My Ántonia Read online

  XV

  OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported thatthe coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon, but themissionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred milesaway, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours' sleep atthe livery barn in town, but he was afraid the gray gelding had strainedhimself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. That long tripthrough the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him.

  Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had taken ahomestead 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 twenties then,handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us like a miraclein the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how he strode intoour kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeksbright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, he snatched off his furcap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice which seemed older than he.

  "I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind topoor strangers from my kawn-tree."

  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 said hewould have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to huskcorn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the schoolby the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He told mehe 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?" he asked.

  Jelinek looked serious. "Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their fatherhas done a great sin," he looked straight at grandfather. "Our Lord hassaid that."

  Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. "We believe that, too, Jelinek.But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soul will come to its Creator as welloff without a priest. We believe that Christ 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 for thedead. 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. I makemy first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to me. By'n' by war-times come, when the Austrians fight us. We have very manysoldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that camp,and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about there to givethe Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the vessels withthe Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch the sicknessbut me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have no fear, becausewe carry that blood and that body of Christ, and it preserve us." Hepaused, looking at grandfather. "That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happenedto myself. All the soldiers know, too. When we walk along the road, theold priest and me, we meet all the time soldiers marching and officers onhorse. All those officers, when they see what I carry under the cloth,pull up their horses and kneel down on the ground in the road until wepass. So I feel very bad for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament,and to die in a bad way for his 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 was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strongblack farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to theShimerdas', so that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who wasthe only cabinet-maker in the neighborhood, was set to work on a coffin.

  Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told usthat 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 barn with the blacks,and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he wascompletely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he andthe 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 drafts 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 work-table 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 was thusengaged, 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 end ofit that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. The lasttime I made one of these, Mrs. Burden," he continued, as he sorted andtried his chisels, "was for a fellow in the Black Tiger mine, up aboveSilverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into the face ofthe cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us over on atrolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket traveled across a boxcanon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. Two Swedeshad fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you'llbelieve it, they went to work the next day. You can't kill a Swede. But inmy time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and it turned outdifferent with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happenedto be the only man in camp that could make a coffin for him. It's a handything to know, when you knock about like I've done."

  "We'd be hard put to it now, if you did n't know, Otto," grandmother said.

  "Yes, 'm," Fuchs admitted with modest pride. "So few folks does know howto make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonder ifthere'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 the pantingwheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. They were suchcheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for living people: it was apity that those freshly planed pine boards were to be put underground sosoon. The lumber was hard to work because it was full of frost, and theboards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as the heap of yellowshavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchs had not stuck tocabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease and content. He handledthe tools as if he liked the feel of them; and when he planed, his handswent back and forth over the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if hewere blessing them. He broke out now and then into German hymns, as ifthis occupation brought back old times to him.

  At four o'clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbor who livedeast 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 brother ofthe Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at our door,and after him came the father of the German family, our nearest neighborson the south. They dismounted and joined us in the dining-room. They wereall eager for any details about the suicide, and they were greatlyconcerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholiccemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeks before a wagon could getso far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother were sure that a man who hadkilled himself could not be buried in a Catholic graveyard. There was aburying-ground over by the Norwegian church, west of Squa
w Creek; perhapsthe Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in.

  After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returned tothe kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolate cake, andOtto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant song of theplane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybody talked morethan usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anything but "Onlypapers, to-day," or, "I've got a sackful of mail for ye," until thisafternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman; to herself or to theLord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather was naturallytaciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supper that I usedto feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Now every one seemedeager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story after story; about theBlack Tiger mine, and about violent deaths and casual buryings, and thequeer fancies of dying men. You never really knew a man, he said, untilyou saw him die. Most men were game, and went without a grudge.

  The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather would bringthe 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. Ifanything 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 would havesworn out a warrant against Krajiek. "The way he acted, and the way hisaxe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man."

  Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself, Jakeand the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiek because hebehaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened, certainly, and perhapshe even felt some stirrings of remorse for his indifference to the oldman's misery and loneliness.

  At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which I hadhoped would linger on until to-morrow in a mutilated condition,disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about where theyshould bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbors were all disturbedand shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerda and Ambroschwanted the old man buried on the southwest corner of their own land;indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather hadexplained to Ambrosch that some day, when the country was put under fenceand the roads were confined to section lines, two roads would crossexactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, "It makes 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 did n't know; he seemed to remember hearing there had oncebeen such a custom in Bohemia. "Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind," headded. "I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to all theneighbors; but she say so it must be. 'There I will bury him, if I dig thegrave myself,' she say. I have to promise her I help Ambrosch make thegrave to-morrow."

  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, sheis mistaken."