Chapter Sixteen
Mirabelle stood by the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables for dinner. As she sliced her carrots into neat little disks, she looked out the window, thinking of Joseph. She found herself thinking about him more and more each day. He was something of an enigma, a mystery. At times he seemed so gentle and caring; at other times he seemed so remote and aloof. "Who was this man?" she wondered, and why was she growing attracted to him? She knew he was an excellent rider--Bobby had found out that Joseph was a trick rider and now they spent Sundays practicing bareback riding, picking up objects, and barrel running. He was also an Indian with long braided hair... but who was he really? Mirabelle was trying to imagine a history to go along with his person when she inadvertantly drew her knife across her finger, opening a large gash which began to bleed profusely.
"Oh!" she cried with pain as she quickly clutched her finger. Hearing the commotion, Michael hurried in from the living room--he had been meticulously going over his business accounts.
"What happened?" he asked Mirabelle.
"Oooh. I cut my finger," she said as she squeezed her finger tightly, trying to stop the bleeding.
Michael walked up to her. "Here, sit down," he told her as he pulled out a chair from under the kitchen table. Mirabelle sat down. Michael then held her wrist in his palm and removed her tightly clutched hand from around her finger. The cut was deep and wide. It continued to ooze blood. Michael stared at her cut intensely, not saying anything. Mirabelle wondered what he was doing. As she watched, Michael's mouth began to open, pouring from it an incantation and beseechment to higher powers:
He said:
Jesus Christ Dearest blood
That stoppest the blood
In this help Mirabelle
God the Father God the Son God the Holy Ghost amen!
Help to this!
As Mirabelle stared in amazement, the oozing flow of blood from her finger began to lessen and eventually came to a stop. In a few seconds, all that was left of the cut was a thin red line on her finger that tingled.
Michael got up and went to a drawer. He took from it a cloth and bandages. After wetting the cloth with tap water, he wiped the blood off of Mirabelle's hands. Taking the bandages he then wrapped up her finger, snuggly. Finished, he looked up at Mirabelle and asked, "All better?"
"Yes," she said. She was still amazed at what happened. She wondered if she had imagined it or if it had been some sort of coincidence. Unable to come up with an answer, she questioned Michael. "How did you do that?" she asked him.
"It's something I learned when I was younger," he replied, "Before I came to Colorado." He looked at her, then stood up and said, "Come. Let's sit on the porch. Dinner's still a few hours away. Let's take a break." Mirabelle got up and followed him to the porch. Sitting on it's bench, they stared at the windbreak of trees and the forested hillside beyond.
"Michael, where are you from?" Mirabelle asked him. Her fondness for these ranchers was increasing every day, yet she really knew nothing about them.
"I'm originally from Wisconsin. I came to Colorado when I was twenty," he replied.
"Wisconsin?" said Mirabelle, "That's right next to Iowa." She looked at him and playfully questioned, "So you're a 'badger', Michael?" He laughed.
"Oh yeah, I was," he answered back.
"Why did you come to Colorado?" she asked him.
"I grew up in a small, closely-knit farming community. I couldn't stand it. It was like I was being restrained from being the person I was meant to be. The traditional way of life, handed down through the centuries, was the yoke they were going to chain around my neck--one I'd have to carry for the rest of my life. It was fine for others but to me it seemed to be a death sentence. I wanted freedom. I wanted adventure. So I left and eventually made my way to Colorado," he said to her.
"How did you know you wanted to be a rancher?" Mirabelle asked.
"I didn't," he said, "When I first came here I did a whole odd assortment of jobs. Eventually, I became a ranch manager and soon after had a ranch of my own."
"How could you do that?" Mirabelle asked him, intrigued. She couldn't see how it was possible to become so successful starting out with nothing.
"When times were tough and I had my doubts, I would remember something my father always used to say to me," he said as he looked wistfully into the distance. Returning from his memories, he turned to look at Mirabelle. She was still waiting to find out what his father had said. Michael spoke:
"Wer sucht der finnt; wer awhalt, der gewinnt," he said out loud, smiling.
"Pardon me?" said Mirabelle. She couldn't understand German.
"Wer sucht der finnt; wer awhalt, der gewinnt," he said again. "It means: 'Who seeks, finds; who keeps on, wins'," he said with a triumphant smile. He paused to reflect for a second, then added, "It has certainly proven true for me." Mirabelle nodded.
Michael smiled to himself. He was cherishing some personal secret of his own when he noticed Mirabelle quietly waiting for him to share it with her. He revealed to her what it was: "I haven't spoken German for many, many years. Not since I came to Colorado." His memories had returned him to his youth, after a lifetime away.
"Didn't you speak German to your wife?" asked Mirabelle.
"No," said Michael, once again in the present. "She was an Anglo. English. My sons never learned German, either. They were Americanized," he said.
Michael never mentioned he had children. Mirabelle wondered what happened to them.
"Where are your sons, Michael?" asked Mirabelle.
Michael was silent for a second then answered, "Dead, I suppose." His voice had cracked and he lowered his head in sadness.
"How?" asked Mirabelle. She didn't want to pry, especially with Michael looking distraught, but her curiousity could not be checked.
"They went off to the Pacific during the war and never came back," he answered, still looking down.
Mirabelle understood. The Second World War had only ended a few years ago and many young men she had known had gone off to fight and never returned. James was eighteen when the war ended, but if it had lasted longer he too might have been sent away to fight on distant shores.
Michael continued, talking more to himself now than to Mirabelle: "I tried to get them to take the Himmelsbrief with them but they were 'modern' and didn't want anything to do with 'old superstitions'."
"The what?" asked Mirabelle. She had never heard of a himmelsbrief before.
"Himmelsbrief," repeated Michael. He looked at her and seeing that she was still confused, he stood up and walked into the kitchen. She followed him. Michael took a chair and, placing it in the kitchen doorway, stood on it. He proceeded to remove a tack-held, folded piece of paper from the wall above the doorway and then stepped off the chair. Mirabelle hadn't noticed that curiosity above the door, before. He unfolded the paper and showed it to Mirabelle.
"The Himmelsbrief," he said again, then went on: "A Letter from Heaven. It is a charm to protect from evil and harm."
Mirabelle looked at the paper. It was a letter written in German with a picture of Jesus on it. She handed it back to Michael and nodded. As he folded up the paper and replaced it above the doorway, Mirabelle stood there watching him and thinking. All her life she wondered about the reality of magic and now she had found someone who definitely believed in it's veracity. Michael climbed off the chair and replaced it under the table. The two then returned to sit on the porch. Michael continued:
"Placed up above the door like that, the charm is supposed to protect the house. When carried into battle, it is supposed to protect the soldier," he said. He paused a moment and then continued, "Whether it would have worked for my sons or not, I'll never know."
"Where did you learn these sorts of things, Michael?" Mirabelle asked him. They were definitely outside of her realm of experience.
"My mother taught me when I was a child," he answered. "It's called powwowwing. Folk magic. A German-American country tradition," he informed her.
"But that prayer you said to heal my cut was in English," she noted to him.
He smiled and then said: "Yes, yes. I know. Over the years I've come to discover that it's the thought or belief that is more important than the words or paper with these things." He looked at her then continued, "And I wanted you to understand what I was saying."
Mirabelle nodded, grateful for his considerateness. Michael went on:
"I haven't spoken German for so long now," he said with a pause. He continued, remarking: "I guess I've been Americanized myself." He chuckled then said, "Miller. Miller."
Mirabelle stared at him wondering what he was talking about. He had never exhibited any signs of senility before, but....
Michael looked at her then said, "I'm sorry. On the rare occasion I get preoccupied in my thoughts. I said 'Miller' because at one time I felt like changing my name to that."
"Why?" asked Mirabelle.
"Being German-American isn't easy when America happens to be at war with Germany," he told her. Mirabelle continued to look at him, saying nothing. He went on, "During the First World War, many people, even people who were once friends of mine would call me a 'hun' or 'barbarian' and everything I did was viewed with suspicion. It was much the same in the last war a few years ago. That's why my sons went off--they wanted to prove their loyalty to America. Even being half-German was a sort of stigma for them."
Mirabelle nodded. She now realized she wasn't the only person in life who had been discriminated against, that life's unfairness and injustice hadn't limited themselves only to her. She wanted to change the topic. She didn't like the somber mood that was developing, so she asked Michael: "Is Kirk really from Boston?"
Michael, happy to take on a different train of thought, nodded then answered, "Yes. Yes, he is. He came to work on the ranch I was managing when he was just a teenager." He paused to remember then said, "He was a complete greenhorn." Michael smiled then laughed out loud while saying, "He couldn't even tell a horse's front end from rear end back then." He tried to stifle his laughter and shook his head.
Mirabelle couldn't believe it. With his long, curly brown hair, full beard, and cowboy getup Kirk had seemed to be a born cowpuncher to her. Though usually quiet to the point of being reticent, his sense of humour revealed him to be very earthy, very rustic. If a single man alone could typify bucolic country life for her it would have been him. It was like a character from the Old West somehow managed to survive to the present, living and breathing like an anomalous anachronism. She couldn't believe he could have been from a big city like Boston. Mirabelle asked, "Why did he come to Colorado?"
Michael answered, "He told me that all his childhood he had read 'westerns' and wanted to be a cowboy and fight Indians." He continued, "That was his dream," he paused, reflectively, "and now he's a cowboy who happens to be working with an Indian."
"And Bobby?" Mirabelle asked. She wondered how he had joined this odd cast of characters.
"Kirk found him," answered Michael. "I guess he reminded him a little bit of himself," he added. "Bobby didn't want to spend the rest of his life on the family farm. He wanted adventure. He wanted to see the world. Kirk met him in a town and brought him here." Michael continued, "He's young but he's learning really fast." He paused and noted, "Actually, Bobby is a lot like me--in my younger days, that is."
"Well, that was everybody's story now," thought Mirabelle, "Almost everybody's."
"What about Joseph?" she asked him.
"Joseph, Joseph," said Michael, "He doesn't talk about his past much. I met him at a rodeo at Rocky Ford. I had a feeling I should talk to this man even though he was a total stranger. All he told me was that he was a trick rider and that he had grown up on a ranch near Lawton, Oklahoma. I've only known him for a few years but he's a good man and a good friend."
The sun, unnoticed by the two, had made it's way further west to hide itself behind the hills. Noting the time, Michael stood up and rested his hand on Mirabelle's shoulder. He said to her, "You're a really nice girl, Mirabelle. I like you." He went on, "I'll finish cooking dinner. You just relax and enjoy yourself this evening." He smiled at her then walked into the kitchen.
Mirabelle sat there staring at the sheltering trees. Life was so odd, she thought. She looked at her finger and poked it. She winced, it still hurt. She looked up again. What a strange collection of individuals they were. All of them were sort of 'oddballs' in a way. She thought about each of them: Michael, Kirk, Bobby, and Joseph. Joseph. Who was this man? She was becoming more and more attracted to him, she knew. It felt good to her, she noted, but maybe now it was time to find out more about the object of her attraction.
