Crossing Purgatory (33 page)

For a short time, no one spoke. Thompson noticed that the riders sat uncomfortably in the saddle and the mules seemed willing to test their control, shuffling and trying to dislodge the bit. Their guns looked ancient, both still fitted with flint and pan.

“Deliver and be on your way,” the steadier of the two riders demanded, his voice high with nervousness. Only then did it register with Thompson that they were mere boys, within spitting distance of Joseph's age. Neither yet grew face whiskers.

“Young pups,” Thompson whispered to Benito out of the side of his mouth. “Babies.” And, to the boys, “What do you want of us?”

“You know. The gold.”

“Armed boys,” Benito said, under his breath. “Give them what they demand.”

“My gold? My land?” Thompson said, more agitated now.

“Money only. We can recoup,” Benito said, soothingly.

The boys waved their muskets excitedly. “No funning. Be quick.”

“Yes, sir,” Thompson said, and reached below the seat and came up with the money bag in his left hand, and as the boys' attention turned to the bag he brought up the Allen pistol with his right.

“Wait,” Benito said, and reached for his staff, pushing himself erect, extending his hand. “Wait.” Thompson raised the pistol and fired off rounds as quickly as the revolving barrels allowed. The mules bucked wildly, the two muskets discharged, knocking one of the boys backward off his saddle. Apparently uninjured either by Thompson's volley or the tumble, as soon as he hit the ground the boy rolled into the arroyo, continued head over heels until he reached the sandy bed of the dry gully, and took off running. The other mule had bolted into the brush with its rider clinging to the saddle pommel, having dropped both reins and weapon.

Thompson whipped the team into full gallop, throwing Benito back onto the bench. For ten minutes, Thompson slapped and shouted, driving the horses. His blood pulsed. For the second time in his life, he'd been fired upon, experienced adrenaline flush his body. The horses finally slowed of their own accord and Thompson's hands began shaking so violently he feared he could not control the team, so he pulled to a halt. He sat with his elbows on his knees, interlocking his fingers, attempting to steady himself.

“Too close,” he said once his breathing regulated. Benito did not answer. Thompson turned to him. “Are you irked with me?”

Benito wanned, his face ashen, his lips a thin slash. He slumped back on the wagon bench, legs splayed. Thompson looked down and saw one leg of his trousers soaked in blood, hip to ankle. Blood dripped from his pant cuff and pooled in the boot box. Concentration creased Benito's face and his eyes strained for focus. Thompson set the hand brake and jumped from the wagon. He went around to Benito and lifted him from the bench and laid him in the wagon bed. When he stepped away, his own shirt was stained red and he noticed a red trail in the dust. He dipped water from the barrel and climbed into the wagon and lifted Benito's head and brought the tin to his lips. Benito drank a little and his eyes found Thompson.

“I should have let the Captain have the leg after all,” Benito said, and forced a smile.

“It will be all right,” Thompson said.

“It's not as bad as I'd thought,” Benito said. “This business.”

“No.”

“It will be fine.”

“Yes.”

“See to them,” Benito said. His voice sounded hoarse, his breathing rattled.

“Of course,” Thompson said.

Benito reached out and grasped Thompson's forearm. “See to them,” he repeated.

“Yes. Don't worry,” Thompson said. He took his knife and slit Benito's trousers and saw at once the entry wound on the inside of his upper thigh. Blood pumped from the round hole with each beat of Benito's heart. Thompson grabbed an empty sack and tore it into wide bandages and fashioned a thick compress and tightly wrapped Benito's leg with the remaining strips, but the bleeding would not stanch and the bandage was soaked through even before Thompson had finished tying it off.

“Prop me up,” Benito said. “I want to see what there is to see.”

F
OR HOURS
, T
HOMPSON FORCED HIS
mind blank, willed himself to concentrate only on the team, refusing to acknowledge the dark accusations fomenting somewhere deep within. He blocked out the moans from Benito when the wagon jostled over broken terrain. But eventually the demons surfaced, real and substantial as the young desperados he'd faced that morning. They stood before him, blocked his vision, and passed judgment. He halted the team, again unable to handle the reins, shuddering so. He searched the pitted, wind-scoured barrens for an answer. He craved dominion over
this?

Overwhelmed, Thompson jumped from the wagon and descended an arroyo. He picked up a fistful of sand and threw it into the wind.
“This?”
he shouted. He followed the twisted course of the dry streambed aimlessly until an object caught his eye, and he bent and picked up the fragile bone of a desert animal, bleached white, small and neatly formed as the finger of a child. The animal long forgotten in this forgotten place. The bone only. He dropped to his knees and shut his eyes and held the bone in his hand like a talisman and attempted to summon the spirits of his wife and boys. He wanted to tell them they would not be forgotten. He sought forgiveness. But they did not answer his call, and after a time he dropped the bone and returned to the wagon. Benito had paled and seemed asleep. His chest rose and fell in barely perceptible rhythm.

Thompson climbed aboard and put the team in motion. The hours passed. The horses cast ever-lengthening shadows ahead of them until it appeared as if a second, phantom team was leading them. Wind sliced through the grass, a thin, high sound. The iron rims of the wagon clattered. The horses plodded on. Benito bled.

Long after nightfall the trail dipped from high ground to meet the river. Thompson allowed the team to water for a short time. Benito refused food. He had not spoken again since morning, but when Thompson steadied his head to offer drink, Benito held his gaze for a long moment. His eyes were not unkind; they expressed neither accusation nor condemnation, but seemed to offer a gentle reassurance that bore into Thompson's soul more than damnation ever could have. Trust. When Benito again closed his eyes, Thompson climbed onto the bench and urged the horses, but before they had advanced even a short distance Benito called to him in a strong, calm voice. “Here.”

Thompson reined the team and jumped from the seat and went around to Benito.

“What do you require?”

“This place.”

“Yes.”

“It is a fine place?”

Thompson looked around. Dark, and in the shadows, rough scrub, low-growth willows along the trail and beyond the sound of the river, shallow, a murmurous suggestion. “Yes.”

“I am weary. Stop a while.”

“We should push on.”

“Stop a while.”

“For a short time,” Thompson said. He walked around the wagon and slumped against the wheel hub, exhausted but impatient. He listened to the horses pulling at grass, to water caressing pebbles. Time passed. The wind gusted and then stilled completely, the horses quieted, even the river-flow seemed to hush, and Thompson knew that Benito had died. He sat against the wheel, unwilling to move. The moon hung in the sky lopsided, out of symmetry. Finally, he stood and went to the back of the wagon. Benito sat against the drop gate, eyes glazed and half-lidded, his face calm and still like the night, and in the moon glow Thompson saw how he must have looked as a young man. His creases smoothed and his expression innocent. Thompson eased him prone and closed his lids and crossed his arms at his chest and began to cover his face with the blanket, but could not, and instead folded it into a pillow and tucked it under his head. He continued toward the Purgatoire, toward the placita of Benito Ibarra. Somewhere along the trail, he wasn't sure where or when, the low rattling began far inside his skull, a constant, humming rattle of bone on bone, the army advancing. Let them, he thought. I don't care.

31

T
eresa came for Benito to clean his body and prepare him for burial. Carlos had been working the field, seen Thompson approach, and after learning Benito's fate run ahead with the news. “Do not bring the wagon through the gates,” she'd instructed. Dressed for mourning, she walked from the placita with dignity, dry-eyed, her bearing erect and proud. Paloma followed, her face distorted with grief. Teresa approached Benito, smoothed his hair. Remarkably, Benito's face retained the same peaceful expression, as if his body refused decay until taking leave of his family. Teresa leaned close, whispered into his ear, “Foolish man.” She caressed his face. “Foolish old man.” She straightened, looked at Thompson with level, intense eyes.

“He died well?” she asked.

“Yes,” Thompson said.

“It concerned him,” Teresa said. “When the time came. How he would face it.”

“He died well,” Thompson said. He fought for composure, the drumming in his head.

Teresa motioned to Thompson and Carlos. “Please, carry him inside, to our bed. Then leave us to attend to him.”

When they lifted him, Thompson noted dried blood staining the wagon bed a deep rust. He sensed that time would never completely fade it, a reminder, constant, silent, persuasive.

T
HEY BURIED HIM OUTSIDE THE
south wall where he'd begun to construct the family chapel. Three cottonwoods grew a short distance from the wall, drawing water from some deep tap. In the shade of the broad-spread canopy, Carlos and Thompson dug.

When time came to cover him over, Genoveva, Teresa, and Paloma took turns reciting the burial rites, what they could remember. They read from the Bible. The boys stood mute, dumb with fear and sorrow. Hanna kept to the side, moving away whenever Destiny chatted or fussed. Captain Upperdine stood at the head of grave, looking down into the pit, brooding. Paloma and Genoveva wept quietly, but not Teresa, and when they lowered Benito into the ground, she sang a hymn in Spanish that reminded Thompson of mist drifting over the river on autumn mornings.

Afterwards, Teresa sat in a chair under the cottonwoods while Thompson filled the grave. The others stood behind her, the boys close at her side, looking up into her eyes for any sign, any sign at all that things soon would be as before. Paloma clung to Carlos for support, and with each shovel of dirt a moan escaped her lips. Carlos turned to her and talked low, soothing. As Thompson finished tamping the earth, the sun turned red on the horizon and day ended. Teresa rose from the chair and accepted Carlos's free arm and he led them into the placita. Thompson returned to his cabin. He sat on the stump and faced west and watched the purpling sky. Skeletons continued to rattle and drum in his head. He looked over the valley and wondered if he might abandon this land, move on to some other shack on some other waste.

He awakened the following morning hardly able to stand, so deep was his exhaustion. He started toward the fields, but found no one at work, a day given to mourning. He halted, unsure what to do, where to go. In the distance, he saw Teresa, a shadow in black, sitting beside the mounded, fresh-turned earth. Thompson walked to Upperdine's paddock and watched the horses shuffle. He went to the wagon and retrieved his money pouch and pistol from beneath the bench and he tried, but failed, to avert his eyes from the bloodstain. He noticed for the first time the clear outline of Benito's leg on the floorboards where blood had pooled around him. His eyes began to tear, and he swiped with his shirtsleeve and shook clear his head. The drums sounded.

Returning to his cabin, he stopped first at the placita and placed the pouch of gold at Teresa's door. He'd mentioned the money to her yesterday but she had raised her hand to cut him short and studied him without accusation but with a perfect clarity that washed him with shame. Near his cabin, he cut a branch from a juniper and sharpened one end. Inside, he hammered the peg into the chinking on the far wall and hung the pistol from the trigger guard and stepped away from it.

T
HOMPSON EXPECTED THE TREMORS TO
abate, but they did not, coming at unexpected times, growing worse. Chopping wood, the ax would fly from his grip. Eggs spilled from skillet into fire. The skeletons rattled in his head, and drumbeats, at times thunderous, at times distant. And weariness overcame him, a constant weight. Harvest was upon them, so he forced himself into the fields. At times he seemed confused about the work and unable to follow conversations, often not hearing at all. He picked beans, stored hay, shocked corn. In the evenings he retreated to his cabin and took to his bed, shaking, unable to rest. Up and into the fields. Back at day's end, sometimes eating, sometimes not. Uncomprehending cycles of light and darkness, until one morning he did not rise. He lacked strength and had no will. He lay in bed and thought that, yes, he would quit this place, a sin offering. He would quit it this instant.

But he did not move, did not rise. His sense of being in the world ebbed and flowed. At times, the universe collapsed into his thumbnail and he felt a part of everything that ever was, the purple bloom on a thistle, the evening star, a vole, a church bell tried in fire; at times, he floated above his bed and rose upward, higher, higher, feeling a part of no thing, no place, looking down upon his corporal self growing small, insignificant, a nit, a mote, invisible, and then nothing. Nothing at all. Where in this world a place for sin? For grace?

Sometime during the day he became vaguely aware of visitors, a soft buzz, his head tilted to accept porridge and a sip of water. And that night, in stupor, he felt a presence beside him, warmth, the press of a body. A whispering, let it go. Die in your grief. Pass through the veil. Emerge renewed.

He attempted to turn to the voice. Was it a voice? He could not move. He settled into the warmth, a deep and abiding comfort. Something was pulling him into himself, a sinking, to an unknown place.