My Ántonia
as if they would never have any life in them again. The few little
cedars, which were so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong,
dusky green. The wind had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat
and nostrils smarted as if someone had opened a hartshorn bottle. The
cold stung, and at the same time delighted one. My horse’s breath rose
like steam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields
got back a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood
the palest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow was
crusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at the
edges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lash
in the wind.
The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shivering
beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they
were so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother’s
scolding that they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter’s
house. The great fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made
them behave like wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they
never wanted to go home again. Couldn’t we settle down and live in
Russian Peter’s house, Yulka asked, and couldn’t I go to town and buy
things for us to keep house with?
All the way to Russian Peter’s we were extravagantly happy, but when we
turned back—it must have been about four o’clock—the east wind grew
stronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the
sky became grey and sombre. I took off my long woollen comforter and
wound it around Yulka’s throat. She got so cold that we made her hide
her head under the buffalo robe. Ántonia and I sat erect, but I held
the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of
the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused
to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if
I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I
had to drive home directly against the wind. The next day I came down
with an attack of quinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two
weeks.
The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days—like a
tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all
day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled
down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to
think they were like Arctic explorers. In the afternoons, when
grandmother sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read ‘The
Swiss Family Robinson’ aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss family
had no advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I was
convinced that man’s strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired the
cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and
comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when she was preparing
for the return of the hungry men, that this country was not like
Virginia; and that here a cook had, as she said, ‘very little to do
with.’ On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and on
other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies
or cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favourite
pudding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag.
Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most
interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around
warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to
wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and
their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so
conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and
look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to
get the cold out of their bones. While grandmother and I washed the
dishes and grandfather read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on
the long bench behind the stove, ‘easing’ their inside boots, or
rubbing mutton tallow into their cracked hands.
Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used
to sing, ‘For I Am a Cowboy and Know I’ve Done Wrong,’ or, ‘Bury Me Not
on the Lone Prairee.’ He had a good baritone voice and always led the
singing when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.
I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto’s
close-clipped head and Jake’s shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a
wet comb. I can see the sag of their tired shoulders against the
whitewashed wall. What good fellows they were, how much they knew, and
how many things they had kept faith with!
Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bartender, a miner; had
wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work
everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.
Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name
with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him
behave like a crazy man—tore him all to pieces and actually made him
ill. But he was so soft-hearted that anyone could impose upon him. If
he, as he said, ‘forgot himself’ and swore before grandmother, he went
about depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial
about the cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work
overtime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them
not to spare themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get
on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.
On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that
fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes
howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to
remind the boys of wonderful animal stories; about grey wolves and
bears in the Rockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains.
Sometimes Fuchs could be persuaded to talk about the outlaws and
desperate characters he had known. I remember one funny story about
himself that made grandmother, who was working her bread on the
bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her
hands being floury. It was like this:
When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of his
relatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to
join her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children,
but it was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey.
Fuchs said he ‘got on fine with the kids,’ and liked the mother, though
she played a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not
one baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved
notoriety, since he was travelling with her. The steerage stewardess
was indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The
first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took an
embarrassing interest in Otto, and often enquired of him about his
charge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he
said, ‘to carry some of them.’ The trip to Chicago was even worse than
the ocean voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for
the babies and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best,
but no woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies.
The husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modest
wages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushed
by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion to
blame. ‘I was sure glad,’ Otto concluded, ‘that he didn’t take his hard
feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for me, all
right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller’s having such hard
luck, Mrs. Burden?’
Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things
to his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he didn’t
realize that he was being protected by Providence.
X
For several weeks after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the
Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold
which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad
to have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen
Mr. Shimerda out hunting.
‘He’s made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar
that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain’t got but one overcoat
among ‘em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful
scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers.’
‘All but the crazy boy,’ Jake put in. ‘He never wears the coat. Krajiek
says he’s turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must
be getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the
cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie
dogs he’d shot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a
face and took on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was
smarter’n me and put ‘em back in his sack and walked off.’
Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. ‘Josiah, you
don’t suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs,
do you?’
‘You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline,’ he
replied gravely.
Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts
and ought to be good for food, but their family connections were
against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they
belonged to the rat family.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake
packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.
‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster
that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him
along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens
from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I
reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come
strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good
thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.
‘Just as you say, ma’m,’ said Jake, ‘but I hate to think of Krajiek
getting a leg of that old rooster.’ He tramped out through the long
cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.
After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and
climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the
Shimerdas’, we heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Ántonia, her
head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her
weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon,
looked back over her shoulder, and, catching up her pail of water,
started at a run for the hole in the bank.
Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the
provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy
path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came
from the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the
wind whisked them roughly away.
Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized
grandmother’s hand. She did not say ‘How do!’ as usual, but at once
began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her
feet which were tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at
everyone.
The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as
if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet,
her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing
up at her mother, hid again. Ántonia was washing pans and dishes in a
dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a
gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw a
grain-sack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the
cave was stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung