They were as thick and curly as carded wool. His rosy face, with its
snub nose, set in this fleece, was like a melon among its leaves. He was
usually called "Curly Peter," or "Rooshian Peter."
The two Russians made good farmhands, and in summer they worked out
together. I had heard our neighbors laughing when they told how Peter
always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other bachelor
homesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes Peter came to
church at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw him, sitting on a
low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands, his bare feet tucked
apologetically under the seat.
After Mr. Shimerda discovered the Russians, he went to see them almost
every evening, and sometimes took Antonia with him. She said they came
from a part of Russia where the language was not very different from
Bohemian, and if I wanted to go to their place, she could talk to them for
me. One afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up there
together on my pony.
The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with a windlass
well beside the door. As we rode up the draw we skirted a big melon patch,
and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers lay about on the sod. We
found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending over a washtub. He was working
so hard that he did not hear us coming. His whole body moved up and down
as he rubbed, and he was a funny sight from the rear, with his shaggy head
and bandy legs.
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