Kabanata Kabanata 33 · Chapter XIV

The day after commencement I moved my books and desk upstairs, to an

empty room where I should be undisturbed, and I fell to studying in

earnest. I worked off a year’s trigonometry that summer, and began

Virgil alone. Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunny

little room, looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of

the blond pastures between, scanning the ‘Aeneid’ aloud and committing

long passages to memory. Sometimes in the evening Mrs. Harling called

to me as I passed her gate, and asked me to come in and let her play

for me. She was lonely for Charley, she said, and liked to have a boy

about. Whenever my grandparents had misgivings, and began to wonder

whether I was not too young to go off to college alone, Mrs. Harling

took up my cause vigorously. Grandfather had such respect for her

judgment that I knew he would not go against her.

I had only one holiday that summer. It was in July. I met Ántonia

downtown on Saturday afternoon, and learned that she and Tiny and Lena

were going to the river next day with Anna Hansen—the elder was all in

bloom now, and Anna wanted to make elderblow wine.

‘Anna’s to drive us down in the Marshalls’ delivery wagon, and we’ll

take a nice lunch and have a picnic. Just us; nobody else. Couldn’t you

happen along, Jim? It would be like old times.’

I considered a moment. ‘Maybe I can, if I won’t be in the way.’

On Sunday morning I rose early and got out of Black Hawk while the dew

was still heavy on the long meadow grasses. It was the high season for

summer flowers. The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides,

and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere. Across the wire

fence, in the long grass, I saw a clump of flaming orange-coloured

milkweed, rare in that part of the state. I left the road and went

around through a stretch of pasture that was always cropped short in

summer, where the gaillardia came up year after year and matted over

the ground with the deep, velvety red that is in Bokhara carpets. The

country was empty and solitary except for the larks that Sunday

morning, and it seemed to lift itself up to me and to come very close.

The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy rains to the west of

us had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream along the

wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwood

bushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for a

swim. The girls would not be along yet. For the first time it occurred

to me that I should be homesick for that river after I left it. The

sandbars, with their clean white beaches and their little groves of

willows and cottonwood seedlings, were a sort of No Man’s Land, little

newly created worlds that belonged to the Black Hawk boys. Charley

Harling and I had hunted through these woods, fished from the fallen

logs, until I knew every inch of the river shores and had a friendly

feeling for every bar and shallow.

After my swim, while I was playing about indolently in the water, I

heard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridge. I struck downstream

and shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view on the middle

span. They stopped the horse, and the two girls in the bottom of the

cart stood up, steadying themselves by the shoulders of the two in

front, so that they could see me better. They were charming up there,

huddled together in the cart and peering down at me like curious deer

when they come out of the thicket to drink. I found bottom near the

bridge and stood up, waving to them.

‘How pretty you look!’ I called.

‘So do you!’ they shouted altogether, and broke into peals of laughter.

Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back

to my inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself

in the sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosure

where the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves and

the woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out over

the water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept picking

off little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, and

breaking them up in my hands.

When I came upon the Marshalls’ delivery horse, tied in the shade, the

girls had already taken their baskets and gone down the east road which

wound through the sand and scrub. I could hear them calling to each

other. The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines between

the bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where their

roots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossoms

were unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer.

I followed a cattle path through the thick under-brush until I came to

a slope that fell away abruptly to the water’s edge. A great chunk of

the shore had been bitten out by some spring freshet, and the scar was

masked by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces.

I did not touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by

the warm silence about me. There was no sound but the high, singsong

buzz of wild bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I

peeped over the edge of the bank to see the little stream that made the

noise; it flowed along perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut

off from the muddy main current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the

lower shelf of the bank, I saw Ántonia, seated alone under the

pagoda-like elders. She looked up when she heard me, and smiled, but I

saw that she had been crying. I slid down into the soft sand beside her

and asked her what was the matter.

‘It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this smell,’ she said

softly. ‘We have this flower very much at home, in the old country. It

always grew in our yard and my papa had a green bench and a table under

the bushes. In summer, when they were in bloom, he used to sit there

with his friend that played the trombone. When I was little I used to

go down there to hear them talk—beautiful talk, like what I never hear

in this country.’

‘What did they talk about?’ I asked her.

She sighed and shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know! About music, and the

woods, and about God, and when they were young.’ She turned to me

suddenly and looked into my eyes. ‘You think, Jimmy, that maybe my

father’s spirit can go back to those old places?’

I told her about the feeling of her father’s presence I had on that

winter day when my grandparents had gone over to see his dead body and

I was left alone in the house. I said I felt sure then that he was on

his way back to his own country, and that even now, when I passed his

grave, I always thought of him as being among the woods and fields that

were so dear to him.

Ántonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love and

credulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces.

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me that before? It makes me feel more sure

for him.’ After a while she said: ‘You know, Jim, my father was

different from my mother. He did not have to marry my mother, and all

his brothers quarrelled with him because he did. I used to hear the old

people at home whisper about it. They said he could have paid my mother

money, and not married her. But he was older than she was, and he was

too kind to treat her like that. He lived in his mother’s house, and

she was a poor girl come in to do the work. After my father married

her, my grandmother never let my mother come into her house again. When

I went to my grandmother’s funeral was the only time I was ever in my

grandmother’s house. Don’t that seem strange?’

While she talked, I lay back in the hot sand and looked up at the blue

sky between the flat bouquets of elder. I could hear the bees humming

and singing, but they stayed up in the sun above the flowers and did

not come down into the shadow of the leaves. Ántonia seemed to me that

day exactly like the little girl who used to come to our house with Mr.

Shimerda.

‘Some day, Tony, I am going over to your country, and I am going to the

little town where you lived. Do you remember all about it?’

‘Jim,’ she said earnestly, ‘if I was put down there in the middle of

the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along the

river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember

all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick

out to trip you. I ain’t never forgot my own country.’

There was a crackling in the branches above us, and Lena Lingard peered

down over the edge of the bank.

‘You lazy things!’ she cried. ‘All this elder, and you two lying there!

Didn’t you hear us calling you?’ Almost as flushed as she had been in

my dream, she leaned over the edge of the bank and began to demolish

our flowery pagoda. I had never seen her so energetic; she was panting

with zeal, and the perspiration stood in drops on her short, yielding

upper lip. I sprang to my feet and ran up the bank.

It was noon now, and so hot that the dogwoods and scrub-oaks began to

turn up the silvery underside of their leaves, and all the foliage

looked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of one of

the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always a

breeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on the

grass. Below us we could see the windings of the river, and Black Hawk,

grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the rolling country, swelling

gently until it met the sky. We could recognize familiar farm-houses

and windmills. Each of the girls pointed out to me the direction in

which her father’s farm lay, and told me how many acres were in wheat

that year and how many in corn.

‘My old folks,’ said Tiny Soderball, ‘have put in twenty acres of rye.

They get it ground at the mill, and it makes nice bread. It seems like

my mother ain’t been so homesick, ever since father’s raised rye flour

for her.’

‘It must have been a trial for our mothers,’ said Lena, ‘coming out

here and having to do everything different. My mother had always lived

in town. She says she started behind in farm-work, and never has caught

up.’

‘Yes, a new country’s hard on the old ones, sometimes,’ said Anna

thoughtfully. ‘My grandmother’s getting feeble now, and her mind

wanders. She’s forgot about this country, and thinks she’s at home in

Norway. She keeps asking mother to take her down to the waterside and

the fish market. She craves fish all the time. Whenever I go home I

take her canned salmon and mackerel.’

‘Mercy, it’s hot!’ Lena yawned. She was supine under a little oak,

resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off the

high-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. ‘Come here,

Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair.’ She began to draw her

fingers slowly through my hair.

Ántonia pushed her away. ‘You’ll never get it out like that,’ she said

sharply. She gave my head a rough touzling and finished me off with

something like a box on the ear. ‘Lena, you oughtn’t to try to wear

those slippers any more. They’re too small for your feet. You’d better

give them to me for Yulka.’

‘All right,’ said Lena good-naturedly, tucking her white stockings

under her skirt. ‘You get all Yulka’s things, don’t you? I wish father

didn’t have such bad luck with his farm machinery; then I could buy

more things for my sisters. I’m going to get Mary a new coat this fall,

if the sulky plough’s never paid for!’

Tiny asked her why she didn’t wait until after Christmas, when coats

would be cheaper. ‘What do you think of poor me?’ she added; ‘with six

at home, younger than I am? And they all think I’m rich, because when I

go back to the country I’m dressed so fine!’ She shrugged her

shoulders. ‘But, you know, my weakness is playthings. I like to buy

them playthings better than what they need.’

‘I know how that is,’ said Anna. ‘When we first came here, and I was

little, we were too poor to buy toys. I never got over the loss of a

doll somebody gave me before we left Norway. A boy on the boat broke

her and I still hate him for it.’

‘I guess after you got here you had plenty of live dolls to nurse, like

me!’ Lena remarked cynically.

‘Yes, the babies came along pretty fast, to be sure. But I never

minded. I was fond of them all. The youngest one, that we didn’t any of

us want, is the one we love best now.’

Lena sighed. ‘Oh, the babies are all right; if only they don’t come in

winter. Ours nearly always did. I don’t see how mother stood it. I tell

you what, girls’—she sat up with sudden energy—‘I’m going to get my

mother out of that old sod house where she’s lived so many years. The

men will never do it. Johnnie, that’s my oldest brother, he’s wanting

to get married now, and build a house for his girl instead of his

mother. Mrs. Thomas says she thinks I can move to some other town

pretty soon, and go into business for myself. If I don’t get into

business, I’ll maybe marry a rich gambler.’

‘That would be a poor way to get on,’ said Anna sarcastically. ‘I wish

I could teach school, like Selma Kronn. Just think! She’ll be the first

Scandinavian girl to get a position in the high school. We ought to be

proud of her.’

Selma was a studious girl, who had not much tolerance for giddy things

like Tiny and Lena; but they always spoke of her with admiration.

Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her straw hat. ‘If I

was smart like her, I’d be at my books day and night. But she was born

smart—and look how her father’s trained her! He was something high up

in the old country.’

‘So was my mother’s father,’ murmured Lena, ‘but that’s all the good it

does us! My father’s father was smart, too, but he was wild. He married

a Lapp. I guess that’s what’s the matter with me; they say Lapp blood

will out.’

‘A real Lapp, Lena?’ I exclaimed. ‘The kind that wear skins?’

‘I don’t know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapps all right, and his

folks felt dreadful about it. He was sent up North on some government

job he had, and fell in with her. He would marry her.’

‘But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly, and had squint eyes,

like Chinese?’ I objected.

‘I don’t know, maybe. There must be something mighty taking about the

Lapp girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up North are always

afraid their boys will run after them.’

In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a lively

game of ‘Pussy Wants a Corner,’ on the flat bluff-top, with the little

trees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said she

wouldn’t play any more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, out of

breath.

‘Jim,’ Ántonia said dreamily, ‘I want you to tell the girls about how

the Spanish first came here, like you and Charley Harling used to talk

about. I’ve tried to tell them, but I leave out so much.’

They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the trunk and the

other girls leaning against her and each other, and listened to the

little I was able to tell them about Coronado and his search for the

Seven Golden Cities. At school we were taught that he had not got so

far north as Nebraska, but had given up his quest and turned back

somewhere in Kansas. But Charley Harling and I had a strong belief that

he had been along this very river. A farmer in the county north of

ours, when he was breaking sod, had turned up a metal stirrup of fine

workmanship, and a sword with a Spanish inscription on the blade. He

lent these relics to Mr. Harling, who brought them home with him.

Charley and I scoured them, and they were on exhibition in the Harling

office all summer. Father Kelly, the priest, had found the name of the

Spanish maker on the sword and an abbreviation that stood for the city

of Cordova.

‘And that I saw with my own eyes,’ Ántonia put in triumphantly. ‘So Jim

and Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!’

The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards come

so far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronado

never gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king? I

couldn’t tell them. I only knew the schoolbooks said he ‘died in the

wilderness, of a broken heart.’

‘More than him has done that,’ said Ántonia sadly, and the girls

murmured assent.

We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. The

curly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned red

as copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in the

stream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in the

willow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breeze

sank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and

somewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless,

leaning against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched their

foreheads.

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was

going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the

red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black

figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet,

straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On

some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun

was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the

horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained

within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share—black

against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing

on the sun.

Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball

dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The

fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten

plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.