Crossing Purgatory Read Online Free PDF

skinning knife first to trim the beard close and then, after another soaking, to shave. Thick stubble remained and he made note to purchase a straight razor. But for the first time since Deep Woods, Indiana, since leaving his family, he exposed his face to the world, nicked and raw, for judgment.
    He arrived back at the meadow rendezvous midafternoon just as a thundershower blew in from the northwest. He ducked back into the woods and sat under the overhang of an oak tree watching the rain slant in. Not heavy but windblown. It appeared that during the day a few additional wagons had arrived. After the quick shower, a golden light washed the meadow. The grass bejeweled. The oxen steaming.
    Moving toward his camp, Thompson noticed a man working at one of the wagons. He had the back wheel off and was attempting to remount it on the axle. The man rolled the wheel into position while a boy and a Negro were struggling to raise the back end of the wagon using a large tree limb as a lever. The boy’s feet were off the ground, hanging from the end of the limb, but the axle was not plumb to the hub. Thompson went to the boy and lent his weight to the lever and after some maneuvering, the back end rose sufficiently for the wheel to slide back over the hub.
    â€œObliged,” from the man guiding the wheel. He appeared several years older than Thompson and slight, thin as a whip. A close-trimmed beard. Denim trousers that bunched at his waist, held up with suspenders. He wiped his hand on his blue work shirt and offered it to Thompson. “Obadiah Light. Sorry to inconvenience you.”
    â€œThompson Grey. No trouble at all.”
    The Negro carried the limb off to the side and they all watched him as he began to chop it into firewood.
    â€œIron rim and brake lever wanted some work,” Obadiah said. “Wagon’s only as good as its wheels.”
    â€œThat is so,” Thompson said.
    â€œI aimed to avoid having to unload the wagon. Left the back end overly heavy. Slothful, I suppose.”
    Thompson noticed the covered box of the wagon full of household goods: a spinning wheel, chests, two chairs, one inverted on the other, coiled rope, harness gear, sacks of grain, tools, a steel-tipped plow, grinding stone, and, near the back, a small parlor organ.
    â€œI would not envy you that task,” Thompson said.
    â€œI’d be pleased to have you sup with us,” Obadiah said.
    Behind the wagon, a woman stood beside an iron pot suspended on a tripod over the low fire. A young girl, a toddler in blond curls, played in the grass with a cornhusk doll while the boy, the one who had been on the lever with Thompson, busied himself repacking tools in the box mounted above the front wheel. Thompson saw that the boy was older than he’d first judged, maybe just coming into shaving age, a faint presence above the lip. Slight of frame like his father, but undaunted, it seemed, about jumping to a man’s work. The woman came over to the wagon, smiled at Obadiah, and folded down the rear gate into a table. She showed. How far along, Thompson wondered.
    â€œMy wife, Hanna. The boy, Joseph, and my girl, Martha.”
    Thompson nodded to the woman and the boy, and smiled at the little girl. Hanna set the kettle on the gate and retrieved a ladle and some tin bowls from a box on the far side of the wagon.
    â€œSimple fare,” she said, “some bread.” She served a soup of desiccated vegetables flavored with field greens and a few wild onions.
    â€œI’ve not had bread in a while,” Thompson said. “Thank you.” Bread from wheat, not corn.
    â€œI can trouble to knead it proper when we’re laying over. No time on the trail.”
    Obadiah pulled at the waist of his dungarees. “These were filled out when we left home. Had a little sickness. Some difficult times. But we’re on our last leg now,” he explained. “Barely two hundred mile to go.” The Lights were from