My Antonia Page 18

  XVII

  WHEN SPRING CAME, AFTER that hard winter, one could not get enough ofthe nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness thatwinter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I usedto watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There wasonly--spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vitalessence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the palesunshine, and in the warm, high wind--rising suddenly, sinking suddenly,impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay downto be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, Ishould have known that it was spring.

  Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighboursburned off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that thefresh growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Thoselight, swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the samekindling that was in the air.

  The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbours hadhelped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of theirold cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairlyequipped to begin their struggle with the soil. They had fourcomfortable rooms to live in, a new windmill--bought on credit--achicken-house and poultry. Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather tendollars for a milk cow, and was to give him fifteen more as soon as theyharvested their first crop.

  When I rode up to the Shimerdas' one bright windy afternoon in April,Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave readinglessons; Antonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony and wentinto the kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppyseeds as she worked. By this time she could speak enough English to askme a great many questions about what our men were doing in the fields.She seemed to think that my elders withheld helpful information, andthat from me she might get valuable secrets. On this occasion she askedme very craftily when grandfather expected to begin planting corn. Itold her, adding that he thought we should have a dry spring and thatthe corn would not be held back by too much rain, as it had been lastyear.

  She gave me a shrewd glance. 'He not Jesus,' she blustered; 'he not knowabout the wet and the dry.

  I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hourwhen Ambrosch and Antonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs.Shimerda at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which shewanted to keep warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed withfeathers. I have seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keepit hot. When the neighbours were there building the new house, they sawher do this, and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their foodin their featherbeds.

  When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw withher team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had cometo us a child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although herfifteenth birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as shebrought her horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the bootsher father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and hisold fur cap. Her outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, overthe boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms andthroat were burned as brown as a sailor's. Her neck came up strongly outof her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees thatdraught-horse neck among the peasant women in all old countries.

  She greeted me gaily, and began at once to tell me how much ploughingshe had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter,breaking sod with the oxen.

  'Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don't want that Jakeget more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn thisfall.'

  While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drankagain, Antonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on herhand.

  'You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope yourgrandpa ain't lose no stacks?'

  'No, we didn't. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants toknow if you can't go to the term of school that begins next week over atthe sod schoolhouse. She says there's a good teacher, and you'd learn alot.'

  Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they werestiff. 'I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mothercan't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can workas much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make thisland one good farm.'

  She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her,feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, Iwondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in hersilence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her facefrom me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the darkprairie.

  I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while sheunharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambroschhad come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at thetank.

  Antonia took my hand. 'Sometime you will tell me all those nice thingsyou learn at the school, won't you, Jimmy?' she asked with a sudden rushof feeling in her voice. 'My father, he went much to school. He know agreat deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. Heplay horn and violin, and he read so many books that the priests inBohemie come to talk to him. You won't forget my father, Jim?' 'No,' Isaid, 'I will never forget him.'

  Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antoniahad washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basinby the kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs.Shimerda ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it.After the mush we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee withthe cake that had been kept warm in the feathers. Antonia and Ambroschwere talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done moreploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while shegobbled her food.

  Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: 'You take them ox tomorrowand try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart.'

  His sister laughed. 'Don't be mad. I know it's awful hard work for breaksod. I milk the cow for you tomorrow, if you want.'

  Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. 'That cow not give so much milk likewhat your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send himback the cow.'

  'He doesn't talk about the fifteen dollars,' I exclaimed indignantly.'He doesn't find fault with people.'

  'He say I break his saw when we build, and I never,' grumbled Ambrosch.

  I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I beganto wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable tome. Antonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often atthe table and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached.Grandmother had said, 'Heavy field work'll spoil that girl. She'll loseall her nice ways and get rough ones.' She had lost them already.

  After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight. Sincewinter I had seen very little of Antonia. She was out in the fields fromsunup until sundown. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing,she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then grippedher plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow,making me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. OnSundays she helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfatherwas pleased with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled andsaid, 'She will help some fellow get ahead in the world.'

  Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or howmuch she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. Iknew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not todo, and that the farm-hands around the country joked in a nasty wayabout it. Whenever I saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts,sunburned, sweaty, her dress open at the neck, and her throat and chestdust-plastered, I used to think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda,who could say so little, yet managed to say so much when he exclaimed,'My Antonia!'