A bat flitted up
the still glimmer.
Fayne went up the drive and opened the gate
For Lance coming across the fields. He looked
As if he had fought, a victory; Fayne was silent;
He nodded, and said, "I`ve got it over with. You were right."
She saw a thin drift of blood on the bay`s foreleg;
A big brown bird hung from the saddle-thongs,
The half-spread sail of one wing clasped Lance`s knee;
He had his rifle. "Another hawk, Lance?" "Fve been there,`*
He answered. "Oh, this? I pick `em off when I see `em.
I`ve been back to that place." "What place, dear?" "The . . .
Slaughter-house. Under the cliff. Ah: I looked around there.
And rubbed that . . . time into my eyes
Until it formed. Now I guess it won`t mix
With every mouthful of air; I can call it to memory
Or shut it up." Fayne looked at his drawn face.
But she thought he seemed a degree restored
To natural goodness again, for he dismounted
And walked beside her. She smelled the prickly sweet fragrance
Of whiskey, and said: "That nasty old man was there.
Lance: you were careful with him?" "Care?" he said, "Hell.
We talked about fish. ... I heard once about a fellow in jail
Kept banging his head on the wall until he died:
I`d liefer have done that than killed my brother.
I often . . . miss him." He stopped to tie up the hawk`s feet
To the top wire of the fence; thence they went on
Without speaking.
                                 At supper he said suddenly across the table,
"Listen, dad.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? When Mikey and I
were little you used to have prayers in the evenings
And flogged us the times we snickered: why did you quit?" Old
Fraser fixed his narrow-set apelike eyes
On Lance`s face; they seemed to become one thrusting darkness,
but he said nothing. After a time
Lance said, "But why did you quit?" "Because I grew old and
powerless," the old man answered. Lance: "What was that
You used to read about two sparrows for a farthing?" "The Book
is there." He nodded toward the other room.
"Look it out for yourself." When they stood up from table Lance
said, "I wish you would read it for us,
About the sparrows." "I will not," he said, "read for your mockery.
I am utterly left alone on earth;
And God will not rise up in my time." But Lance: "Doesn`t it say
No sparrow can fall down without God?" Fayne said, "Oh,
Lance: come on."
"No, no; I want him to read and pray.
What does that mean, fall to earth without God?
Does it mean that God fells it? Fayne and I
Know better than that: ah, Fayne? We know, ah?
But God connives.
Do read about the two sparrows." His roving glance
Came on his mother`s blanched and full-moon face,
The pouched watery blue eyes, and the mouth always
Thirsting for breath. "No, no, I`ll keep still, mother.
I didn`t want to tease him, I was in earnest
To have prayers again."
                                         But he remained in the room
Until his mother had gone up to bed, then instantly
Said, "Listen, dad. Be a good sport.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" Fayne had watched him
Sitting stone-still, only twitching his hands,
His face hollow in the lamp-shadow: she went quickly
And touched his shoulder; she smoothed her hand on his throat,
Saying, "Please, Lance, no more of that. Why will you do it?"
"Sh," he said, "I have him by a raw spot: keep out.
He spooned the gospel down my throat when I was a cub:
Why`s he so tight wi` that farthing? Once, dad, you whipped Mikey
For spelling the name of God backward
Until the red crucifixion ran down his legs.
Do you remember the brave little brown legs
All smeared and welted?" The old man eyed him and said,
"You lie. He had a thorn-scratch that opened." "Booh," Lance answered,
"I won`t quarrel with you. I want the truth:
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" Old Fraser
Groaned, and the straight edge of the lamp-shade shadow
That crossed his broad face obliquely over the burning
Blackness of the eyes, but left the stiff mouth and jaw
In the yellow light, shook with his passion. He said, "My Master also
Was mocked cruelly by those he loved, desiring to save them.
You have a strong body, and if I struck you
You`d take me by the wrists like a little child. I am in my house
and I have no one to help me.
I am old and worn out; my strength is gone and white hair has
come, but honor has not come. I say that God
Is not mocked; but a feeble ailing old man, who loved his boys
too indulgently and has seen the blithe hands
Reach out for damnation, and the happy feet ... Oh ...
Is rightly mocked. Oh Lance, over Michael`s death." Lance, pale
and mumbling: "We all have troubles, old man;
Yours have come late. Well. Are not two sparrows . . ."
Fayne cried, "Lance, Lance, for pity
Hush, whatever he did to you when you were little.
He earns peace now." "Mm," he said, "where`s that? I’ve
Been trying to get him to call me about those sparrows:
The old man won`t play: we`ve an ace in the hole too.
Here it is for nothing, old man:
I rode by the Abbeys` line-fence along the steep
Over Wreck Beach, and there`s a young deer, a spike-buck,
Hanging dead on the wire, made a bad jump
From the low side. The barbs caught him by the loins,
Across the belly at the spring of the haunches, the top wire.
So there he hangs with his head down, the fore-hooves
Reaching the ground: they dug two trenches in it
Under his suspended nose. That`s when he dragged at the barbs
Caught in his belly, his hind legs hacking the air.
No doubt he lived for a week: nothing has touched him: a young
spike-buck:
A week of torture. What was that for, ah?
D`you think God couldn`t see him? The place is very naked and
open, and the sea glittering below;
He hangs like a sign on the earth`s forehead, y` could see him from
China. . . . But keep the wind side.
For a loving God, a stinking monument." "Bosh," the old man answered,
And stood up, and puckering a miminy mouth: "Your little buck!
There is not one soul in hell but would take his place on the wire
Shouting for joy . . . and few men past fifty." Lance also,
Made surly by the slow death of whiskey in his blood,
Stood up: "Your merciful God, that made you whip little boys.
We`re dogs,
But done licking those feet." He bulked in the old man`s way to
the door, towering in the shadow, and forced him
Toward the near corner. Fayne ran between them. "Tell me the
truth," Lance said, "do you believe in your God?"
Old Fraser, who had stood glaring like a bayed cat, suddenly
dwindled; and felt outside the walled cube
Of lamplight, under gray stars no Scottish nor Palestinian uplands
but the godless hills of America
Like vacant-eyed bison lying toward the sea, waiting for rain.
He moved his lips without breath, he struck
His throat and said feebly: "I am choked and dried up with the
running sands.
I have prayed a great deal in vain, and seen the whole earth
Shed faith like leaves;
And the faces of sin round as the sun and morality
Sneered to death. I cannot
Live unless I believe. ... I cannot live";
And stood all shrunken. Lance, awed: "My God, who`d ever `a`
thought
He could be plagued into honesty?" The old man
Cried fiercely: "I believe. Ah: tell your people to be careful
Of the God they have backed into a snarling corner,
And laugh off like a dirty story." "That`s it," Lance answered.
"Dogs. We all are." He stood backward, the old man
Passed slowly, staring, saying, "Make yourself ready if you can.
For I see you are changed."
                                            Fayne shuddered and said,
"What does he mean?" "He? Nothing. He means two sparrows
For a farthing." She said, "Lance . . . Lance?"
He moved to leave her; she breathed and said, "Can you hear?
We were doing, what you thought. It seemed . . . usual
That night: both drunk: he was going away ... So what you
did, Lance,
Was justice." "Agh," he said, "nudge me wi` that, still?
I know it perfectly. What does it matter, what farthing
Sold them?" Fayne, sobbing: "Oh, then, we did not. It is not true.
I lied." "It would not be possible to tell you," he said,
"How little I care." She, with both hands at her white throat, but
lifting her face:
"Yes. I can bear that. We`ve sailed I think away past the narrows
of common faithfulness. Then care for this:
To be able to live, in spite of pain and that horror and the dear
blood on your hands, and your father`s God,
To be able to go on in pure silence
In your own power, not panting for people`s judgment, nor the
pitiful consolation of punishing yourself
Because an old man filled you with dreams of sin
When you were little: you are not one of the sparrows, you are
not a flock-bird: but alone in your nature,
Separate as a gray hawk." "The very thing I was thinking," he
answered.
"If you`d take your red hair and spindly face
Out of my lamplight I`d be alone: it`s like a burst blood-vessel
In the eye of thought."

IX
                                        Old Mrs. Fraser
Caught cold and remained in bed, the bronchial pain
Frightened her heart with memories of worse anguish.
Fayne went back and forth from the stove to the bed
Heating flannels, to lay them on the white upland
Between the blond mountains of falling flesh
That had fed Lance. Going by the curtainless window
She looked whether she could see him, across the fields
Or up the burnt hill. Not Lance, but a smaller figure
Was coming down the black hill under white clouds:
Mary Abbey: her father had horses enough,
Was she walking down here?
                                                Lance`s mother
Wished for that wintergreen oil again; Fayne rubbed it
On the white plain and the roots of the great soft udders.
She could feel in her finger-tips the suck and rattle
Of phlegm in the breathing-tubes, the old woman coughing
And saying "I see there was four sheets in the wash again
From you and Lance; well, dearie, don`t fret.
He`s just his father all over, crazy as hawks.
They get to thinking Antichrist and the Jews and the wicked
Pope in Rome
And scunner at every arrangement for human comfort.
Then they come home like hungry sailors from sea.
You`re all worn out in the morning; my feet are cold."
She coughed and panted; Fayne rubbed the oil. The old woman said,
"My feet are cold." Fayne answered sadly "I`ll rub them."
"No, if you`d get me an iron; a fine hot flat-iron
Done up in cloth is a great comfort in bed.
Right often it`s been a husband to me when my old man
Was prophesying around and a fresh cow
Cried all the night."
                                   Fayne went downstairs for the iron
And heard a wonderful sound behind the house; she heard Lance
laughing.
She looked from the door and saw old Davie by the lime-washed
hen-house, leaning both hands on a long shovel,
Gaze at the ground; Lance crouched near by, with blood on his
hands and something between his knees, red feathers,
That fiery old half-bred game-cock, that sent the dogs
Yelping for mercy. A little Cooper`s-hawk was tethered in front
of Lance to a driven peg,
One wing bloodily trailing; Lance pushed the game-cock toward
it and the hawk fell, tripped by its wing,
But crutched itself on the other and came up again,
Erect and watchful, holding the earth with its yellow feet.
Lance pushed and freed the game-cock, that eagerly
Staring-hackled in his battle-passion
Leaped up and struck down; the hawk tripped by its wing
Fell quivering under the spurs, but a long-fingered
Lean yellow hand reaching up out of ruin
Plucked at the red king`s breast: who charged again: one hawk-wing
Waved, and the talons mysteriously accomplished
Many quick bitter acts, whence the red king
Reeled out of hope. He crouched beyond tether`s reach,
Propping himself on both wings, but the sinking head
Still stretched for fight; then dull-eyed, at strength`s end,
Went staggering to it again. The yellow hands
Easily made him what would never any more
Chirp over bright corn to the hens or subdue a rival.
Lance came, and the little hawk ran quickly and fell
Onto its broken shoulder at the tether`s end. Lance picked up
the dying game-cock;
Red grains of wheat from the torn crop fell down with the
blood. Fayne watched from the open door; she saw him
GIVE YOUR HEART TO THE HAWKS
Turn at the click of a gate, and Mary Abbey came up from the
creek-bed path. At sight of Lance
She stopped; her hands went up to her throat. He, frowning:
"What do you want . . . Mary?" She lowered her hands
And stepping backward almost inaudibly said, "I ...
Came the back way. I ... came to see Fayne." She had hurried
and was breathing hard. Lance stared at her,
And said "Go on in, confess your sins." He turned with his
shoulder toward her; the bleeding bird in his hands
Stretched itself, thrusting back with the spurs as if it were killing
its last rival, and suddenly died,
With a bright bubble of blood in the gaping beak. Old Davie
laughed, but not Lance; the little hawk
Stood up and watched all with intent eyes. Mary stayed wringing
her hands and Fayne came from the door,
Then Mary, half running toward her: "I hardly bear to see
blood: let me go in." Fayne said to Lance:
"It won." "It will lose," he said in his throat, "when my heel is
on it." She, gravely: "It fought well, Lance.
Have you hurt your hands?" "Ugh," he said, "nothing: the vermin."
He moved toward the little captive, that looked up at him
With cold intentness; the blood had started again from its broken
shoulder and striped the dead wing. Mary Abbey,
Shrilly, whipping the air with her hands: "Let me go!" Lance
raised his foot to tread, but the victim`s intent
Concentration of binocular eyes looked human; Mary cried
shrilly: "They told me, my father said . . .
And Nina told me ... Oh Fayne!" Lance, suddenly rigid:
"What`s that?" Fayne answered steadily and said, "Its life
Is little value to it with a broken wing. Come into the house."
She answered "I am afraid."
But approached the door, whispering "What kind of a house,
with blood sprinkled
Where you enter the door: what have you done?
His hands are red." Lance turned from the hawk and said with
his teeth showing, "Tell your father
That I may soon be with this," he toed the dead cock, "our
second-sighted old Scotchman has got a hunch,
But not with that, not caught alive." She fled from him
To the open door. Fayne, jerking her face but not
Her shoulders toward him, said low: "You speak of things
Less real than nothing. It is not courage to make
Danger where there is none." She followed Mary Abbey
Into the door, saying: "Lance is not well. He loved his brother
Most deeply, and having heard of venomous talk
Makes the wound burn. Have you too been listening
To our enemies?" Mary, trembling in the house twilight:
"I know you couldn`t speak calmly, if, if ... Oh Fayne.
But every person . . . What have I done?" "Will you hush,"
Fayne said,
"Mrs, Gomez is probably not interested
In your girl dreams." Then Mary was silent, seeing
The dark ruler of the kitchen. Fayne took the iron,
And said on the stair, "I have to attend to Lance`s mother:
You`d better stay with me. Then we`ll walk." At the room door:
"Mary Abbey is here, Mother."
                                                     Mary faltered
At the air of the room, the stove-heat and stale hangings in the air
Of wintergreen and eucalyptus. She stood close to the door,
And felt the weary mill turn in her mind,
Unable to think of any definite thing, painfully grinding, turning.
        Old Mrs. Fraser
Sniffed and said, "I can smell scorching cloth,
Did you try it with a wet finger? It ought to sizz
But if it whistles it will burn the sheets; Mary, are you sick?
You look all blue by the mouth," she wagged her head in the
pillow, "watch your heart." Fayne, kneeling
To slip the iron under the covers of the bed, tossed back her
bright hair and said, "She`s all right, Mother.
Lance was having a kind of cock-fight in the back yard, that
struck her pale: she`s one of those delicate
Natures that die at seeing blood."
                                                      The weary mill of the mind
struck a hard kernel and seemed to fall
Down hollow waters; Mary leaned on the door-frame, clenching
her fists not to go down with it, biting
Her white lip, the circle of sight contracted until only the blood-splatch
of Fayne`s hair was visible
At the hub of the whirlpool. She slid with her back to the steep
door-frame and did not fall; Fayne helped her
To escape the room, the old woman far off proclaiming "It is her heart."

Mary leaned on the newel
Of the stairhead to find her strength to go down, and said,
"I am so caught. And someone has daubed every
Beam of your house with it. All women have to bear blood
But mine has stopped. Please go first, Fayne,
For you don`t hate me yet; now I can`t bear
To meet . . . anyone." Fayne slowly said, "It was Michael?"
"I am in terror," she answered, "of every living thing,
And him, and you." Payne`s triangular face,
The high cheek-bones and narrow jaw, thrust in the twilight
Opposite the other`s white oval, as a small perching hawk
Thrusts with her head, forcing the shapes of things
To grow alive in the motion of the eyes
And yield up their hunted secrets: Fayne peered at her,
Trembling, and said, "Then follow."
                                                           They went out the front way;
No one was seen; Fayne said: "It is horrible to be nearing New Year`s
And still the dust and the sun, as if it could never rain. Would
you like to be nurse to that old woman?
She`s Lance`s mother." Mary said faintly, stumbling on the plain
path, "I have no mother: and the raging
Blue of your eyes hates me." "What you have heard," Fayne said,
"is only the common lies of the shore.
It`s natural for people to furnish a house with lies if it meets
misfortune. When a man loses his property
He`s called fool, or thief; when they see you crushed
By the sudden death of someone you love they begin to hint
murder; it`s human nature. If you`re weak enough,
Believe them; it won`t hurt us. But what are you here for?" She
answered, leaning her hand on the post of the little gate
To steady her body: "I am not strong like you. I am in danger
of killing myself, if ...
Or if I believe them." "Better than you," Fayne said, "have died.
Come on." A little way past the gate,
Mary said, "What is it? You too are trembling!" She answered,
trembling, "Oh no: my life is easy. Dear,
We`re friends, we mustn`t make mysteries; tell me, won`t you,
what`s all this web of trouble
You stare so white through? You can count on my loving friendship,
and my
Forgiveness, if for any reason . . . My worst enemy
Will call me warm-hearted; and if I once had the name
Of being a jealous woman in my love for Lance:
Well," she said with a calm voice, her face twisting
Like a small white flame specked with flying ashes,
"That wears, it softens. And he ... grows morose and strange,
Is not perfectly a splendor in my eyes any more.
I will confess that I cannot feel so warmly about him
As once I did. . , . Here above the beehives, Mary,
Nobody ever conies, and you could tell me
Everything safely; and if any advice of mine
Could help, though I am not wise."
                                                           They stood silently,
Turning their faces away from each other,
In a wind acrid with stale honey and the life of bees.
Mary Abbey shuddered and said, "I came here
To tell you. Oh, Oh. I used to seem to myself
Locked in, cold and unwishing; but . . . Michael`s . . . love
Made April in me, and the sudden emptiness of death
Tore ... I was much changed: you remember
How I clung to you in the desert of the days afterwards,
And tired you into dislike, until you turned
Hard eyes toward me. The first time I saw Lance alone
He was riding in fire and ashes; he was more unkind
Than you ever were." Fayne tasted
The crack in her bitten lip, and shut her eyes and said softly,
"Go on, sweetheart"; but the dark-haired one
Only wept, and Fayne said, "You`ve told me nothing,
Sweetheart." She answered, "Are you still really my friend?
Don`t look at me," and turned her face from Fayne,
Saying, "I was so aching lonely. I only wanted
To be friends with someone: he really ... he took me roughly
On the great lonely hill; it hurt, does it hurt at first
If you are loved?" Fayne had stopped trembling and stood
With bones and teeth showing through the skin of her face,
And trying to speak moaned slightly, and avoided
The little blind hand feeling for hers. "But still I
Strain and ache to be near him." Fayne took the hand,
And with her unfleshed mouth kissed Mary`s hair,
And tried to speak, and with painful care: "Go ... on ...
Sweetheart?" "Then they told me that he killed Michael.
That was not true. Oh yes, I know, but I thought
If I loved where I ought to hate I would kill myself.
I have always been as regular as the new moon,
And this time, twelve days have passed. When I was troubling
About that, that was when they told me. I thought
About a coyote that was caught near our house
In two steel traps at once, so that it couldn`t
Stand nor lie down." Fayne touched her teeth with her tongue
Until the stretched white lips came slowly to cover them,
And said, "Do you mean?" She answered, "I am so caught.
I know, I have a book about it. So I came here.
Your dooryard was full of blood." Fayne said, "Maybe you are.
He`s travelled away past caring, and would let
Nature fly. I`d naturally . . .
I have to control my starts, because Lance,
Who`s worth ten thousand of you, hangs on the scale.
D` y` love him, sweetheart?" She turned her face toward her,
Saying, "Yes." Fayne mumbled and said, "I`d naturally . . .
It`s babies like you . . . Listen to me.
I took Lance in my hand in that bad night
To fling at the world. We do not have to let the dogs judge for
us. I told him that we are our own people
And can live by ourselves: if we could endure the pain of being
lonely. Do you think you with Lance
Could strangle time? I am holding the made world by the throat
Until I can make it change, and open the knot that past time
tied. To undo past time, and mend
The finished world: while you were busy teething your young
virginity. I have to control myself.
Last year I`d `a` let
Nature fly; changed your baby face wi` my hands,
Sweetheart: but I cannot risk: life has changed." "Oh Fayne! why
did you say . . ." "I`m not a tame animal,"
She answered, "the wild ones are not promiscuous. What would
you do," her voice thinning to a wire, "if . . . Lance . . .
If it proved true, that you`d given your little dry heart and careful body
And anxious little savings of honor
For a prize to your lover`s murderer: could you walk, eat, sleep,
While you knew that?" She said, "It is true then.
I had made up my mind: indeed I long for it.
Sleep: Oh, you`ll see." Fayne drew in breath like one
Drinking in a desert passion, and said, "You`ve not
Enough courage." "Not for anything else," Mary answered;
"But that"; and began to go back down the dry hill.
Fayne followed, with eyes like the blue flame of sulphur
Under the fever of her hair, and lips reddening.
The moment of joy withered out of her face.
"I am fighting the whole people, do you think I`ll risk:
For the pleasure of a small soft fool`s removal,
Who`d weep it out to her father or leave a letter. . . . Oh, you:
it`s not true.
Lance is no murderer, you`re innocent as far as that.
I saw with my eyes your unmourned lover
Clambering up the ledges in his happy drunkenness,
All alone, and the shale broke in his hands;
I saw him pitching down the white moonlight,
And heard the noise like a melon of his head on rock
In the clatter of the falling pebbles. Lance came up the sand
After I screamed." Mary Abbey stood swaying and said,
"If you knew my heart you`d pity me." Fayne, amazed: "Pity you
For having had Lance?" and said hoarsely, "When did you tell him
That you think you are pregnant?" "Oh, Oh," she stammered,
"Never. You hate me." "You`re good at guessing," Fayne said.
"What do you want here, money to bribe a doctor?
We have no money here. Yet it seems I must help you,
Or worse will come. I know a woman in the city . . .
When you start east . . . But you must promise never to come back
Into the drawing net of our lives." 

X
                                                          When Mary had gone,
Fayne went where Lance had been; but only the little hawk
Stood in the dust, hopeless and watchful, with its own misery
And a shadow of its own, between the privy and the hen-house
and the back door. Fayne thought: would Lance
Be harmed if she should give it the gift? and fetched the axe
from the wood-block, but forgot to be merciful
And went upstairs. She washed herself, brushed her bright fleece,
and came down.
                             She found Lance at the fence-corner
Where the north pasture comes down to drink. He had looped
his belt around the neck of a yearling colt
That had a head like a barrel; the little body and long knotted
legs of nature, but the head enormous,
Like a barrel-headed beast in a dream. "Oh Lance, what ails it?"
He stared at her
And answered, faintly smiling, "I guess a little
Message from someone." "What?" she said. "Nothing. We don`t
have rattlers
In the middle of winter." "Is it a rattlesnake bite?"
"They sleep in the rocks and holes, twisted in bunches,
They won`t strike if you dig them up: but here
On his lip are the pricks." He unhaltered
The shuddering colt. "Stumble away, poor thing.
That was a mean trick, to sung the innocent."
Fayne said, "Was it a rattlesnake bite?" "Mm: but
What sent it up?" "This weather," she said, "the vicious sun."
"Fine hawk`s-weather, ah? Did Mary what`s-her-name
Tell you her young sins?" Fayne quivered, closing her eyes,
And answered at length, "She`s sick." "So are we all."
"I am not. . . . Lance, you are generous: if you found a stranger
Starving, and gave her . . . him milk and bread, and came
Home, and you found someone of yours starving;
Your father, whom you don`t love, but you have to owe him
A kind of duty . . ." "Why didn`t you say brother?"
She fixed her eyes on his face and sighed and said, "I am speaking
Of the living.
. . . And he begged you for the mouthed cup, and what was left
Of the broken loaf?" He made a sound of impatience
And turned, but Fayne took his hand, still marked by pressure
Of the strap that had held the struggling colt: "Would you let
him starve?"
"No. What about it?" "That . . . stranger . . . you fed seems
to be sorry about it. I suppose she was starving.
I have some angry rinsings of pride in me
Make begging bitter." "That’s it," he said. "I could `a` laughed
at you
In the days before I was damned. I`m learning. The mares have
their seasons but women always." "I will bear anything,"
She answered sighing, her narrow white face opaque with tolerance.
"I was not always perfectly patient.
If you were safe I`d have twisted a knife in her fluty throat. My
knife is patience." "I know the very
Place," he said. "Come on, I’ll answer his note. The very place."
                                                           They went up by the dry
Gully through the starved and naked pasture; the autumn hunger
of horses and the patient hooves had left
Hardly roots of the grass, and the yellow dust was reddened with
sundown. They saw lean horses drift off
Along the ridges on the darkening sky, and far on the last knoll
Three slabs of redwood standing like erect stones, quite black
against the red streak and slate-color cloud,
Lonely and strange. Fayne, breathless with labor up the long
slopes, cried hoarsely, "Where are you going? Oh Lance,
Not there?" "There," he said. "No. I won`t. No.
What agony in you . . . not here." "On his earth," he answered.
"It would make us despise ourselves. Oh, do not hate him.
He did no wrong, he was happy and laughing-natured, and dear
to us all." "Come on," he said, "or go home.
Choose." She went slowly away down the hill, and returned and
said, "I love you and I want . . . not what you think,
But near enough. And the dead know nothing." "I wouldn`t bet
on it," he said; "the drunk did." "You are wildly wrong,"
She answered, "Oh, horribly," and embracing him strained up
to his throat
Her whitened lips.
                                  She felt the bare crumbled earth,
The dark home of the dead and serpents,
Under her back, and gave herself eagerly,
Desiring that gift that Mary meant to destroy,
And herself had never wanted before, but now
To accept what her rival dared not keep,
Take and be faithful where the other fled, had some bitter value;
And faith and the world were shaken; Lance might be lost,
The past might prove unconquerable: no, she could save him:
      but yet
She`d bind the future.
                                   This time Lance did not fail.
She feared his caution and schemed against it, quite needlessly,
For he had wandered beyond prudent thoughts;
But when they were going away in the twilight, "Ah vile.
Vile," he said, "your hawks have worse poison in their hook beaks
Than any ground-nest of rattlers." She answered, "I am not to tell you
What my hope is." "On top of his bones, dogs in a bone-yard."
She answered languidly and bitterly, "I ought to have let you
Go to Salinas. I did not know that your mind . . .
I would have waited for you all the long years.
I did not know that your mind needed men`s judgment
And the helpless appraisals of the world to help you. You stood
so strong,
Separate, clear, free in my eyes: and I did violence to you
When I kept you." She felt a trembling about him
And saw that he did not hear but was watching shadows
Fleet in the air: "Sea gulls. They are gulls, Lance. Look how
beautiful
The long sharp silent wings in the fading light
On the bare hill." "He took it very quietly," he answered;
"We are all dogs, every one." "Oh," she said, "the world`s full
Of evil and foolishness but it is terribly beautiful.
If you could see that, Lance." "What? By God they won`t, not alive.
But then comes hell." "I pray you, I pray you, dear,
Not to begin to think strangely: that`s for your father, who often
Walks his road all staring between hedges
Of Christs and Satans: but you will rub your mind quiet
Like the face of a crystal; there is enough to see
In the dark lovely shoulders of hills, the cows and horses, the
old gray rocks and the folk around us,
Without tapping strange dreams. . . "Oh, we`ll live well."

XI
The rain held off; for two hundred and forty days there had been
no rain
But one sun-drunken shower. The creek was dry rock and weary
gray roots; the skin of the mountain crumbled
Under starved feet; the five carcasses of hawks that Lance had
hung on the fence-wire dried without odor
In the north wind and rages of the sun.
                                                             Old Fraser walked under
the moon along the farm-drive beside them,
Saying, "Lord if thou art minded to burn the whole earth
And spat off the dust from thy hands, it is well done,
The glory and the vengeance: but if anywhere
Rain falls on hills, remember I beseech thee thy servant`s placer
Or the beasts die in the field." While he was praying
The moon was dimmed; he felt a flutelike exultance
Flow up from the V of his ribs to his wrinkled throat:
He was not abandoned: and looked aloft and saw
A little many-colored man`s-palm-size cloud
Coasting the moon from the southeast, the storm-side.
The old man exalted himself; he had power upon God; and
anxiously
Repressing his joy for fear it waste the event
Beforehand, compelled his heart to remember bitterness,
His two sons lost, one dead, the other in rebellion,
And poverty and scorn and the starved cattle. "Oh Lord God,
As in old time thou didst choose one little people for thine out
of all the earth,
So now thou hast chosen one man, one old man, foolish and poor:
but if thy will was made up
To punish the earth, then heed not my voice but arise and punish.
It is rank with defilement and infidelity
And the music of the evil churches." He saw a shining white
form at the garden-gate, and for a high moment
Believed that some angel, as unto Abraham ... It was Lance,
Perfectly naked, and Fayne his wife behind him
Walking in her white nightdress, who spoke pleadingly,
But Lance went on. He came with stiff hesitance,
And seemed not to look down at the latch but opened the gate.
The old man watched and waited in the tool-house shadow.
Lance passed the gate and stood in the open dust
Like a blind marble pillar-stone, the icy moonlight
Washing his body, pouring great shadows
Of the heavily moulded muscles on the hairless breast,
And the ripple of strength on the smooth belly; he stood
And babbled and called: "Mikey. Oh Mikey. Come home.
I`ll be it to-morrow again. It`s getting too dark to play,
Don`t hide any more, buddy, for the owls are out.
If you`ll come in I`ll let you have my cornelian,
And the heron`s eggs that I found." Fayne took his hand,
"Lance, Lance, wake up," and stroked the smooth power of his arm,
Her face caressing his shoulder. He said, "Hurry, they`re blaming me.
They think you`re lost." Fayne said, "I can`t bear it, Lance.
Mikey`s in the house. He`s come in already." The old man
Came forward out of the shadow; Fayne heard and stared at him.
Lance said, "Damned liar. Ma`s not . . . mare.
People ain`t made like . . . dirty . . ." and babbled words
That could not be understood. Fayne said, "Sleep-walking.
Did he ever before . . . what can I do?" Lance moaned,
She reached her arm around him and stroked his face
With the other hand; the old man saw her hair
Against the wide white breast like a burst of blood
Deep in the moonlight, then Lance flung her aside
As white foam flies from the oar, saying still in the dream-drunken
Sing-song, "Oh no you don`t: this is not dog`s meat.
Or you`ll have to kill it before you paw it.
The angels wi` the hooky beaks . . . What in hell," he said
Sharply, "who`s there?" "I, Lance. Oh come to bed, dear.
You wandered out in your sleep." "No: that spying devil,"
He said, "Hm?" "Your father, your father, Lance.
He was here when you came." "Oh. . . . Did I talk?"
"Hardly a word. Nothing, dear." "I sleep better
Alone," he said, "now."
                                      The old man looked up at cloud-flecks
Like algae breeding on clear deep well-water around the moon,
And looked at Lance, and returned up the drive. Lance said,
"Do you wear white? Hitch it up on your breast,
The teat is bare. Why did he turn away without speaking?" "He
saw you`d wakened." "Black will look fine,"
He answered, "wi’ the fiery hair. I want you to marry again,
you`ll have chances."
                                    The sky in the morning
Was layered with cloud, and it drove from the southeast; the
old man kept working his mouth in silent thanksgiving
For answered prayer; and the wind came down from heaven and
smoked in the fields. The sky cleared for a time,
But that was natural; the wind increased. It ran quartering the
little valley; ashes from the hill
And mountain dust entered all cracks of the house. It raged on
the salt pool at the creek sea-mouth
By the caverned crag that storms have worn spongelike; it reaped
the heads of the waves on the wide sea, and lay
Like a quivering steel blade on the necks of the herbless mountains.
                Far away northward in San Francisco
It blew the filth of the street into the faces
That walked there; one was Mary Abbey`s little pale oval
Lost among thousands. She moved unevenly, fast and lagging,
And looked with terrified eyes at the gilt street-number
Scribed on a window; beyond a mean plush-curtained restaurant
The number stood over a door. She stood choking,
And read on a brass plate in the doorway: "Dr. Eisendraht,
Eye, ear, nose, throat"; a wind-scoop of sudden dust
Blurred the letters and filled her eyes. She went on
With faint small steps, and at the street-corner
Tried to stand still, and was jostled. Not wearing gloves
She spurred blood from the back of her left hand
With the nails of her right: the pain helped her go back
And enter the door and find the stairway. She had to sit long,
Waiting her turn; she was served impersonally
And dismissed, fainting or able, to the desert wind
And dust and multitude down the mean street.
                                                                       At Sycamore Creek
Lance`s mother was wiping the table oil-cloth
For the noon meal, the film of the wind`s dust, and suddenly
Fell into a chair; Mrs. Gomez came in with knives and forks on
the plates and found her, and Fayne
Came at the cry; they couldn`t take her upstairs until Lance came
in. They helped her slip to the floor,
And brought a pillow, then Lance came in. Fayne said, "She is
weak but better, the pain is passing." The old woman
Mountainous laid on the floor wished to lie still for a time. Lance
knelt by her side. "All right, Mother.
As long as you like. Fayne," he said gravely,
"Will you come to the door a minute?" Fayne went, and outside
the door said, "What do you want, Lance? You scare her
Wi` that secret look." "I was not afraid to go in after him, I want
you to see him. The question is
Whether my eyes have begun to sing lies to me.
He came from the orchard walk and went in the shed.
I know you have courage. A frightful branding. Oh," he sighed,
"That`s the point." She looked at his face and followed him,
And reeled in the dry fierce wind in front of the house;
But he leaning his back on the stiff wind,
So that his shirt moulded the groove between
The great bands of lean power from the shoulders: "Well. Do
you see him?
In the shed door." "No." "It was closed, he opened it.
You can see that it`s open? Now I`ll catch him.
Come." He ran suddenly and leaped the garden gate.
But Fayne must stop to unlatch it, and when she came
Lance had gone into the shed and around the motor-truck
That stood within. Fayne said, "Wind broke the peg
That held the clasp of the door: see, here`s one piece.
That`s why it`s open." She heard the roof straining
Over the imprisoned storm. Lance said, "Did he pass you?
Ah?" She answered, "We must go away from this place.
For you, it`s haunted. Your mother, whom I think you love, is just now
Lying low between life and death, and you leave her
To chase the wind, and the foxes of your eyes. Do you love him so?
Or hate him?" He answered, "The fire`s burnt through his cheek,
His back teeth grinned at me through the horrible scar.
I`ll be there soon." "What fire? . . . Are you dreaming punishment?
Oh, that`s the vainest craziest falsehood of all.
Leave that to your poor old father." "We go down
Into blackness," he stiffly answered,
"And neither you nor I nor the old man
Knows what happens there. This was Michael: if I should dream him
I`d dream the skull knocked in, hm? What I saw`s
The cheek burnt through." "I will not let go and lose you," she
answered. "Probably," Lance said, "he`d have lied
If I could have caught him."
                                                  In the afternoon
Fayne saw from the window above the kitchen a small gray object
Making a singular dance in the flying dust.
The little hawk which Lance had shot but not killed
Was dying; they had dropped it a strip of beef that dried in the sun,
And given it a dish of water, and not again
Remembered it, though it stood up grimly and watched
Whoever passed to the privy. The water was blown
Out of the dish; no matter, it had never drunk.
Now it was flapping against the wind,
Fluttering the natural wing and trailing the broken one,
Grotesque in action as the blackcock at dawn
Making his dance of love; but this was of death.

In the night Fayne said: "That little hawk died. Oh, be quiet now;
You`ve shot them out of the sky. . . . Dear, I am to blame
Like you, and yet I`d be as happy at heart
As a fed bird that glides through the high air
If you were not tearing yourself." He made no answer,
She heard the wind tear at the roof, and said,
"I love this place. But time has changed, let old Davie
And your dad farm it now, it is full of memories
And very fit for old men. You and I
Will take three horses for all our share of it,
And travel into the south by that deer-track
Where the planted foot is on the face of the mountain and the
lifted foot
High over the gray face of the sea: four or five days
Only the eagles will see us, and the coasting ships
Our fires at evening, and so on southward. But when we get to
Los Angeles, dear,
You`ll put your great white shoulders to work
For passage-money, we`ll sell the horses and ride
In a ship south, Mexico`s not far enough,
The Andes are over the ocean like our hills here,
But high as heaven." "Fancy-work," he mumbled. "Ah. Low as hell."
Fayne said, "No. Listen: how the air rushes along the keel of the
roof, and the timbers whining.
That`s beautiful; and the hills around here in the cloud-race moon-glimmer,
round rocks mossed in their cracks with trees:
Can`t you see them? I can, as if I stood on them,
And all the coast mountain; and the water-face of the earth, from
here to Australia, on which thousand-mile storms
Are only like skimming swallows; and the earth, the great meteorball
of live stone, flying
Through storms of sunlight as if forever, and the sun that rushes
away we don`t know where, and all
The fire-maned stars like stallions in a black pasture, each one
with his stud of plunging
Planets for mares that he sprays with power; and universe after
universe beyond them, all shining, all alive:
Do you think all that needs us? Or any evil we have done
Makes any difference? We are a part of it,
And good is better than evil, but I say it like a prayer
That if you killed him, the world is all shining. It does not matter
If you killed him; the world`s out of our power, the goodness
and splendor
Are things we cannot pervert, although we are part of them
And love them well." He heavily answered: "Have you finished?
Don`t speak of ... him . . . again." She began to answer,
Thought, and was silent.

XII
                                      She fetched a pair of rawhide panniers
From the harness wall in the barn, remembering that Michael
Less than two years ago had whittled the frame, and Lance
Shaped the hairy leather and stitched it with sinew thongs.
That was the time they three in delight and love
Rode south by the sea-eagle trails to Point Vicente and Gamboa
For seven days` hunting, when Fayne shivered with happiness,
Riding between the most beautiful and strongest man
For husband, and the gayest in the world for brother, on perfectly
Wild hills and by rushing streams.
                                                             She packed the panniers,
And balanced the weight, mixing her things with Lance`s.
The wind had ceased and no rain had fallen, but the air grown colder
Whipped up her courage to believe Lance would go,
And find life, in new places. His mother was well again;
And on the farm all things had come to a pause; he was not needed.
The hay-loft was emptying fast; but Lance could not make it
rain by staying!

     While she packed the panniers
A little agony was acting under the open window, between the
parched lips of the creek.
One of those white-crowned sparrows that make sweet voices in
the spring evenings in the orchard
Was caught by a shrike and enduring death, not the bright surgical
mercy of hawks, but slow and strangling.
Its little screams quivered among the gray stones and flew in the
window; Fayne sighed without noticing them,
And packed the panniers.
                                                 When Lance came up at evening she
showed him what she had done: "We`ll go to-morrow."
He said he`d not leave the place in trouble, "Even dogs are faithful.
Source
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