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Page 61
After I refused to join `the Owls,' as they were called, I made a bold
resolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew it
would be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather
didn't approve of dancing, anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to
dance I could go to the Masonic Hall, among `the people we knew.' It was
just my point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.
My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had a stove
in it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, change my
shirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all was quiet
and the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbed out, and
went softly through the yard. The first time I deceived my grandparents I
felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I soon ceased to
think about it.
The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward to all
the week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis' tent.
Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys who came down on
the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny were always
there, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry girls.
The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in their house
behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hung out to
dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his girls well,
looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told me once that his
own daughter died just as she was getting old enough to help her mother,
and that he had been `trying to make up for it ever since.' On summer
afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalk in front of his
laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watching his girls through the
big open window while they ironed and talked in Danish. The clouds of
white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot wind that withered his
vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expression seemed to
say that he had found the secret of contentment. Morning and evening he
drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed clothes, and
collecting bags of linen that cried out for his suds and sunny
drying-lines. His girls never looked so pretty at the dances as they did
standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the fine pieces,
their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest
wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat and curling in
little damp spirals about their ears. They had not learned much English,
and were not so ambitious as Tony or Lena; but they were kind, simple girls
and they were always happy. When one danced with them, one smelled their
clean, freshly ironed clothes that had been put away with rosemary leaves
from Mr. Jensen's garden.
There were never girls enough to go round at those dances, but everyone
wanted a turn with Tony and Lena.
Lena moved without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand often accented
the rhythm softly on her partner's shoulder. She smiled if one spoke to
her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into a soft, waking
dream, and her violet-coloured eyes looked sleepily and confidingly at one
from under her long lashes. When she sighed she exhaled a heavy perfume of
sachet powder. To dance `Home, Sweet Home,' with Lena was like coming in
with the tide. She danced every dance like a waltz, and it was always the
same waltz-- the waltz of coming home to something, of inevitable, fated
return. After a while one got restless under it, as one does under the
heat of a soft, sultry summer day.
When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you didn't return to anything.
You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked to schottische with
her; she had so much spring and variety, and was always putting in new
steps and slides. She taught me to dance against and around the
hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to the end of the
railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked up a living
with his fiddle, how different Antonia's life might have been!
Antonia often went to the dances with Larry Donovan, a passenger conductor
who was a kind of professional ladies' man, as we said. I remember how
admiringly all the boys looked at her the night she first wore her
velveteen dress, made like Mrs. Gardener's black velvet. She was lovely to
see, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a little parted when she
danced. That constant, dark colour in her cheeks never changed.
One evening when Donovan was out on his run, Antonia came to the hall with
Norwegian Anna and her young man, and that night I took her home. When we
were in the Cutters' yard, sheltered by the evergreens, I told her she must
kiss me good night.
`Why, sure, Jim.' A moment later she drew her face away and whispered
indignantly, `Why, Jim! You know you ain't right to kiss me like that.
I'll tell your grandmother on you!'
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