My Ántonia
thought the future looked hopeful for them. Ambrosch was a far-seeing
fellow; he soon realized that his oxen were too heavy for any work
except breaking sod, and he succeeded in selling them to a newly
arrived German. With the money he bought another team of horses, which
grandfather selected for him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him
hard; but he could never teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The
one idea that had ever got through poor Marek’s thick head was that all
exertion was meritorious. He always bore down on the handles of the
cultivator and drove the blades so deep into the earth that the horses
were soon exhausted.
In June, Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy’s for a week, and took
Marek with him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second
cultivator; she and Ántonia worked in the fields all day and did the
chores at night. While the two women were running the place alone, one
of the new horses got colic and gave them a terrible fright.
Ántonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was well
before she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans was
swollen about the middle and stood with its head hanging. She mounted
another horse, without waiting to saddle him, and hammered on our door
just as we were going to bed. Grandfather answered her knock. He did
not send one of his men, but rode back with her himself, taking a
syringe and an old piece of carpet he kept for hot applications when
our horses were sick. He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with
her lantern, groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments
to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two women heard
the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly diminish in girth.
‘If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden,’ Ántonia exclaimed, ‘I never stay
here till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond before
morning.’
When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy’s, we learned that he had given
Marek’s wages to the priest at Black Hawk, for Masses for their
father’s soul. Grandmother thought Ántonia needed shoes more than Mr.
Shimerda needed prayers, but grandfather said tolerantly, ‘If he can
spare six dollars, pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he
professes.’
It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the
Shimerdas. One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on so
well, he thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July.
He would need more men, and if it were agreeable to everyone he would
engage Ambrosch for the reaping and threshing, as the Shimerdas had no
small grain of their own.
‘I think, Emmaline,’ he concluded, ‘I will ask Ántonia to come over and
help you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something, and it
will be a good time to end misunderstandings. I may as well ride over
this morning and make arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim?’
His tone told me that he had already decided for me.
After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming,
she ran from her door down into the draw behind the stable, as if she
did not want to meet us. Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied
his horse, and we followed her.
Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently been
grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to the animal,
pulled up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her, she was trying to
hide the cow in an old cave in the bank. As the hole was narrow and
dark, the cow held back, and the old woman was slapping and pushing at
her hind quarters, trying to spank her into the drawside.
Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely.
‘Good morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will find
Ambrosch? Which field?’
‘He with the sod corn.’ She pointed toward the north, still standing in
front of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it.
‘His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter,’ said grandfather
encouragingly. ‘And where is Ántonia?’
‘She go with.’ Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about
nervously in the dust.
‘Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me
cut my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good morning.
By the way, Mrs. Shimerda,’ he said as he turned up the path, ‘I think
we may as well call it square about the cow.’
She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did not
understand, grandfather turned back. ‘You need not pay me anything
more; no more money. The cow is yours.’
‘Pay no more, keep cow?’ she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow
eyes snapping at us in the sunlight.
‘Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow.’ He nodded.
Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and, crouching down
beside grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had
ever been so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too.
Somehow, that seemed to bring the Old World very close.
We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: ‘I expect she thought we
had come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she
wouldn’t have scratched a little if we’d laid hold of that lariat
rope!’
Our neighbours seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs.
Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted.
She presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, ‘Now you
not come any more for knock my Ambrosch down?’
Jake laughed sheepishly. ‘I don’t want to have no trouble with
Ambrosch. If he’ll let me alone, I’ll let him alone.’
‘If he slap you, we ain’t got no pig for pay the fine,’ she said
insinuatingly.
Jake was not at all disconcerted. ‘Have the last word ma’m,’ he said
cheerfully. ‘It’s a lady’s privilege.’
XIX
July came on with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the
plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It
seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the
stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured
cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green. If all
the great plain from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had been under
glass, and the heat regulated by a thermometer, it could not have been
better for the yellow tassels that were ripening and fertilizing the
silk day by day. The cornfields were far apart in those times, with
miles of wild grazing land between. It took a clear, meditative eye
like my grandfather’s to foresee that they would enlarge and multiply
until they would be, not the Shimerdas’ cornfields, or Mr. Bushy’s, but
the world’s cornfields; that their yield would be one of the great
economic facts, like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the
activities of men, in peace or war.
The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,
secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little
to fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the
wheatfields that they did not notice the heat—though I was kept busy
carrying water for them—and grandmother and Ántonia had so much to do
in the kitchen that they could not have told whether one day was hotter
than another. Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass,
Ántonia went with me up to the garden to get early vegetables for
dinner. Grandmother made her wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we
reached the garden she threw it on the grass and let her hair fly in
the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over the pea-vines, beads of
perspiration used to gather on her upper lip like a little moustache.
‘Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!’ she used to
sing joyfully. ‘I not care that your grandmother say it makes me like a
man. I like to be like a man.’ She would toss her head and ask me to
feel the muscles swell in her brown arm.
We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsive
that one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way with
pans. Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Ántonia
worked for us.
All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. The
harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in the
house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heat
lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gaunt
frame of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was a
beautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cut
grain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and when
the dishes were washed, Ántonia and I climbed up on the slanting roof
of the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud and
metallic, like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke in
great zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out and come
close to us for a moment. Half the sky was chequered with black
thunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the lightning
flashes it looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on
it; and the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement, like the
quay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction. Great warm
splashes of rain fell on our upturned faces. One black cloud, no bigger
than a little boat, drifted out into the clear space unattended, and
kept moving westward. All about us we could hear the felty beat of the
raindrops on the soft dust of the farmyard. Grandmother came to the
door and said it was late, and we would get wet out there.
‘In a minute we come,’ Ántonia called back to her. ‘I like your
grandmother, and all things here,’ she sighed. ‘I wish my papa live to
see this summer. I wish no winter ever come again.’
‘It will be summer a long while yet,’ I reassured her. ‘Why aren’t you
always nice like this, Tony?’
‘How nice?’
‘Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be
like Ambrosch?’
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky.
‘If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for
you. But they will be hard for us.’
BOOK II. The Hired Girls
I
I had been living with my grandfather for nearly three years when he
decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old for
the heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I
ought to be going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to
‘that good woman, the Widow Steavens,’ and her bachelor brother, and we
bought Preacher White’s house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was
the first town house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark
which told country people their long ride was over.
We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather had
fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said he
would not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; that
he was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he called
the ‘wild West.’ Jake Marpole, lured by Otto’s stories of adventure,
decided to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was so
handicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that he would
be an easy prey to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay among
kindly, Christian people, where he was known; but there was no
reasoning with him. He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver
mine was waiting for him in Colorado.
Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, put down
the carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards for
grandmother’s kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last they
went, without warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us
through sun and storm, had given us things that cannot be bought in any
market in the world. With me they had been like older brothers; had