Read Online Edna in the Desert by Maddy Lederman - Free Book Online Page A

for thousands of miles, cooking and feeding children while doing it and tending to oxen in all kinds of weather. She might as likely think she could walk to the moon.
    Her favorite pioneer was Mrs. Anderson. At nineteen years old, she had already become a “Mrs.” and she and her husband provided a window into history because they saved their letters in a metal box. The letters were found and eventually published. Edna thought it would be romantic if their lives hadn’t been so difficult. Mr. Anderson had gone West years (yes, years) before Mrs. Anderson in search of gold. He finally found some and could afford for her to join him. A photograph of his handwritten letter was in a sidebar of one of the books, which were all a little too textbook-like to get completely lost in. In any case, Mrs. Anderson’s trip, one she would make across the continent in a covered wagon, was two thousand miles. The list of things to do for the trip was extensive, including engineering a way to haul an eighty-pound sack of flour and keeping writing paper safe and dry from Kentucky to California. There were nearly a hundred tasks on the list. Edna wasn’t sure if it was outrageous that a young woman be expected to acquire and pack so many things for such a rugged journey or if this was normal and expected. If it was normal and expected, Edna was glad she was alive now instead of then. Getting lost and sleeping in Grandma’s pantry was rugged enough, and Edna wasn’t sure any amount of gold could change that. Although being with Johnny might. Edna imagined that most of the pioneer women didn’t make the trip for gold, but for love. Nothing else could explain it. Grandma had a lot in common with these pioneer women. Her whole life was like being on a cross-country wagon trail, except she never went anywhere.
    Edna dozed off reading the Andersons’ letters, until she was disturbed by pans rattling around on the shelves above her cot. The whole cabin shook. An earthquake. In the big room, Grandma’s rainbow crochet pillows bounced around her ugly couch. Edna stepped onto the porch. She must have overslept because the sun was high and strong. It was hard to keep her footing with the sudden, jerking motions. The cabin was moving under her, but strangely, it wasn’t an earthquake after all. Or maybe the earthquake was over. The cabin cut through a choppy sea. The distant hills moved past at a clip. The cool ocean wind was heaven. Ahead blue oxen charged through the water up to their shoulders, pulling chains attached to the cabin. Grandma commanded all three of them on a leash. Grandpa stayed in his chair as usual, though it tipped back and forth as the porch hit rough water. When he fell too far back, Edna rushed to him, but she was distracted by a shark’s fin breaking through the water’s surface. She turned around for Grandpa, but he was gone. So was his chair. She had no time to figure out where he went because the shark’s fin emerged as Johnny, speeding along the porch on his dirt bike. Dust kicked up behind him. Edna waved, but he didn’t notice her. The porch seemed longer than it could be as she ran, keeping pace with him. He veered away from the cabin, and Edna tried, like a Hollywood stuntman, to jump from the railing onto his bike. She soared, confident she could make it, but she missed and was left choking in dust.
    Edna woke up spitting flour out of her mouth. A sack sat on the floor, most of its contents on her head and pillow. A mouse rummaging the shelves must have knocked it over. The little guy cowered and escaped. If anyone saw a mouse at home, Jill would call the exterminator and they would all go to a hotel for a few days, but here no one was going to do anything about it. Edna swept the floor and changed her sheets.
    She still had a flour in her hair when she stepped onto the porch. It was the time of night it was supposed to be, though it was nearly bright enough to read a book. The full moon cast shadows that were