| XIII
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| THE WEEK FOLLOWING Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year's Day
all the world about us was a broth of grey slush, and the guttered
slope between the windmill and the barn was running black water.
The soft black earth stood out in patches along the roadsides.
I resumed all my chores, carried in the cobs and wood and water,
and spent the afternoons at the barn, watching Jake shell corn
with a hand-sheller.
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| One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Antonia and her
mother rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit.
It was the first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house,
and she ran about examining our carpets and curtains and furniture,
all the while commenting upon them to her daughter in an envious,
complaining tone. In the kitchen she caught up an iron pot that stood
on the back of the stove and said: `You got many, Shimerdas no got.'
I thought it weak-minded of grandmother to give the pot to her.
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| After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes,
she said, tossing her head: `You got many things for cook.
If I got all things like you, I make much better.'
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| She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could
not humble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward
Antonia and listened unsympathetically when she told me her father
was not well.
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| `My papa sad for the old country. He not look good.
He never make music any more. At home he play violin
all the time; for weddings and for dance. Here never.
When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Some days
he take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers
on the strings, like this, but never he make the music.
He don't like this kawntree.'
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| `People who don't like this country ought to stay at home,' I said severely.
`We don't make them come here.'
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| `He not want to come, never!' she burst out. `My mamenka
make him come. All the time she say: "America big country;
much money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls."
My papa, he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him.
He love very much the man what play the long horn like this'--
she indicated a slide trombone. "They go to school together
and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch
for be rich, with many cattle.'
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| `Your mama,' I said angrily, `wants other people's things.'
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| "Your grandfather is rich," she retorted fiercely. `Why he not help my papa?
Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is very smart boy.
For Ambrosch my mama come here.'
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| Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family.
Mrs. Shimerda and Antonia always deferred to him, though he was
often surly with them and contemptuous toward his father.
Ambrosch and his mother had everything their own way.
Though Antonia loved her father more than she did anyone else,
she stood in awe of her elder brother.
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| After I watched Antonia and her mother go over the hill
on their miserable horse, carrying our iron pot with them,
I turned to grandmother, who had taken up her darning,
and said I hoped that snooping old woman wouldn't come to see
us any more.
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| Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole
in Otto's sock. `She's not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old
to you. No, I wouldn't mourn if she never came again. But, you see,
a body never knows what traits poverty might bring out in 'em.
It makes a woman grasping to see her children want for things.
Now read me a chapter in "The Prince of the House of David."
Let's forget the Bohemians.'
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| We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle
in the corral ate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it
for them, and we hoped they would be ready for an early market.
One morning the two big bulls, Gladstone and Brigham Young,
thought spring had come, and they began to tease and butt
at each other across the barbed wire that separated them.
Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth
with their hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads.
Each withdrew to a far corner of his own corral, and then
they made for each other at a gallop. Thud, thud, we could
hear the impact of their great heads, and their bellowing
shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not
been dehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces.
Pretty soon the fat steers took it up and began butting and
horning each other. Clearly, the affair had to be stopped.
We all stood by and watched admiringly while Fuchs rode into
the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls again and again,
finally driving them apart.
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| The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the twentieth
of January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Otto
came in white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet.
They began to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:
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| `You've got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake.
They was a full-grown blizzard ordered for you.'
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| All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simply
spilled out of heaven, like thousands of featherbeds being emptied.
That afternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought
in their tools and made two great wooden shovels with long handles.
Neither grandmother nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed
the chickens and brought in a pitiful contribution of eggs.
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| Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn--
and the snow was still falling! There had not been such a
storm in the ten years my grandfather had lived in Nebraska.
He said at dinner that we would not try to reach the cattle--
they were fat enough to go without their corn for a day or two;
but tomorrow we must feed them and thaw out their water-tap so that they
could drink. We could not so much as see the corrals, but we knew
the steers were over there, huddled together under the north bank.
Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, were probably
warming each other's backs. `This'll take the bile out of 'em!'
Fuchs remarked gleefully.
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| At noon that day the hens had not been heard from.
After dinner Jake and Otto, their damp clothes now dried on them,
stretched their stiff arms and plunged again into the drifts.
They made a tunnel through the snow to the hen-house, with walls
so solid that grandmother and I could walk back and forth in it.
We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they thought night had
come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about, pecking at
the solid lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed
the lantern in their eyes, the hens set up a great cackling
and flew about clumsily, scattering down-feathers. The mottled,
pin-headed guinea-hens, always resentful of captivity,
ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried to poke their ugly,
painted faces through the snow walls. By five o'clock the chores
were done just when it was time to begin them all over again!
That was a strange, unnatural sort of day.
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