Free Crossing Purgatory by Gary Schanbacher Page B

dug furiously. The girl’s coffin was exhumed, the lid worried and splintered in one corner, but Hanna apparently had been unable to pry it open. A mound of dirt rose beside Obadiah’s grave as well, his body not yet exposed. He took hold of her shoulders and pulled her from the hole and wrestled the shovel from her and threw it aside. She swung on him and connected with her open palm to the side of his face. Stunned him. With surprising strength she pummeled him, head, neck, pounding, kicking, silent, the huffing of her exertion the only sound resonating in the still morning. Thompson’s knees buckled and he almost fell. He sensed that if he stumbled, she would take the shovel to him, and he almost surrendered, let it happen. Why not, really? So easy, just bow to it. But some instinct sparked him to action, would not permit him to go down into the pit with the others. He straightened and struck Hanna on the side of the head, and she fell.

8
    T he two of them rode in the bed of the wagon, Joseph awake on and off, groaning, and Hanna, mute, her hands and legs bound to the sideboards to keep her from climbing down and returning to the graves. Thompson had removed the parlor organ and a three-drawer oak chest to make room for them. He’d tethered the horse he’d taken from the raider to the back of the wagon but he’d left the milk cow lowing on the prairie because he could not afford its pace. Once on the west bank of the creek, Thompson turned and regarded their camp, the three hummocks of fresh earth on the hill, the parlor organ beside the cold fire ring, as if set out the evening prior for a recital, the abandoned cow rubbing its flank against the chest of drawers. The cryptic story of one emigrant family. Thompson prodded the oxen and hollered commands. He needed to put the camp behind him. He walked through the day and into night, eating and drinking on the move, stopping only to take water and food to Joseph and Hanna. Sanitation breaks for Hanna, Thompson the awkward sentinel. Joseph began to recover an appetite, although Thompson had little to offer—stale biscuits, a few strips of jerked venison. The water in the pail running low. Hanna drank, ate little, and did not talk. Her expression remained fixed. Joseph and Hanna were inattentive toward one another and both toward Thompson.
    Thompson did not graze the team. They bellowed in protest, kept plodding. The trail showed white under the partial moon and he pushed on. He would not stop, knew he could not sleep even as weariness overcame him. He walked. That first night his legs held out, felt strong with urgency. The second day, the sun tried to suck him dry, drain his resolve. But he came upon a stream and allowed the animals to drink and filled the water pail and then whipped the team onward. Compelled to rejoin Upperdine. Why, he did not know, but a goal, a goal he could focus on. He walked. The wagon creaked along.
    The second night, the skeletons appeared and marched beside him. He was unaware when exactly they had arrived, but he did not care, they no longer frightened him. They’d heard his confession. He asked once if they bothered Joseph or Hanna, the rattling and clacking of bone against bone. The drums they carried, beating and beating, low, a vibration in the gut. Hanna did not respond and Joseph said only, “Nothing bothers me anymore.” Sometimes, walking, he dozed. The clamoring of the bones kept him from drifting completely and falling and he welcomed their company. His tormentors, his inquisitors, became his companions on the road. The following day, he no longer noticed the heat. Dust raised up by the wind and by the thousands of shuffling feet covered his clothes and made him look as if he worked in a grinding mill. Fine grit in his nose and between his teeth. He did not care.
    Night may have come again, and morning. He wondered if the oxen would fail, decide to kneel in the middle of the road and die, but he