Crossing Purgatory (26 page)

“They must be nearer the ford. They'd not of come this far.”

“How can you be certain?”

“He came to collect wood. We passed by thick growth coming here, winter downfall. He'd of stopped long before.”

Thompson followed Upperdine, again covering ground they'd been over, grimly scanning near and middle distances. Midday they dismounted and let the horses and Benito's burro graze and water for a few minutes. A hawk circled above, a dark shadow gliding over the patches of snow and rock. Thompson followed the flight of the hawk and his eyes caught something, a flash of color unnatural to the landscape that drew his attention.

“There.”

Downslope from the trail, at the base of a bluff where underbrush grew thick, a flap of red cloth, a thin column of smoke.

They rode to the bluff and spotted the cart with its awning fashioned from one of Teresa's blankets.

“Hullo,” Upperdine called. Paloma's head darted above the awning and she stepped out from behind the wagon and answered his call.

“Papa is hurt.”

The two men dismounted and descended the slope clumsily, the footing still treacherous. Benito lay wrapped in blankets, feverish, shivering under his covers, sweat beading at his forehead. A tendril of smoke rose from a sputtering fire. Paloma had cut his boots from his feet, and swaddled them in cloth stripped from her blanket. His right leg from thigh to knee was swollen to the size of a ripe watermelon. Juniper branches splinted the leg.

“Took a spill, did you?” Upperdine asked.

“I've made quite a mess,” Benito said. He tried to make his voice light, unconcerned. But his eyes reflected agony, his breathing raspy and shallow, and his face beaded with sweat.

“Got it set?”

“Paloma did as well as she could.” Each sentence an effort.

“Did bone break through?”

“No.”

“Can he travel?” Thompson asked.

Upperdine shook his head, no.

Benito's awareness ebbed and flowed. He seemed to drift at times to the other side and his face would relax, his breathing turn shallow and thin. Then a forced determination would distort his features and he would return to the here and now of pain and discomfort. He dozed, a troubled half-sleep, mumbled what sounded like ancient incantations. Thompson listened, mesmerized, and thought, another world? He's there now. For an instant he felt an almost irresistible urge to ask Benito, are they with you? Are they safe? Do they remember me? Condemn me?

Paloma did not leave her father's side. Thompson and Upperdine stoked the fire when Benito shivered and banked it when he burned with fever. On the morning of the second day in their makeshift camp, Benito's delirium increased and Upperdine unfurled him from his blanket and packed his torso in snow dug from the banks that still hugged the north facing slopes. Benito convulsed from cold and the jerking of his leg caused him to cry out.

“You're hurting him,” Paloma protested, but weakly.

“His leg is hot to the touch and all swolled up,” Upperdine said. “He'd improve his chances without it.”

Paloma did not understand. “Without what?” she asked, and then after a moment she comprehended and sucked in her breath. “No. You cannot.”

“Would you have him die?” Upperdine asked, gently. Thompson noticed Paloma's eyes glistening. She bit her lower lip and turned from them.

“Will it come to that?” Thompson asked.

“I don't know. Sometimes the poison works itself out. But if we wait too late, taking the leg won't matter.”

Benito's eyes fluttered and he opened them, struggled to focus. “I think we'll leave the leg be,” he whispered. They all turned to him. So, Thompson thought, good, he is still with us.

“As you wish,” Upperdine said, putting his hand on Benito's shoulder.

Thompson thought about the options, and found himself in agreement with Benito. Could a man work the fields on one leg? His boys were not yet capable of heavy labor. Thompson had known a man in Indiana who'd had his leg pinched off mid-thigh in a logging mishap, but he had five sons and three daughters to take on the load. Paloma and Teresa? They'd do what they could. But it would be difficult. Easier to return to family in New Mexico Territory.

For another two days, Benito floated in and out, too weak to move, Upperdine sitting with him, pulling a wineskin from somewhere in his pack, squeezing the liquid first into his mouth, and then offering a taste to Benito. Paloma hovered, silent. Thompson paced. Food gave out, and for a day they made do with only melted snow.

Before dawn on the fifth morning, Thompson heard a turkey gobbling in the distance and he sneaked out into the brush and shot it. While it roasted over the embers, Benito awoke, alert, hungry, and ate more than he had for days, slept soundly the remainder of the day and through the night, and upon waking the following morning, said to John Upperdine, “I am ready to be rid of this place.”

“Well, then, we'll see to it.”

They placed Benito in the cart and harnessed the burro. Paloma rode Thompson's horse while Thompson led the burro. They followed the river downstream until the bluffs fell away and the bank gentled sufficiently to allow them access to the higher ground. Every rock, every jolting bump elicited a soft moan from Benito, the jostling of the cart a constant agitation. Finally, they reached the junction with the Purgatoire and made good time, Benito resting more comfortably on the established trail.

A few miles on, the homestead and the placita. They all waited at the gate. Upperdine turned away for his house and Thompson led the cart to the gate and stood back and watched the procession. The boys jumped with excitement and before anyone could restrain him, Alejandro threw himself onto the cart to hug his father, who groaned in agony but refused to relinquish his hold on the boy. Teresa approached Paloma and placed her open palm on her daughter's cheek and, to Thompson's astonishment, Paloma did not pull away. Teresa appeared to Thompson to have aged a decade in the days they'd been away. Haggard, face streaked in worry lines and tears, she could easily have passed for one of the ancient ones. She bent to her husband, feeling his forehead, clucking her tongue, saying only “Foolish man.” Thompson could imagine her thoughts, what herbs remained in the medicine sack, what blends to cool the skin and heal the leg. As he eased away from the homecoming to see to the horses, he caught sight of Hanna and Joseph standing by the gate. Her eyes looked swollen and she raised her hand to him and he sensed her watching him as he walked across the field toward Upperdine's stock pen.

Hanna came to him later, at his cabin, to call him to supper. She waited at the door while he gathered his jacket. He sensed that if he invited her in, she would come. He did not want that, was not ready. Would he ever be? He hurried out to meet her and they walked to the placita.

“We were all worried sick about you,” Hanna said as they traversed the field between Thompson's shack and the placita.

“We were not far,” Thompson said. “But a new crisis arose daily with Benito's condition, and it did not feel right leaving.” After a few minutes, he asked, “How did you fare while we were gone?”

“Teresa is a stronger woman than even I credited her for,” Hanna said. “As soon as the snow lifted, she had us out scouring the brush for the missing goats, and we were able to save them all. She helped Genoveva look after Captain Upperdine's stock as well.”

“Is Teresa capable of maintaining the field while Benito is recovering?” Thompson asked.

“She's managed so far. But not without cost. She is exhausted, both from worry and from work.”

“I could see as much,” Thompson said.

“What of Benito?” Hanna asked.

“I think he will do,” Thompson said.

“The leg. Will it have to come off?”

“Don't know. But either way, it will prove a burden.”

“Lame?”

“For good, I expect.”

“How will he farm?” Hanna asked.

The question remained with Thompson for days on end.

24

B
uffalo grass appeared on the high plains, and Upperdine prepared to ride out to guide an eastbound freight train. He planned to return by late summer with an assortment of trade goods and a full purse, and perhaps another swarm of emigrants in tow. Thompson helped hitch the team.

“You'll not change your mind?” Upperdine asked.

“No,” Thompson said. “I'll see to the fields.” He'd gone back and forth about it, packed and unpacked, walked along the river and far afield testing his legs and his will. But, soon as he had set his mind to assist Benito with planting, he realized the land had taken hold of him again. The prospect both excited and frightened him. What memories might be turned to the surface by the plow?

“Well, then, see to my holdings,” Upperdine said, clapping Thompson on the shoulder. “A share will be yours.” His face, grown doughy over the winter, now flushed, as if he'd dipped into his poor experiment with Taos Lightning. His eyes shone. Thompson knew Captain Upperdine took no interest either in planning or in planting his fields. He traded. The prospect of profitable exchange brought him visceral pleasure. Thompson harbored no doubts about Upperdine's destiny on the frontier even as he questioned his own.

“Safe journey,” Thompson called and watched him go, and traveled in his mind back across the desolate track, back to Indiana and to those three graves beneath the persimmon tree. The trail carried in its ruts and grooves so much of his pain and history that it seemed almost a part of him, a long scar running the length of his soul.

Lost inward, the wagon had long passed from sight when finally he turned and found Genoveva on the porch, watching. She'd not been present for Upperdine's departure. Standing above him, she seemed regal, larger than life, her soft brown skin and black hair; her expression tranquil and untroubled. Thompson thought her a symbol of this country, at once both new and timeless.

“Coffee?” Genoveva asked.

“I have chores,” Thompson answered, and then, “But, yes, thank you.”

They went into the dining room and Genoveva filled first his cup and then her own. He sipped, and, glancing over his shoulder, said, “So, he's off.”

“Yes.”

“Will you be all right?”

Genoveva laughed, although without mirth. “Yes. I think I will be just fine.”

Thompson thought it a silly question even as he asked it. Of course Genoveva would manage. She'd managed before any of them had arrived. Seasons of solitude, seasons of unending chores, of night fears and grinding sameness.

S
NOWMELT FED THE
P
URGATOIRE
R
IVER
. Winter's purl increased in volume and velocity almost hourly until it threatened bank and bottomland. Some mornings the sound of water battling over and around the rocks woke Thompson and he walked the few paces from his cabin to the bluff and stood mesmerized as the river coursed below. He'd known it only as a trifling ripple. Now, an angry boil.

Spring took hold, but grudgingly: warmth to soak the shirt; a sudden thunder-snow; calm, fragrant mornings; afternoon winds so fierce that once he actually was lifted from the ground. Wind billowed his open coat and for an instant his feet lost the earth and left him with an otherworldly sensation of floating, of being somewhere other than where he was, someone other than himself.

As had become habit, Thompson went to the placita each morning for Benito. Benito could not yet walk, and he found crutches cumbersome, so Thompson hitched the burro to the cart and Paloma helped her father from the house, and the men went out into the fields. Fifteen acres, secondary ditches dividing the field into three plots.

“I thought corn here,” Thompson pointed. “And there, melons.”

Benito shook his head. “Corn, over there,” he countered. “Here, beans. In the third section, peppers.” Benito explained the contours of the land, how the water would flow, pool, and soak; the most favorable patches for each crop; how they would alternate each year.

“Visualize the water from the ditches flooding the field,” he explained to Thompson.

“I expect I've seen a field or two,” Thompson said.

“You've seen ground so hard the water just sits on it, can't soak in?” Benito asked. “You've seen corn stalks grow tall as me and not put out one ear because of bad soil? You've seen an apple tree curl up and go barren not three feet from the bank of a stream because the roots can't reach?”

Thompson thought Benito smug in his knowledge and resented him for it, but also recognized once again how much he must adapt to this alien world. “I'll harness up tomorrow.” They both sensed it was time. The earth fully thawed, the diversion pond filled.

“Come with me,” Benito said, and they led the burro across the fields and into the placita. From the cart bed, Benito summoned his boys and pointed them to the tool shed. Alejandro and Benjamin listened to his instructions and rummaged through the shed and with effort dragged out what looked like the large knee-timber of a tree. One end of the crotched log curved upwards to serve as a handle of sorts and the other branch tapered to a point tipped in iron.

“A Mexico plow?” Thompson asked. It looked primitive and clumsy, like debris swept downcurrent with the floods and deposited on the bank.

Benito nodded. “We'll break ground in the old way.”

“Backwards,” Thompson said.

“Traditional,” Benito said. “It serves well in this soil.”

“It looks like something Moses would have used,” Thompson said.

“Well, if it was suitable for Moses, it should be suitable for us as well.”

“That is a backward tool and I will not use it.” He much preferred the steady bulk of Upperdine's eastern plow, and in the end Benito deferred to him. What choice had he?

They began with Upperdine's fields. Benito insisted on accompanying him each day, sitting in the cart, watching, shouting advice, criticism.