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Page 12
When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointed
toward them, and Antonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me how
glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop
until the ground itself stopped-- fell away before us so abruptly that the
next step would have been out into the tree-tops. We stood panting on the
edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below
us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls'
skirts were blown out before them. Antonia seemed to like it; she held her
little sister by the hand and chattered away in that language which seemed
to me spoken so much more rapidly than mine. She looked at me, her eyes
fairly blazing with things she could not say.
`Name? What name?' she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told her my
name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She pointed into
the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and said again, `What
name?'
We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like a
baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Antonia pointed up to the sky
and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not
satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word,
making it sound like `ice.' She pointed up to the sky, then to my eyes,
then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that she
distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her knees
and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then
to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.
`Oh,' I exclaimed, `blue; blue sky.'
She clapped her hands and murmured, `Blue sky, blue eyes,' as if it amused
her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind, she learned a score of
words. She was alive, and very eager. We were so deep in the grass that
we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of
us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Antonia had said the new words
over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased silver ring she wore
on her middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite
sternly. I didn't want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless
and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never
seen before. No wonder Krajiek got the better of these people, if this was
how they behaved.
While we were disputing `about the ring, I heard a mournful voice calling,
`Antonia, Antonia!' She sprang up like a hare. 'Tatinek! Tatinek!' she
shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Antonia
reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched
my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds.
I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by
my elders.
We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was waiting
for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his pocket,
opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the
other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at
her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never forget,
`Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Antonia!'
IV
ON THE AFTERNOON of that same Sunday I took my first long ride on my pony,
under Otto's direction. After that Dude and I went twice a week to the
post-office, six miles east of us, and I saved the men a good deal of time
by riding on errands to our neighbours. When we had to borrow anything, or
to send about word that there would be preaching at the sod schoolhouse, I
was always the messenger. Formerly Fuchs attended to such things after
working hours.
All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that first
glorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were no fences
in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands,
trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the
sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were
introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the
persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to
find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of
the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower
seed as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came
through with all the women and children, they had the sunflower trail to
follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Fuchs's story, but insist
that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend
has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the
roads to freedom.
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