My Antonia Read online

  XV

  OTTO FUCHS GOT back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reportedthat the coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon,but the missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundredmiles away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours'sleep at the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the grey gelding hadstrained himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. Thatlong trip through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.

  Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had takena homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help hisfellow countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever sawAnton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twentiesthen, handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us likea miracle in the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how hestrode into our kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat,his eyes and cheeks bright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, hesnatched off his fur cap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice whichseemed older than he.

  'I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind topoor strangers from my kawntree.'

  He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eyewhen he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He saidhe would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out tohusk corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to theschool by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. Hetold me he had a nice 'lady-teacher' and that he liked to go to school.

  At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did tostrangers.

  'Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?' heasked.

  Jelinek looked serious.

  'Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a greatsin'--he looked straight at grandfather. 'Our Lord has said that.'

  Grandfather seemed to like his frankness.

  'We believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soulwill come to its Creator as well off without a priest. We believe thatChrist is our only intercessor.'

  The young man shook his head. 'I know how you think. My teacher at theschool has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer forthe dead. I have seen too much.'

  We asked him what he meant.

  He glanced around the table. 'You want I shall tell you? When I was alittle boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. Imake my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain tome. By 'n' by war-times come, when the Prussians fight us. We have verymany soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in thatcamp, and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go aboutthere to give the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry thevessels with the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catchthe sickness but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we haveno fear, because we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and itpreserve us.' He paused, looking at grandfather. 'That I know, Mr.Burden, for it happened to myself. All the soldiers know, too. Whenwe walk along the road, the old priest and me, we meet all the timesoldiers marching and officers on horse. All those officers, when theysee what I carry under the cloth, pull up their horses and kneel downon the ground in the road until we pass. So I feel very bad for mykawntree-man to die without the Sacrament, and to die in a bad way forhis soul, and I feel sad for his family.'

  We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,manly faith.

  'I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about thesethings,' said grandfather, 'and I would never be the one to say you werenot in God's care when you were among the soldiers.' After dinner it wasdecided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong black farm-horsesto the scraper and break a road through to the Shimerdas', so thata wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was the onlycabinetmaker in the neighbourhood was set to work on a coffin.

  Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he toldus that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who'batched' with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna,made the coat. From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barnwith the blacks, and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield.Sometimes he was completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose abouthim; then he and the horses would emerge black and shining.

  Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carrieddown into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planksgrandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor forthe oats-bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and thedoors were closed again and the cold draughts shut out, grandfather rodeaway to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coatand settled down to work. I sat on his worktable and watched him. He didnot touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece ofpaper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he wasthus engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at hishalf-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. Atlast he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.

  'The hardest part of my job's done,' he announced. 'It's the head endof it that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. Thelast time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden,' he continued, as he sortedand tried his chisels, 'was for a fellow in the Black Tiger Mine, upabove Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into theface of the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us overon a trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket travelled across abox canon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. TwoSwedes had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down.If you'll believe it, they went to work the next day. You can't killa Swede. But in my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and itturned out different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now,and I happened to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin forhim. It's a handy thing to know, when you knock about like I've done.'

  'We'd be hard put to it now, if you didn't know, Otto,' grandmothersaid.

  'Yes, 'm,' Fuchs admitted with modest pride. 'So few folks does knowhow to make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonderif there'll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I'm not at allparticular that way.'

  All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear thepanting wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. Theywere such cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for livingpeople: it was a pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to beput underground so soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was fullof frost, and the boards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as theheap of yellow shavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchshad not stuck to cabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease andcontent. He handled the tools as if he liked the feel of them; and whenhe planed, his hands went back and forth over the boards in an eager,beneficent way as if he were blessing them. He broke out now and theninto German hymns, as if this occupation brought back old times to him.

  At four o'clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbour wholived east of us, stopped in to get warm. They were on their way to theShimerdas'. The news of what had happened over there had somehow gotabroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother gave the visitorssugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers were gone, the brotherof the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at ourdoor, and after him came the father of the German family, ournearest neighbours on the south. They dismounted and joined us in thedining-room. They were all eager for any details about the suicide, andthey were greatly concerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried.The nearest Catholic cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeksbefore a wagon could get so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother weresure that a man who had killed himself could not be buried in a Catholicgraveyard. There was a burying-ground over by the Norwegian chu
rch, westof Squaw Creek; perhaps the Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in.

  After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returnedto the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolatecake, and Otto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant songof the plane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybodytalked more than usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anythingbut 'Only papers, to-day,' or, 'I've got a sackful of mail for ye,'until this afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman: to herselfor to the Lord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather wasnaturally taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supperthat I used to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Noweveryone seemed eager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story afterstory: about the Black Tiger Mine, and about violent deaths and casualburyings, and the queer fancies of dying men. You never really knewa man, he said, until you saw him die. Most men were game, and wentwithout a grudge.

  The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather wouldbring the coroner back with him to spend the night. The officers of theNorwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting and decided that theNorwegian graveyard could not extend its hospitality to Mr. Shimerda.

  Grandmother was indignant. 'If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr.Bushy, we'll have to have an American graveyard that will be moreliberal-minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring.If anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holdinginquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst'em.'

  Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton Jelinek, and thatimportant person, the coroner. He was a mild, flurried old man, a CivilWar veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty. He seemed to find this casevery perplexing, and said if it had not been for grandfather he wouldhave sworn out a warrant against Krajiek. 'The way he acted, and the wayhis axe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man.'

  Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself,Jake and the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiekbecause he behaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened,certainly, and perhaps he even felt some stirrings of remorse for hisindifference to the old man's misery and loneliness.

  At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which Ihad hoped would linger on until tomorrow in a mutilated condition,disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about wherethey should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbours were alldisturbed and shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerdaand Ambrosch wanted the old man buried on the southwest corner oftheir own land; indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner.Grandfather had explained to Ambrosch that some day, when the countrywas put under fence and the roads were confined to section lines, tworoads would cross exactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, 'Itmakes no matter.'

  Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was somesuperstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at thecross-roads.

  Jelinek said he didn't know; he seemed to remember hearing there hadonce been such a custom in Bohemia. 'Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind,'he added. 'I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to allthe neighbours; but she say so it must be. "There I will bury him, ifI dig the grave myself," she say. I have to promise her I help Ambroschmake the grave tomorrow.'

  Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial. 'I don't know whosewish should decide the matter, if not hers. But if she thinks she willlive to see the people of this country ride over that old man's head,she is mistaken.'