My Antonia

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Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass.
Our neighbours burned off their pasture before the new grass
made a start, so that the fresh growth would not be mixed
with the dead stand of last year. Those light, swift fires,
running about the country, seemed a part of the same kindling
that was in the air.

The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then.
The neighbours had helped them to build it in March. It stood
directly in front of their old cave, which they used as a cellar.
The family were now fairly equipped to begin their struggle
with the soil. They had four comfortable rooms to live in,
a new windmill--bought on credit--a chicken-house and poultry.
Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather ten dollars for a milk cow,
and was to give him fifteen more as soon as they harvested
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 reading lessons; Antonia was busy with other things.
I tied my pony and went into the kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda
was baking bread, chewing poppy seeds as she worked.
By this time she could speak enough English to ask me a great
many questions about what our men were doing in the fields.
She seemed to think that my elders withheld helpful information,
and that from me she might get valuable secrets. On this
occasion she asked me very craftily when grandfather expected
to begin planting corn. I told her, adding that he thought we
should have a dry spring and that the corn would not be held
back by too much rain, as it had been last year.

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

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

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

She greeted me gaily, and began at once to tell me how much ploughing
she 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 Jake get more done in one day than me.
I want we have very much corn this fall.'

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

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

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

Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they
were stiff. `I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
My mother can't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him.
I can work as much as him. School is all right for little boys.
I help make this land 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,
I wondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense
in her silence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying.
She turned her face from me and looked off at the red streak
of dying light, over the dark prairie.

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

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

Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antonia
had washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basin
by 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 with the cake that had been kept warm in the feathers.
Antonia and Ambrosch were talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of
them had done more ploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on,
chuckling while she gobbled her food.

Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: `You take them ox
tomorrow and 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 break sod. I milk the cow for you tomorrow,
if you want.'

Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. `That cow not give so much milk
like what your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars,
I send him back 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 began to wish I had not stayed for supper.
Everything was disagreeable to me. Antonia ate so noisily now,
like a man, and she yawned often at the 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 lose all her nice ways and get rough ones.'
She had lost them already.

After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight.
Since winter I had seen very little of Antonia.
She was out in the fields from sunup 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 gripped her
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.
On Sundays she helped her mother make garden or sewed all day.
Grandfather was pleased with Antonia. When we complained of her,
he only smiled and said, `She will help some fellow get ahead
in the world.'

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how
much she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength.
I knew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought
not to do, and that the farm-hands around the country joked
in a nasty way about 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 chest dust-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!'

XVIII

AFTER I BEGAN TO go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians.
We were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came on horseback
and brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them very interesting,
but I somehow felt that, by Taking comrades of them, I was getting
even with Antonia for her indifference. Since the father's death,
Ambrosch was more than ever the head of the house, and he seemed
to direct the feelings as well as the fortunes of his womenfolk.
Antonia often quoted his opinions to me, and she let me see that she
admired him, while she thought of me only as a little boy. Before the spring
was over, there was a distinct coldness between us and the Shimerdas.
It came about in this way.

One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar
which Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned.
It was a beautiful blue morning. The buffalo-peas were blooming
in pink and purple masses along the roadside, and the larks,
perched on last year's dried sunflower stalks, were singing
straight at the sun, their heads thrown back and their yellow
breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts.
We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence.

We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek was
cleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden,
off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmill tower,
oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jake asked
for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collar belonged
to grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible for it, flared up.
`Now, don't you say you haven't got it, Ambrosch, because I know you have,
and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will.'

Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill toward
the stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days.
Presently he returned, carrying a collar that had been badly used--
trampled in the dirt and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking
out of it.

`This what you want?' he asked surlily.

Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under
the rough stubble on his face. `That ain't the piece of harness
I loaned you, Ambrosch; or, if it is, you've used it shameful.
I ain't a-going to carry such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden.'

Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. `All right,'
he said coolly, took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill.
Jake caught him by the belt of his trousers and yanked him back.
Ambrosch's feet had scarcely touched the ground when he lunged out
with a vicious kick at Jake's stomach. Fortunately, Jake was in such
a position that he could dodge it. This was not the sort of thing
country boys did when they played at fisticuffs, and Jake was furious.
He landed Ambrosch a blow on the head--it sounded like the crack
of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambrosch dropped over, stunned.

We heard squeals, and looking up saw Antonia and her mother coming
on the run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged
through the muddy water, without even lifting their skirts.
They came on, screaming and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch
had come to his senses and was sputtering with nosebleed.

Jake sprang into his saddle. `Let's get out of this, Jim,' he called.

Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she
were going to pull down lightning. `Law, law!' she shrieked after us.
`Law for knock my Ambrosch down!'

`I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden,' Antonia panted.
`No friends any more!'

Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second.
`Well, you're a damned ungrateful lot, the whole pack of you,'
he shouted back. `I guess the Burdens can get along without you.
You've been a sight of trouble to them, anyhow!'

We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiled for us.
I hadn't a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper and trembling
all over. It made him sick to get so angry.

`They ain't the same, Jimmy,' he kept saying in a hurt tone.
`These foreigners ain't the same. You can't trust 'em to be fair.
It's dirty to kick a feller. You heard how the women turned on you--
and after all we went through on account of 'em last winter!
They ain't to be trusted. I don't want to see you get too thick
with any of 'em.'

`I'll never be friends with them again, Jake,' I declared hotly.
`I believe they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath.'

Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye.
He advised Jake to ride to town tomorrow, go to a justice of
the peace, tell him he had knocked young Shimerda down, and pay
his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerda was inclined to make trouble--
her son was still under age--she would be forestalled.
Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul to market
the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour
after Jake had started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch
proudly driving by, looking neither to the right nor left.
As they rattled out of sight down the Black Hawk road,
grandfather chuckled, saying he had rather expected she would
follow the matter up.

Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given
him for that purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake
sold his pig in town that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his
shrewd head that Jake had to sell his pig to pay his fine.
This theory afforded the Shimerdas great satisfaction, apparently.
For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and I met Antonia on her way
to the post-office, or going along the road with her work-team, she
would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing voice:

`Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the slap!'

Otto pretended not to be surprised at Antonia's behaviour.
He only lifted his brows and said, `You can't tell me anything
new about a Czech; I'm an Austrian.'

Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our feud with
the Shimerdas. Ambrosch and Antonia always greeted him respectfully,
and he asked them about their affairs and gave them advice
as usual. He thought the future looked hopeful for them.
Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; he soon realized that
his oxen were too heavy for any work except breaking sod,
and he succeeded in selling them to a newly arrived German.
With the money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather
selected for him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard;
but he could never teach him to cultivate corn, I remember.
The one idea that had ever got through poor Marek's thick
head was that all exertion was meritorious. He always bore
down on the handles of the cultivator and drove the blades
so deep into the earth that the horses were soon exhausted.

In June, Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy's for a week, and took Marek
with him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator;
she and Antonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores at night.
While the two women were running the place alone, one of the new horses got
colic and gave them a terrible fright.

Antonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was
well before she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans
was swollen about the middle and stood with its head hanging.
She mounted another horse, without waiting to saddle him,
and hammered on our door just as we were going to bed.
Grandfather answered her knock. He did not send one of his men,
but rode back with her himself, taking a syringe and an old piece
of carpet he kept for hot applications when our horses were sick.
He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern,
groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments
to release the gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two
women heard the rush of wind and saw the roan visibly
diminish in girth.

`If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden,' Antonia exclaimed,
`I never stay here till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself
in the pond before morning.'

When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy's, we learned that
he had given Marek's wages to the priest at Black Hawk,
for Masses for their father's soul. Grandmother thought
Antonia needed shoes more than Mr. Shimerda needed prayers,
but grandfather said tolerantly, `If he can spare six dollars,
pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he professes.'

It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with the Shimerdas.
One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on so well,
he thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July.
He would need more men, and if it were agreeable to everyone he would
engage Ambrosch for the reaping and threshing, as the Shimerdas had no
small grain of their own.

`I think, Emmaline,' he concluded, `I will ask Antonia to come over
and help you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something,
and it will be a good time to end misunderstandings.
I may as well ride over this morning and make arrangements.
Do you want to go with me, Jim?' His tone told me that he had
already decided for me.

After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda
saw us coming, she ran from her door down into the draw
behind the stable, as if she did not want to meet us.
Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied his horse,
and we followed her.

Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently
been grazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to
the animal, pulled up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her,
she was trying to hide the cow in an old cave in the bank.
As the hole was narrow and dark, the cow held back, and the old
woman was slapping and pushing at her hind quarters, trying to spank
her into the drawside.

Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely.
`Good morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will find Ambrosch?
Which field?'

`He with the sod corn.' She pointed toward the north, still standing
in front of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it.

`His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter,'
said grandfather encouragingly. `And where is Antonia?'

`She go with.' Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervously
in the dust.

`Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help me
cut my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good morning.
By the way, Mrs. Shimerda,' he said as he turned up the path, `I think
we may as well call it square about the cow.'

She started and clutched the rope tighter.
Seeing that she did not understand, grandfather turned back.
`You need not pay me anything more; no more money.
The cow is yours.'

`Pay no more, keep cow?' she asked in a bewildered tone,
her narrow eyes snapping at us in the sunlight.

`Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow.' He nodded.

Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and, crouching down
beside grandfather, she took his hand and kissed it.
I doubt if he had ever been so much embarrassed before.
I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that seemed to bring
the Old World very close.

We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: `I expect she
thought we had come to take the cow away for certain, Jim.
I wonder if she wouldn't have scratched a little if we'd laid
hold of that lariat rope!'

Our neighbours seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday
Mrs. Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted.
She presented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, `Now you
not come any more for knock my Ambrosch down?'

Jake laughed sheepishly. `I don't want to have no trouble with Ambrosch.
If he'll let me alone, I'll let him alone.'

`If he slap you, we ain't got no pig for pay the fine,'
she said insinuatingly.

Jake was not at all disconcerted. `Have the last word ma'm,'
he said cheerfully. `It's a lady's privilege.'

XIX

JULY CAME ON with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes
the plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world.
It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night;
under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured
cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy and green.
If all the great plain from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains
had been under glass, and the heat regulated by a thermometer,
it could not have been better for the yellow tassels that were
ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. The cornfields were
far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazing land between.
It took a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's to foresee
that they would enlarge and multiply until they would be,
not the Shimerdas' cornfields, or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields;
that their yield would be one of the great economic facts,
like the wheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities
of men, in peace or war.

The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night,
secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we had little
to fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in the wheatfields
that they did not notice the heat--though I was kept busy carrying water
for them--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to do in the kitchen
that they could not have told whether one day was hotter than another.
Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Antonia went
with me up to the garden to get early vegetables for dinner.
Grandmother made her wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reached
the 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 perspiration
used 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 to sing joyfully. `I not care that your grandmother
say it makes me like a man. I like to be like a man.'
She would toss her head and ask me to feel the muscles swell
in her brown arm.

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

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season.
The harvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there
than in the house. I used to lie in my bed by the open window,
watching the heat lightning play softly along the horizon,
or looking up at the gaunt frame of the windmill against the blue
night sky. One night there was a beautiful electric storm,
though not enough rain fell to damage the cut grain.
The men went down to the barn immediately after supper,
and when the dishes were washed, Antonia and I climbed up on
the slanting roof of the chicken-house to watch the clouds.
The thunder was loud and metallic, like the rattle of sheet iron,
and the lightning broke in great zigzags across the heavens,
making everything stand out and come close to us for a moment.
Half the sky was chequered with black thunderheads, but all
the west was luminous and clear: in the lightning flashes it
looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it;
and the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement,
like the quay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction.
Great warm splashes of rain fell on our upturned faces.
One black cloud, no bigger than a little boat, drifted out
into the clear space unattended, and kept moving westward.
All about us we could hear the felty beat of the raindrops
on the soft dust of the farmyard. Grandmother came to the door
and said it was late, and we would get wet out there.

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

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

`How nice?'

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

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky.
`If I 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

I

I HAD BEEN LIVING with my grandfather for nearly three years
when he decided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother
were getting old for the heavy work of a farm, and as I was
now thirteen they thought I ought to be going to school.
Accordingly our homestead was rented to `that good woman,
the Widow Steavens,' and her bachelor brother, and we bought
Preacher White's house, at the north end of Black Hawk.
This was the first town house one passed driving in from the farm,
a landmark which told country people their long ride was over.

We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather
had fixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention.
Otto said he would not be likely to find another place
that suited him so well; that he was tired of farming and
thought he would go back to what he called the `wild West.'
Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure,
decided to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake.
He was so handicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting
disposition that he would be an easy prey to sharpers.
Grandmother begged him to stay among kindly, Christian people,
where he was known; but there was no reasoning with him.
He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine was
waiting for him in Colorado.

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