Willa Cather Immitation

In this assignment I worked to immitate Willa Cather's writing style in Book one Chapter ten of her novel My Antonia. (The text is in italics while my immitation is farther below)
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from the Shimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a cold which made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was glad to have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen Mr. Shimerda out hunting.
`He's made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar that he buttons on outside his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among 'em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scared of cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers.'
`All but the crazy boy,' Jake put in. `He never wears the coat. Krajiek says he's turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits must be getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfield yesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he'd shot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face and took on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was smarter'n me and put 'em back in his sack and walked off.'
Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. `Josiah, you don't suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, do you?'
`You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline,' he replied gravely.
Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beasts and ought to be good for food, but their family connections were against them. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged to the rat family.
When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jake packing a hamper basket in the kitchen.
`Now, Jake,' grandmother was saying, `if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take him along. There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn't have got hens from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I reckon she was confused and didn't know where to begin. I've come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no matter what you don't have.
`Just as you say, ma'm,' said Jake, `but I hate to think of Krajiek getting a leg of that old rooster.' He tramped out through the long cellar and dropped the heavy door behind him.
After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up and climbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas', we heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Antonia, her head tied up and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on the pump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked back over her shoulder, and, catching up her pail of water, started at a run for the hole in the bank.
Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring the provisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icy path toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came from the stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the wind whisked them roughly away.
Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother's hand. She did not say `How do!' as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which were tied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at everyone.
The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing up at her mother, hid again. Antonia was washing pans and dishes in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw a grain-sack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cave was stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer.
Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that had been frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian woman laughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and, catching up an empty coffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positively vindictive.
Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admitting their stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with the hamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda's reproaches. Then the poor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid no heed to her, but called Antonia to come and help empty the basket. Tony left her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like this before.
`You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad,' she whispered, as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the things grandmother handed her.
The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noises and stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack of potatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity.
`Haven't you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Antonia? This is no place to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?'
`We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office what he throw out. We got no potatoes, Mrs. Burden,' Tony admitted mournfully.
When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up the door-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out from behind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth grey hair, as if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was clean and neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He took grandmother's arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much bigger than an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on one of the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw. The old man held the lantern. `Yulka,' he said in a low, despairing voice, `Yulka; my Antonia!'
Grandmother drew back. `You mean they sleep in there--your girls?' He bowed his head.
Tony slipped under his arm. `It is very cold on the floor, and this is warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there,' she insisted eagerly. `My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese in Bohemie. See, Jim?' She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek had built against the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came.
Grandmother sighed. `Sure enough, where WOULD you sleep, dear! I don't doubt you're warm there. You'll have a better house after while, Antonia, and then you will forget these hard times.'
Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointed his wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his hand on Antonia's shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughter translated. He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the old country; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. He left Bohemia with more than a thousand dollars in savings, after their passage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By the time they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxen and some old farm machinery, they had very little money left. He wished grandmother to know, however, that he still had some money. If they could get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and chickens and plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and Antonia were both old enough to work in the fields, and they were willing to work. But the snow and the bitter weather had disheartened them all.
Antonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them in the spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but the logs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had been felled.
While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on the floor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiously toward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wanted to make his queer noises for me--to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse--but he did not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek was always trying to be agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mind that he must make up for his deficiencies.
Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over, and, while Antonia translated, put in a word now and then on her own account. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever she heard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest and brought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack and half as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boy began to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirred the contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, very pungent, even among the other odours of that cave. She measured a teacup full, tied it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously to grandmother.
`For cook,' she announced. `Little now; be very much when cook,' spreading out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell to a gallon. `Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eat better in my country.'
`Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda,' grandmother said dryly. `I can't say but I prefer our bread to yours, myself.'
Antonia undertook to explain. `This very good, Mrs. Burden'-- she clasped her hands as if she could not express how good--'it make very much when you cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, in the gravy--oh, so good!'
All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily good Christian people could forget they were their brothers' keepers.
`I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard to keep. Where's a body to begin, with these people? They're wanting in everything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that, I guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as they are. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?'
`He's a worker, all right, ma'm, and he's got some ketch-on about him; but he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world; and then, ag'in, they can be too mean.'
That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the package Mrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips that looked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthy odour. We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable.
`They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain't dried fish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, I shouldn't want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with old clothes and goose pillows.'
She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest....

The summer breeze blew against my brow as I dashed through street, jumping over a short hedge and narrowly missing a small brown feral cat. The air felt refreshing on my brow as I ran along the sidewalk, past the long uncut grass of my neighbor’s yards. The air carried the scent of the pine trees and azaleas and which tickled my nose as I ran home. I worried that I wouldn’t make it home in time and put on an extra burst of speed, racing the street lamps home. The sun was setting behind me, a giant ball of fire as red as a blood orange. The street lamps started to turn on, their orange glow being announced by a slight humming. My shadow was cast out in front of him taking the form of an emaciated giant, as if to warn me of the punishment he would face if I didn’t return home in time.
As I neared my house, a two story white house with a wraparound porch, I saw my father gazing out the front window searching the woods at the edge of the empty lot for my figure, he then turned and spotted me sprinting towards the house. He pointed to his wristwatch and glared at me. I made a note not to cut it this close to curfew next time. As leaned over on the front porch to catch my breath I saw the Cortezes gathering their two sons, Miguel and Pablo, together to come over to our house for dinner.
I started to remember when they had first moved into the neighborhood, Miguel and Pablo were very friendly when they first met me and we quickly became close friends and would get enough people together to play soccer while the other parents met the Cortezes.
I was brought back to the present by the smell of corn pudding and mashed potatoes drifting out to the front porch. I rushed to the bathroom and washed my hands thoroughly before I walked into the dinning room. Right then there was a knock on the door and I turned to open it. Out on the front porch were the Cortezes. Mr. Cortez was smiling brightly and was dressed neatly. Behind him was his wife who simply nodded as I welcomed them inside and led them to the dinning room. Pablo and Miguel waved at me as they walked into the dinning room.
“Ded you git ome in time?” asked Miguel with a knowing smile. He had been punished for returning home late a week earlier
“Just barely,” I said, grinning.
I led them into the dinning room where the grownups were already seated and talking to one another. The windows were open letting in the cool night air. The last rays of sunlight were shining through, painting the sky all sorts of shades of pink and red. Fireflies started to come out as the meal progressed and Pablo and Miguel went outside to catch some while I searched for a jar to put them in.
“We’re so glad that you came tonight,” said Mary, Chris’s mom.
“Gracias. We are happy you invite us,” said Mr. Cortez. “I have trouble finding job. Many places ask but no job have. My wife is muy triste. Pleeze, help me. I'm having trouble finding has job because I can' t speak Ingles very well.”
“Well don’t you worry none Mr. Cortez,” said Jonathan “I’ll set you up with a friend of mine and he’ll getcha a job.”
“Gracias. I grateful for this very much.”
“Don’t mention it. Now we better get these kids off to bed if they are going to help us fix your back gate tomorrow.”
Pablo came into the house, his face light up by the dozens of fireflies he had managed to catch. Miguel walked in after him and I showed them how to squish a firefly when it lit up in order to make their fingers glow. We each had a tiny glowing ring on our finger by the time the parents were done talking. When Mrs. Cortez caught sight of Pablo and Miguel’s hands she started to scold them in Spanish and made them go wash their hands. I hid my hand in my pocket until she left. Mr. Cortez took the jar outside and unscrewed the lid, releasing the dozens of captive fireflies inside. They scattered and then started to once again rise and fall lazily lighting up the night sky.
The amber glow from the front porch light threw Mr. Cortez’s left side of his face into shadow. He turned and watched his wife carry Pablo, who was drifting in and out of sleep, and lead Miguel back to their home down the block. Without turning back to face Jonathan he thanked him once more and started to walk slowly after his wife, his long shadow stretching out across the street.
I crawled into bed after saying my prayers that night. The stars shone my bedroom window. The full moon lit up the backs of the clouds that were moving in from the sea. They were laden with rain and I started to drift off to sleep while listening to the steady beat of the rain. Just as I slipped out of consciousness I heard thunder rolling in the distance.