Bab Bab 9 · Chapter IX

The first snowfall came early in December. I remember how the world

looked from our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove that

morning: the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields

had faded out into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen

under its stiff willow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over

everything and disappearing in the red grass.

Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was,

faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to

ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ring

the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; but

grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there.

Whenever one looked at this slope against the setting sun, the circle

showed like a pattern in the grass; and this morning, when the first

light spray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderful

distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure

stirred me as it had never done before and seemed a good omen for the

winter.

As soon as the snow had packed hard, I began to drive about the country

in a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a wooden

goods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in the

old country and was very handy with tools. He would have done a better

job if I hadn’t hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, and

the next day I went over to take Yulka and Ántonia for a sleigh-ride.

It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into the

box, and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to the

Shimerdas’, I did not go up to the house, but sat in my sleigh at the

bottom of the draw and called. Ántonia and Yulka came running out,

wearing little rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. They

had heard about my sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. They

tumbled in beside me and we set off toward the north, along a road that

happened to be broken.

The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering white

stretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Ántonia said, the whole

world was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiar

landmarks. The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now only

a cleft between snowdrifts—very blue when one looked down into it. The

tree-tops that had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted,

as if they would never have any life in them again. The few little

cedars, which were so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong,

dusky green. The wind had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat

and nostrils smarted as if someone had opened a hartshorn bottle. The

cold stung, and at the same time delighted one. My horse’s breath rose

like steam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields

got back a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood

the palest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow was

crusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at the

edges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lash

in the wind.

The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shivering

beneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. But they

were so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother’s

scolding that they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter’s

house. The great fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, made

them behave like wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said they

never wanted to go home again. Couldn’t we settle down and live in

Russian Peter’s house, Yulka asked, and couldn’t I go to town and buy

things for us to keep house with?

All the way to Russian Peter’s we were extravagantly happy, but when we

turned back—it must have been about four o’clock—the east wind grew

stronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and the

sky became grey and sombre. I took off my long woollen comforter and

wound it around Yulka’s throat. She got so cold that we made her hide

her head under the buffalo robe. Ántonia and I sat erect, but I held

the reins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of

the time. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused

to go in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if

I went near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I

had to drive home directly against the wind. The next day I came down

with an attack of quinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two

weeks.

The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days—like a

tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields all

day, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulled

down over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I used to

think they were like Arctic explorers. In the afternoons, when

grandmother sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read ‘The

Swiss Family Robinson’ aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss family

had no advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I was

convinced that man’s strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired the

cheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm and

comfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when she was preparing

for the return of the hungry men, that this country was not like

Virginia; and that here a cook had, as she said, ‘very little to do

with.’ On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and on

other days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either pies

or cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favourite

pudding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag.

Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the most

interesting things we had to think about. Our lives centered around

warmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used to

wonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb and

their hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores so

conscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, and

look after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long while to

get the cold out of their bones. While grandmother and I washed the

dishes and grandfather read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat on

the long bench behind the stove, ‘easing’ their inside boots, or

rubbing mutton tallow into their cracked hands.

Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs used

to sing, ‘For I Am a Cowboy and Know I’ve Done Wrong,’ or, ‘Bury Me Not

on the Lone Prairee.’ He had a good baritone voice and always led the

singing when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse.

I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto’s

close-clipped head and Jake’s shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a

wet comb. I can see the sag of their tired shoulders against the

whitewashed wall. What good fellows they were, how much they knew, and

how many things they had kept faith with!

Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bartender, a miner; had

wandered all over that great Western country and done hard work

everywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it.

Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his name

with difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made him

behave like a crazy man—tore him all to pieces and actually made him

ill. But he was so soft-hearted that anyone could impose upon him. If

he, as he said, ‘forgot himself’ and swore before grandmother, he went

about depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovial

about the cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to work

overtime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with them

not to spare themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get

on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day.

On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that

fed us and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes

howling down by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to

remind the boys of wonderful animal stories; about grey wolves and

bears in the Rockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains.

Sometimes Fuchs could be persuaded to talk about the outlaws and

desperate characters he had known. I remember one funny story about

himself that made grandmother, who was working her bread on the

bread-board, laugh until she wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her

hands being floury. It was like this:

When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of his

relatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, to

join her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children,

but it was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey.

Fuchs said he ‘got on fine with the kids,’ and liked the mother, though

she played a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have not

one baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeserved

notoriety, since he was travelling with her. The steerage stewardess

was indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. The

first-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took an

embarrassing interest in Otto, and often enquired of him about his

charge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as he

said, ‘to carry some of them.’ The trip to Chicago was even worse than

the ocean voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for

the babies and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best,

but no woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies.

The husband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modest

wages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushed

by the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion to

blame. ‘I was sure glad,’ Otto concluded, ‘that he didn’t take his hard

feeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for me, all

right! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller’s having such hard

luck, Mrs. Burden?’

Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these things

to his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he didn’t

realize that he was being protected by Providence.