Crossing Purgatory (22 page)

“Let's sit and talk a moment,” Benito said and led Thompson away from the door. He told Paloma's story.

20

W
hen the Ibarra family set out from Plaza del Arroyo Seco, there was to be another person joining them: Carlos de Vargas, a young man from a neighboring village, a weaver who also owned a small but growing flock of sheep. At age twenty-one, someone with promise. Paloma's betrothed. The past summer, Paloma and Carlos, chaperoned by Teresa, traveled to Santa Fe seeking the priest's blessing for an abbreviated engagement so they could marry upon Benito's return from the Purgatoire. The day hot, dusty; American soldiers loitering outside the tavern, drinking; a girl dancing a fandango, her slim waist cinched with a bright sash, her skirt fanned, ankles flashing; a lewd comment as Paloma walked by, a challenge from Carlos; a response from the soldiers. One of them grabbed Paloma's arm and pulled her close and attempted to engage in a clumsy two-step. Paloma slapped the soldier, he pushed her roughly, and Carlos charged him, striking him full in the face, splitting his lip. The others came quickly to the aid of their companion, knocking Carlos to the ground. He got to his feet but one of the Americans pulled his revolver and held it to Carlos's face, full cock, daring him to advance. They made him watch while they passed Paloma one to another, hands groping, fondling, raising her dress, mocking Carlos, his manhood. They tore her undergarments, exposed her flesh to Carlos, think you can handle that, boy? Teresa hurled herself at the men and was tossed to the ground as well. An officer passed and noticed the disturbance and dispersed the soldiers. Teresa still sprawled in the dust, Carlos bleeding from the head and nose, Paloma, in tatters, nearly naked, hysterical with anger and shame. No apologies offered, a warning from the officer for Carlos to keep his place.

Relating the story, Benito's voice lacked emotion, but he continually wrung his hands as if attempting to wash away the events as he spoke them, cleanse the stain of recollection. Thompson listened, expressionless, elbows on knees, head lowered, eyes focused on the ground a short distance in front of his feet.

“No harm came to them?” Thompson at length asked.

“None to the body.”

“And no satisfaction demanded of the soldiers?”

“When I returned, I met with the elders of Carlos's village. I traveled to Santa Fe with a delegation and approached the commander of the American garrison, seeking redress. He blamed the incident on the fandango dancer. She enticed his men and enflamed the passions.”

Thompson reached down and picked up a pebble and sat up and tossed it across the courtyard in the general direction of a hen.

“The villagers talked of revenge,” Benito continued. “I argued against it.”

Thompson looked at Benito and Benito could sense his question.

“No good could come of it. No satisfaction, nothing righted. The American soldiers possessed overwhelming power, cold eyes. They lacked nobility. Sometimes it's best to put evil to our backs and move on with life.”

“Good advice, perhaps, but difficult to follow,” Thompson said.

“True,” Benito allowed. “Paloma's bitterness remains. She hates Americans. She feels betrayed by me and disgraced by Carlos. In her anger and humiliation, she accused him, questioned his courage, his honor.”

“And Carlos?” Thompson asked. “How did he respond?”

Benito shook his head. “Quit his loom. Abandoned his sheep. Disappeared.”

“Where to?” Thompson asked.

“Into the badlands, I suspect.” Benito looked up from his hands and waited until Thompson turned to him. “Shame is an unforgiving master. It can drive you far from home.”

“I know shame,” Thompson said, and Benito saw remembrance welling behind his eyes, sorrow and remorse. Thompson started to speak and stopped and shook his head slowly back and forth as if dismissing the thoughts that rose in his throat, denying them voice, forcing them back into some inner vault.

“I suspect at some point all men feel remorse,” Benito finally said.

Thompson shrugged.

“And here,” Benito motioned with his hand. “Is this a place of banishment or of second chances?”

“Depends on the day,” Thompson said. “Some days I wake up and walk outside and it's like I'm standing at the gates of hell. But other times I seem a part of the valley. I feel almost at home.”

“What about this place makes it feel like home?”

“It's difficult to put into words,” Thompson said. “The endlessness of its want, perhaps.”

“Yes?”

“The river wants for flow, the land for rain. The sky for days almost seems in want of clouds. Without clouds, there is nothing to define the sky. The horizon wants for end.” Thompson paused, and it seemed to Benito that he waited for validation, for permission to have these notions. Benito gestured with his hands, go on.

“My cabin,” Thompson said. “On that rise no more than twenty feet above the river.”

“Yes.”

“When I look east, on clear days from that vantage I can make out a stand of trees surrounding a spring out in the plains.”

“I know that place,” Benito said.

“Once, I walked there. A day and part of the second morning it took.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Almost a day and a half.”

“Yes,” Benito nodded. “This is a vast, empty place.”

“And that emptiness gives me comfort. Some days. I don't know why.”

“It is good to find comfort wherever one is able.”

“But such a peculiar succor.”

“Comfort, nonetheless,” Benito said, “and that is a start.”

21

D
ays shortened. Each new snow lingered in the shadows. Ice thickened along the riverbank and in wagon ruts. Winter constricted the world—low skies pulled horizons near, walls closed in, rooms shrunk to the size of a tomb.

Benito noticed Teresa withdraw inward. One morning, carding wool by the fire, he watched her hands go still. She took up a fluff of wool from the paddle and studied it, absently pulling at the fine threads as she stared into the flame snaking between two lengths of piñon. Benito knew she was remembering the Plaza, the women who would gather to card and spin and share coffee and gossip. In the months since they'd arrived, no word from Plaza del Arroyo Seco, and little free time to wonder. But now, winter, a time for reminiscence. He looked about the room, empty save for him, the quiet crackle of fire and the wind slashing against the window shutters the only conversation. He struggled to find some words of encouragement, something to brighten her spirit, but nothing came. He pulled on his jacket and went outside. A wan sun offered feeble comfort. He walked. Fog hung above the river—a heron glided through the diaphanous ether. He returned to the placita. Across the courtyard his sons tossed table scraps on the ground for the chickens and collected eggs from the coop. He went to Paloma's door and knocked. Her room shared a common wall with Benito and Teresa's and originally had been connected by an archway inside. But when Paloma was made to take in the boys, she insisted the archway be plastered over and a separate entrance be installed opening onto the plaza. Benito had little spare time for additional work, but decided acquiescence offered the greatest opportunity for familial harmony. He knocked out and framed an outer opening and used the reclaimed bricks to wall the interior.

Benito rapped again more forcefully and Paloma opened the door but did not motion her father inside.

“Your mother requires your help in preparing the wool,” Benito said.

“I am helping her,” Paloma replied. She opened the door wider and pointed to her hearth, the stack of raw wool and the carding paddles on her chair.

“I think she'd like your companionship as well,” Benito said.

“The only time I have to myself is when the boys are at chores,” Paloma answered without apology.

Benito felt helpless. If he ordered his daughter to Teresa's side, her company surely would prove worse than no company at all. And he had no idea how to appeal to Paloma's sense of duty. Unable to comfort his wife or to command respect from his daughter, he pulled his jacket close and pushed open the gate of the compound and went to the goat pen. He busied himself sinking posts to expand the enclosure to accommodate the kids that his does soon would drop. The frozen ground made digging almost impossible. But he needed the challenge. Paloma's self-imposed isolation was unhealthy both for her and for the family, and her simmering, open hostility toward the Americans could eventually prove dangerous in this new country. He must somehow persuade her to move past her misfortune. He remembered her before. Always strong-willed, she nevertheless was respectful and devoted to Teresa and to him. How to turn back time? Benito believed their future happiness depended on it, but he lacked a solution. He worked through the morning, the labor an eventual balm for his irritation and worry.

Alejandro and Benjamin joined Benito presently and they too lightened his mood. They took turns carrying posts and scratching with the pick. At noon, Benito returned with the boys to the placita and was buoyed at the sound of light chatter coming from the room when he opened the door. He found not Paloma but Hanna visiting with Teresa. Disappointed, Benito nodded to them and hung his jacket on the door peg while the boys scurried to one corner of the room to play with clay marbles that Thompson had molded for them from adobe mud earlier that autumn. Hanna helped Teresa by the hearth with the midday meal, and learned from her as well. Benito sat at the table and watched them.

Following the birth of her daughter, Hanna had refused the usual laying-in period and daily seemed to gain strength both physically and emotionally. Destiny riding her hip, she visited almost daily with Teresa, offering help with chores and peppering her with questions about ways of the Plaza. Reserved at first, fearing how Paloma might react to Hanna's presence, Teresa gradually warmed to the visits and now openly welcomed Hanna's friendship.

“And this, what is this called?” Hanna indicated the flat stone sitting on the hearth.

“A comal. For the tortillas.”

“How do you make tortillas?”

“Corn. Water. A pinch of limestone ash. Simple,” Teresa smiled. “But for every woman, a little different. How much of this? How smooth the
masa?
How hot the stone?”

“Do they keep well?”

“Si
, but whenever possible fresh every day. No table is complete without tortillas, and a cold tortilla is really nothing at all. Serve fresh. Serve warm.”

Teresa took Hanna's elbow and led her to the pot where the corn had been soaking and demonstrated how to skin the kernels and grind the pulp into masa using the
mano
and the
metate
. Good, thought Benito. A purpose for Teresa, and a distraction. With their backs to the room, talking, the two women did not hear the door creak open. Benito turned and motioned with his eyes for Paloma to come, sit. Paloma stood at the door for a moment watching Hanna and Teresa, glanced darkly at Benito, and left.

T
HE WINTER SOLSTICE APPROACHED
,
NIGHTS
that seemed to flow one into another without break. Benito began chores before first light and ended in the murky afternoon darkness. Sunk deep into that interminable season, the celebration days arrived almost without notice. There was little to celebrate. Corn stores ran short and some days they went without bread, without tortillas. A ration of meat, some onions perhaps. Never starving, but persistently on the edge of hunger. On La Noche Buena, Thompson stopped by and presented the boys each with a hand-carved whistle, which they delighted in. Beneath his smile, Benito noticed in Thompson a solemnity, and he seemed distracted, his thoughts somewhere far off, and he refused to sup with them.

On Dia de los Reyes, John Upperdine arrived at the placita like one of the wise men bearing gifts. With ceremony, he handed Teresa a covered basket and beamed as she unveiled a mound of fresh lemons and oranges. She marveled at the fruit and examined each piece individually, each one a heavenly orb in miniature, admiring its color and the firmness of its flesh. Even Paloma became animated for a few moments before resuming an expression suggesting she'd tasted the fruit and found it sour. Teresa could not imagine such a bounty appearing at her table, and later, in private, Benito advised her to accept the gift without delving too deeply into how the fruit had been procured. He knew John Upperdine to be a shrewd and sometimes ruthless trader, and he had no doubt that the transaction had a history best left undocumented. But Benito gave thanks for the smile he saw come to Teresa's face, a short respite from the challenges of winter.

Two weeks following the New Year, Benito led his cart to Upperdine's house with a load of kindling the boys had collected from the river bottom. He found the Captain checking tackle on a pair of horses hitched to a light freight wagon.

Thompson emerged from the barn shouldering a bag of sugar, which he loaded onto the wagon. Benito took inventory of the freight: two hams from the cold storage, a keg of whiskey, pouches of tobacco, several glass panes arranged in a box with straw padding, and a stack of hand-milled lumber the length of the wagon bed. How Captain Upperdine came to possess such items never ceased to confound and impress Benito. He silently eyed the hams. With corn supplies low, they had been consuming more meat.

“A journey?” Benito asked.

“An exploratory trip,” Upperdine answered. “To the mining camps along Cherry Creek.”

“I thought you stated that nothing good would come of those settlements,” Benito said.

“Nothing will,” Upperdine said, “for ninety-nine out of every one hundred ill-equipped, scruff-necked prospectors and for one hundred out of one hundred Indians.” He patted the bag of sugar approvingly and smiled. “But for a merchant, that's another story.”