Out of Context

It’s been a long post-Memorial Day

My Antonia
Willa Sibert Cather

‘”Oh, cattle,” he says, “you’ll all take care of your cattle! Ain’t you got no beer here?” I told him he’d have to go to the Bohemians for beer; the Norwegians didn’t have none when they threshed. “My God!” he says, “so it’s Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy.”

‘Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, “Hello, partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I’m tired of trampin’. I won’t go no farther.”

‘I tried to make signs to Ole, ’cause I thought that man was crazy and might get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down out of the sun and chaff–it gets down your neck and sticks to you something awful when it’s hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under one of the wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bands all right for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his hand to me and jumped head-first right into the threshing machine after the wheat.

‘I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt had sucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped, he was all beat and cut to pieces.’