My Ántonia Read online

  IX

  THE first snowfall came early in December. I remember how the world lookedfrom our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that morning:the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields had faded outinto ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under its stiffwillow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over everything anddisappearing in the red grass.

  Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was,faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used toride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring theIndians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the center; butgrandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there.Whenever one looked at this slope against the setting sun, the circleshowed like a pattern in the grass; and this morning, when the first lightspray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderful distinctness, likestrokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure stirred me as it hadnever done before and seemed a good omen for the winter.

  As soon as the snow had packed hard I began to drive about the country ina clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a woodengoods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in theold country and was very handy with tools. He would have done a better jobif I had n't hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, and thenext day I went over to take Yulka and Antonia for a sleigh-ride.

  It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into the box,and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to theShimerdas' I did not go up to the house, but sat in my sleigh at thebottom of the draw and called. Antonia and Yulka came running out, wearinglittle rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. They had heardabout my sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. They tumbled inbeside me and we set off toward the north, along a road that happened tobe broken.

  The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering whitestretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Antonia said, the whole worldwas changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiar landmarks.The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now only a cleftbetween snow-drifts--very blue when one looked down into it. The tree-topsthat had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted, as if theywould never have any life in them again. The few little cedars, which wereso dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong, dusky green. The windhad the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat and nostrils smarted as ifsome one had opened a hartshorn bottle. The cold stung, and at the sametime delighted one. My horse's breath rose like steam, and whenever westopped he smoked all over. The cornfields got back a little of theircolor under the dazzling light, and stood the palest possible gold in thesun and snow. All about us the snow was crusted in shallow terraces, withtracings like ripple-marks at the edges, curly waves that were the actualimpression of the stinging lash in the wind.

  The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shiveringbeneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they wereso glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother's scolding thatthey begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter's house. The greatfresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made them behave likewild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they never wanted to gohome again. Could n't we settle down and live in Russian Peter's house,Yulka asked, and could n't I go to town and buy things for us to keephouse with?

  All the way to Russian Peter's we were extravagantly happy, but when weturned back,--it must have been about four o'clock,--the east wind grewstronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the skybecame gray and somber. I took off my long woolen comforter and wound itaround Yulka's throat. She got so cold that we made her hide her headunder the buffalo robe. Antonia and I sat erect, but I held the reinsclumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of the time. Itwas growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused to go in withthem and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if I went near afire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I had to drive homedirectly against the wind. The next day I came down with an attack ofquinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two weeks.

  The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days--like atight 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 downover their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to thinkthey were like Arctic explorers.

  In the afternoons, when grandmother sat upstairs darning, or makinghusking-gloves, I read "The Swiss Family Robinson" aloud to her, and Ifelt that the Swiss family had no advantages over us in the way of anadventurous life. I was convinced that man's strongest antagonist is thecold. I admired the cheerful zest with which grandmother went aboutkeeping us warm and comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, whenshe was preparing for the return of the hungry men, that this country wasnot like Virginia, and that here a cook had, as she said, "very little todo with." On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and onother days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies orcake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favorite pudding,striped with currants and boiled in a bag.

  Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the mostinteresting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around warmthand food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to wonder, whenthey came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and their handscracked 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 oftheir bones. While grandmother and I washed the dishes and grandfatherread his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on the long bench behind thestove, "easing" their inside boots, or rubbing mutton tallow into theircracked hands.

  Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used tosing, "For I Am a Cowboy and Know I've Done Wrong," or, "Bury Me Not onthe Lone Prairee." He had a good baritone voice and always led the singingwhen we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.

  I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto's close-clippedhead and Jake's shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a wet comb. I can seethe sag of their tired shoulders against the whitewashed wall. What goodfellows they were, how much they knew, and how many things they had keptfaith with!

  Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bar-tender, a miner; hadwandered all over that great Western country and done hard workeverywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his namewith difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made himbehave like a crazy man--tore him all to pieces and actually made him ill.But he was so soft-hearted that any one could impose upon him. If he, ashe said, "forgot himself" and swore before grandmother, he went aboutdepressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial about thecold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work overtime andto meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them not to sparethemselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or doanything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.

  On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fedus and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howlingdown by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind the boysof wonderful animal stories; about gray wolves and bears in the Rockies,wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains. Sometimes Fuchs could bepersuaded to talk about the outlaws and desperate characters he had known.I remember one funny story about himself that made grandmother, who wasworking her bread on the bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes withher bare arm, her hands being floury. It was like this:--

  When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of hisrelatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to joinher husband in Chicago. The woman start
ed off with two children, but itwas 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 asorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not one baby, butthree! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved notoriety, since hewas traveling with her. The steerage stewardess was indignant with him,the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The first-cabin passengers, whomade up a purse for the woman, took an embarrassing interest in Otto, andoften inquired of him about his charge. When the triplets were takenashore at New York, he had, as he said, "to carry some of them." The tripto Chicago was even worse than the ocean voyage. On the train it was verydifficult to get milk for the babies and to keep their bottles clean. Themother did her best, but no woman, out of her natural resources, couldfeed three babies. The husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniturefactory for modest wages, and when he met his family at the station he wasrather crushed by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs insome fashion to blame. "I was sure glad," Otto concluded, "that he did n'ttake his hard feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye forme, all right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller's having such hardluck, Mrs. Burden?"

  Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things tohis credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he did n'trealize that he was being protected by Providence.