Crossing Purgatory (9 page)

“I don't remember overtaking the company,” Thompson said.

“Actually, it was me what found you. Went scouting when you were over late. Saw the tracks where you'd wandered off trail. Wagon took a little beating, but we'll see to repairs.”

“You've checked on the Lights?”

“Of course.”

Thompson waited but nothing else forthcoming. “How do they fare?”

“The boy is healing. Knocked in the head, a busted rib, but he'll do.”

“Hanna?”

“The girl has lost her senses, best I can tell. Seen it before.”

“Will she recover?”

“Can't say. Some do.”

Thompson attempted to climb from the wagon but wooziness overcame him and Upperdine helped him down and steadied him with a hand to his arm.

“Have you the news about Obadiah and the other, Ned?” Thompson asked. It came back to him now, the neat circle in Obadiah's forehead, painted red. Ned's hacked and mutilated body.

“Again?” Thompson asked. Upperdine had responded to his question but he had not heard, had been back on Turkey Creek.

“Bits and pieces from the boy. Enough. Didn't want to question too deeply.”

“What men could do such things?” Thompson asked.

“Sons of bitches. That is who. Sons of bitches.”

“I have one of their horses.”

“I saw.” Upperdine shook his head and waved his hand in dismissal. “A dragged-out beast. Won't make much either for the saddle or the plow.”

“I don't want it. Someone might recognize it or its tack.”

“A patrol out from Ft. Riley passed us yesterday,” Upperdine said. “When they return, I'll send it back with them. Maybe something will come of it. Not likely.”

“I failed them,” Thompson said and his legs went wobbly again but he caught the wagon wheel and straightened.

“Plenty of opportunity to fail in this country.” Upperdine handed Thompson another ladle of brandy. “A man does what he can. Take another drink and rest, and when you again wake, I'll see about food.”

D
URING THE FOLLOWING WEEK
,
DAYS
passed in hazy anonymity. Thompson might remember rising, looking in on the Lights, and thereafter setting off into the barrens on a path roughly parallel to the trail only to find himself back in camp as evening drew near, recalling nothing of the interval between. One day he brought to camp a pronghorn draped across his shoulders but could not answer Upperdine's questions concerning the hunt. Some in the company began to shy from Thompson when he approached. Some complained to Upperdine about his queer behavior.

When aware, Thompson worried about the times he was not, the unaccounted hours and miles. Days when he could sense his mind beginning to blank, to drift into the insentient regions, he attempted to will it back into this world, focus on the tuft of grass, name it, the bird that flushed at his footfall, name it. Stay a while, he encouraged himself. On this piece of land, at this hour. Some days, he declined, could think of no compelling reason.

On good days, clearheaded, he often spent time walking beside the Lights' wagon. As Joseph regained strength, he assumed an adult role, sitting at Upperdine's council, tending the animals. But his recovery brought with it a sullenness that disturbed Thompson.

“Sounds like that hub could do with grease.”

“Could be.”

“I could stop over after we set camp.”

“I can see to it myself.” Joseph drove the oxen with cold severity.

Hanna kept to the wagon, rarely venturing out to walk in the open. She appeared competent in dress and hygiene, and she began eating again and cooking simple fare for herself and Joseph. But she remained mute and aloof. She did not visit with others during noon layovers or around the evening campfire. Except for Thompson, she did not acknowledge greetings or attempts at conversation. When approached, she fixed her gaze upon some distant object and remained silent until the well-meaning visitor gave up and moved on. When Thompson called, her eyes registered recognition and she watched him closely. When he went to the opposite side of the wagon, to check a wheel rim perhaps, she presently followed.

Hanna moved cautiously, as if anticipating danger. And she often sat with her arms folded across her stomach, hands probing here and there anxiously. The others feared her assault may have terminated her pregnancy, and she must have shared those same concerns. But it had not. Her belly grew.

T
HE COMPANY CONTINUED TO DWINDLE
in number. Several emigrant families grew trail-weary and disillusioned with a country turning more sandy and less vegetated by the day. Upon meeting an eastbound freight train, they decided to backtrack with them to Council Grove. Three traders met a teamster near Middle Crossing who offered to guide them over the dry route to Santa Fe. The prospect of avoiding the mountain at Raton enticed them. Upperdine advised against the southerly route because of scarce water and Comanche presence, but their minds were set. Later, Upperdine confided to Thompson that the men also worried that Thompson might bear the curse of Jonah and they felt more easy away from him. Upperdine laughed when he related the story.

He said, “Only thing worse than their ignorance is their ill-judgment.”

Thompson wondered.

Keeping the Arkansas River to the south, Captain Upperdine guided his remaining wagons into desolate country. A few isolated cottonwoods still sprung from the river valley, but the banks increasingly were overtaken by scrubby oak, hackberry, and willow brush. And then, no trees at all. Often, deep cuts and gullies forced the train from the riverbed onto arid tableland. The gentle rises and dips of the land and the swaying tall grasses of the prairie gave way to a flat, featureless plain, empty save for the ankle-high buffalo grass, brittle and brown. The isolated and denuded expanse was broken by sandy knobs populated by bunchgrass, sand sage, and yucca.

Thompson's mind began wandering less; he remained attuned to his surroundings. Passing through that barren and stripped territory gave him the sensation of walking the interior paths of his own mind, his soul, his body. No place to hide, all the scars, the deep cuts, the rolls and rifts lay bare. He felt the hum of its silence, the core energy working up through the cracked earth into the soles of his boots. The land seemed to Thompson almost like the beginning of creation. Unpeopled, the fundamental essence of being. Below, the earth; above, the sky. From these bare elements arose the potential for all being, Thompson thought. For life and for death, for good and for evil. If only it were possible to begin anew with this raw clay.

For days they traveled firm track under a white sun. Wind a constant: hot, dry, and always into their faces, the sand burrowing into hair and hide. Deep summer, heat borne down from the sun and reflected back from the trail which on the plains became not so much a marked road as a direction: westward. They saw little game afield, foraged no wild herbs or spices. Thompson found he could keep his strength by mixing cornmeal mush with bits of jerky, a chunk of salt pork. Coffee ran low. Upperdine insisted on conserving a portion for trade with the Indians, so they made do with weak, tea-colored adulterations, or they went without. Exclusively, buffalo chips replaced wood in the cooking fires. They collected dried dung by the barrelful, round discs the size of dinner plates, everywhere the leavings of the great herds, representing numbers unimaginable to Thompson. The chips burned like bark, a quick fire that sent up fine ash into the air. He wondered what Rachel might have thought about cooking stew while specks of cindered dung floated down into the pot. He thought about Rachel and walked out into the solitude.

Thompson took to the brooding silence of empty spaces. The plains whispered “come,” and he found himself physically unable to sit idly, even after a long march. As he wandered out of camp silhouetted against the horizon in the flat light at end of day, he sometimes seemed almost an apparition, disappearing from sight as he climbed down into a dry creekbed, only to reemerge in a different place. The others would watch him and some wondered aloud if he might posses a dark power to come and go unseen, to float though the night sky. One evening he returned after nightfall and approached Upperdine's camp fire. Three men of the company sat with him, smoking and talking in quiet voices. One of them greeted him.

“Come, sit. It's not often you relax with us. Tobacco?” The man offered a pouch.

“Thank you, no.” Thompson held out a rough oval stone the size of a child's fist that reflected from its cracks and fissures a robin's-egg blue in the firelight. “Found this along a dry bank.”

Upperdine inspected the stone. “Turquoise.” He held it up to the firelight. “Right pretty. Not from around here, I don't think. Some trader might have dropped it. The Mexicans and some Indians buff it up and make jewelry of it. Carvings.”

Thompson put the stone in his pocket and stood at the fire idly discussing with the men the affairs of the day: heat, wind, miles traveled and miles to go. After a few minutes he grew restless and excused himself and walked to the Lights' wagon. He found Joseph spreading a bedroll out beside the dying fire. Hanna sat beside the fire looking into the coals, and Thompson wondered what she saw there. Sometimes, as his own campfire glowed and dimmed, visions appeared to him: the face of Rachel or one of the boys. Once, early on, he'd reached into the embers and burned his hand attempting to stroke a cheek.

“Hanna?”

She did not show sign of hearing him.

“I've brought you this. Something pretty.” He held the stone out, and her eyes fixed on it, but she did not speak and her expression remained blank and unreadable.

“I'll just set it inside your wagon,” he said. “You can look at it when you have a mind.” But Hanna reached out her hand and Thompson gave it to her and traced the blue veining with her finger. “See?”

“Where'd you come by it?” Joseph asked, more of a demand than a question.

“In a gully north of here. A mile or so. Walk with me tomorrow and we can search some more.”

“Chores need tending.”

“I'd like to help.”

Joseph looked down at his feet and then turned to his bedroll without answering.

T
HEY PROGRESSED WESTWARD
. W
ITH EACH
day, Upperdine grew more wary about the isolation and vulnerability of his charges. The heat and the wind drained the livestock, demoralized the men, and parched the grasslands. There had been no rain for two weeks, not a cloud in three days. Scorched land, relentless sun. The trail turned sandy in places, sucking at feet and hooves. Winds strengthened. West of the Middle Crossing, they arrived nooning hour at a spring Upperdine knew contained good water. Even though it lacked forage, their few animals could manage. As Thompson helped close the wagons, he noticed to the northwest a canvas tent shining brightly in the high sun. After eating, he and Upperdine walked over. A man left his plow and came to greet them. Jesse Rench, he introduced himself. From the tent, a young girl emerged, holding the hand of a toddler who followed, shyly. In the partially broken field, two older boys who had been pulling the plow rested, harness straps hanging from their shoulders, no animals in sight. A woman of sturdy proportions with gray hair and a sun-baked face gouged the side of a low hillock with a spade. Off to her side, a barefoot boy, just of an age for long pants, sat stroking the head of a dead dog. Upperdine returned the greetings and surveyed the surroundings.

“Snake-bit,” explained Jesse Rench when he saw the men's attention drawn to the boy and the dog.

“A test you've put yourself to,” Upperdine said.

“Water's good,” Rench answered. “Land for the claiming.”

“But hard land,” Upperdine countered. Thompson read his mind. Days from market, Aboriginals about, a bleak and tenuous future.

T
HE COMPANY SPENT THE MIDDAY
hours at the spring. Thompson offered the Rench family what was left in his cooking pot, some beans laced with salt pork, a few squares of cornbread. They accepted, took the pot from Thompson and ate from it communally, scooping with their fingers and sopping with the bread. After lunch, the Renches returned to chores while the company rested under what shade they could find or create by draping blankets from ox prods pounded into the earth. Thompson sat with Upperdine while Upperdine smoked. He watched the two Rench boys struggle to pull the plow.

“An ox or one of the mules would make short work of that small plot,” he commented to Upperdine.

“If I tarried to assist every doomed immigrant we passed, I'd never complete a passage.”

Toward two o'clock, Captain Upperdine broke camp; but they had progressed no more than a quarter-mile when the rear wagon hit a deep rut and broke an axle. Upperdine rode back to assess the damage, and then passed the word that they would lay over for the night.

“We have what we require to repair,” he told Thompson, “but it will take some time.” He turned his horse to join a group of men who were busy lightening the wagon and leveraging it onto blocks.

Thompson went to the Lights' wagon and shortly he and Joseph led one of the oxen to Rench's field and rigged it to the plow. Rench seemed uncomfortable working with the animal, so Thompson took the plow and continued in the field while the others hacked at the dugout and Joseph went over to the boy who had lost his dog and began talking with him. Thompson enjoyed walking behind the plow again, the rolled earth beneath his feet, the smell of newly turned soil and the draft animal close in front, the lathered flanks musty, its droppings mixed by the blade into the freshly exposed soil. Thompson spent an hour carving crooked furrows in the grudging soil with the makeshift rig and then, unwilling to overextend the ox, he unhitched and led it to graze. He went over to the incapacitated wagon to check on repairs, to lend what assistance he might, but several men already were at work. There was little to be added to their efforts, so he walked back to the Rench homestead.