Crossing Purgatory by Gary Schanbacher Page B

who had returned from his visit with Upperdine.
    A squall blew up at sunset. Winds carried a drenching rain, slanted and malevolent, as if seeking out every dry space, every comfortable nook. Campfires extinguished, paths mired, blankets soggy. They scrambled for cover under the canvas, under the wagons themselves. The rain sought them out and saturated them. Wet and chilled, they passed the night. Thompson crouched by his cold fire, the charred remains not even smoldering, stone cold. A flashing in the west, thunder. He nodded off sometime during the darkest watch.
    Martha was dead by morning.
    Thompson heard keening from the Lights’ wagon at daybreak, and Captain Upperdine came to him shortly thereafter. “It’s the diphtheria, I think,” he told Thompson. “Comes on fast, can take the little ones hardly before you know it.”
    â€œOthers?” Thompson asked, thickly. The word stuck in his throat. A glutinous, ugly sound. He feared the reply. The air heavy with mist, a veiled world. Where was he?
    â€œNone that I know of. The older boy, Joseph, shows no symptoms. A few others was around their camp yesterday. I will check on their condition, but I believe them to be spared. Thus far. But we should not tarry.”
    Thompson registered the salmon smudge on the eastern horizon. He focused on that thin line of color beneath a bruised sky. Concentrated on the far distance while hearing himself speak. “I’ll see about a spade, maybe a place on the rise over there?” He vaguely pointed to the crest of a small hill.
    â€œNot too close to the river,” Upperdine advised. “And afterwards, make sure the men tamp it firm. River rocks, perhaps. Keep it from the prairie wolves.”
    That morning, Thompson and Ned went to high ground, to a level spot that had a nice view of the creek, and dug the hole. As he labored, Thompson found himself in Deep Woods, Indiana, digging beneath the persimmon tree, full summer now, the oval leaves providing shade from the high sun, the fruit just beginning to set. He looked down the hill toward his cabin, hoping to catch sight of Rachel hanging wash, but instead saw only the charred remains of his home, the chimney stones still in place, rising from the blackened heap. Of course, he thought, and he could imagine it perfectly. After he’d been gone a week, a committee from town, the pastor, the merchant Henderson, and Constable Fletcher went to the farm. They found the dried-off milk cow in the pasture but never did locate the horse they knew he owned. They sopped grain from the bin and fed the hogs, and untethered the mule from the lean-to, and between them determined a schedule to look after the livestock. After Thompson had been gone a month, they voted to keep the mule and the plow as community property, to divide the hand tools and the chickens, and to draw lots for the hogs. From outside, they covetously inventoried the farm house interior, the furniture and tableware, but none dared enter. Caution outweighed cupidity. Instead, they burned it. Burned it to white ash and black cinders in hopes the perdition that inhabited the rooms might leave them in peace.
    â€œThey burned it,” he said aloud.
    â€œCome again?” Ned asked.
    Thompson, returned to Kansas Territory, shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and resumed digging.
    Shortly, Ned set aside his shovel and went in search of a tree and felled a middling cottonwood, which he hauled back to camp with a borrowed mule. He cut a four-foot length, hewed out the core to form a coffin, and used his saw and adze to cut and shape rough planks for the lid. Some in the company debated the wisdom of keeping the girl and her disease above ground until the coffin could be finished, but Ned would not be dissuaded. “No, sir, this here girl to be seen off right. Need a coffin to cross over in.” While he worked, Obadiah hacked limbs from the tree and with rawhide lashings pieced