My Ántonia

by Willa Cather

  XI

  DURING the week before Christmas, Jake was the most important person ofour household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmas shopping.But on the 21st of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came downso thickly that from the sitting-room windows I could not see beyond thewindmill--its frame looked dim and gray, unsubstantial like a shadow. Thesnow did not stop falling all day, or during the night that followed. Thecold was not severe, but the storm was quiet and resistless. The men couldnot go farther than the barns and corral. They sat about the house most ofthe day as if it were Sunday; greasing their boots, mending theirsuspenders, plaiting whiplashes.

  On the morning of the 22d, grandfather announced at breakfast that itwould be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. Jake wassure he could get through on horseback, and bring home our things insaddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would be obliterated, anda newcomer in the country would be lost ten times over. Anyway, he wouldnever allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain.

  We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. I hadwanted to get some picture-books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulka wasable to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-coldstoreroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cutsquares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. We boundit between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico,representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-roomtable, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had files of thosegood old family magazines which used to publish colored lithographs ofpopular paintings, and I was allowed to use some of these. I took"Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine" for my frontispiece. On thewhite pages I grouped Sunday-School cards and advertising cards which Ihad brought from my "old country." Fuchs got out the old candle-moulds andmade tallow candles. Grandmother hunted up her fancy cake-cutters andbaked gingerbread men and roosters, which we decorated with burnt sugarand red cinnamon drops.

  On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things we were sending to theShimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on grandfather's gray gelding.When he mounted his horse at the door, I saw that he had a hatchet slungto his belt, and he gave grandmother a meaning look which told me he wasplanning a surprise for me. That afternoon I watched long and eagerly fromthe sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spot moving on the westhill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where the sky was taking on acoppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on mycap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see that hewas bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help myfather cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgottenhow much I liked them.

  By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in a cornerof the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supper we allgathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by the table,looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar was about fivefeet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbread animals,strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fitted intopasteboard sockets. Its real splendors, however, came from the mostunlikely place in the world--from Otto's cowboy trunk. I had never seenanything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, and afascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, and shoemaker'swax. From under the lining he now produced a collection of brilliantlycolored paper figures, several inches high and stiff enough to standalone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his old mother inAustria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace; there werethe three kings, gorgeously appareled, and the ox and the ass and theshepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a group of angels,singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the black slaves of thethree kings. Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legendsand stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said itreminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheets of cotton wool underit for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for a frozen lake.

  I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table in thelamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that his faceseemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savage scarthat made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twisted mustache. AsI remember them, what unprotected faces they were; their very roughnessand violence made them defenseless. These boys had no practiced mannerbehind which they could retreat and hold people at a distance. They hadonly their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one ofthose drifting, case-hardened laborers who never marry or have children oftheir own. Yet he was so fond of children!