by Willa Cather
“ ‘Corn,’ he says, ‘there ain’t no corn.’
“ ‘What you talkin’ about?’ I said. ‘Ain’t we got forty acres?’
“ ‘We ain’t got an ear,’ he says, ’nor nobody else ain’t got none. All the corn in this country was cooked by three o’clock today, like you’d roasted it in an oven.’
“ ‘You mean you won’t get no crop at all?’ I asked him. I couldn’t believe it, after he’d worked so hard.
“ ‘No crop this year,’ he says. ‘That’s why we’re havin’ a picnic. We might as well enjoy what we got.’
“An’ that’s how your father behaved, when all the neighbours was so discouraged they couldn’t look you in the face. An’ we enjoyed ourselves that year, poor as we was, an’ our neighbours wasn’t a bit better off for bein’ miserable. Some of ’em grieved till they got poor digestions and couldn’t relish what they did have.”
The younger boys said they thought their father had the best of it. But Rudolf was thinking that, all the same, the neighbours had managed to get ahead more, in the fifteen years since that time. There must be something wrong about his father’s way of doing things. He wished he knew what was going on in the back of Polly’s mind. He knew she liked his father, but he knew, too, that she was afraid of something. When his mother sent over coffee-cake or prune tarts or a loaf of fresh bread, Polly seemed to regard them with a certain suspicion. When she observed to him that his brothers had nice manners, her tone implied that it was remarkable they should have. With his mother she was stiff and on her guard. Mary’s hearty frankness and gusts of good humour irritated her. Polly was afraid of being unusual or conspicuous in any way, of being “ordinary,” as she said!
When Mary had finished her story, Rosicky laid aside his pipe.
“You boys like me to tell you about some of dem hard times I been through in London?” Warmly encouraged, he sat rubbing his forehead along the deep creases. It was bothersome to tell a long story in English (he nearly always talked to the boys in Czech), but he wanted Polly to hear this one.
“Well, you know about dat tailor shop I worked in in London? I had one Christmas dere I ain’t never forgot. Times was awful bad before Christmas; de boss ain’t got much work, an’ have it awful hard to pay his rent. It ain’t so much fun, bein’ poor in a big city like London, I’ll say! All de windows is full of good t’ings to eat, an’ all de pushcarts in de streets is full, an’ you smell ’em all de time, an’ you ain’t got no money,—not a damn bit. I didn’t mind de cold so much, though I didn’t have no overcoat, chust a short jacket I’d outgrowed so it wouldn’t meet on me, an’ my hands was chapped raw. But I always had a good appetite, like you all know, an’ de sight of dem pork pies in de windows was awful fur me!
“Day before Christmas was terrible foggy dat year, an’ dat fog gits into your bones and makes you all damp like. Mrs. Lifschnitz didn’t give us nothin’ but a little bread an’ drippin’ for supper, because she was savin’ to try for to give us a good dinner on Christmas Day. After supper de boss say I can go an’ enjoy myself, so I went into de streets to listen to de Christmas singers. Dey sing old songs an’ make very nice music, an’ I run round after dem a good ways, till I got awful hungry. I t’ink maybe if I go home, I can sleep till morning an’ forgit my belly.
“I went into my corner real quiet, and roll up in my fedder quilt. But I ain’t got my head down, till I smell somet’ing good. Seem like it git stronger an’ stronger, an’ I can’t git to sleep noway. I can’t understand dat smell. Dere was a gas light in a hall across de court, dat always shine in at my window a little. I got up an’ look round. I got a little wooden box in my corner fur a stool, ’cause I ain’t got no chair. I picks up dat box, and under it dere is a roast goose on a platter! I can’t believe my eyes. I carry it to de window where de light comes in, an’ touch it and smell it to find out, an’ den I taste it to be sure. I say, I will eat chust one little bite of dat goose, so I can go to sleep, and tomorrow I won’t eat none at all. But I tell you, boys, when I stop, one half of dat goose was gone!”
The narrator bowed his head, and the boys shouted. But little Josephine slipped behind his chair and kissed him on the neck beneath his ear.
“Poor little Papa, I don’t want him to be hungry!”
“Da’s long ago, child. I ain’t never been hungry since I had your mudder to cook fur me.”
“Go on and tell us the rest, please,” said Polly.
“Well, when I come to realize what I done, of course, I felt terrible. I felt better in de stomach, but very bad in de heart. I set on my bed wid dat platter on my knees, an’ it all come to me; how hard dat poor woman save to buy dat goose, and how she get some neighbour to cook it dat got more fire, an’ how she put it in my corner to keep it away from dem hungry children. Dey was a old carpet hung up to shut my corner off, an’ de children wasn’t allowed to go in dere. An’ I know she put it in my corner because she trust me more’n she did de violin boy. I can’t stand it to face her after I spoil de Christmas. So I put on my shoes and go out into de city. I tell myself I better throw myself in de river; but I guess I ain’t dat kind of a boy.
“It was after twelve o’clock, an’ terrible cold, an’ I start out to walk about London all night. I walk along de river awhile, but dey was lots of drunks all along; men, and women too. I chust move along to keep away from de police. I git onto de Strand, an’ den over to New Oxford Street, where dere was a big German restaurant on de ground floor, wid big windows all fixed up fine, an’ I could see de people havin’ parties inside. While I was lookin’ in, two men and two ladies come out, laughin’ and talkin’ and feelin’ happy about all dey been eatin’ an’ drinkin’, and dey was speakin’ Czech,—not like de Austrians, but like de home folks talk it.
“I guess I went crazy, an’ I done what I ain’t never done before nor since. I went right up to dem gay people an’ begun to beg dem: ‘Fellow-countrymen, for God’s sake give me money enough to buy a goose!’
“Dey laugh, of course, but de ladies speak awful kind to me, an’ dey take me back into de restaurant and give me hot coffee and cakes, an’ make me tell all about how I happened to come to London, an’ what I was doin’ dere. Dey take my name and where I work down on paper, an’ both of dem ladies give me ten shillings.
“De big market at Covent Garden ain’t very far away, an’ by dat time it was open. I go dere an’ buy a big goose an’ some pork pies, an’ potatoes and onions, an’ cakes an’ oranges fur de children,—all I could carry! When I git home, everybody is still asleep. I pile all I bought on de kitchen table, an’ go in an’ lay down on my bed, an’ I ain’t waken up till I hear dat woman scream when she come out into her kitchen. My goodness, but she was surprise! She laugh an’ cry at de same time, an’ hug me and waken all de children. She ain’t stop fur no breakfast; she git de Christmas dinner ready dat morning, and we all sit down an’ eat all we can hold. I ain’t never seen dat violin boy have all he can hold before.
“Two three days after dat, de two men come to hunt me up, an’ dey ask my boss, and he give me a good report an’ tell dem I was a steady boy all right. One of dem Bohemians was very smart an’ run a Bohemian newspaper in New York, an’ de odder was a rich man, in de importing business, an’ dey been travelling togedder. Dey told me how t’ings was easier in New York, an’ offered to pay my passage when dey was goin’ home soon on a boat. My boss say to me: ‘You go. You ain’t got no chance here, an’ I like to see you git ahead, fur you always been a good boy to my woman, and fur dat fine Christmas dinner you give us all.’ An’ da’s how I got to New York.”
That night when Rudolph and Polly, arm in arm, were running home across the fields with the bitter wind at their backs, his heart leaped for joy when she said she thought they might have his family come over for supper on New Year’s Eve. “Let’s get up a nice supper, and not let your mother help at all; make her be company for once.”
“That would be lovely of you, Polly,” he said humbly. He wa
s a very simple, modest boy, and he, too, felt vaguely that Polly and her sisters were more experienced and worldly than his people.
VI
The winter turned out badly for farmers. It was bitterly cold, and after the first light snows before Christmas there was no snow at all,—and no rain. March was as bitter as February. On those days when the wind fairly punished the country, Rosicky sat by his window. In the fall he and the boys had put in a big wheat planting, and now the seed had frozen in the ground. All that land would have to be ploughed up and planted over again, planted in corn. It had happened before, but he was younger then, and he never worried about what had to be. He was sure of himself and of Mary; he knew they could bear what they had to bear, that they would always pull through somehow. But he was not so sure about the young ones, and he felt troubled because Rudolph and Polly were having such a hard start.
Sitting beside his flowering window while the panes rattled and the wind blew in under the door, Rosicky gave himself to reflection as he had not done since those Sundays in the loft of the furniture-factory in New York, long ago. Then he was trying to find what he wanted in life for himself; now he was trying to find what he wanted for his boys, and why it was he so hungered to feel sure they would be here, working this very land, after he was gone.
They would have to work hard on the farm, and probably they would never do much more than make a living. But if he could think of them as staying here on the land, he wouldn’t have to fear any great unkindness for them. Hardships, certainly; it was a hardship to have the wheat freeze in the ground when seed was so high; and to have to sell your stock because you had no feed. But there would be other years when everything came along right, and you caught up. And what you had was your own. You didn’t have to choose between bosses and strikers, and go wrong either way. You didn’t have to do with dishonest and cruel people. They were the only things in his experience he had found terrifying and horrible; the look in the eyes of a dishonest and crafty man, of a scheming and rapacious woman.
In the country, if you had a mean neighbour, you could keep off his land and make him keep off yours. But in the city, all the foulness and misery and brutality of your neighbours was part of your life. The worst things he had come upon in his journey through the world were human,—depraved and poisonous specimens of man. To this day he could recall certain terrible faces in the London streets. There were mean people everywhere, to be sure, even in their own country town here. But they weren’t tempered, hardened, sharpened, like the treacherous people in cities who live by grinding or cheating or poisoning their fellow-men. He had helped to bury two of his fellow-workmen in the tailoring trade, and he was distrustful of the organized industries that see one out of the world in big cities. Here, if you were sick, you had Doctor Ed to look after you; and if you died, fat Mr. Haycock, the kindest man in the world, buried you.
It seemed to Rosicky that for good, honest boys like his, the worst they could do on the farm was better than the best they would be likely to do in the city. If he’d had a mean boy, now, one who was crooked and sharp and tried to put anything over on his brothers, then town would be the place for him. But he had no such boy. As for Rudolph, the discontented one, he would give the shirt off his back to anyone who touched his heart. What Rosicky really hoped for his boys was that they could get through the world without ever knowing much about the cruelty of human beings. “Their mother and me ain’t prepared them for that,” he sometimes said to himself.
These thoughts brought him back to a grateful consideration of his own case. What an escape he had had, to be sure! He, too, in his time, had had to take money for repair work from the hand of a hungry child who let it go so wistfully; because it was money due his boss. And now, in all these years, he had never had to take a cent from anyone in bitter need,—never had to look at the face of a woman become like a wolf’s from struggle and famine. When he thought of these things, Rosicky would put on his cap and jacket and slip down to the barn and give his work-horses a little extra oats, letting them eat it out of his hand in their slobbery fashion. It was his way of expressing what he felt, and made him chuckle with pleasure.
The spring came warm, with blue skies,—but dry, dry as a bone. The boys began ploughing up the wheat-fields to plant them over in corn. Rosicky would stand at the fence corner and watch them, and the earth was so dry it blew up in clouds of brown dust that hid the horses and the sulky plough and the driver. It was a bad outlook.
The big alfalfa-field that lay between the home place and Rudolph’s came up green, but Rosicky was worried because during that open windy winter a great many Russian thistle plants had blown in there and lodged. He kept asking the boys to rake them out; he was afraid their seed would root and “take the alfalfa.” Rudolph said that was nonsense. The boys were working so hard planting corn, their father felt he couldn’t insist about the thistles, but he set great store by that big alfalfa field. It was a feed you could depend on,—and there was some deeper reason, vague, but strong. The peculiar green of that clover woke early memories in old Rosicky, went back to something in his childhood in the old world. When he was a little boy, he had played in fields of that strong blue-green colour.
One morning, when Rudolph had gone to town in the car, leaving a work-team idle in his barn, Rosicky went over to his son’s place, put the horses to the buggy-rake, and set about quietly raking up those thistles. He behaved with guilty caution, and rather enjoyed stealing a march on Doctor Ed, who was just then taking his first vacation in seven years of practice and was attending a clinic in Chicago. Rosicky got the thistles raked up, but did not stop to burn them. That would take some time, and his breath was pretty short, so he thought he had better get the horses back to the barn.
He got them into the barn and to their stalls, but the pain had come on so sharp in his chest that he didn’t try to take the harness off. He started for the house, bending lower with every step. The cramp in his chest was shutting him up like a jack-knife. When he reached the windmill, he swayed and caught at the ladder. He saw Polly coming down the hill, running with the swiftness of a slim greyhound. In a flash she had her shoulder under his armpit.
“Lean on me, Father, hard! Don’t be afraid. We can get to the house all right.”
Somehow they did, though Rosicky became blind with pain; he could keep on his legs, but he couldn’t steer his course. The next thing he was conscious of was lying on Polly’s bed, and Polly bending over him wringing out bath towels in hot water and putting them on his chest. She stopped only to throw coal into the stove, and she kept the tea-kettle and the black pot going. She put these hot applications on him for nearly an hour, she told him afterwards, and all that time he was drawn up stiff and blue, with the sweat pouring off him.
As the pain gradually loosed its grip, the stiffness went out of his jaws, the black circles round his eyes disappeared, and a little of his natural colour came back. When his daughter-in-law buttoned his shirt over his chest at last, he sighed.
“Da’s fine, de way I feel now, Polly. It was a awful bad spell, an’ I was so sorry it all come on you like it did.”
Polly was flushed and excited. “Is the pain really gone? Can I leave you long enough to telephone over to your place?”
Rosicky’s eyelids fluttered. “Don’t telephone, Polly. It ain’t no use to scare my wife. It’s nice and quiet here, an’ if I ain’t too much trouble to you, just let me lay still till I feel like myself. I ain’t got no pain now. It’s nice here.”
Polly bent over him and wiped the moisture from his face. “Oh, I’m so glad it’s over!” she broke out impulsively. “It just broke my heart to see you suffer so, Father.”
Rosicky motioned her to sit down on the chair where the teakettle had been, and looked up at her with that lively affectionate gleam in his eyes. “You was awful good to me, I won’t never forgit dat. I hate it to be sick on you like dis. Down at de barn I say to myself, dat young girl ain’t had much experience in sickness, I don�
�t want to scare her, an’ maybe she’s got a baby comin’ or somet’ing.”
Polly took his hand. He was looking at her so intently and affectionately and confidingly; his eyes seemed to caress her face, to regard it with pleasure. She frowned with her funny streaks of eyebrows, and then smiled back at him.
“I guess maybe there is something of that kind going to happen. But I haven’t told anyone yet, not my mother or Rudolph. You’ll be the first to know.”
His hand pressed hers. She noticed that it was warm again. The twinkle in his yellow-brown eyes seemed to come nearer.
“I like mighty well to see dat little child, Polly,” was all he said. Then he closed his eyes and lay half-smiling. But Polly sat still, thinking hard. She had a sudden feeling that nobody in the world, not her mother, not Rudolph, or anyone, really loved her as much as old Rosicky did. It perplexed her. She sat frowning and trying to puzzle it out. It was as if Rosicky had a special gift for loving people, something that was like an ear for music or an eye for colour. It was quiet, unobtrusive; it was merely there. You saw it in his eyes,—perhaps that was why they were merry. You felt it in his hands, too. After he dropped off to sleep, she sat holding his warm, broad, flexible brown hand. She had never seen another in the least like it. She wondered if it wasn’t a kind of gypsy hand, it was so alive and quick and light in its communications,—very strange in a farmer. Nearly all the farmers she knew had huge lumps of fists, like mauls, or they were knotty and bony and uncomfortable-looking, with stiff fingers. But Rosicky’s was like quick-silver, flexible, muscular, about the colour of a pale cigar, with deep, deep creases across the palm. It wasn’t nervous, it wasn’t a stupid lump; it was a warm brown human hand, with some cleverness in it, a great deal of generosity, and something else which Polly could only call “gypsy-like,”—something nimble and lively and sure, in the way that animals are.
