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Page 32
He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eye
when he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He said he
would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out to husk
corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to the school
by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. He told me
he had a nice `lady-teacher' and that he liked to go to school.
At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did to
strangers.
`Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?' he asked.
Jelinek looked serious.
`Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a great
sin'--he looked straight at grandfather. `Our Lord has said that.'
Grandfather seemed to like his frankness.
`We believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soul
will come to its Creator as well off without a priest. We believe that
Christ is our only intercessor.'
The young man shook his head. `I know how you think. My teacher at the
school has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer for the
dead. I have seen too much.'
We asked him what he meant.
He glanced around the table. `You want I shall tell you? When I was a
little boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. I make
my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain to me. By
'n' by war-times come, when the Prussians fight us. We have very many
soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in that camp,
and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go about there to give
the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry the vessels with the
Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catch the sickness but me
and the priest. But we have no sickness, we have no fear, because we carry
that blood and that body of Christ, and it preserve us.' He paused,
looking at grandfather. `That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happened to
myself. All the soldiers know, too. When we walk along the road, the old
priest and me, we meet all the time soldiers marching and officers on
horse. All those officers, when they see what I carry under the cloth,
pull up their horses and kneel down on the ground in the road until we
pass. So I feel very bad for my kawntree-man to die without the Sacrament,
and to die in a bad way for his soul, and I feel sad for his family.'
We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank,
manly faith.
`I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these
things,' said grandfather, `and I would never be the one to say you were
not in God's care when you were among the soldiers.' After dinner it
was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong black
farm-horses to the scraper and break a road through to the Shimerdas', so
that a wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was the only
cabinetmaker in the neighbourhood was set to work on a coffin.
Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he told us
that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who `batched'
with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat.
From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barn with the blacks,
and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was
completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose about him; then he and
the horses would emerge black and shining.
Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carried
down into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planks
grandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor for
the oats-bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and the
doors were closed again and the cold draughts shut out, grandfather rode
away to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coat and
settled down to work. I sat on his worktable and watched him. He did not
touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece of paper,
and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he was thus engaged,
he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at his half-ear.
Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. At last he
folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us.
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