My Ántonia Read online

  II

  I DO not remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime beforedaybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses.When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcelylarger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head wasflapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin andblack hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be mygrandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyesshe smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.

  "Had a good sleep, Jimmy?" she asked briskly. Then in a very differenttone she said, as if to herself, "My, how you do look like your father!" Iremembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often havecome to wake him like this when he overslept. "Here are your cleanclothes," she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as shetalked. "But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nicewarm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about."

  "Down to the kitchen" struck me as curious; it was always "out in thekitchen" at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed herthrough the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. Thisbasement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and akitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed--the plasterlaid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floorwas of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were littlehalf-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jewin the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell ofgingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickeltrimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall,and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. Whenshe brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking mybath without help.

  "Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a rightsmart little boy."

  It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-waterthrough the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbedhimself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, mygrandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously,"Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!" Then she came laughing,waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

  She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carryher head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she werelooking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grewolder, I came to believe that it was only because she was so oftenthinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energeticin all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she oftenspoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous thateverything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high,and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it.She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.

  After I was dressed I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It wasdug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with astairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one ofthe windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in fromwork.

  While my grandmother was busy about supper I settled myself on the woodenbench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat--he caught not onlyrats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight onthe floor traveled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talkedabout my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; shesaid they were to be our nearest neighbors. We did not talk about the farmin Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the mencame in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper-table, thenshe asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighborsthere.

  My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spokekindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once hisdeliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. Thething one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly,snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard ofan Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

  Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they werebright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white andregular--so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had adelicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young manhis hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

  As we sat at the table Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances ateach other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that hewas an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led anadventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. Hisiron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he haddrifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives inBismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now hehad been working for grandfather.

  The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to meabout a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; hehad been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he wasa "perfect gentleman," and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything Iwanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he wasa stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer forme before sundown next day. He got out his "chaps" and silver spurs toshow them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched inbold design--roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures.These, he solemnly explained, were angels.

  Before we went to bed Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room forprayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read severalPsalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that Iwished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. Iwas awed by his intonation of the word "Selah." "_He shall choose ourinheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah._" I hadno idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, itbecame oracular, the most sacred of words.

  Early the next morning I ran out of doors to look about me. I had beentold that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk--until you cameto the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbors livedin sod houses and dugouts--comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white framehouse, with a story and half-story above the basement, stood at the eastend of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by thekitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to thebarns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare,and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, atthe bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willowbushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came directly byour door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyondwhich it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west.There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a great cornfield, muchlarger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghumpatch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, asfar as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, redgrass, most of it as tall as I.

  North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-setstrip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turningyellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to lookvery hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant againstthe grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and overthe plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house.

  As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the wateris the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color ofwine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. Andthere was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to berunning.

  I had almost forgot
ten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, hersunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I did notwant to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. The garden,curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way toit led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called myattention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by aleather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. Imust never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn-knife; she hadkilled a good many rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl wholived on the Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been sick allsummer.

  I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside mygrandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September morning.Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more thananything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowingmorning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sortof loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping,galloping {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

  Alone, I should never have found the garden--except, perhaps, for the bigyellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines--and Ifelt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walkstraight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, whichcould not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the worldended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went alittle farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float offinto them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slowshadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we foundstanding in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up outof the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up atthe hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.

  When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there inthe garden awhile.

  She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. "Are n't you afraid ofsnakes?"

  "A little," I admitted, "but I'd like to stay anyhow."

  "Well, if you see one, don't have anything to do with him. The big yellowand brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull-snakes and help to keep thegophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out of that hole inthe bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about as big as a big'possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He takes a chicken oncein a while, but I won't let the men harm him. In a new country a bodyfeels friendly to the animals. I like to have him come out and watch mewhen I'm at work."

  Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down thepath, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of thedraw; when she came to the first bend she waved at me and disappeared. Iwas left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content.

  I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcelyapproach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. Therewere some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. Iturned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries andate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had everseen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophersscurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltereddraw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singingits humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave.The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers.Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me.Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still asI could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I wassomething that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I didnot want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel likethat when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sunand air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to bedissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, itcomes as naturally as sleep.