Chapter Chapter 6 · Chapter VI

One afternoon we were having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy

bank where the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there

was a shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the little

horsepond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found the

tall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass of

slimy green.

Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton dress and was

comfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked earth, in the

full blaze of the sun. She could talk to me about almost anything by

this time. That afternoon she was telling me how highly esteemed our

friend the badger was in her part of the world, and how men kept a

special kind of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him. Those dogs, she

said, went down into the hole after the badger and killed him there in

a terrific struggle underground; you could hear the barks and yelps

outside. Then the dog dragged himself back, covered with bites and

scratches, to be rewarded and petted by his master. She knew a dog who

had a star on his collar for every badger he had killed.

The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting up

all about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing a

game of some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the

grass were all dead—all but one. While we were lying there against the

warm bank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped

painfully out of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of

bluestem. He missed it, fell back, and sat with his head sunk between

his long legs, his antennae quivering, as if he were waiting for

something to come and finish him. Tony made a warm nest for him in her

hands; talked to him gaily and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he

began to sing for us—a thin, rusty little chirp. She held him close to

her ear and laughed, but a moment afterward I saw there were tears in

her eyes. She told me that in her village at home there was an old

beggar woman who went about selling herbs and roots she had dug up in

the forest. If you took her in and gave her a warm place by the fire,

she sang old songs to the children in a cracked voice, like this. Old

Hata, she was called, and the children loved to see her coming and

saved their cakes and sweets for her.

When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrow

shelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chill

came on quickly when the sun got low, and Ántonia’s dress was thin.

What were we to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to

life by false pretences? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head

and carefully put the green insect in her hair, tying her big

handkerchief down loosely over her curls. I said I would go with her

until we could see Squaw Creek, and then turn and run home. We drifted

along lazily, very happy, through the magical light of the late

afternoon.

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them.

As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in

sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the

day. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and

threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned

with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of

victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero’s death—heroes who died

young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of

day.

How many an afternoon Ántonia and I have trailed along the prairie

under that magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted

before us or followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass.

We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank nearer and

nearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure moving on the edge of

the upland, a gun over his shoulder. He was walking slowly, dragging

his feet along as if he had no purpose. We broke into a run to overtake

him.

‘My papa sick all the time,’ Tony panted as we flew. ‘He not look good,

Jim.’

As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted, and he lifted his head and

peered about. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed it

against her cheek. She was the only one of his family who could rouse

the old man from the torpor in which he seemed to live. He took the bag

from his belt and showed us three rabbits he had shot, looked at

Ántonia with a wintry flicker of a smile and began to tell her

something. She turned to me.

‘My tatinek make me little hat with the skins, little hat for winter!’

she exclaimed joyfully. ‘Meat for eat, skin for hat’—she told off these

benefits on her fingers.

Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and

lifted it carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of

old Hata. He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his

fingers, and stood looking down at the green insect. When it began to

chirp faintly, he listened as if it were a beautiful sound.

I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece from the old country,

short and heavy, with a stag’s head on the cock. When he saw me

examining it, he turned to me with his far-away look that always made

me feel as if I were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly and

gravely, and Ántonia translated:

‘My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine,

from Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you

not got here; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play

for his wedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you.’

I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were such

people as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything they had.

Even the mother was always offering me things, though I knew she

expected substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendly

silence, while the feeble minstrel sheltered in Ántonia’s hair went on

with its scratchy chirp. The old man’s smile, as he listened, was so

full of sadness, of pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it.

As the sun sank there came a sudden coolness and the strong smell of

earth and drying grass. Ántonia and her father went off hand in hand,

and I buttoned up my jacket and raced my shadow home.