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Page 10
`A little,' I admitted, `but I'd like to stay, anyhow.'
`Well, if you see one, don't have anything to do with him. The big yellow
and brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull-snakes and help to keep the
gophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out of that hole in
the bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about as big as a big
'possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He takes a chicken once
in a while, but I won't let the men harm him. In a new country a body
feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him come out and watch me
when I'm at work.'
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down the
path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of the
draw; when she came to the first bend, she waved at me and disappeared. I
was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content.
I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely
approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There
were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I
turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and
ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever
seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers
scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered
draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing
its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave.
The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers.
Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me.
Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as
I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was
something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did
not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like
that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun
and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be
dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it
comes as naturally as sleep.
III
ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance
of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them some provisions, as
they had come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or
chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of
potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother packed
some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and several pumpkin pies
in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up to the front seat and
jolted off past the little pond and along the road that climbed to the big
cornfield.
I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there was
only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high wagon-seat
one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wild thing,
avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow.
And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of
them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches
which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie.
Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full
of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his
bites as he ate down toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the
homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him more than
it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they left the old
country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative of Mrs. Shimerda.
The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the
county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything
he chose. They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even
to make their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was
well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and
frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a
skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his
fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick
up money by it at home.
`If they're nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in
that cave of Krajiek's,' said grandmother. `It's no better than a badger
hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he's made them pay twenty
dollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth ten.'
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