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16 THE THIRD COFFIN

--------- XVI --------THE THIRD COFFIN IN THE OLD LOG CABIN where the family had lived during their first years as settlers there now shone a night light. This cabin had been built to serve as a home but after the completion of the new house it had been used as a workshop . A large carpenter's bench stood against one walL Now a man stood at the bench and worked in the light ofa candle lantern which hung from a beam in the ceiling; he was making a coffin for his wife. To him fell a task which could not be delayed and which he must complete during the night. Hurriedly, untiring, his plane moved over the wood, as he smoothed boards that had been cut from oak timber. But the boards had been intended for another use. They had been sawed and stacked for the building of a house. They were meant for a new main house that he would build, but now they must be used for another purpose. The oak boards would not form the walls ofa house where he and his wife would live out their lives. Of the boards he built instead her home after death. Earlier he had built houses and homes for himselfand his wife for life's time which in fleeting years would pass by, but the room he now built was for the time ofdeath, which had no end. In this house she would stay. Many times he had said to her: Next time I build ... That time had come. But now he built only for her. The plane moved its even path back and forth over the board and spewed out long shavings which coiled like white snakes on the floor. The light from the candle in the lantern above the carpenter's head fell in a circle over the bench and lit him in his work with its fluttering rays. Round about him in the cabin were dim shadows. On the walls skins of animals had been nailed up to dry; shrouds that had belonged to four-legged beings hung there, limbs outstretched , as if crucified. The plane dug and bit with its sharp iron tooth and tore shavings from the board. The shavings gathered in piles, coiled around his wrists, and rustled under his feet. The oak board was prime timber, hard under the plane, first 147 THE LAST LETTER HOME class. It was white oak-no timber existed that lasted longer, no wood was better suited to wall a permanent resting place. Twice before in his life the man at the workbench had made coffins. The first he had made in his homeland for a daughter who from hunger had eaten herselfto death. That time he had stood out in a woodshed and worked. That time he was still a beginner in the carpenter's handicraft, his hands unused to plane and hammer, and he had had poor lumber for the coffin: only old boards, knotty and badly sawed, cracked and warped. He had chosen and discarded-very little had been needed for the girl's coffin. She had died early in life, when she was only four years old. It had not required many boards to enclose that little body. But he had sought out the clear and knot-free ones, he had chosen the finest planks he could find. It had been difficult for him that time, for his plane was dull and unsharpened , the hammerhead flew off, refusing to stay on its handle, and it had been his first coffin, his journeyman effort. (The carpenter's questions: This daughter was very dear to me, but before she was four years old she was taken from me and died in terrible pain. She died before she had had time to commit any crimes. Did God wish thereby to punish me for my transgressions? But one hears only ofa God who is good and just. Can he who is good and just punish the innocent for the deeds of the guilty? Does he let my children inherit my sins? I have never wondered over this before, but now I do: Is our God good and just?) The first coffin he made was just big enough so that he could carry it alone when his daughter's body was placed in it. He had carried it in his arms to the grave. That was a father's labor for his child. The second coffin he had made many...