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 Antonia
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 Antonia, 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.
Antonia 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. Antonia 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.
Antonia 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,' Antonia 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,' Antonia 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 Antonia 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.
