Free Crossing Purgatory by Gary Schanbacher

belly was distended and tight-looking as a drum. Something bleeding inside, Thompson thought. The man’s pistol lay on the ground away from him, and he looked at it when he saw Thompson, but was unable even to move his arm. His eyes looked glazed and shone brightly.
    â€œA drink,” he demanded of Thompson.
    â€œGo to hell, you son of a bitch,” Thompson answered. He retrieved the pistol and tossed it far into the grass. Then he walked to the horse, took up its bridle and began leading it away.
    â€œDon’t leave me like this,” the man said. “Finish it.”
    â€œIt is finished. Look, the buzzards already circle.”
    â€œGoddamn them Free-Soilers,” the man said. Pink foam bubbled from his nose and from his mouth when he spoke. His breath came in gurgles. “Goddamn you.”
    Thompson turned away and led the horse back toward the stream and murmured to himself, “Yes, I believe He has.” He tried to hurry, but his limbs felt heavy as if wallowing through deep mud. He could not imagine what must be Hanna’s burden and he struggled with what he could ever offer in way of succor.
    Thompson went to work with the spade once again and took the better part of the midday digging. Afternoon, he stood over their graves. Ned. Obadiah. And beside them, the child, Martha. He tossed a handful of dirt into each hole and picked up his Bible and thumbed through the passages and felt nothing but hopelessness and despair. Job: “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me”; “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men”; “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.” He looked down into the hole that held Obadiah, and he tossed his Bible into the pit and began, shovel by shovel, returning first him and then Ned to dust.
    The heat rose up off the prairie and he was drenched in sweat by the time he filled and tamped the graves. As he walked down the hill and drew near the corpse of the first fallen rider, he was startled by a green mist that hovered above the body. He drew near; the mist shimmered in the sun and made a buzzing sound. Blowflies. The flies had found the body and they swarmed by the thousands, a cloud of green. They alighted in the dead man’s eyes and crawled into his nostrils and into his open mouth. The dung beetles and ants too had found him and one arm seemed to move with life as the insects tunneled their way into the sleeve of his jacket. Thompson shivered, felt a surging in his throat, suppressed it, and then left the man where he lay and went down to the creek and washed himself in the cold water. Then he returned to the wagon and found Hanna where he’d left her hours ago, unstirred. He asked if she was hungry but she did not answer, did not even look up at him. He dipped water from the pail and tilted her head and tipped the ladle to her lips. Most of the water ran down her chin and onto her dress. He dipped a cloth into the water and went to Joseph and put the cloth to his mouth. After a moment, Joseph’s eyes fluttered and his lips puckered at the cloth, although he did not regain consciousness.
    â€œGood,” Thompson encouraged, and squeezed the cloth and Joseph suckled in earnest.
    Thompson unhitched the oxen from the wagon that Obadiah had prepared for travel early that morning. He left them yoked to graze and he picketed the milk cow and the horse he’d taken from the raider. He had a vague sense of himself at the chores, but no firm grounding in reality. What was happening? One moment he found himself at the hog trough in Deep Woods, Indiana, the next kneeling beside an unresponsive woman clutching her knees, rocking, gazing into space like an old woman lost in childhood. Night came on. He built a small fire and drank coffee and ate some of the rice and beans he’d cooked, when? He could not entice Hanna with either coffee or beans. He