O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (ebook reader with internet browser .TXT) 📕

him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull, gave him a criminal look which he had not had during the trial.

Alexandra held out her hand. “Frank,” she said, her eyes filling suddenly, “I hope you’ll let me be friendly with you. I understand how you did it. I don’t feel hard toward you. They were more to blame than you.”

Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket. He had begun to cry. He turned away from Alexandra. “I never did mean to do not’ing to dat woman,” he muttered. “I never mean to do not’ing to dat boy. I ain’t had not’ing ag’in’ dat boy. I always like dat boy fine. An’ then I find him⁠—” He stopped. The feeling went out of his face and eyes. He dropped into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor, his hands hanging loosely between his knees, the handkerchief lying across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up in his mind a disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.

“I haven’t come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they were more to blame than you.” Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.

Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. “I guess dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on,” he said with a slow, bitter smile. “I not care a damn.” He stopped and rubbed the palm of his hand over the light bristles on his head with annoyance. “I no can t’ink without my hair,” he complained. “I forget English. We not talk here, except swear.”

Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone a change of personality. There was scarcely anything by which she could recognize her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not altogether human. She did not know what to say to him.

“You do not feel hard to me, Frank?” she asked at last.

Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. “I not feel hard at no woman. I tell you I not that kinda man. I never hit my wife. No, never I hurt her when she devil me something awful!” He struck his fist down on the warden’s desk so hard that he afterward stroked it absently. A pale pink crept over his neck and face. “Two, t’ree years I know dat woman don’ care no more ’bout me, Alexandra Bergson. I know she after some other man. I know her, oo‑oo! An’ I ain’t never hurt her. I never would‑a done dat, if I ain’t had dat gun along. I don’ know what in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I ain’t no man to carry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought‑a been⁠—But das a foolish talk.”

Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped before. Alexandra felt that there was something strange in the way he chilled off, as if something came up in him that extinguished his power of feeling or thinking.

“Yes, Frank,” she said kindly. “I know you never meant to hurt Marie.”

Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears. “You know, I most forgit dat woman’s name. She ain’t got no name for me no more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me do dat⁠—Honest to God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I don’ want to kill no boy and no woman. I not care how many men she take under dat tree. I no care for not’ing but dat fine boy I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go crazy sure ’nough.”

Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Frank’s clothes closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a gay young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl in Omaha had run away with him. It seemed unreasonable that life should have landed him in such a place as this. She blamed Marie bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who had loved her, even to poor old Joe Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about so proudly when she was a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Was there, then, something wrong in being warmhearted and impulsive like that? Alexandra hated to think so. But there was Emil, in the Norwegian graveyard at home, and here was Frank Shabata. Alexandra rose and took him by the hand.

“Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you pardoned. I’ll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can get you out of this place.”

Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from her face. “Alexandra,” he said earnestly, “if I git out‑a here, I not trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from; see my mother.”

Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button on her black jacket. “Alexandra,” he said in a low tone, looking steadily at the button, “you ain’ t’ink I use dat girl awful bad before⁠—”

“No, Frank. We won’t talk about that,” Alexandra said, pressing his hand. “I can’t help Emil now, so I’m going to do what I can for you. You know I don’t go away from home often, and I came up here on purpose to tell you this.”

The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra nodded, and he came in and touched the white button on his desk. The guard appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank led away down the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison and made her way to the streetcar. She had refused with horror the warden’s cordial invitation to “go through the institution.” As the car lurched over its uneven roadbed, back toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought of how she and Frank had