Читать книгу Country People - Ruth Suckow - Страница 6

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August liked the new community. He saw that in some respects it was ahead of Turkey Creek. For one thing, there was a railroad, a main line of the Illinois Central that connected Richland directly with Chicago. It would be easier to market crops here. There would not be so much hauling to do. It was only eleven miles from "Wapsie," the county seat, and that was an advantage. And, then, he liked the looks of the country. There was not so much timber, more prairie-land; and after all the clearing that he had had to do about Turkey Creek, August was not fond of timber. He said little, but he made up his mind before very long that he wanted to get hold of some land about here and settle down. Someone would be wanting to sell and move out. He had been saving ever since he started working for other people and was putting away some all the time. When he saw a good piece of land he was going to try to get it, paying for it gradually as he could. And he had his eyes open for some girl who looked as if she would make him a good wife.

There were not so many Germans here as around Turkey Creek, and there were some Lutherans among them, so that they had no German Methodist church. Those who were close enough drove over to the Turkey Creek church when the weather was good. Most of them began "going in town." They drove to the Richland church, four of them together, two girls and two boys, in a two-seated buggy. The old people did not care to go there because the services were in English. They thought that it meant, too, that the young people were getting away from them.

There were more good times not connected with the church than there had been at Turkey Creek. Socials at the country schools, bob-rides, and big country parties where they played the old country games and kissing-games until the whole thing ended in a general "spooning," with the lights out. August was bashful. Herman Klaus urged him to get a girl and come on. But he did not go to these parties very much until he began keeping company with Emma Stille.

That was in the first summer after he came to Richland. Henry Baumgartner let him go over to help the Stilles at threshing-time. The Stille boys had come over to help the Baumgartners. The Stille farm was about two miles from where August was working.

Old Wilhelm Stille was the one who used to preach in the Turkey Creek church. He was a gentle, dreamy kind of man. His threshing was always left until near the last. But old lady Stille saw to it that he did not get too far behind. People spoke of her as "someone to watch out for." She was short, squat, heavy. She had a round, wrinkled, crafty face with narrow, suspicious eyes. She looked as if she might just have come from the old country. She parted her hair smoothly in the middle and wore round ear-rings. When they drove into town, she never wore a hat, but a dark scarf tied over her head. Her dark, thick, shapeless clothes, her shawls, her scarf, her soft felt slippers, all added to the feeling of craft, of slyness, that she gave. People were afraid of her. She was stingy, too, as stingy as the Baumgartners; but the girls saw to it that the threshers were well fed.

There were two of the Stille girls at home, Emma and Mollie. Herman Klaus liked Mollie Stille pretty well. Everyone liked the Stille girls. They said that they were just nice girls, not so queer as their father and without their mother's meanness. They waited on the table when the threshers came. The men all knew them and joked with them. August had nothing to say, but he knew every move that Emma Stille made as she hurried around the long table bringing in more stewed chicken and coffee. She was not very large, but she looked like a good worker. Her black hair curled a little from the heat, and her face was flushed. Her lips, full German lips, curved, dark red, were slightly parted. The men teased her. "Hurry up there, Emma! Emma, you're too slow!" August sat eating industriously, without looking up; but when Emma came near him and put out her hand to take his coffee-cup, he caught the faint scent of heat that came from her, saw the little beads of perspiration about the roots of her shiny black hair.

He liked her. He wondered if she was pretty strong. She seemed to be able to get through with a lot of work. She did not look in the least like her mother. She was a giggler; she and Mollie both could seem to giggle by the hour, but just the same she was pretty sensible. She taught country school in the Benning Township school-house, but she knew how to wait on threshers.

The old man Stille was not badly off despite his preaching. He had come out in an early day and had managed—he and the boys together—to get hold of a good deal of land. He had helped the boys, and he ought to be able to help the girls a little, too. The Stille girls would have had more beaus if the young men had not been afraid to get mixed up with that old lady. She was down on all her daughters-in-law. That would not stop August. He'd like to see any old woman that could bother him very much.

The threshers were at the Stilles' two days. It was in early September, dry, burning weather, when the bright new evergreens in the grove at the north of the house stood motionless and pointed against the blue sky. The men worked with their old horse-power thresher out in the fields, where the stubble was bright and harsh under their feet and the sun blazed on the yellow-gold straw-stacks that piled up behind the machine. Emma and Mollie came out once to see them work. Some of the men stopped for a moment and "joshed" with them, offered to let them run the machine, told them they ought to be out here helping thresh instead of sitting around the house doing nothing.

"Ja, doing nothing!" the girls scoffed. "I guess we'd see what would happen if you didn't get any supper to-night."

"Oh, do you get supper?" Herman Klaus said. "I thought your ma did that, and you girls set around looking nice." They struck out at him until he backed off from them, holding up his hands and shouting, "Hey! Hey! I gotta work! Owgust, come here once and help!"

August was too bashful yet to join in. He pretended not to notice, but he saw the girls, standing there leaning against each other, half closing their eyes against the sun, which was bright on their black hair and flushed cheeks, the blue dresses against the blazing gold of the straw-stacks and the stubble out under the blue prairie-sky. The chaff filled the air, and the men turned to grin with a flash of white teeth in their blackened faces. That night August "cleaned up" very carefully, although usually he didn't think it was much use until threshing was over.

After that, Herman began to tease him about Emma Stille. August sat next to her at a bob-ride one night. Either she managed it, or he did, or Herman and Mollie, he didn't know just who. She had come with Herman and Mollie and didn't have any fellow of her own that night. The moon was not up yet. It was dark except for the dim, ghostly white glare of the snow. The fur of the buffalo robes was cold to the touch, but underneath them it was all warm, dark, secret, and intimate. He could feel Emma beside him, her arm against his, her feet close to his down in the warm straw in the bottom of the bob, her frosty breath. When the bob-runners struck a rut, Emma fell over against August. He steadied her and said, "Whoa, there!" Then he kept his arm around her the rest of the way until they stopped at the Stille farm, and she struggled out of the warm nest of straw under the robes. "Hey, August, ain't you cold? Lost your girl?" the rest all shouted.

He had never gone to the box socials, always grunting shamefacedly, "Ach, I don't want to go there; I ain't got no girl to take," when Herman urged him to go. But he went to one that winter, out in the Benning Township school-house where Emma taught. Mollie told Herman which was Emma's box, and Herman told August—a big shoe-box covered with ruffled red crêpe-paper and a huge green bow. When it was put up for auction, August turned as red as the box. Martin Graettinger, a young fellow from Benning Township, was bidding for it. Now that he had started, August was doggedly determined to let no one get ahead of him, and although he had no idea of paying so much, and it made him squirm, he got the box for three dollars and sixty cents. He and Emma and Mollie and Herman ate together in a corner of the room, which they barricaded with chairs, the girls giggling and Herman teasing them, August sitting red and silent, but happy. People thought that he and Emma would "go together" now.

But August was slow to get started. He did not take Emma anywhere until the next summer. He was cautious, and, besides, he had to save his money. Then he and Herman decided to ask the two Stille girls to go to the Fourth of July celebration at Richland Grove.

They started early and called at the Stille place for the girls. They had hired a team. They wore their best dark, thick suits, which made their hands and necks look browner. The girls wore striped summer dresses with tight basques, and Mollie had fastened a row of "spit-curls" across her forehead. August did the driving. Emma sat on the front seat beside him, and Herman and Mollie were "cutting up" in the back seat, Herman shouting, "Now, Emma, you make that Owgust act decent up there in front, where I can't look after him."

"You better act decent yourself," Emma retorted. August blushed furiously.

The big wooden gate of the grove was propped open. "This way, boys!" a man shouted jovially. They drove in slowly over the fresh wheel-marks that had smoothed down the long green grass and looked around for a place to tie. The buggy-wheels scraped over a stump half hidden in the grass, lifting up the buggy on one side and making the girls squeal. They stopped. No one seemed to know just what to do.

"Well, might as well get out," Herman said. "What you girls sitting in here for?" The girls stood aside while the boys staked out the horses. Then they all wandered off together, not knowing just what to do now that they were here. There were bunches of girls going around together, children darting off and being hauled back, women shrieking, "Come here, Mister! You don't get away yet. Come back here and fix this swing."

The grove had been well cleared of underbrush, and there were open spaces through which the sun shone golden-green. There were bur-oaks in clumps, larger oaks standing apart, full-leaved, casting a gracious shade. The ground lay in smooth, rounded slopes with long fine green grass that was full of little whirring things. It was sprinkled with wild gooseberry bushes, bitter-smelling white yarrow, clumps of catnip filled with black-bodied wild bees. The creek was dry, a narrow stream bed filled with hot white sand. Some children were running along it with bare feet.

There were swings put up, games going on. Rigs were standing all about: wagons, buggies of all descriptions, a carryall. Horses, big farm horses, were staked out with ropes. They would begin to eat the bark off the trees, and then the men would have to run up and tie them somewhere else. There were family groups, old ladies sitting on cushions or in buggies, unattached boys going about hoping to find girls, men pitching horseshoes. The four young people were glad when it was time for the program.

The speaker's stand was built of fresh new planks, with a resiny scent, bound around with red-white-and-blue bunting. There was an amphitheatre of planks laid across low saw-horses. August and Herman and the two girls stood at the edge of the crowd. There was a smell of perspiring people, cloth, starched dresses, planks. Babies cried. The chorus sang patriotic songs. A strong, fierce-looking girl went pounding to the front of the platform and declaimed "Barbara Frietchie" in a loud, coarse voice. When she came to "Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf," she caught up the flag and waved it wildly. Some people clapped, others looked half gratified and half foolish. The chorus sang again, "We're tenting to-night on the old camp ground." Despite harsh untrained voices, there was something touching about the sad cadences, sung there in the open, breezy grove. State Representative Calkins, from "Wapsie," spoke. There was a scraping and moving-about when he first came forward, and then a long silence before he began. He spoke loudly, but it was hard to hear him. The breeze seemed to carry his voice away from all except the people directly in front of him. The children were still playing in the swings. Young people who did not care about speeches, the oak leaves rustling, the horses, the whispering on the outskirts of the audience, drowned the speech. Herman and Mollie got tired of it and slipped away. August and Emma felt foolish when they saw that the others had gone. Emma's brother, Willie Stille, was in the chorus, and he sat up there grinning at them.

They sat near the buggy to eat their lunch. Emma and Mollie had brought a huge lunch in a big red pasteboard box. The table-cloth was hunched up in places by little spears and bunches of grass. But eating seemed to dispel their awkwardness.

After dinner the boys went away for a while and pitched horseshoes. The girls went to sleep, and awoke with hot, shiny faces. They took down their hair, and were just putting it up again when the boys came back. They squealed. The boys teased Mollie about her spit-curls until she got angry and threw them away. Herman put them on and pranced around, and then he had to go after Mollie and make peace. August and Emma sat down on the buggy-robe on the grass. August took off his heavy felt hat. There was a white band of flesh that shaded into red-brown below the golden roots of his hair. The oak leaves rustled dreamily.

August and Emma wandered off together. They crossed the hot white stream bed and climbed the hill, sat down in the shade between some trees and gooseberry bushes. Emma picked some of the gooseberries to take home, and August helped her pull off the woody little hulls. He put his hand over hers in the grass. The hand quivered, and he held it closer, his hard brown fingers grasping a little higher on the wrist. There was an exciting incongruity between their halting self-conscious talk and the warm, thrilling animal intimacy of their hot, moist palms in the long fine grass. The shouting from the races down on the level ground came to them long-drawn-out and dreamily distant. They were aware of the little green things that jumped about in the grass and of the heat of their two hands on the cool earth near the grass roots.

When they went back, Mollie and Herman were sitting in the buggy "spooning."

August made Herman drive home. He and Emma sat in the back seat. Herman kept saying, "Why are you two so quiet back there?"

"Ach, you shut up, and tend to your driving." August put his arm around Emma. She took off her hat and put her head against his shoulder. The weeds along the roadside were damp, and wet night odours and mists came up from the fields. There was nothing but riding, jolting on through the dusk, the horses' hoofs pounding on the hard road, the buggy-wheels scraping.

After that August and Emma "kept company right along." The old lady Stille made little trouble, for she wanted her girls to be married. Wilhelm Stille promised to let them go on one of his farms, the one between Richland and "Wapsie," with the privilege of paying for it gradually. Emma did not teach country school the next year, but stayed at home getting ready to be married. The wedding would be as soon as August had enough saved to start them out on the farm.

The first day that August could get away they drove into "Wapsie." The four of them again, in the Stilles' two-seated buggy, August and Emma and Herman and Mollie. It was late February, just before the last thaw. The road to "Wapsie" was a winter study in dull black and white. The snow, which had an opaque, thick look under the colourless winter sky, drifted down the black earth of the slopes; the plum-trees in interlaced masses along the creek, low, spreading, done in smoky black, purple tinging the massed farther trees and the bushes; the creek half under thin greyish ice cracked and broken down in places; the road dead black, sifted over with fine snow. The buggy looked small on that great expanse of land, the hoofs of the horses on the hard wintry road made a lonesome sound.

The town had a closed-up winter look. The girls did not speak as they drove along the wintry street. They sat small and subdued in their heavy country wraps and dark knitted hoods. They drove to the court-house. The two boys tramped solemnly into the old brick building, with its dusty wooden floors and brown spittoons and glimpses of littered rooms, with shelves stuck full of records. August got the licence of the county clerk, a little crippled man with one shoulder higher than the other.

Then they drove to the minister's house.

The girls got out of the buggy and stood stiffly on the board side-walk while the boys tied the team to a wooden hitching-post. All four went solemnly up the walk to the house. They did not know whether to knock or to open the storm-door. No one heard them at first, and they went into the chilly, bare little entry, where overshoes and a fibre mat were piled, until August finally rang the bell.

"Ring again once," Emma whispered.

The minister's wife came, tall, gaunt, with spectacles. She said in a businesslike way:

"Did you wish to see Mr. Taylor? Step inside."

They filed silently into the parlour. They sat waiting, the girls clasping their hands nervously, staring at the hard-coal burner, the lounge, the pink sea-shell on the stand.

The minister came in with hastily brushed hair. They sat in frozen embarrassment.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

August cleared his throat resolutely. He and Herman had been turning their caps on their knees, with hands red from the cold.

"We came to get married. If you——"

"Oh, certainly, certainly," Mr. Taylor assured them hastily.

Mrs. Taylor had thought "wedding" when they first came in, and had come back into the room. Now she asked the girls if they would not like to take off their wraps. She offered to let them go into the bedroom "if they wanted to fix up any," but they shyly refused. August asked her where the kitchen was, and after he had washed his hands at the granite basin, he came back and murmured, "Do you want to wash up, Emma?"

After many backings and exchanging of places, with a nervous determination on Mr. Taylor's part to mistake Mollie for the bride, which made Herman blush, the wedding party was arranged. August and Emma stood between the two windows, with Herman and Mollie in frozen attitudes on each side of them, and Mr. Taylor facing them.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the presence of God and these witnesses to join this man and this woman in the holy bonds of matrimony."

The voice sounded sonorous in the small, bleak room. Emma stood in trembling quietness. August had to clear his throat, and then his voice came out gruffly. Herman breathed hard and eased his weight. Some coal dropped in the stove.

They felt shy and happy under the congratulations of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. They signed the certificate, and August fished in his pocket and brought out two dollars for the minister. Emma said that they would bring his wife a chicken in the summer.

They drove back to the farm down the dim, chilly road, the bare bushes thin and small, the fields spreading out black and sprinkled with snow. There was a wintry red in the Western sky.

They had supper at the Stilles', where the old lady had got up a big meal for them, inviting in all the married children. Emma was to stay there until August "got things fixed" at the farm and could come after her. But he had to go straight over to the farm in the morning. One of the Stille boys was staying there now, looking after things, but the next day August was to take possession.