Crossing Purgatory (16 page)

“See here. I believe we done asked your girl here for her company.”

“You must forgive her,” Benito said. “She is not herself.”

“Cerdo!” Paloma hissed. The soldier did not appear to understand, but the tone of her voice caused him to sneer at her.

“She don't sound too friendly toward us, does she,” he said.

“Please,” Benito said, motioning for Teresa to take Paloma's arm and move away from the soldiers. “She is not of right mind. She wears the widow's gown.” Benito cast his eyes to the ground and shook his head. The rim of his hat blocked his face and out of the corner of his eye he noticed Teresa edging the family away, heard the creak of the cart wheels. He slipped his hand to the small of his back and felt the hilt of his knife. Hopeless, he knew, but he'd draw, if it came to that. The soldier glanced at Paloma and looked back at his friends who had lost interest and returned to their game of dice. The soldier frowned at Benito and dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

“Well, get on, then, Mister pepper-gut,” the soldier ordered. “Go learn her some manners.”

Benito took the burro's lead from Teresa and moved them away. Near the plaza gate, they drew water from the community barrel and allowed the burro to drink for a few minutes from the trough.

“You are a foolish girl,” Teresa scolded her daughter.

“Pigs,” Paloma answered. “The Americans are pigs, and they disgust me.”

Benito had to restrain himself from grabbing his daughter and shaking her. He came up close, hissed. “I was forced to degrade myself because of your outburst. Do not put me to the test again!”

U
NEVENTFUL
? A
MAN TRAVELING ALONE
with two women and two young boys
.

“Quickly. Follow me.” Benito guided his burro from the trail down the steep bank of an arroyo, slipping on loose rock and fine sand. He led them fifty yards along the floor of the arroyo to a thicket of saltbush that grew tall and dense. He tethered the burro as deep into the underbrush as he could force it and hoped the cart was hidden from view. He positioned the others beside it and waited.

On his previous trip alone, Benito had developed a keen sense for identifying fellow travelers from their dust sign. Men on foot kicked up low whiffs and almost always were more interested in putting miles behind them than in conversing or in causing trouble. Benito learned to distinguish between the fast moving, thin trails raised by Indian ponies and the denser column kicked up by cavalry horses. Thick clouds rose from mule teams hauling cargo wagons. Something in the dust rising in the closing distance told him to flee the trail. He shoved his boys deeper into the undergrowth and removed his hat and folded it under his belly and peeked out from the thicket. There, in the dry bed of the arroyo, Paloma's headscarf, a black signal flag starkly visible in the white sand. He sprinted from the cover and retrieved the scarf and wedged himself into a gully eroded into the ditch bank. Sparse cover. He reached overhead and scooped dirt into his hair, down the back of his shirt and trousers, and he angled his head slightly so that he could watch the trail from one eye. He worked his shoes into the sandy bed of the arroyo until little of the dark leather showed. He attempted to quiet his breathing, relax into the side of the hill. A tug at his pant leg caused him fright. He looked down. Benjamin, peering up at him. “Papa?”

“Quiet.” Benito took Benjamin and pulled him into the crevice tight against his thighs, small body pressed against the bank. He put his right hand over the boy's mouth and positioned his thumb and forefinger against his nostrils and prayed he would not have to do it. To clamp shut. “Not a sound,” he whispered.

He heard the jangling of tackle, creaking wood, the rub of leather on leather, iron on iron. Two riders came into view astride tall horses thick across the shoulders and haunches. Both riders wore Texas hats and were well armed: pistols at the belt, long knives, and muskets hanging in scabbards from the saddle. Trailing them, a team of four horses pulled a wagon driven by a huge black man with a bald head that shone with perspiration. The man's forearms looked as large as Benito's thighs. The bed of the wagon held three people bound hand and foot: an Indian dressed almost comically as a white man: dark trousers, a white shirt and red vest, and a black bowler; a Negro male slumped against the back gate seemingly asleep or unconscious; and a young Negro female in a calico dress torn at the bodice to expose one breast.

Benjamin squirmed. Benito's hand closed more firmly on his son's mouth. Every instinct, every muscle twitch urged him to run, but his mind cautioned him to remain still as rock. One of the lead riders pulled up, and the wagon halted and the other rider circled back and sat his horse facing the arroyo and looked down the bank and across the dry streambed. It seemed to Benito the rider stared directly at him for an agonizing length. He dared not even blink. The rider took a water bag from around his saddle horn, pulled at the cork, and tilted it into his open mouth, still searching the arroyo. He stopped the bag, returned it to the horn, turned his horse, and signaled the wagon forward. Benito did not move for several minutes, so frozen by fear and caution. He felt his son jerking and realized he'd been pinching his nostrils, and he relaxed his grip and whispered for him to hush and they remained against the wall of the gully until Benito no longer could hear the wagon or the horses. He eased from the bank and saw a hint of dust kicking up in the middle distance. Only then did he pull away completely. Benjamin emerged from the crevice like some desert insect, covered in dirt. Benito took him into his arms, but when he began walking he felt as though he were melting and his legs almost gave out and he had to set Benjamin down and reach a hand to the bank for balance. His every muscle had been tensed for what seemed hours, although perhaps only a few minutes in chronological time, and they no longer wanted to work. Benito waited until his legs felt reliable and then led his son back to the others crouching in the saltbush thicket. When Teresa saw him approach she jumped from hiding and ran to Benjamin and drew him close and dusted him. The child began to whimper but did not cry.

“Who were they?” Paloma asked.

“I don't know. Texas slavers, I think,” Benito said.

“What were they doing up here?”

“Business.”

“Those people in the wagon?” Teresa asked.

“Runaways perhaps. Perhaps just innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who knows?”

“What makes you say that?” asked Paloma.

“The Indian. Dressed in missionary clothes.”

“Where have you brought us?” Teresa challenged. “What place is this where we have to hide like lizards?”

“U
NEVENTFUL
,” B
ENITO SAID TO
U
PPERDINE
.
“Si
, thank God. A busy road and our great good fortune to travel it unmolested.”

“The trail is abuzz of late with low fellows,” Upperdine observed. “I believe it is this rumor of gold that is spreading east. Bringing out prospectors of all sorts. Some just green farm boys out to get rich, some old forty-niners, and some foul types, opportunists of the worst kind, just out for the pickings.”

“Perhaps it will blow over with winter.”

“I don't have a good feeling about it.”

“Tell me,” Benito asked. “Your friend, Thompson. He knows the land?”

“He's a farmer,” Upperdine said

“From the states? From the East?”

“Yes.”

“It is much different there, I'm told.”

“All I know is that I put him on the land and he has taken to it.” Upperdine leaned close to Benito, his voice low but intent.

“He's a troubled sort. I don't know why I should give a fig for him, why he should concern me one way or the other. I seen plenty like him out here in the wilderness. Wandering souls. Groundless. Spirit out of fix.”

“So, he may stay, or he may move on?” Benito asked.

“Who's to say,” Upperdine said. “But make use of him. There is much to do.”

15

F
ollowing the noon meal, Upperdine retired for a nap while Benito collected a rake and a pitchfork from the tool shed and hitched an ox to the flatbed wagon fitted out with the hayrack, and walked to the field. He was bone-tired, but not yet ready to face his daughter. From a distance, he watched Thompson as he moved along the rows. Benito judged him to be still in his twenties, perhaps six or seven years older than Paloma, although he was a poor judge of age. To Benito, people either were young or old, and time on earth had much less to do with it than the trials one faced getting from one year to the next. From a distance, Thompson had appeared young to Benito, clean-limbed and spry. Up close, he appeared much older.

He wished to take a measure of this man to whom John Upperdine had become attached. John was a trader, a shrewd businessman and a boisterous fellow. He'd made acquaintances up and down the trail, friends and more than a few enemies. Yet he rarely held strong emotions for anyone. He liked some men, disliked others, but it had always been in his best business interests to keep arm's distance. He always conducted trade with an eye to his own advantage with whomever he dealt. He'd never think to favor a friend, or to exclude an enemy. Better to keep even-tempered with both. Benito thought this uncommon interest in a stranger's well-being would eventually prove beneficial to John's spiritual constitution, but he could not help but wonder how this person's arrival might affect his own relationship with the Captain.

Benito walked to the lower end of the field and tested the cut grass, twisting the stem base, tasting it for moisture. Convinced it was ready to row up, he began raking the cuttings into stacks and piling them onto the wagon with his pitchfork. Deep into the day Thompson kept at his cutting while Benito raked and loaded. September, summer slow to ebb, the sun continued to throw heat, sweat soaked their garments. But, as the day wore on, the field turned golden in the soft light and a breeze stirred. The birds trilled in the thickets by the river. Grasshoppers chirred. Benito straightened, stretched, and thought, good work. Fodder for the cold season, for the animals. And, for hours, he'd forgotten his troubles with Paloma, hard labor leaching the anger from his pores.

When the wagon brimmed, he led the ox back down the trail to the barn and positioned the wagon below the door to the haymow. As he climbed into the bed Thompson came up beside the wagon.

“The field yields well,” Thompson said.

“It does,” Benito said.

“Rains must have fallen at opportune times,” Thompson said.

“Must have,” Benito said.

Thompson pointed off toward Benito's field and the irrigation ditch. “I appreciate your plan in case the rains don't come when needed.”

Benito regarded Thompson.
“Si
. We have a saying. Water is the blood of the land.” And, after a moment, he added, “You've completed much in my absence.”

“You laid out a good plan,” Thompson said. “The crops not yet ripe, the grass wasn't ready to cradle. I had nothing better to bide my time.”

“Still, I am in your debt,” Benito said, uncomfortable with the notion.

“Your ditch filled idle time,” Thompson repeated. He nodded toward the hay. “If you want to pitch it up, I'll work from inside.”

For the next hour Benito tossed the fodder into the opening of the haymow while Thompson distributed it. When they were finished, Thompson climbed down from the loft. Bits of dried grass clung to his wet shirt and matted hair. They both went to the trough and drank deeply, sharing the ladle that hung from a peg on the well beam.

“I have to collect some goats and chickens Genoveva has been kind enough to watch after during my absence,” Benito said.

Thompson glanced up at the sky. “A little of the day remains. I'll cut a while longer.”

“Supper with us tonight?” Benito asked.

“You must be worn thin from your travels,” Thompson said.

“It will be a simple meal,” Benito said.

Thompson hesitated and then said, “Thank you, I will,” and started toward the field.

In among John's livestock, Benito had grazed a handful of goats, one buck, the rest does. A dozen hens with his mark dyed on their crowns pecked and scratched among John's flock in the yard outside the coop. Already in this new land he had amassed greater wealth than he could have hoped for in New Mexico, although much of it through Genoveva's beneficence. Brood stock provided the beginnings and Benito's husbandry the increase. He left the chickens for the boys to collect in the morning, cut out his goats. His legs felt leaden, his body drained of energy, emotionally and physically, but he revived as the placita came into view. He turned the goats into the pen adjoining the outer wall and then stepped back and inspected anew his home. He walked the outside perimeter, the three tall walls, the fourth partially built. He ran his hand along the textured surface of the adobe. Solid, well constructed, he patted it as he might a favorite dog. He entered the plaza through the opening he would soon door off and stood beside the water trough and slowly turned a complete circle. The cottonwood tree outside the partially completed wall cast a long shadow upon the dirt of the square. The lines of the walls and the rooms extending inward from them were smooth and round and pleasing to the eye. Smoke rose from two chimney stacks, and he imagined Teresa working at the hearth and the stranger at the other, preparing meals, settling into the routine common to every time, every place. Teresa had walked to their new home while Benito had been in the field and already the smell of tortillas cooking drifted in the wood smoke. When he entered their rooms, Teresa was bent over the cooking stone.

“It draws well?” Benito asked Teresa, pointing to the fireplace.

“Yes. Very well.”