Coffin To Lie On (3 page)

Anselm replied while he
hugged her, “It iss nice dat you are honest about your
shortcomings. I'll haf you know dat does not bother me. I am just
glad you vant to be my wife and share my home vit me. Ve all haf
someding we do not do well. Dat you are not a good cook iss all
right. You vill learn.”

Miranda saw this
conversation wasn't going her way. She pressed on with she was
worried she might not be able to keep up with all the work her
husband expected from her. She didn't want him to be disappointed
in her. That's why she had to tell him the truth.

She said she had an idea
that might help. It would be a good idea for him to hire her a
woman to help with cooking and housework.

Anselm told her he couldn’t
afford to pay a hired girl. She should do the best she could. He
assured her he'd understand. Over time with practice, she'd learn
how to do her housework. He was sure of it. In his mind, that ended
the subject.

By the end of first year of
marriage, her rough, reddened hands cause Miranda concern. She took
to studying her sun darkened face in the mirror. The sun caused
dark spots on her face and hands. The Minnesota breezes caused her
skin to dry out and wrinkle. She no longer saw the good looks of
the young beauty she once was in her mirror.

She was sure her mother had
been right with her dire prediction. Miranda decided she wasn’t
about to finish wearing out her good looks and health. She had to
find a solution, and maybe in time she could reverse the damage
done to her skin.

For a while, she wrestled
silently with her worries, wondering how to solve her problem. She
loved her hard working husband and felt obligated to do her share
of the work. To speak up honestly to say she didn't like ruining
her good looks with hard farm tasks might make her look vain in
Anselm's eyes. Of course, she knew she was, but she didn't want her
husband to think so.

She thought about the first
year of drudgery. She'd learned to cook her husband’s basic meals
to keep them both from starving. She washed their clothes and
cleaned the house. She kept their garden weeded and watered during
the dry spells. The garden produced enough bounty she was able put
up food for the winter.

Miranda didn't have time,
with all the work to be done at home, to spend idle time visiting
her girlfriends in town. She missed the care free social life she
enjoyed as a teenager.

On Sundays, they barely
made it to church in time for the sermon. After church, they ate
dinner with her folks. Miranda was able to catch up on news about
her friends and the other people in town. Since customers stayed to
visit when they shopped, gossip was easy for Miranda's folks to
hear at the store.

Anselm would shake his head
on the way home and tease Miranda that her folks sure liked to
sliddersladder, his word for gossip. Miranda understood as she
patted his knee.

Anselm had been raised to
never say anything about anyone if he couldn't say something good.
That didn't keep her from wanting to hear what happened to people
in town.

Many times, Miranda endured
her mother's frowns when the older woman stared at Miranda's rough,
reddened hands. The dark spots on her face and back of her hands
became another source of observation.

Miranda steeled herself for
another lecture, but it didn't come. If she had to venture a guess,
she figured it was because Jane Wickman knew her daughter had
married a good man. He'd always take care of her. Miranda's mother
realized Miranda was luckier than most of the women in
town.

Miranda silently
agreed.

The time came when everyone
in the area had terrifying worries. A diphtheria epidemic hit and
ravaged the countryside. That put an end to travel for months. No
one had experienced this disease before. People didn't have any
knowledge about the disease, and there wasn't a cure. The town
doctor decided the safest thing to do was stay home away from other
people. Hopefully, that stopped the disease from spreading. They
all hoped and prayed they wouldn't the unlucky ones that
died.

Anselm and Miranda didn't
know about the outbreak until they drove to town for church.
Miranda's mother met them at the yard gate. Jane Wickman told them
to stay on the buck-board because of the epidemic. They should go
home without talking to anyone and stay there until she sent word
it was safe to get around others.

Concerned folks roamed the
neighborhood. They left sick people food on the edge of the
porches. Lots of yelling was done from the road to houses to make
sure at least one person was still alive inside. That helped
determine the progress of a family's illness.

When their supplies were
low, Anselm said he'd risk driving to the mercantile to get what
they needed from Miranda's parents. She offered to go along with
him, but he said she was better off staying home where he knew she
was safe.

The Mercantile door was
unlocked, but there wasn't anyone in the store. Anselm called out,
“Hello. anyone here?”

From the back room, George
Wickman responded back, “Pick out what you need, Anselm. Leave your
money on the counter. I ain't waiting on no one until I know it's
safe to get near folks.”

“
Ja, I understand,” Anselm replied.

“
You and
Miranda still well?” George asked from behind the
wall.

“
Ja, we
are fine,” Anselm called back. “Miranda's mother iss vell I
trust.”

“
She is
but tired of being house bound. We've lost several citizens so far.
Cain't even bury them for fear of getting sick ourselves. This is a
terrible, scary time. Sure is bad for business I can tell you,”
George complained.

Once Miranda's folks didn't
hear of any new outbreaks, her father drove out to the farm to let
them know church was going to start up again on Sunday. First thing
all week long on the minister's agenda was funerals for all the
dead.

Of course, most winters
made traveling hard. One horrible blizzard howled through the
night, depositing heavy, wet snow half way up the windows. The rest
of the way up snow plastered to the glass so Miranda couldn't see
out.

The snow wasn't quite as
deep on the west side of the house, sheltered from the storm's
path. Anselm found a window he could climb out. He kept a shovel in
the kitchen. Once he slipped out of the window with his shovel, he
prepared to work his way around the house to the porch and dig in
front of the door.

Anselm dug a tunnel to the
barn by the rope he attached from the house to the barn in late
fall. He didn't intend to get lost in a blizzard on the way to the
barn to milk and feed his stock.

That night the wind howled,
and with a vengeance blew snow right back in his tunnel. He had to
dig his path again the next morning. That was pretty much the way
it went with each storm.

And so from year to year,
they spent their married life in the same way. A few years in to
the marriage, Miranda wasn't sure what started Anselm thinking she
was really sickly.

Perhaps, the fact she
became less talkative and rarely smiled helped him think she wasn't
feeling well. He didn't realize she was unhappy, and he didn't
bother to ask. They didn't talk about such things. Maybe it was the
fact, Anselm expected her to produce him sons to help him farm. She
proved to be barren.

For two or three days, her
monthly cycle always sent her to bed with a horrible headache. At
those times, Anselm had to fend for himself. He fixed hot tea and
broth for her. Miranda liked being waited on by her husband, but
she wished she didn't have to feel so lousy for it to
happen.

She could have told him he
shouldn't worry. The way she felt each month wasn't life
threatening. She'd inherited the symptoms from her mother. Anselm
didn't ask, because they didn't talk about such things.

When Anselm finally
mentioned what he called her weak condition, she understood he
worried about her developing worse health.

She didn't expect that to
happen, but she didn't bother to enlighten him. She hated the
worried look on his face, but she liked the few restful days in bed
while him waited on her.

As long as Anselm thought
she was in poor health, he didn’t expect as much work from her. So
she did as little as possible to help him on the farm. She sure
didn't encourage Anselm to think differently.

For good measure, Miranda
had more
headaches
that put her in bed when she thought Anselm might ask her to
help him. Such as going with him to the timber to bring in their
winter wood supply.

She could have carried the
wood to the buckboard and helped stack the slabs into ricks at
home. She just didn't want Anselm to think she was up to the task.
Finally, Anselm gave in and hired Hildur Landers to help
her
.

Now when Miranda had to do
any physical work, she was short of breath from lack of exercise.
She didn’t have the energy she once had. She sat around way too
much, and she’d gained weight from Hildur's good
cooking.

A realization came to her
now that she was thirty seven years old. The years she'd acquired
caused her to lose her youthful looks anyway no matter how she
tried to prevent it.

Poor dear Anselm didn’t
seem to notice she was looking older so worried was he over what he
thought were her health problems. She was confident she could
depend on him to love her no matter how sickly she
seemed.

Then last summer a drought
hit the area. Most of the small pears dropped from the trees in the
orchard before they ripened. The wheat and corn plants wilted in
the fields. One after another of Anselm's cash crops were
destroyed. For the first time in years, his hay crop wasn't
sufficient to feed his cattle and horses.

Worry over his farm income
made him listen to Clarence Swensen when the man told him about
homesteading out west. He was excited about the news that wagon
trains were headed west, Anselm wanted to join one of them. He told
Miranda he knew the long, hazardous trip would be hard on her. He
was willing to leave the decision to her and abide by what she
wanted to do.

Leaving her cozy house,
Hildur's help and her comfortable routine was not what Miranda
wanted at all. Perhaps it was out of guilt, she agreed to give the
journey a try. That’s what Anselm wanted. Besides, he couldn't
afford to pay Hildur to help her anymore.

For years, she let him
think she wasn't well while he worked hard to provide for both of
them. Suddenly, her conscious bothered her. Maybe she owed him the
chance at this new life. But contrary to what Anselm feared, she
didn’t figure on dying along the trail. She wasn’t that bad off.
The problem was Anselm would find out soon enough she'd lied to him
when the going got rough, and she had to do her share of
work

Chapter 4

Time passed faster than
Miranda would have liked. Before she wanted it to be, it was the
last of April, and time to leave. All Anselm could talk about was
their adventure while they traveled across the country, the
different sights and settling in a new place.

Miranda wanted her husband
to be happy, but she wasn't the least bit excited about the trip.
She knew she'd have to do the cooking and laundry herself while
they were on the trail. Even after they reached Willamette Valley,
she'd put in the hours of drudgery she'd gotten out of all these
years.

While they traveled, none
of the other women in the wagon train would be willing to work for
her. They would have their hands full, caring for their own
families.

Once the settlers arrived
in Willamette Valley, the neighbor women would be busy helping
their husbands carve out their homesteads in the wilderness before
winter came. Beside, the settlers probably lived miles apart. Doing
her own work is what all those hard working women would expect from
her.

The wives of the neighbors
always frowned and looked down their noses at her. Some of those
judgmental women, like Florence Swensen, would be on this trip.
They would watch her and criticize her every twinge.

So against her better
judgment, Miranda consented to go with Anselm on this arduous
journey. Even though she now realized there was one more reason
this was the worst possible time for her to travel. She'd missed
her last two monthlys. After all these years, she was pretty sure
now she was pregnant. She didn't feel she could share the news with
her husband. If for her sake he stayed on the farm, she was afraid
he'd always resent her for keeping him from his dream.

The day came when Anselm
brought that awful symbol of her demise, the coffin, in the house.
He set it in the middle of the parlor floor.

Miranda packed her precious
china dishes between quilts that were wedding gifts and layered
Anselm and her clothes over the bedding. In a crate, she stacked
every day quilts and left it sit on top the coffin. That was the
bedding to use on the ground each night.

They stacked other crates
in the kitchen. Those crates held cooking vessels, the coffee pot
and every day dishes to use when they stopped for meals.