This basement
was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the
left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon
the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts.
The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little
half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in
the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking.
The stove was
very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden
bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot
and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was
used to taking my bath without help. 'Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you
sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.'
It was pleasant
there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west
half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub,
watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the
dining-room until I called anxiously, 'Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are
burning!' Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were frightened
chickens.
She was a lean,
tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward
in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening
to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only
because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was
quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather
shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly
desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too,
was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in
it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.
After I was
dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the
wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside
door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place
for them to wash when they came in from work.
While my
grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the wooden bench behind
the stove and got acquainted with the cat—he caught not only rats and mice, but
gophers, I was told. The patch of
yellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and
grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new
Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. We did not
talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But
after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper
table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and
neighbours there.
My grandfather
said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he
was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity,
and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was
his beautiful, uneven, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was
like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more
impressive.
Buckboard wagon |
Grandfather's
eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a
fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular—so sound that he had
never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened
by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his
eyebrows were still coppery.
As we sat at the
table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother
had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to
this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among
mining-camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by
mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a
while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us,
but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.
The minute
supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony
down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him
to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a 'perfect gentleman,'
and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost
his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a
lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out
his 'chaps' and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy
boots, with tops stitched in bold design—roses, and true-lover's knots, and
undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels... (adapted to easier English from the original novel)
Vocabulary
Dugouts: bunkers
Gingerbread: a
moist brown cake, flavoured with ginger and treacle or syrup
Gophers:
squirrels
From
the web
Jim was reading “Life of Jesse James” while
travelling to meet his grandparents in Nebraska. Who was Jesse James?
Any
suggestions to read something interesting? Write to us
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