My Antonia Read online

  XIX

  JULY CAME ON with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plainsof Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemedas if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars onecaught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured cornfields where thefeathered stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain fromthe Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heatregulated by a thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellowtassels that were ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. Thecornfields were far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazingland between. It took a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's toforesee that they would enlarge and multiply until they would be, notthe Shimerdas' cornfields, or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields;that their yield would be one of the great economic facts, like thewheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities of men, in peaceor war.

  The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we hadlittle to fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in thewheatfields that they did not notice the heat--though I was kept busycarrying water for them--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to doin the kitchen that they could not have told whether one day was hotterthan another. Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass,Antonia went with me up to the garden to get early vegetables fordinner. Grandmother made her wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reachedthe garden she threw it on the grass and let her hair fly in the breeze.I remember how, as we bent over the pea-vines, beads of perspirationused to gather on her upper lip like a little moustache.

  'Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!' she used tosing joyfully. 'I not care that your grandmother say it makes me likea man. I like to be like a man.' She would toss her head and ask me tofeel the muscles swell in her brown arm.

  We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsivethat one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way withpans. Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antoniaworked for us.

  All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. Theharvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in thehouse. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heatlightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gauntframe of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was abeautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cutgrain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and whenthe dishes were washed, Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roofof the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud andmetallic, like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke ingreat zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out andcome close to us for a moment. Half the sky was chequered with blackthunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the lightningflashes it looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight onit; and the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement, like thequay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction. Great warmsplashes of rain fell on our upturned faces. One black cloud, no biggerthan a little boat, drifted out into the clear space unattended, andkept moving westward. All about us we could hear the felty beat of theraindrops on the soft dust of the farmyard. Grandmother came to the doorand said it was late, and we would get wet out there.

  'In a minute we come,' Antonia called back to her. 'I like yourgrandmother, and all things here,' she sighed. 'I wish my papa live tosee this summer. I wish no winter ever come again.'

  'It will be summer a long while yet,' I reassured her. 'Why aren't youalways nice like this, Tony?'

  'How nice?'

  'Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to belike Ambrosch?'

  She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. 'IfI live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you.But they will be hard for us.'

  BOOK II. The Hired Girls