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Robinson Jeffers - Thurso’s Landing
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Hummed over the gulf in the hanging air, and the hawk flew,
But the wires held. Reave looked at the bright crescent
Chipped in the brown axe-edge. "The old man`s tough;
But wait a minute." An instant thought of Helen
Ran like a string of ants over his mind,
No danger of Helen standing under the skip
As his mother wished in her spite, but Mark`s mind
Was not secure, better look down. The trees in the canyon
Hid the dooryard from here, and Reave went seaward
Some twenty paces along the steep of the hill
Through pale oak-leaves and russet ferns to see Mark standing
By his mother, Helen beside them, foreshortened specks
On the foot-worn patch of earth from the dark redwoods
And the globular golden puff of the sycamore
To the painted roofs of the house. Light mist flew over them,
Helen lifted the pin-point white of her face,
She looked like an incredibly small flower-stock
Suddenly flowering.

                                 Johnny Luna
Stood by the cable with a file, and looking down
Saw the wires move like a scarred twist of worms
In the wood they were dented into, the all but invisible
Kinks printed in them by the steel edge straightening,
A nicked strand broke, then all parted at once
Very smoothly and instantly. He saw the scything rope
That ran from the cable to the oak-tree go west
And strike Reave standing, he was bent at the loins backward
And flung on the face of the hill.

                                                        Helen also saw,
But the others watched the great cable and the skip fall,
Obliquely in the draw of the rope, and the high oak-tree
Rush down the hill, the arched balks and crooked thighs
Of root in the scant soil on the near rock
Channeled with dry-rot, proving less masterful
Than one inch twist of hemp: so avalanchelike
The whole tree went down to the gorge, from its great yellow
furrow on the face of the hill
A long track of dust blew east, above and below
The racing clouds.

                               Thus the long trough and the covering sky
Of Mill Creek Canyon were cleared of that old cobweb,
The black moon over the gorge was down, and the mountain lips
Wiped clean. Helen Thurso ran up
Under the trees, through the oak-thicket, up the glacis
Of gray dead grass to the wreck of the oak-tree,
And up by the long furrow of the slide to Reave`s
Body on its edge, dragged down and flung aside,
Like a red root cut by the plow and pitched
Forth of the furrow. He was not dead but crawling,
His belly and legs flat to the ground, his head
Lifted, like that lizard in the desert, and Helen saw the red ropes
of muscle
Labor in his great shoulder, the shirt and the skin flayed off them.

                               Luna came down from above, then Helen`s
Face frightened him more than his master`s body, it was white as
lightning, eyed and mouthed with darkness, and the strained
breath
Whined from the pit of her lungs like a bat`s cries. She stood
Wavering, Reave crawled at her feet, the gorge glimmered below.
"God evens things. My lover in the desert,"
She gasped, "crawled in the sand like that after Reave struck him.
A bushel for a bushel says God exactly.
What can we do?" Luna stood mute and helpless, the color of
his Indian skin like pale blue slate.
Reave crawled down hill between them; they watched the corded
strips of flesh in his shoulder reddening and paling,
And when he began to speak they were terrified. "Must `a` been
holes in my mind. Everything wrong. Won`t die."
Helen cried shrilly, "How can we get you down, where can I
touch you?" "Hell," he said, "you`ll wash." "For your pain!"
She cried shrilly. He raised up his gray face, fantastically grown
smaller, hewn thin and focussed
On resistance, like a flint chip: "Can`t worsen it, fool. I don`t die.
Drag." They dragged him a little way
Down the hill and his mother came; in a flash Helen understood
whose face it was
That Reave`s in pain resembled identically, and felt toward his old
mother
Her heart move in a jet of loving compassion
Wild and lost like peering down a precipice,
She cried "O mother!" The old woman went to Reave`s head
And carried it against her breast. Helen and Luna
Carried his body, so they went tottering down;
His legs dragged in the feather-gray sage until Olvidia
And Hester came. On the steep of the slope came Mark
Hitching up on hands and knees for his lameness.
Helen thought, "Both her sons crawling!" and cried shrilly,
"Get out of the way, will you. He`s met somebody
Stronger than himself. Now I forgive him, now I forgive him.
I`d die for him." The old woman glanced at her
With astonished hatred across Reave`s head. "You forgive him!"

XV
Winter had begun and Reave was brought home from the hospital
In Monterey. Luna drove and Helen crouched
Beside Reave`s mattress in the open body of the farm-truck.
She thought they all came by turns to ride in it: pigs and calves
to the butcher, Hester Clark from Nevada,
Herself from her lover and the desert mine, and again Reave
Thurso. All compelled; all unhappy; all helpless.
Clouds with dragging keels came in from the ocean, over Mai
Paso bridge a thin rain began,
Helen drew up the oil-skin over the blanket and said, "I know
that you suffer pain day and night,
And now the jolting of the road is torture." He was silent a time;
his face looked like his mother`s. "What of it?"
He said suddenly. "Not to hide it from me, hidden pain`s worse.
If you trusted me . . ." "Do you think rat-gnawings
Mean much to a man who never any more ... all the endless
rest of his life lie flat like a cut tree . . .
Something to think about, ah? Have food brought and be wiped,
grow fat between a tray and a bed-pan,
While every shiftless and wavering fool in the world
Has walking legs. Never waste pity: the cramps and the stabbing
are my best diversion: if they ever ended
I`d have to lie and burn my fingers with matches. Well: day by
day." She watched the small raindrops
Beading his rough eyebrows and hair, and said "I`d willingly die
for you; I have not one grain of comfort
To answer with."
                                At Sovranes Creek he began to peer about and
look up the mountain, but dimly
To be seen through leaning pillars of rain. "You throw off the
oilcloth. What are you looking at, dear?" "Pasture.
Pasture for cows." Helen saw mist-green veils tapering up the
iron folds to the mountain-head,
The noble slopes and the crowning pyramid, and suddenly began
to weep aloud. He said, "I can`t help it.
You promised lightly to take the worse with the better. This is
the worse.
I never will let you go until you are dead.
When you played the chippy I went and fetched you back;
You`ll never try it again." His focussed will
Forgot to control the outthrows of bodily pain,
He ended groaning, with convulsed lips. Helen answered,
"I wasn`t crying. I wasn`t crying for myself. I will not be
At last contemptible." And lifting her white throat
Against the blue hills and rain: "Nothing can break you,
It was only bones and nerves broke, nothing can change you.
Now I`ve begun to know good from bad
I can be straight too." "Hell," he said, "changed enough.
Dead legs and a back strapped in plaster. You`ll never
Be as straight as this." Helen shivered in the rain and said,
"What kind of a doctor was that, who leaves you suffering."
"An honest old man. He told me plainly that the nerves of pain
Might live, and the nerves of motion were lost. He told me,
When I asked him, that I shall never ride, walk, nor even
Be able to stand." She answered suddenly, "I`ll never leave you
In life or death." He smiled and his lips whitened with pain. He
said, "How`s Mark?" "Stark mad: all his gentleness
Gone into vengeful broodings. He thinks a dead man tore up an
oak on the mountain . . ." Reave frowned and said,
"Exactly. With my imbecility to spring the trap. Our fathers
build and cowardly slip out and we
Catch the fall. Not so crazy as you think. Do you think there`s
anything beyond death, Helen? "
"Yes," she answered,
"Worms." "And sleep, without pain or waking. Don`t worry, I`ll
never ease myself out by hand. The old dog
Stinks in that alley."
Luna drove fast; Helen leaned on her hands
for balance in the swirling turn
Around the cape of the road over Garapatas and said, "How did
he kill himself? I never knew."
Reave sharply between tight lips of suffering: "Leave that." She
answered, "He acted cowardly and you despise him,
But perfect courage might call death like a servant at the proper
time, not shamefully but proudly." His mind
At civil war in the darkness forgot to control the animal tokens
of pain, he groaned and answered:
"Means your freedom, ah?" "You are right," Helen said, "to expect
vileness in me: I will show you before the end
That I am changed." "I didn`t mean that. Blind bitterness. But I
mean to stick it out, you know, and there`s tempting
Too sweet to be patient with. I say damn quitters."

                                                                                   The little
farm-truck, with its dull-smoldering sparks of sad life,
Ran swiftly on south the wavering and twisted road on the steep
foot of the mountain sea-wall. No life
Ought to be thought important in the weave of the world, whatever
it may show of courage or endured pain;
It owns no other manner of shining, in the broad gray eye of the
ocean, at the foot of the beauty of the mountains
And skies, but to bear pain; for pleasure is too little, our inhuman
God is too great, thought is too lost.
It drove above the long crescent beach toward Palo Colorado,
That is lined with lonely splendor of standing wind-carven rocks,
like a chariot-racetrack adorned with images,
Watched by the waving crowds and clamor of the sea, but there
are no chariots. Thurso`s Landing
Stood heavy-shouldered in the south beyond.

XVI
                                                                             After some days
and nights Reave called for Luna.
Helen fetched him, Reave instructed him to choose two fence-rails
And whittle handles on the ends, and nail cross-pieces
To make a stretcher. An old tarpaulin was cut
For canvas, which Helen sewed over and bound with fishline
Between the two rails. Reave had thought carefully,
There was no reason for being jailed in the house,
There were things he was bound to bear, that was not one of them.
Helen and Olvidia each holding a handle,
And Luna at the other end, carried him forth
Heavily, of fantastic shape and weight
With the plaster girdle about his loins: like a stone man,
Petrified man, was echoing in Helen`s mind
While she labored with the weight, "Does everything I dream
come true?"
They laid him on a low bank near the corral,
Where he could turn his head and at times
See horses in the muddy enclosure. Or see tall redwoods,
And if he wished, the long narrow canyon sky,
Reminding him what its clearance had cost.

                                                                      One day that Helen
Was bringing his lunch from the house, she saw Mark
Waiting in her path; she went about him to avoid him,
Feeling unable at length to hear his troublesome
Mysteries with patience, and approached Reave
An unusual way, unseen and silently, on the new grass
Around a thicket. She saw the whitened knuckles
Of his heavy-boned hands over his breast,
One clutching the other, and then the fists beaten together
Like stones, and heard a high helpless moaning. She stole back
And broke through the branches into her accustomed path,
To go to him lying quiet and watching stolidly
While she came near. She trembled and set the tray on the ground,
And said, "May I shift the pillows under you?" He answered,
rolling his head,
"I can shift them. Look here." The bluish bruised look of his
face darkened, that the gray eyes
Looked white in it, his thick neck swelled; he was raising himself
upward with prodigious pain and effort by the thrust
Of his elbows backward against the earth, saying harshly, "I am
not helpless." He clutched his hands in the soil
And slowly with immobile face and no groan lay down. She felt
in her breast like the rush of a big bird
Flying from a covert and the threshing wings: "If I`d never been
here," she said, "nothing would have been the same."
She knew that she ought to be silent, she could not cease, crying
uncontrollably,
"You`d not be hurt, you`d be riding on the hill. I wish I had died
in misery before you saw me,
I wish you had seen me first lying five days dead in the jagged
mountain, blackening on a white rock
In a dry place, the vultures had dipped their white beaks in my
eyes, their red heads in my side,
You`d make them raise the great wings and soar, you`d see my
bowels drawn out of my body and the rock stained under me
And the soil of death, I was lying black-mouthed in the filth of
death. You`d not have wanted me then, and nothing
Would be as it is, but you`d be lucky and I quiet." He looked
in her eyes and smiled, with that bruised look,
Not hearing, bent inward on his own pain; but after a time he
seemed to remember that she spoke of death
And said angrily: "Have you death for sale, you talk like a salesman.
Every fool knows it`s pleasant to rot in peace
After long pain but that`s not the question.
I saw a nigger boxer in Monterey one night,
Cut all to pieces,
Sail on up the wind of fists, beaten and blinded,
Vomiting blood: he needed only let down
His knees onto the canvas and be at peace,
He wouldn`t do it. I say I cared for that man;
He was better than a better fighter."

XVII
Reave`s doctor came to break the cast from his body; Helen
helped, and washed the ill-smelling
Long-enclosed flesh. Afterwards while Reave rested she spoke
with his mother in another room. "You saw him.
The giant shoulders and the pitiful part below. I know that he
has hoped secretly to live again . . .
Ride a horse . . . he`ll never sit up in bed. What can we do?"
She answered with a like contorted face,
But not twitching like Helen`s: "There were two oaks broken
that morning. What can you do? Run away.
Follow that Hester. You and she are out of employment
When a man`s withered from the waist down." She answered,
"Yet I was thinking there`s . . . another kindness
That I could do for him. Another that his mother can`t." "What?"
she said fiercely. "Nothing, nothing, nothing,"
Helen faintly answered. "However, I`ll never leave him. I promised
him never to leave him and I`ve grown faithful
At last." She felt the old woman`s eyes like flints press on her
own, she shuddered and said, "I know
You hate me: let our spites lie, we`re both unhappy. Tell me
something, if you know, what`s all this troublesome
Affair of living, and people being troubled and the sun rising
and setting: what`s it all about, what`s it for?
I`ve seen you go on bitterly year after year, living, planning,
working: do you know something
That`s hidden from the weak like me? Or it`s only
Gloomy stubbornness like Reave`s blind ... or else perhaps
we live for no other reason than because our parents
Enjoyed their pleasure and we dread to die? I dread it," she said
with her hands at her throat, "so ... I can`t bear it,
But Reave`s too proud. I mean, if the pain ceases, if his pain ceases
at last . . . then I can`t imagine.
But if the pain keeps up I must do it." "What can you do
But run away off? You`re not the make. I wish
He could see your slobbered face, Helen, he`d hardly
Have hunted into Arizona to fetch it home,
Do what then?" Her mouth shuddered and tautened, she answered,
"I cannot tell." "I believe you," she answered scornfully.
Helen stood moving her sad lips
in silence
Like one casting a sum of numbers, and said,
"I must have read it somewhere: a hundred and twenty-three
Millions in this one country of the world, besides the animals.
Far more in Asia. How can it be sacred
Being so common? I`ve never hated you back for hating me;
I’ve called you Mother; now if you`d help me
To know what`s right I`d be grateful." The old woman with
eyes like a hawk`s watching
A bush of sparrows: "Tell me then." "For now it seems to me
that all the billion and a half of our lives on earth,
And the more that died long ago, and the things that happened
and will happen again, and all the beacons of time
Up to this time look very senseless, a roadless forest full of cries
and ignorance. But is life precious
At the worst you know? I used to wish for round jewels and a
fur cloak: I could love opals,
Born in October: and a set of gay laughing friends to fool with,
and one of those long low stream-lined cars
That glide quietly and shine like satin: so I can`t say, whether
life maybe might `a` been precious
At the best. And death`s awful. . . . We`re too closed-in here."
"If you think of killing yourself": she laughed,
Lifting her shoulders. Helen looked down and said,
"How did . . . Reave`s dad do it?" "In the forehead, poor fool,
And was long dying." "In the heart would have been better?"
"You must find out for yourself." "I wasn`t thinking of myself;
I`m faithful now." "To the death? Ah?
A new color for you, worn strangely."

                                                                She went through the house
To her son`s room. Helen followed, saying, "Go quietly,
And listen." They tip-toed down to hear a thin moaning
Increase and break off; then hands beat on the bed
In the room behind the shut door; a silence followed,
And again the moaning. The old woman rolled her gray head
And whispered, `Til not awake him." But Helen: "If that is sleep,
Then life`s a dream." She touched the door-handle
And the room was full of silence; they entered, Reave lay
Stolid and strong, meeting them with calm eyes
Blood-shot around the gray-blue. Helen said faintly,
"May I turn you now?" He said "What meanness in you
Is always making me out worse than I am? Helpless enough,
But not to that point." The old woman went to the window
and looked down the canyon; then turning: "Helen talks strangely.
She says that she`s now faithful. What does that mean, do you
think?" Reave answered, "I know she is, and I pay it
With cross impatiences: I`m sorry, Helen." "Oh, but you`d never
guess," the mother said furiously,
"How far that reaches, this kind of faithfulness. She`s likely had word
From the yellow-haired man, because . . ." Helen said sharply,
"That man is dead." Reave strained up his head, groaning,
"Who told you? Everything slips away. I was hopeful still
To touch him with my hands. He might have come near me
Sometime to mock my ruin. . . ." The old woman said,
"How could she hear? She`s lying, I watched her mouth." "Reave
killed him,"
Helen said patiently; "only by waiting for him and he didn`t
come, beat him to corrupt earth,
Dust and a wind. Oh Reave, be at peace
For anything you owed there." "She was lying again,"
The mother said, "but a moment ago in the other room
Her truth came out. This white, violet-eyed thing
Would if she dared murder you: Oh, from high motives,
All mercy and good will like a lamp in a window, but mostly wondering
Whether a dutiful wife will shoot her man
In the head or the heart." Helen had cried out to speak,
But checked herself and watched Reave; he answered heavily,
His light eyes withstanding his mother`s dark ones: "We`ve talked it over,
But I have forbidden her." Then Helen cried, "Don`t send me away.
I believe you will never need me: but God`s not moderate enough
to trust, and when he turns bad, no one
Can bear him to the end." He answered, "That`s cowardly said;
there`s nothing a man can`t bear. Push my bed
To the window and let me look out westward." They moved
his bed; in the mouth of the gorge the evening sea-cloud
Hung heavy black, Jeoparded all over with sanguine fire-spots;
he muttered wearily, "We`re too closed-in here.
I lie like a felled log in a gully and women wrangle above me.
I have no power and no use
And no comfort left and I cannot sleep. I have my own law
That I will keep, and not die despising myself."

                                                                       The stormy twilight
closed over and filled the canyon
And drowned the house, and the ocean made a great noise in
the dark, crying up the canyon; with between the cries
Noises like trespassers breaking fences, or the cattle running.

                                                     Helen slept in a room by herself,
For Thurso wanted no witness to hear his nights of endured
pain, and had sent her from the low couch
Beside his bed, to use the little room that Hester Clark had
been glad of.
She fell asleep for a moment and lay an hour
Terribly awake, and went down the stair, having a candle
In both her hands, the right hooding the flame
That etched red lines between the dark fingers,
The left holding the shaft, and the white grease
Dripped hot films on it. She went barefoot and silently
With the one piece of linen about her, hearing
The stairs groan like a man, and stole through the house
To a distant closet where vermin-traps and squirrel-poison,
Hunting-gear and a smell of leather were kept. She sought her
own rifle
In that close place, meaning to hide it in her bed
Between the springs and the mattress, knowing that no one
Commands life without the tools of death
Readily hid in the background. She loaded in
New cartridges with glittering brass jackets, for oil
Or time might have damped the old; and turned to the door.
Mark stood in the door.
But Helen thought that the strain in her mind had bred a
phantom,
And waited for it to fade.

                                              He said, "A thready light
Pricked into my room through the cracked panel.
I think my mind has been roiled, when I lie wakeful
Blades of strange light. Are you going hunting?
Dear Helen let the deer feed. Life`s bad for people,
But the clean deer, that leap on the high hills
And feed by the hollow streams, there`s not one of them
Lame nor a fool." She answered in her mind, "Nothing
Is very serious," and said, "Ah, there`s one hurt one,
Would thank me kindly, if it had a man`s brain,
For death, that great fallen stag." "Where is it? I`ll feed it
With tender grass." "It fell on the mountain and its broken bones
Have caught the nerves in their hard lumps of healing,
So that it`s in pain forever: I hate . . . love him too.
Love him, I said." "If you kill any living
Creature, the happiness of your heart is troubled
In quiet times afterwards." "What`s that to me?
I shall have no quiet time after this hunting;
But brief and violent. Let me go now." He answered,
"I know what love is, I saw it in the devil`s tie-pin.
How dared you come down undressed?" She saw him shaking
In the candle-light, and thought with a thread ravelled
From her mind`s gathering fire-mist, "You poor good fool,
Is it there with you?" He said, "Horrible dreams of love
Like splintered glass in my bed cut me all night, like a splintered
mirror.
Reave betrayed you with that pale bright doll." He came from
the doorway toward her, then Helen laughed and dipped
Her hand in a half sack of barley on the shelf, and felt the kernels
light and luxuriously
Lie in her fingers, and said through white lips:
"Is this the poison-soaked
grain? that makes the squirrels cry
In the quiet of their little caves, that bitter death?" "Let it alone.
Oh, this place crawls with death,
Traps, guns, knives, poisons: but no one sleeps near, no one can
bear us. There`s a bright wanting beast in me:
Hunt that, Helen. Kill that. I thought love
Was kindness, it`s a blind burning beast. Oh, wait: because I
heard voices and answered them, saw spirits and feared
them,
You and the rest were whispering that I was crazy. Why, that
was nothing. But now, when I burn to tear
That last white rag from you, and do-how can I say it? striking
the obscene parts of our flesh together
This is the real thing, this is the madness." She laughed and ran
her fingers through the deadly barley and answered:
"Yours is a common trouble, we`d manage you a kind cure
If I were liberal; but you`d loathe me for it, and my winter`s come.
I wish to leave my poor spotted memory
A little lonely and distinct at this bitter end. Is it nearly morning?"
"Do you think . . ." he answered, and suddenly
The pallor of his face gleamed with a film of sweat, he said "I`ve
fooled myself out of life for fancy
Feelings and second-hand noble dreams. Kill all the deer on the
mountain, what`s that to me? I`ve seen them
Go to it like dogs in the bushes outside the cantonment: wise
soldiers: did you think you could come naked
And not be mauled?" She said furiously,
"You fool," and heard him hiss when he touched her breast and
cry:
"The lids of your eyes are swollen, your eyes are knives.
This is it. Yes." His teeth clattered together so that she thought
of a crooked stone the returning
Wave sucks, and the stone rolls over and over, clashing on the
pebbles. He wiped his forehead with his hand and shook
The fingers as if blood hung on them, saying, "That Hester`s
gone. I might have had a second-hand . . .
Noble thought very likely.
Tell the audience for all those cat-calls there`s not one of them
But`s more or less in my manner
Done out of his dear life by scrupulous cowardices.
Men ought to ravage: then down comes the black curtain,
We died like old empty priests." But Helen seeing him
All shrunken again, "Believe me," she said in pity,
"These rosy toys you’ve missed make a bad bargain
At the time of the end. I could be very envious
Of virgins and a quiet life." "The two you’ve had
Are nothing," he answered, "take two hundred. But only
Beware not to make a baby, we know what life is:
That mercy`s weakness, and honesty
The simple fear of detection; and beauty, paint;
And love, a furious longing to join the sewers of two bodies.
That`s how God made us and the next wars
Will swallow up all. . . . Helen, I`m very tired
With cloudy thoughts, and have been fearful at times
Of falling into some unclearness of mind.
That would be bad: lunacy`s worse than death.
If I should consider taking a certain remedy
While I`m still sane, to scour the rancid bowl
Back to its first brightness, who could be blamed?
You`ve always been kind beyond words."

                                                                 He went, and Helen
At once forgot him, all her energy reverting
To its old preoccupation like a freed spring,
She took the rifle to hide it below her mattress
And barefoot stilly went up through the house.

                                                                         She passed Reave`s door.
And returned again to listen whether he moaned
Or slept. No sound appeared, but wind or the ocean
Whispering high over the house. In that silence
Her intention flowered; she became calm, convinced
That time had come to cut all the knots at once
And lead the agonies of strain to a sharp end.
Mark`s outcry, though she forgot him, had tired her,
The resistances of a drained spirit faint
Before the power does, she had lost the strength not to act
And stealthily unlatched the door. It seemed clear, plain
And reasonable, to seal that heavy sleep
From ever waking to worse; but having planted
The candle upon the chest by the door, and drawing
Down the steel barrel the three points to one line,
She met his eyes wide open, broad and inhuman, like the universal
eyes of night, judging
And damning her act, with remote absolute merciless comprehension.
She was like a touched sleepwalker,
Unnerved and annihilated: what contemptible
Distraction had made the reasons of her dream? and Reave:
"Come closer. You`d botch it from there, and I`d be days
Dying or not, cursing you for a fool."
She leaned and shuffled toward him.

                                                             She felt her neck
Wrenched by the buffet, and lukewarm blood wandering
From her mouth down the left side of her throat and tasted
The thick salt sweetness, and Reave saying furiously, "Sneak in
behind me
Fighting on my last inch? I never struck you before, you earned
it enough." She mumbled,
"It doesn`t hurt . . ." "Trust you," he said, "to side with my
enemy." His great hands, and the white knuckles
Like peaks among the black hairs, blazed in the lit center of
the orbital darknesses that hooded her eyes.
His hands had her little rifle and were strained to break it, but the
great strength that she believed could do anything
Failed after all. Snapping and whining with pain like a wounded
dog he shifted over on his elbows
And thrust the barrel under the board of the bedside, drew up
against his own weight, and the splitting stock
Ripped from the steel. "That`s yours," he said gasping. "Go call
Luna." She felt the pain of her lips swelling,
Cut on the dog-tooth edge, and the blood on her throat, and
muttered, "It doesn`t hurt." "You red and white
Barber`s-pole," he said, "fetch Johnny Luna.
We`ll have a disarmament here." "What?" "Light the lamp and take
Your light and fetch him." "What? Oh, oh!" she cowered and
knelt down against the bedside, "don`t send me away.
I`ll promise never ... I promise . . ." "You`ll not be sent away,
I`ll not let you go." "How could I sleep,"
She prayed, not hearing him, "or lie down, or live, in another
place, not knowing
How you were, and never see you nor touch you?" "You lie,"
he groaned, "or you`re changed.
Be sure I`ll not let you go. I am not changed."
She clenched a fold of the coverlet and stammered, "I am not changed.
I was only ignorant. When the idiot body and perverse
Imagination went whoring . . . then still whatever it is
That loves was weeping here."

                                                       Reave`s old mother
Stood in the door, her corded bare throat thrust
From the fold of a brown cloak, and dull-white wisps
Starring her head; the noise of the broken gun-stock
Had beckoned her from a dream. "Praying is she? Religion`s
Their last trick . . ." She saw the blood-streak, and blazing
Went and dragged up Helen`s face, one hand in the hair,
One at her throat, saying "What have you done, you . . .
It`s your own, is it? That`s better." Reave said, "Let her alone.
I called and she came running asleep, in the dark,
She struck her face." The old woman looked down the candlelight
At the rifle-barrel and the splintered stock, and said,
"You are still strong." "But can`t run my own errands.
Wash yourself," he said to Helen; "light the lamp;
Go and call Johnny."
When Helen was gone, the old mother:
"Tell me what she was doing." He rolled his shoulders
And groaned, striking his hand down at his thigh.
"Would you believe this fixed and passive flesh
Has red hot wire in it? What nights." "Why have you sent for Luna
At midnight?" "To amuse me awhile. Get to bed, mother,
Before the aching night strikes to your bones.
I had an inflamed throat
After that fall of rain, all my discomforts
Turned fiery then. . . . Oh, if you need, I`ll tell you.
We`ve rifles and a shotgun, but nobody
Will ever go hunting from here again, and to save oiling
He`s to break the guns. They call it disarmament. I dreamed
The old dog that was your husband and my father
Stood in a cave-mouth calling; and, to speak exactly,
I`ll not be tempted."

XVIII
                                      The house in the deep gorge
Had been darkened again. One of those night-birds that cry in
quickening rhythm like the rattle of a spun plate falling
Cried, then the silver streak southeast loosed a slight moon. A few
of the house-windows feebly glittered
Back its horned light; the massed black obelisks of redwood
utterly ignored it, but the leafless leaning sycamore
Shone like a trunked and branched moon on the dark wood,
a tree made wholly of luminous lunar material,
Except one long hanging shadow. The clouds took the moon
again, the sycamore vanished, the dream in the eyes
Of the house died; and imperceptibly a twilight began to exist,
without wind or color, or foam
Of a formal cloud, but misty rain fell. A faintly more curded
mist-wreath flowed from a chimney and down
The house-roof valleys, it spread earthling dissolving, and sensitive
wild nostrils up the great gorge
Tasted the oak-smoke and coffee fragrance of a waking house.
The world lightened, the rain increased.
A broad brown face peered from a window, a woman whose
blood had known this coast for ten thousand years
Perceived a strangeness of shape in that moony sycamore. She
had work in hand, but an hour later she poured
Coffee for Mark Thurso, who`d not come down yet, and set it
with his egg back of the stove and went
To empty the grounds into the willows. She hooded her head
against the rain with an apron, but returning
Saw the sycamore framed in the apron-fold
And it looked dreadful. She approached and found Mark hanging
Long-necked, very wet with rain. She stood at some distance,
Mournfully, with the coffee-pot in her hand,
Thinking the grounds were bad for chickens, but this
Rainy morning she might have mixed them with the other leavings,
Not gone out, and seen nothing. She went and washed plates and cups,
Wishing for Johnny, but he was busy in the barn.
The rain fell on the barn roof, the rain fell . . . everywhere . . .
And no one could sleep: smashing rifles all night.
Old Mrs. Thurso went in and out; Olvidia
Trembled each time, but after going to the privy
Was more composed in her mind.

                                                       The soft beneficent rain hung
on the hills without flowing down
And filled the soil to the rock, all it could hold; it lay on the
shore, it sweetened the bitter sea,
It dripped from every bough of the forest, and from the feet of
the dead man and his hands and his chin,
It glazed his pale-blue face, and glazed the great seaward rock-face
of Thurso`s Landing, and each green leaf
And grass-blade south by the coast to Point Conception; and
north into Oregon; so long an island of cloud,
Blinding white above, dark and dove-purple below, rained on
a thousand miles of the continent`s edge;
The old savage brood-mare, the earth, drank strength and forgot
her deserts. Helen Thurso
Walked in Reave`s room and looked out the window, and the
ivory tree
Seemed to have borne in the rain enormous fruit.
She covered her mouth, through incredulous fear feeling
The bulge of her bruised lip, and left the room
Silently; she met Reave`s mother carrying a white
Bundle of linen that glimmered down the dark passage,
And said, "Have you seen Mark?" She answered jealously
"What do you want?" "Oh, oh. If he`s in his room.
I was thinking about the rain, I haven`t seen him this morning...
My eyes are sick." She passed and felt the smell
Of the freshly ironed linen mix with her fear,
And came to Olvidia in the hot kitchen
Stroking the iron on the board. "Come to the door
For God`s sake, for the windows are blind with rain.
In the sycamore tree?" The Indian hung back, mumbling
"Might `a` been a mountain-lion or a big hawk," and Helen
Dragged her by the wrist, but the old mother
Had followed and heard, and when they came to the door
She was at the foot of the tree. They heard her cry
Three times, a dry scream more goshawk`s than woman`s.
Helen breathed and said "Reave has heard that. I ...
Get a knife." She ran to the tree; where Mark`s mother
Stood stiffly quiet by the grotesque legs
And said, "I can`t reach. He is the one I loved."
Helen began to clamber at the tree, her knees
Slipping on the wet bark and her fingers
On the ivory bough, the old woman said harshly, "Make no
show of yourself.
He`s been long dead and will not admire you. This one is mine,
my servants will help me. Stand off, you."
Helen looked back at her face and saw Olvidia and Luna coming;
she looked at the dead man`s face
And said, "Oh, good-bye," and looked down quickly. "I will go
to Reave," she said trembling.
                                                  She went to his room.
The bed-covers were trailed on the floor and he at the window
Hung like a broken snake, his hands on the sill lifting his head
to the glass. He turned toward her,
Wrinkled like a fighting mastiff with rage and pain, saying "That
dead dog." She shivering and shrill cried out
"No!" but he said, "The dead dog that walks in the wood, that
he used to talk to, has done this: too shot with cowardice
To live, and too envious to let his sons. Praising death. Oh my
poor brother,
If you lived in the hell of pain and impotence
That I inhabit, yet you oughtn`t to have yielded. It was something
to see the envy slaver with hunger
And not be fed." Then Helen said faintly,
half borne into belief
by Reave`s passion, "Oh, have you seen him?"
The great strained shoulders began to fail, the hooked fingers to
slip on the painted sill, "Felt him," he said,
Angularly falling.
Unable to lift his weight, she dragged it
To the side of the bed, and heaved up the dead half
Of his body, and he the living. She fell over against him
In the strain of lifting, his violent hands held her
Like a lover`s, hurting her breasts against his ribs, she felt a
ghastliness in him
But forced her charged nerves to make no resistance
And kissed his cheek with her bruised mouth, the hardening
Muscles of his jaw hurt that. "Fool," he said hoarsely.
"Have you forgotten? You`ll have to learn to endure
A starved life for a hot woman." She stood up
And saw his lips bluish and compressed and his eyes blunted.
"Our loves now,
Ah," he said, "a little too heavy. A wrench of pain
For the consummation.
Pain is the solidest thing in the world, it has hard edges,
I think it has a shape and might be handled,
Like a rock worn with flat sides and edges, harder than rock, but
Like love it can hardly last more than fifty years.
Mark is dead. He`d not have yielded in his right mind.
Go help my mother." Helen said, "She drove me away.
He was always faithful and kind. Oh, oh, what shore
Are we sailing toward, with such wrecks for the sea-marks?
Dear, you didn`t dream I meant to outlive you? Our poor brother
Did very wisely though I wish ... I can hardly remember
The time when death used to seem terrible to me:
I`ve worse fears now. But if the whole world should be burned alive.
Our brother, whom we loved well, is safe."

XIX
                                                                       Reave sighed,
And said, "Go and tell her to send Luna.
He`ll have to ride to Lobos, there`s no telephone
Nearer. To let the coroner know. Oh God, why bother?
I used to have legs and do my own business.
Do you believe in a God?" "I didn`t use to."
"Well? Now do you?" "We`ve less reason to. Yes.
There`s not a tinge of goodness in the whole world,
But war in my mind and agony in yours, and darkness
Over the sea and the heights and all bright spirits
Forsake the earth. We`ve excellent cause
To know there`s none: but there is." "Go to church then.
A torturer then." He wiped his forehead and said,
"Another dead dog to bite us. What, that sits calmly
Above the stars, and sees the old woman lose both her sons for
nothing, one in a dirty noose
And the other like a broken stick on a dung-hill; then smiles over
the sea to China on a million people
Dying of hunger, the lucky ones sold their children for tufts of
grass and die with green teeth, God pats
His baby hands together and looks down pleasantly. No, the
world`s not so comic as that: I`ll tell you
What the world`s like: like a stone for no reason falling in the
night from a cliff in the hills, that makes a lonely
Noise and a spark in the hollow darkness, and nobody sees and
nobody cares. There`s nothing good in it
Except the courage in us not to be beaten. It can`t make us
Cringe or say please." "Dear," she answered,
"Where would the weakness be in kicking off a random and senseless
Darkness like that? Strength doesn`t suffer for nothing,
Strength would refuse to suffer for nothing, but choose its times
To live or die." "Listen," he said; "there`s a silver spoon
With my initials on it in a drawer somewhere.
When I was five years old I saw my father
Use it in his mouth: I never would touch it again.
No doubt it stinks." Tenderly she answered,
"You have great hands: I love you: kill me first,
And then eat with my spoon. It would be wine and honey,
Oh sweet, sweet, after this life." He laughed angrily
And moaned and said, "Let`s talk sense if we talk.
I`ll not have him buried here and put him forever
In the black dog`s power: superstitious as you:
To Monterey, some old graveyard
Where decent people are lying beside each other
And a rose turns from the sea.

                                                ". . . Mother," he said,
She entering the room, "your loss is hard.
There`s nothing. We must take our pain and live in it." Her eyes
More like dry flints than ever, "Can you read this,"
She said, holding a rag of sodden paper,
"My sight fails, and the rain has washed it, pinned to his coat."
She gave it to Reave, he holding it against the light
Said wearily, "Read it, Helen." Sick pencil-marks
On death-cold paper: she read in a brittle voice:
"I fear insanity. Forgive this ugly sight,
Dribbling and screeching would be an uglier sight,
Or to do something worse. Oh, why did you go away,
Why did you come back?
My only cause for this act is fear of madness.
That must be stated clearly. No other cause. Dear love,
Come soon, this room is purer." Helen`s voice fainted on the
final words.
She fixed her eyes on the old mother`s and said,
"It was written to you." Who answered harshly, "I did not go
away nor come back. Her tricks of nature
Have made their misery again. I never hated her enough." Helen,
without moving: "How could I care
Who hates me or not, when I think about him writing that in
the night? He often made notes for thoughts
With a stub pencil," she bit her lip not to weep, and suddenly
the tears rained down. The old mother: "Ah, Reave?
We have to face it: she fished for him too. If I`d married a
stronger man my sons might have outlived me,
But a woman from nowhere comes and burns you like wax.
Give me that paper." Helen gave it and the wet slip
Tore in the taking. Reave said, "Snatch, sea-gull. Be a little quiet
over my head, pain`s worn me thin,
And Mark`s dead in the house. We`re sorry for you,
Mother. As for that message, it has no meaning but the pity in
it." The old woman looked young, with the angry
Color on her cheek-bones; Helen looked aged and pale, saying,
"Very likely it is quite true that I brought
Misery in both my hands, unwillingly. I am much to be blamed
for all our miseries. I can bear it.
But while the night darkens, and God closes his hand on this
house, and there`s no help, I might do well at last
What you can`t do. After that I`ll submit meekly, whether you
wish to punish me or please to say
Some merciful thing."

                                      Reave opened his eyes and said,
"Mark`s not to be buried here, this is the dog`s ditch.
He`d `a` lived long if he hadn`t walked in the woods.
If you have to sell horses to buy a grave to the north, there`s a
little colt
That has no name, I`m fond of him, I rode him before the fall."
His mother stared, saying "Who buys horses?"
He answered, "He`s not for sale, I`ll not have it. I hunted the
desert for him
When he strayed, and brought him back. Are you all ganged
against me
With the devil in the woods?" The old woman touched him and said,
"Reave. Nobody will sell your horses. There`s no buyer.
You`re tired." He answered, "Not tired: but to say it plainly:
In hell, in hell. ... I have talked foolishness.
I can bear twice as much. Go back to Mark, mother.
He needs ... I remember." The women stood side by side
Gazing at his locked face, the mother weaving
Her thin hands together, having that rainy paper
Crushed between the two palms, but Helen stone still; then Reave
Drew down the lids over his staring eyes
And made a thin careful smile. The old woman suddenly
Sighed and went out.

                                   Reave drew loud breath and his eyes
Opened, fastened on Helen`s: "Don`t let her come in again.
I`d hate to tell her. She`s much to be pitied too. Never let her
know," he said craftily,
"That she`s the cause. She lay with my enemy, all springs from
that. I believe you`d never dream it, to look at her,
She`d do such things. Has it cleared?" She stammered "What
what?" "Go to the window," he said, "and look out, and see
Whether the rain has stopped yet." She went and said, "No."
"It is clearing eastward?" "All dark. Some wind moves
The sky-ridge trees." "Rain or not"; and after a moment, "Did
you notice anything," he said, "Helen, disordered
In what I said lately?" "I know you suffer
Overpowering pain at times." "Hm? Not a bit. Firm as a rock.
. . . Listen, Helen:
My pride and I have agreed: I can bear this punishment,
But I don`t have to." She thought he had yielded and was willing
to die;
That he was beaten seemed to be breaking her heart, that he
would die terrified her, that his useless pain
Would find its goal in peace was a great sheaf of good; so three
ways stricken, white and faint: and the undertow
Unconscious enmity that never died from her mind tearing her
too with its exultation: "Oh,"
She whispered, "what change?" "Why should I refuse the means
to relieve it?"
He said defiantly. "I`m like in the sea`s gut here,
Weighed down with tons of green thick water: while above the air`s
Clean and alive. We`re too closed-in here." He paused,
His eyes glassed and hands clenched. "A twinge. Don`t imagine
I`m running from the dead dog: we`ll make a bonfire
Of his platforms on the rock-head some night.
That`s my one point in life now: to clean out
Trace and shape and smell of him and leave the canyon
Virgin if fire and dynamite can do it.
In summer when the ground hardens we`ll slash
A driveway up to the kilns and blow them clean
By the foundations. Have you told him yet?" "What?" she asked.
"What! bring it to the door." "Dear, I`m dull with sadness,
I can`t see to your mind." "Have I not told you
Three times already? The truck, the truck, the motor-truck.
The thing that runs on four wheels. Tell him tell Luna
To bring it to the door and help you load on your cripple,
So I`ll taste air to-day." "Where?" "Where it`s widest,
And the ocean and hills are clear to be seen,
On the Landing: the rock-head: up there." "Oh, Oh, that`s in the sky.
That`s well thought." She trembled violently and said,
"I`ll do my part. It`s noon:
First you must eat, though Mark`s dead in the house.
Then we`ll go up to the rock. It seems long
Since morning." He said, "To-morrow they`ll need the motor
To take my brother . . . who has died, as you say. Akh, do
quickly,"

XX
"You`ll need the jack and a shovel, Johnny Luna,
For the ground`s rotten with rain; and an axe
For brushwood no doubt has grown up in the old road.
Yet another thing:
There was a man named Rick Armstrong: do you remember?
He`s dead quite lately. He died too. The world`s
Full of that kind of thing." She pressed her hand
On the reeling pulse in her throat and said, "I`ll tell you.
He drove too fast at the Salinas River bridge,
Suddenly his sins came on him and swerved the wheel
Over the concrete, he rolled with his car
And got his life bumped out in the willow-bushes.
Do you understand? It will please my husband,
For he was his bitter enemy: but if I told him
I might not be believed.
I am very anxious to make him feel . . . contentment
Before he ... sleeps, because he suffers great pain
And has no joy nor hope. Johnny, you`ll help me
For love of him, and I`ll give you this ring besides.
I wore it through all my ventures, bought long ago
With money I earned. I paid twelve dollars for it,
You can get three no doubt: the stone`s nothing,
But the hoop`s gold. Take it please.
I`ve nothing else of any priceable value
Except my marriage ring: I`ll die in that,
Though stained, some acid. What you must do is, tell him
About Rick Armstrong`s death, as I told it to you,
To make him happier; but say the Vasquez boys
Told you, not I. Everyone`s talking about it,
He was well known on the coast; he worked, you know,
With the road-builders. Mind the jack and the spade,
And the hand-axe: he`s half mad with pain
Or he`d not want to go up. Why, the rain`s stopped,"
She said, and sobbed once and smiled. "That`s a grand sign.
Ah don`t forget how Rick Armstrong died."

XXI
                                                                   Reave`s mother heard
The motor stammer to the house-door, and spin and stop. She
stood up beside her own bed,
On which she had had her dearest laid down, and had never
ceased to arrange the body, to make it seem
Happily asleep if she could; having dried it with a warm towel
and washed the rain-stains, and dressed her son
In clean night-clothes, covering the throat: she looked at the
bed with unmoistened eyes like a mother falcon,
And went downstairs to the door; Luna was entering. "Who
ordered this? Take it back to the shed.
He will stay in my house with me to-night: if we go to-morrow
To another place, 7 will tell you, not that woman." Helen came
while she spoke, and Luna
Looked from her face to hers, as a boatman
From the rock shore to the driving sea. Helen said, "We must
take the bedding first, it is ready."
The old mother: "You`re very confident suddenly. You think
you`ve made enough wretchedness to break my mind and
make you
Commander here." Helen, vaguely, in her own thought snared:
"What? No. Is a wind blowing, the trees on the cloud
Look hunched: and all my strength`s gone: Oh mother,
Tell Reave to wait! Comfort him." "Reave?" She turned and
went toward his room, then Helen remembered that suddenly
He seemed to dislike his mother: "Don`t go in to Reave:
Oh, I was wrong," and followed her; and Luna followed
The two women. Helen said to Luna: "Take out the mattress
and the covers: we`ll have to go." The old mother
To Reave: "You called for that? Did you tell me you were going
somewhere,
And I missed hearing?" His eyes avoided her, he answered:
Source
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