Crossing Purgatory (14 page)

After shaving, Thompson stood beside the river and looked downstream to where the summer flow trickled around the bend, upstream. There, where the channel cut close near the bank, he saw a purposefully placed collection of large stones, stones not native to the river but to the limestone bluffs and rimrock formations rising from the folded-up prairie south of the Arkansas. He walked to the rocks and recognized it as a man-made creation. Someone, Benito he guessed, had built a diversion dam so that the channel water pooled against a steep section of bank before returning to the main stream. On the bank a floodgate had been constructed of half-round planks that could be raised or lowered using a rope pulley system. The gate was lowered so that no water flowed into the partially finished irrigation ditch stretching out behind it. He could see that the trench was to run the length of a long narrow strip of field and that a secondary ditch marked by stakes was planned that would bisect the field into two smaller sections for row crops. The main channel, four feet across and four feet deep, had been dug two-thirds the length of the field, with the remaining one-third staked out like the side ditch.

Thompson at once understood the importance of irrigation in this rain-starved country. The sun-baked earth, hard as Benito's adobe wall, grew only shortgrass a few hundred yards removed from the river's flow; only bunch grass, sage, cactus and prickly pear as the ground rose from the floodplain. He appreciated the simplicity of the ditch layout and the grand design of what could become, with water, productive cropland. Benito had not plotted too ambitious a section, several acres only, and that suited the harsh conditions. A row of young fruit trees within a year or two of bearing, he judged, lined the ditch bank. This land, a yellow, flaky crust, fed by rain and flood, so different from the soil back east. Yet promising still, with nurturing. And vast tracts, the line of sight defined by two elements only: earth and sky.

Thompson returned to the placita as Joseph arrived with the Lights' trail wagon, retrieved from the Upperdine pasture where the team had spent the previous night grazing. Watching Joseph lead the oxen, Thompson judged that during the past few months the boy had been subjected to burdens beyond his years, and that his mouth, fixed in a tight-lipped frown, and his eyes, downcast and devoid of joy, of wonder at this new land, bespoke a childhood prematurely ended. Together, they worked unloading the wagon, moving the travel chest and the spinning wheel into the room, and the few furniture items that Thompson had not abandoned on the prairie: a bed frame minus the head and foot boards; four ladderback chairs with cane seats; a table, legs disassembled for travel. Hanna walked with a splayed, flat-footed waddle, encumbered by a belly dropped low and heavy, and after a few trips from the wagon into the quarters, Thompson dissuaded her from heavy lifting, so she busied herself with arranging the furniture and replacing their mattress ticking with fresh straw Mrs. Upperdine had provided.

With the wagon empty, Thompson inspected the stowage box and discovered a large bundle tightly wrapped in canvas to protect it against the elements. He removed the canvas to expose a seed bag, a hundredweight, and an image came to him of Obadiah opening this same bag on the trail and scooping a sample that he'd shown to Thompson. Wheat, he'd explained, hardy and drought-resistant. This seed had encouraged him to venture out into the great barrens, had lured him and his family beyond the boundaries of settlement. If not for this seed, might Obadiah have indulged Hanna's desire to remain with friends in the relative safety of Diamond Spring? Or, never left Ohio at all?

Suddenly enraged, Thompson hefted the sack onto his shoulder and carried it past the placita gate, struggled across Benito's field to the bank of the Purgatoire. Descending, he slipped under the weight and fell hard and slid on his backside, cursing. He recovered his footing, brushed dirt and debris from his pants, and dragged the bag to the riverside. He unstrung the opening and drew out a handful of seeds and threw them into the water and watched them float downstream. Another handful followed the first. Obadiah's dream, Obadiah's curse, floating in the weak current, grain swirling around exposed rocks and mixing with foam in the eddies. He began to turn the bag wholesale into the river, angry at life, at fate. Grain poured in an arc, but before half empty, he stopped himself, or rather, some feeling like a hand grasping his shoulder turned him from his intent. Was it his place to pass judgment on Obadiah's hope? He retied the bag and climbed the bank and looked out across the floodplain, the flat expanse laid out before him unbroken, challenging. The future? Could such harsh land produce bread? Rough forage, yes. A little grass and, perhaps corn. Wheat? He could not imagine it. But he'd not squander Obadiah's bequest: the dream his only legacy. He returned what remained of the seed to storage at the placita.

M
IDMORNING
,
THE WAGON EMPTIED AND
the oxen set to pasture, Thompson crossed the field toward the sumac thicket that sheltered the log-and-plank cabin Upperdine had offered him the evening before. Approaching close, he saw that the roof sagged at the midline but remained intact and sound for the most part. The only window lay open to the weather, the oiled paper covering long since lost to parching sun and scattering wind. The rough-hewed plank door was set on cracked leather hinges but closed true and tight against the jamb, and it resisted his testing of the latch. He forced it open and inside, the dark, abandoned interior seemed well preserved. It smelled of piñon fire and the faint muskiness of tanned pelts. The iron stove was without rust, the floorboards tight, and daylight filtered through mud chinking only here and there. A bed frame of posts and leather straps still looked serviceable. The corners of the room held droppings; squirrels, rabbits, mice. In the far corner, he noticed tight fur balls and small piles of bones, and he heard a scratching from above. There on the center beam an owl perched, ear tufts like the bushy, arched eyebrows of a disapproving judge, implacable yellow eyes following him.

“So,” Thompson said. “Another tenant.” At the sound of Thompson's voice, the owl took flight, a great swooshing, and then a practiced folding of its wings to fit through the open window frame. Thompson went to the door and watched the owl sweep low over the willows and then rise and alight on a cottonwood branch not thirty yards distant, where it positioned itself to keep watch over its domain. “I meant myself,” Thompson called to the owl. “Not you.”

After sweeping clean the cabin floor with willow switches he'd bundled into the semblance of a broom, and arranging his few possessions, Thompson walked beside the creek collecting firewood and cutting stove length sections from deadfall with a hatchet he'd found hanging from a peg on the doorframe. He stacked the wood and turned toward the placita a quarter-mile distant. His cabin sat on a low bluff above the river and the placita was built on a flat bench just where the land began to rise again from floodplain, and between the two stretched the field cut by the irrigation ditches. The simple act of walking across a ground destined for the plow, and of cleaning out a permanent living space, began to instill in him a sense of place, of belonging, and at once he felt both the yearning to be of this land and a rising guilt at imagining for himself a future here, without Rachel, without the boys. He reached down and took up a handful of dirt, pale, dry as cornmeal, sifted it through his fingers, let the fine grit drift back to the earth. He'd seen Upperdine's corn, noted the grass on the south-facing slopes above the bottomland. Still, he marveled how anything might take root in this soil.

Afternoon, the sun still high, Thompson walked the path to John Upperdine's house and from the lean-to storage shed he shouldered a mattock and a spade. When he turned to go, Genoveva came from the house onto the porch.

“Would you care for a cup of water?”

“Thank you,” he said, setting the tools on the ground and taking the ladle from her outstretched hand. “Is Captain Upperdine in?” he asked.

“He's ridden out to meet a freight wagon.”

“But he's just in from the trail,” Thompson said, and, realizing his indiscretion, blushed, turned his head.

Genoveva smiled. “It takes a while for him to grow accustomed to home.”

Thompson took stock of the house, the outbuildings, the fields, and it occurred to him that this woman must have managed alone during long stretches of Upperdine's absence. He looked to the east, a day's journey, two days, visible in the distance until convergence of sky and earth. He turned to the west where the land climbed gradually in dips and rises. He marveled at Genoveva's endurance. And now, what of the new arrivals, uninvited? Does she welcome, or merely abide us, he wondered.

S
UDDENLY AWARE OF HIS AWKWARD
silence, his inner musing, he gestured to the tools. “I don't suppose he would object to me borrowing these?”

“Of course not.”

“I noticed a small grove of fruit trees downriver,” Thompson said. “Apple I recognized, the other I did not.”

“Pear. A gift to my cousin's husband.” She smiled. “Perhaps more a bribe. His family had orchards, and I've presented him a few saplings to tie him to this place.”

“You will be pleased to have them settled here for good?” Thompson asked.

“Very much so,” she answered. “She is dear. He is a great help to me, and I adore their family. I've not seen any except Benito in three years. The little ones so grown, I imagine.”

“They do sprout,” Thompson said.

“You have children?” Genoveva asked.

“No,” Thompson said, and started to add something that caught in his throat, and he bent for the tools without further conversation.

He walked to Benito's field and stood beside the unfinished irrigation ditch and studied the property, imagined he could understand the Mexican's design, sense his purpose. The initial rooms on the placita were almost complete. Benito would finish the walls this season. Rooms would be added out from the inner wall as his extended family grew, and this would become home for his children, and his children's children, generation after generation.

Again, the dull ache of loss began to overtake him. A vacancy of hope.
My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass
. He let drop the tools and looked at his hands. Hands long rid of the black soil of his farm but stained yet with the blood of his family, and of the Lights'. Hands good only for digging graves. The blackness fell upon him. He took up the pickax and swung it above his head and into the hard earth to continue the irrigation ditch. He swung the ax again. And again, establishing a mindless rhythm until his breathing labored and sweat stung his eyes. He paused to mop his face with his shirtsleeve and then took up the spade to remove dirt he had loosened from the ditchworks with the pick.

“I can dig for you,” Thompson said aloud as he fell back into the cadence of the rise and fall of the pick. “That I can do. I can dig.”

PART TWO

THE VALLEY OF

LOST SOULS,

1858

13

T
he cart came into view along the river path below the pasture that Thompson was mowing. He glanced up from his work just long enough to take notice. A man guided the burro while two children rode in the cart and two women on foot followed behind. Mexicans, by their appearance: Genoveva's cousin? The man raised a hand in passing. Thompson did not acknowledge. Face hidden by a widebrimmed hat, the man walked with the cautious, deliberate gait of one older than Thompson assumed the architect of the placita to be, and his slight frame again belied Thompson's preconceptions. Not much taller than the burro he led, and insubstantial as a shadow, could this be the person responsible for the grand plan of the adobe compound and the irrigation system Thompson had so admired?

The cart and the pilgrims rounded the sweeping bend toward the Upperdine place and Thompson continued mowing. He moved smoothly, cutting the swaths, guiding the scythe with the two-handled snath, passing it close to the ground, curved blade glinting in the sun, grass deposited in neat rows as he walked. Downslope, cuttings from two days earlier had already dried, pale yellow lines running the length of the field. Baked out by a September sun just beginning to lose its summer force. Heat still rose up, but with reluctant intensity, the nights consistently had begun to cool, and afternoon breezes carried just the hint of an edge down from the mountains.

He felt at ease in his labor, a liberation to be lost in motion unforced and effortless and so closely a part of his nature. But, occasionally, that same movement triggered memory, and his mind would wander back to other reaping, other fields, and his rhythm would break, the scythe moving with an uneconomical jerkiness, and he'd find himself hacking at the ground. He'd stop, drop the tool, move his hands to the small of his back, stretch, knead flesh on muscle, attempt to return to the here-and-now, his breath, taking in this air in this place at this time, and after a while, he'd take up the scythe and continue on.