Coffin To Lie On (12 page)

One afternoon, Miranda was
rocking on the porch alone. Anselm was pruning some of the fruit
trees in the orchard. The trees had grown so large Miranda couldn't
see her husband once he walked into the orchard.

No one came to see them
anymore. The neighbors stopped visiting. Anselm and she saw them at
church, and Anselm invited them to visit. They claimed to always be
too busy.

Sarie Lee was busy with her
brood. As the children grew, Sarie Lee didn't have time to visit or
be visited. Miranda missed her company, but she
understood.

She brooded about her life.
She wished she could be as content as Anselm. Her thoughts lingered
on how much better she liked her life in Minnesota.

Over the years, she'd
received death letters from her sisters when her mother and father
passed away. She'd been right to think she'd never see them again.
No reason to return to Minnesota after they were gone even though
she could ride in comfort on a train now.

She'd put up a front,
though it was a poor one, for her husband's sake. This hadn't been
the life she'd have picked for herself if she had a choice. Now
they had grown old and childless. When they were gone, there wasn't
anyone to leave the farm to that Anselm work-ed so hard on and
loved so much.

The sun sank behind the
western mountain range. Miranda kept an eye out for Anselm. He
didn't come out of the orchard. It wasn’t like him not to come to
the house by supper time. Miranda couldn't imagine what was keeping
him so she went to hunt him.

She found her husband
sprawled on the ground among his beloved pear trees. He'd died
clutching his chest.

Edward Linder was working
next to their farm. He heard Miranda's scream and ran across his
plowed field to find out what was wrong.

Edward helped distraught
Miranda back to the house. Once he had her quieted down, he made
the rounds of the neighborhood asking for help.

The men hitched up Anselm's
wagon and brought his body back to the house. They carried Anselm
into the bedroom. Their wives came along to prepare the dead man’s
body for viewing in the parlor.

As was the custom, the men
wanted to start building the coffin right away. Charlie Wright
asked Miranda where Anselm kept his hammer and saw.

Clarence Swensen wondered
out loud if they would find plenty of nails in the shed. He could
go get some of his if need be.

Miranda listened to the
conversation. She wiped her teary eyes on a lace edged hanky. “No
need to bother yourselves.”

“
Ma’am,
we need to build a coffin quick like,” insisted
Edward.

“
You
don’t have to is what I'm saying. You can bring in the coffin
that's in the tool shed. All you have to do is empty the tools out
of it. It will need dusted inside and out after all these years,
but it should be alright to use.”

The men and women
surrounded her, looking as though she was out of her
head.

Wilbur Mast said in
astonishment, “Anselm had a coffin already built fer
hisself?”

“
Yes,” she said without farther
explanation.

That seemed rather strange,
but the men found the coffin right where Miranda said. The pine box
was buried under tools with a garden plow leaned against it. They
dusted the coffin and carried it into the bedroom.

After the coffin contained
Anselm, the men perched him on chairs in the parlor. Miranda sat
down in her rocker by his side, doing her wifely duties for the
last time.

As everyone filed by the
open coffin, she greeted people who came to offer their sympathy.
She thanked women who brought food to serve after the
funeral.

In the lull between
visitors, Miranda closed her eyes and thought about her future.
This might not be all bad. She no longer had to keep up the
pretense of being helpless. Anselm was the only one who really ever
believed she wasn't well.

What was now her fruit
orchard would be bearing fruit again soon. There was still some
pruning work to be done on the trees. She'd hire men to prune the
trees and pick the fruit.

They could haul the crop to
market. If she asked for help, neighboring men would surely round
up her calves each year and sell them for her. She could handle
Anselm's business and live off the proceeds.

Of course, she'd miss
Anselm, but she wouldn't miss cooking for him or washing his dirty
clothes. She wouldn’t have near the chores to do for herself. She
could take life easy. Live the life of a woman with means just as
she had always wanted.

She came out of her revelry
when she heard loud, gossipy whispers in the kitchen.

“
Vat do
you suppose really ails dat woman?” Came Florence Swensen's high
pitched witchy voice.

“
I never
did know, but from de vay Anselm always talked I figured her to die
before him. Didn’t you?” Gretchen Krebsbach's sweet voice
asked.

“
I always
dought she vas faking. She looks too healthy not to be.” The witchy
voice speculated.

Suddenly, the sweet voice
followed the witch’s lead. “You're right about dat. I never seen
her do a lick of hard work. Haf you noticed dem soft skinned hands
of hers?”

Sarie Lee Mast butted in.
“You shouldn't talk about Miranda like that. For years, y'all have
given that poor woman as much of a chance as a grasshopper has in a
hen house. She probably will die right off without her husband to
help her. This is a hard place to take care of if you ain’t even
able to take care of yerself right good.”

“
She
needn’t expect de kind of slave she made out of dat poor soul to
come by her twice. I tell you right now, I’ll make sure my Clarence
don’t offer to help her none and get trapped in to doing for her.
You can believe me on dat,” said witchy Florence.

“
I’m sure
ever wife here abouts vill say de same ding. Our men haf enough to
do on their own places,” agreed Prudence
Sorenson.

With her head leaned back
against the rocker and her hands clasped together in pretended
prayer, Miranda kept her eyes shut as if she hadn’t been
listening.

From what she'd just heard,
she realized she'd never be accepted in this country as long as
those women had any say. They saw right through her pretense of
being sick.

All that she'd just hoped
for in the way of an easy life would be lost. If she tried working
in the orchard to save this farm, the women would see that as proof
of how she fooled Anselm and tried to fool them.

It crossed her mind,
nothing she planned had gone right in her whole life. This day was
proof of that. Her husband had died before her. More definite proof
of her bad luck, Anselm was in her coffin. Now if she asked, she
couldn't even get the men to build another one for her. Their wives
wouldn't let them.

About The Author

Fay Risner lives in Iowa with her
husband in the country. She spent her early years in the Missouri
Ozarks and was raised with westerns as her reading material. Her
parents enjoyed books by all the well known western authors of
their time, and they passed the books and their love of westerns on
to their children.

Readers will find the paperback
book is reader friendly. It is written in larger font which makes
it easy to read.

If you like this ebook, please feel
free to leave a review for the story to encourage others to buy the
book.