"How many times did you die of dysentery?" This was the first question a museum guide ever asked me. Out here, in a wide Nebraska room with a covered wagon roped off in the middle, she said it the way you ask a coworker about their weekend. I did not know how to answer. I thought hard. I wanted to be honest. "Twelve times, ma'am. I have died of dysentery twelve times." She blinked. "Oh honey. Oh, you got the game?" The game. So this was a sacred count, kept among the trial-passers of this land. I bowed. I had answered honestly. Twelve was, perhaps, modest. I added quickly: "Also four times of snakebite. Twice the river drowned my ox." She stared at me, very kindly, and then she laughed. "Sweetheart, I haven't played that game since fourth grade. You sound like my husband." Fourth grade. So the trial began at nine years old. A nation that hands its children a green screen and lets them lose every member of a fictional family in a single afternoon. I bowed deeply. A people who learned grief at a school desk could be trusted. Then I turned to the wagon. Wooden. Roped off. Lit like a relic. I understood the duty at once. A relic of this honor cannot sit. Vehicles want to move. There was no ox. I stepped over the rope and put my own shoulders into the yoke. "Sir, please step out of the yoke." The guide again, gentle. Of course. One does not approach this wagon without first being judged worthy. I bowed without leaving the yoke and asked which task she had set me, to prove I was. "Hon, it's bolted to the floor. You can't pull it. Nobody can." Nobody can. So the wagon had been anchored, not against thieves, but against grief. To stop the great-great-grandchildren from breaking their shoulders on the family vehicle. I braced anyway. I hauled until my collarbones bit. A button left my sleeve. A child near the door clapped once, not knowing what for. The guide came closer. "Sir. It's screwed down. Like, into the concrete." I nodded gravely. "I understand. The trial is the pulling, not the moving." She paused. "That's not what... okay. Sure." Okay sure. The blessing had been granted. I pulled harder. Later she came back with a clipboard, the kind way you come close to someone who needs redirection. "There's a real wagon out back the kids can climb in. We let 'em pretend to cross the river. We lose one or two to dysentery every Saturday." We lose one or two to dysentery every Saturday. She said it deadpan, holding the clipboard, like the Saturday losses were a line item next to coffee filters. Something deep in me said yes. That was the country. That was how it taught its children to grieve the people it had already grieved. My shoulders ached. I was, quietly, a little proud of the bruise. I did not tell her it had come from a wagon that does not move. Later that afternoon, I am out back with the climbing wagon. A boy named Caleb is at the reins. His sister has already declared herself buried on the trail. I will pull until my shoulders give. The river they are crossing is a strip of blue paint on plywood. To those two, on a Saturday in Nebraska, it will be wider than the Platte. If anyone asks tomorrow, I died thirteen times.