My Ántonia by Willa Cather (top android ebook reader TXT) 📕

would make the best dancer among us. On Saturday nights, Mrs. Harling used to play the old operas for us⁠—Martha, Norma, Rigoletto⁠—telling us the story while she played. Every Saturday night was like a party. The parlor, the back parlor, and the dining-room were warm and brightly lighted, with comfortable chairs and sofas, and gay pictures on the walls. One always felt at ease there. Ántonia brought her sewing and sat with us⁠—she was already beginning to make pretty clothes for herself. After the long winter evenings on the prairie, with Ambrosch’s sullen silences and her mother’s complaints, the Harlings’ house seemed, as she said, “like Heaven” to her. She was never too tired to make taffy or chocolate cookies for us. If Sally whispered in her ear, or Charley gave her three winks, Tony would rush into the kitchen and build a fire in the range on which she had already cooked three meals that day.

While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy to cool, Nina used to coax Ántonia to tell her stories⁠—about the calf that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning in the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Nina interpreted the stories about the crêche fancifully, and in spite of our derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia a short time before the Shimerdas left that country. We all liked Tony’s stories. Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky, and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart.

One evening when we were picking out kernels for walnut taffy, Tony told us a new story.

“Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear about what happened up in the Norwegian settlement last summer, when I was thrashing there? We were at Iversons’, and I was driving one of the grain-wagons.”

Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among us. “Could you throw the wheat into the bin yourself, Tony?” She knew what heavy work it was.

“Yes, mam, I did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boy that drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we got back to the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men put in the horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on the deck, cutting bands. I was sitting against a straw stack, trying to get some shade. My wagon wasn’t going out first, and somehow I felt the heat awful that day. The sun was so hot like it was going to burn the world up. After a while I see a man coming across the stubble, and when he got close I see it was a tramp. His toes stuck out of his shoes, and he hadn’t shaved for a long while, and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some sickness. He comes right up and begins to talk like he knows me already. He says: ‘The ponds in this country is done got so low a man couldn’t drownd himself in one of ’em.’

“I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we didn’t have rain soon we’d have to pump water for the cattle.

“ ‘Oh, cattle,’ he says, ‘you’ll all take care of your cattle! Ain’t you got no beer here?’ I told him he’d have to go to the Bohemians for beer; the Norwegians didn’t have none when they thrashed. ‘My God!’ he says, ‘so it’s Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.’

“Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, ‘Hello, partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I’m tired of trampin’. I won’t go no farther.’

“I tried to make signs to Ole, ’cause I thought that man was crazy and might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out of the sun and chaff⁠—it gets down your neck and sticks to you something awful when it’s hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to me and jumped headfirst right into the thrashing machine after the wheat.

“I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt had sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped, he was all beat and cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to get him out, and the machine ain’t never worked right since.”

“Was he clear dead, Tony?” we cried.

“Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There, now, Nina’s all upset. We won’t talk about it. Don’t you cry, Nina. No old tramp won’t get you while Tony’s here.”

Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly. “Stop crying, Nina, or I’ll always send you upstairs when Ántonia tells us about the country. Did they never find out where he came from, Ántonia?”

“Never, mam. He hadn’t been seen nowhere except in a little town they call Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there wasn’t any saloon. Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman hadn’t seen him. They couldn’t find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknife in his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece of paper, and some poetry.”

“Some poetry?” we exclaimed.

“I remember,” said Frances. “It was ‘The Old Oaken Bucket,’ cut out of a newspaper and nearly worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the office and showed it to me.”

“Now, wasn’t that strange, Miss Frances?” Tony asked thoughtfully. “What would anybody want to kill themselves in summer for? In thrashing time, too! It’s nice everywhere then.”

“So it is, Ántonia,” said Mrs. Harling heartily.