Coffin To Lie On

by Risner, Fay

  “I fixin' to I'll hep if I can,” Sarie Lee said. “You afeard it might make her feel worse to see me with a stomach as big as a watermelon?”

  Anselm shrugged. “Maybe dat vould make her vorry dat she needs to be strong enough to help you when de time comes.”

  “Y'all are plum right, and I will need her help. All right, take me to her,” Sarie Lee said. She stopped by the barn to tell Wilbur and Jefferson where she was going.

  On the way back to Anselm's farm, Sarie Lee said, “We've been to the meeting building several Sundays. You should see if you can get Miranda to go. It would do her good get out and to be around other people.”

  “Ya, dat iss for sure,” Anselm agreed.

  “Y'all should know some of the women, where y'all came from, was asking a bunch of questions about Miranda. They wanted to know if she had her baby yet,” Sarie Lee said.

  Anselm looked stern. “You didn't tell dem vat happened, did you?”

  “No. I said the baby was born dead,” Sarie said. “I thought Miranda would want them to think that was what happened. I hope that's all right.”

  “Ja, I dink dat iss vat dey should dink. Dat vill keep dem from questioning Miranda,” Anselm said.

  Miranda was rocking on the porch when Anselm helped Sarie Lee out of the wagon. Sarie Lee waddled to the porch and labored up the steps. “Howdy, Miranda.”

  “Good morning,” Miranda said without looking at Sarie Lee. Her voice didn't sound friendly. “What brings you over here? If Anselm is the cause of your coming, he shouldn't have bothered you. You need to be home resting instead of bothering with me.”

  Sarie Lee put her hands on her hips. “Right now after that long ride, I'm ready to agree with y'all. Now how about gettin' me some coffee or tea to drink. I'm dry.”

  Miranda's head whipped toward Sarie Lee. She was ready to be rude, but when she looked at the heavily pregnant woman, she couldn't do it. “Come in and sit while I get the tea ready. You need to rest.”

  Sarie Lee let Miranda wait on her. While they drank their tea, Sarie Lee broke the silence. “So can I depend on ya to help me at my birthin' or not?”

  “Oh, Sarie Lee, I hadn't given anything much thought for months, but of course, I'll help you,” Miranda said. “I just can't seem to get on with living right now.”

  “I'm one woman that can say I know how you feel, and that's the plain truth. I grieve for Bobby Lee all the time. Y'all told me it would get easier as time passed and it has. The same advice is just as good for y'all right now.”

  Miranda stared into her tea cup. “I feel as if I lost a baby. Nothing to show for all those months I waited and not even a grave to visit. That makes me feel sad and sick inside.”

  “I reckon that's about right. I feel the same way about my little boy that passed. If it makes you and Anselm feel any better, do what we did. Put a marker up somewhere so y'all can visit it.”

  “I'll talk to Anselm. We could do that,” Miranda agreed.

  “After y'all do that, ya best get back to living. Anselm needs a wife. Ya can always try again for a baby,” Sarie Lee said forthrightly.

  “It was a miracle when I thought I was having a baby. Instead, I came out of nine long months with empty arms. I don't know if I could stand to go through a repeat of the same thing again,” Miranda complained.

  “That wouldn't happen again. What happened to y'all was a freak of nature. You wouldn't have it happen to you twice,” Sarie Lee assured her.

  Anselm made a wooden cross on Sarie Lee's advice. He burned the word BABY on it. He asked Miranda to go with him to place the cross in the hawthorn grove. The thought occurred to him with a cross in plain sight that would be proof to those sliddersladders that Miranda had indeed lost a baby.

  Chapter 13

  Miranda perked up some after Sarie Lee's visit. She did the bare minimum that had to be done. She cooked the meals and washed the laundry. Even cleaned house once in awhile. As far as she was concerned not much mattered anymore. When she felt down in the dumps, she'd go out to the grove and pat the wooden cross. That was the only thing that seemed to help.

  Wilbur Mast came to take Miranda with him the day Sarie Lee went in to labor. Miranda went though she really didn't want to be there. Sarie Lee's labor went fine. Miranda held the baby girl a moment before she handed the baby to her mother.

  The time for a new mother to stay in bed was nine days. One day for every day of pregnancy. Miranda took care of the family until Sarie Lee said she could go home.

  When it was safe to travel in the spring, Anselm suggested they go to the meeting building for church.

  When they walked inside the building, Miranda felt the women from Minnesota staring at her. Brunnhilde Fjelde and Prudence Sorenson looked compassionate. Florence Swensen looked skeptical. Miranda waited for at least one of them to bring up her pregnancy.

  Florence Swensen, in a loud whisper behind her hand, said to Brunnhilde Fjelde and Prudence Sorenson in her coarse voice, “Vat did I tell you? Dat woman couldn't even do a pregnancy right.”

  Gretchen Krebsbach tried to hush Florence, but it was too late. Miranda heard the criticism. She was ready to turn around and leave when Edward Linder and his fair haired wife, Jane came to meet them at the door. “Welcome, folks. I believe we're neighbors.” He and Jane shook hands with them.

  Another couple, both of them short and heavy set, Charlie and Norma Wright joined them. “We are neighbors, too.”

  “Good to know,” Anselm said. “You must come visit us ven you haf time.”

  “Yes, we would like to have you any time,” Miranda said.

  When the Linders and the Wrights came to visit the first time, Anselm made sure they understood his wife was frail.

  Pale faced Miranda greeted the neighbor women at the door, extending her soft, creamy white hands. She received pitying looks from women whose faces were covered with sun darken skin, wrinkled like dried prunes. Their hands, rough and calloused, signified years of hard work.

  Jane Linder and Norma Wright were good examples of what this land did to women. Miranda intended to do everything in her power not to look like them. That was the fate her mother predicted for her if she wasn’t careful. Why make the effort to work like someone's servant only to come out looking like those women did.

  The women didn't ask questions about the her pregnancy, but she watched from a window as they drove away with their husbands. She saw Norma Wright pointed to the cross in the hawthorn grove. Miranda was glad that Sarie Lee thought of the cross. Seeing that cross was enough to satisfy the women's curiosity.

  Miranda spent a lot of time sitting idly in her rocker on the porch, watching her husband clear their land.

  She knew it wouldn’t have taken Anselm as long if she helped him, but he did get the work done without her. She consoled herself with the fact if she'd offered to help he'd have told her no. He believed she wasn't able.

  Her husband worked hard and was so proud of what he accomplished. Because he loved his wife dearly, he was very willing to share his good fortune made from his hard work. When she let herself think of it that way, she felt guilty.

  In a few years, the fruit trees grew higher than Anselm’s head. As one winter slipped away, he said wistfully he expected he’d see the trees explode into white blooms that spring. As he predicted, one spring morning Anselm left the house to work in his orchard. He came running back, grabbed Miranda by the hand. “Come vit me.”

  “Is something wrong?” Miranda asked.

  “You vill see,” Anselm said, grinning at her.

  They walked out to the orchard. Amselm said, “Look up at dat row of plum trees.”

  Miranda raised her head. “Anselm, the trees are full of bloom. We will have plums this year.” She took in a deep breath. “Smell the sweet air?”

  “Ja, I do. Dis iss just de start. De other fruit trees vill bloom, one variety at a time,” Anselm said excitedly.

  Miranda hugged him. “I'm glad the wait is over.”


  So the years passed. The orchard produced a bounty of fruit just like Anselm wanted. The cattle herd increased due to his saving the heifers. Anselm had everything he had dreamed about when they left their Minnesota home. He was content.

  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.

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