Chapter Four

Alice paused on the top of the landing and shrugged her shawl a little higher around her shoulders. The fire that roared in the hearth, day and night throughout the winter months, cast long shadows across the room. She felt her mouth twitching in a smile as she considered her husband’s legs sprawled across the table and a voice echoed in her memory.

“Joseph, what are tables for?”

Every time, without fail, Joe would pull his feet back and plant them on the floor as he grinned at his father. Gradually he would settle into the sofa and somehow his feet would find their way back up onto the table. Until his father would look sternly at him and start again.

She stepped quietly down onto the floor and made her way across the room, hoping not to disturb either of its occupants. A mother’s ear is always finely tuned to a child’s need and even though the child was not hers, she could still hear the faint snuffles of a blocked nose. She paused as she looked down at the face she loved more than life itself and could not resist planting a kiss on Joe’s forehead. The grey streaks in his hair were turning to white and she wondered how long before he looked as white as his father had when she first met him. Of course, Joe had been going grey when she first saw him, but the youthful energy in his cheeky grin and the spark in his eyes that he reserved just for her, offset any signs of aging.

Alice smiled as she wondered how sore Joe’s back would be when he woke up, given the angle he was lying at. The chairs that had graced the room when she first came to the Ponderosa had long since served their time and the newer ones that she had ordered all the way from Boston were plump and solid and sturdy. That didn’t change the fact that sleeping with his neck turned sideways was going to make for one very grouchy husband if she didn’t wake him up. Hannah lay stretched across his body and even in sleep his hands were wound around her protectively. Her cheeks shone red in the glow of the fire and Alice traced the back of her hand over the child’s forehead, checking for signs of fever. Teething was never fun, but this little one seemed to be getting the worst of it and had kept them all up for over two weeks as her back molars made their presence known.

At that moment, Joe shifted and blinked open his eyes. He smiled up at her and Alice sucked in a breath. It was Joe’s smile that had first stolen her heart and it was still her greatest weakness.

“What time is it?”

“Almost one.”

Joe leaned down to bestow a kiss on the blonde curls in his arms and he smiled again. “A whole hour! She’s been asleep for one whole hour. I think that’s a record.”

Before Alice could speak again, she heard footsteps on the stairs and looked up to see Michael making his way towards them. He rubbed a hand across his eyes and tried valiantly to stifle a yawn.

“Pa, I came down to let you go to bed.”

“We’re okay. I think now that she’s asleep, her pillow had better stay put!”

Michael leaned over to see that his daughter was actually asleep with her thumb firmly wedged in her mouth. He resisted the urge to pick her up and instead settled himself on the sofa.

Once again, he could not contain a yawn and his father nodded in sympathy. “I’d forgotten how hard this can be. I skipped this part with you.”

Michael didn’t respond, but he looked up to see his parents watching him. Neither of them were biologically his, but he could not have loved them any more if they were. It had been many years since he thought about his real father, but at that moment a memory flared in his mind and he flinched.

Joe didn’t want to disturb the child finally resting peacefully, but he noted that Alice hadn’t missed the reaction and she settled herself next to their son on the sofa.

“I can’t remember what he looks like anymore.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

The comment seemed to have come out of nowhere and Joe felt an uneasiness rising up his chest as he watched the firelight playing over his son’s face. He had no idea what to say so he waited to see what had prompted it.

“I can’t imagine him soothing me back to sleep when I was teething.”

Joe frowned as he considered the idea. He was forced to agree that the man he only knew from his wife’s revelations did not seem like the type to care about his son’s sore gums.

Michael looked up and stared at his father as memories filed through his mind. Every time he had awoken screaming from a nightmare or had been confined to bed with a childhood illness, this man had been there. His grandfather and uncles had been right behind him and always in the background was a beloved Chinese man who slipped him cookies and patted his head.

Tears pricked at his eyes as he considered something else. “I can’t remember what Mama looked like either.”

Joe’s heart lurched as he heard the pain in the whispered comment. “She was beautiful. And all you have to do is look at this little one and you’ll see her every time.”

Michael looked at his youngest child sleeping in his father’s arms. The blonde curls were damp and dark with sweat, but she was the only one of his children to bear his colouring. His two sons favoured their mother more, although all of them had blue eyes.

Alice squeezed his arm as he sucked in a slow breath and pulled himself together. She knew all the details of Joe’s first wife and had sometimes wondered what her life would have been like, had Hannah not stepped in front of a bullet to save him. It was a pointless exercise and she rarely allowed herself to entertain it. Instead, she had been gifted with a husband and stepson who she adored. Michael had stood at his father’s side as she had made her vows to love and cherish them both. Even as more children had come along, there was something unique about Michael’s place in his father’s heart and she thought she knew what it was. He had chosen this particular child. And Michael had chosen him.

“Son, why don’t you go on back to bed? You know there’s going to be a stampede in a few hours and you’ll be exhausted.”

Michael grinned as he considered what was coming. It was Christmas morning and in a few short hours the rest of the family would be awoken as excited children came clambering down those stairs to see what was under the tree. He’d brought his family to stay over a week ago as it was easier than trekking up from the valley in the snow. His younger siblings would all have said they were far too old to be excited over Christmas, but he knew that at fifteen, his baby sister would still be racing his own children down the stairs come morning.

“Do you remember my first Christmas here?”

“How could I forget? Hop Sing hovered over you all day after you threw up on the stairs the night before!”

Michael groaned as he remembered the mountain of buttered popcorn he’d eaten instead of stringing it up for the tree. Of course, Uncle Hoss had devoured twice as much, but at some point his stomach had protested. He hung his head as he thought about the mess he’d made and how terrified he’d been that he’d be punished for it. Joe had never once beaten him as his father had, but it had taken a long time before he was sure of that.

“I had no idea what Christmas was all about. We’d never had turkey or gifts or anything.”

Joe swallowed down the lump in his throat as he recalled the first time he’d seen his son. The child was cold and dirty and living in a livery stable. No, Christmas celebrations wouldn’t have been high on his list of life experiences.

“When Hop Sing put that turkey on the table, I thought it was going to break the table! It was the biggest bird I’d ever seen.”

Joe laughed as he remembered his son’s eyes almost popping from his head. “You thought we couldn’t possibly eat all that food, but you didn’t count on Hoss!”

A flicker of a shadow crossed over his face and Alice noted as her husband forced his smile to stay put. It had been many years since Joe had lost his brother and even though she had never met the man, she felt that she knew him. His memory lived on, as large in their hearts as he was in life.

“I’d never seen such a feast! I couldn’t imagine that much food in one place.”

“You didn’t know where to start. At the end, Hop Sing brought out those Chinese rice desserts and you ate half the plate!”

“Grandpa hated those things.”

Joe looked up with surprise. His father had never let on that he didn’t like them because Hop Sing was so proud to bring a little of his culture to the Cartwright celebration.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I caught him once sliding them into a napkin in his pocket.”

Alice laughed as she considered the man with good table manners and social grooming, hiding sweets in his pocket. “He fed them to the chickens.”

Joe looked across at his wife and grinned. “You knew about that too?”

“Of course. A woman doesn’t miss these things.” She smiled sweetly at him and dipped her head a little.

“Woman, you don’t miss anything!”

Michael leaned his head back against the sofa and smiled as he listened to his father’s voice. The gentle teasing and the daily humour his father found in life had rubbed off on all of them. It had taken him a long time to figure out the nature of the relationships in his new family and he closed his eyes as he thought about it. At just five years of age, he had no idea how very young his father was when he brought home a small child to raise. Michael’s own brother was just barely gone twenty-one and he wondered if Eric could do the same job his father had done. Of course, there were women in the house now and he knew that things would be different, but somehow that made it all the more incredible what his father had given him. He slowly opened his eyes and found his father watching him intently.

“It was snowing the night you brought me here.”

Joe wondered why they were suddenly taking a wander down memory lane as it had been many years since Michael had talked of any of these things.

“You said we had to push on and get home. It was so cold and I had no idea where we were, but you knew we were on Ponderosa land.”

Michael sat up and rubbed at his chin. “How did you even know that? This place is huge and yet you knew, even in the dark, that you were home.”

“I was born here. My roots are dug deep into this land and I just knew.” Joe could not define what it was, but he felt such a deep connection that it felt like a physical ache when he was removed for any length of time. His brother had settled in Boston in his grandfather’s house and while Joe was happy for him and the life he’d made, it wasn’t his. The Ponderosa was in his blood.

Alice looked across at her husband and smiled as his eyes drifted off somewhere. Her children had all been born in the same house and shared the same bond with their father. Did it bother Michael that he didn’t have that? She looked upward to the stonework above the fireplace and smiled at the row of stockings hanging there. Each one was different. Joe’s was faded to a dull brown, but the delicate hand stitching still reflected a mother’s love as she had stitched his name onto it over half a century ago. Next was hers; a beautiful piece made of reds and greens that Joe had made for her the first Christmas they were married. Beside it hung four others that looked similar in styling and she knew that Inger had made them from scraps she had pieced together somewhere in the back of a wagon as it crossed the land. She had finished the one for her baby before he was even born, but she had made it in anticipation of Christmases to come. Adam’s still hung there alongside his family’s and she knew he’d chosen to leave a small part of himself on the Ponderosa, as though he was still physically linked in some way. In the opposite way, Jamie had taken his with him when he’d left to seek his future, saying he wanted something of home with him wherever he went. A delicate lacey one was Marie’s and Alice smiled as she visualised Ben Cartwright giving detailed instructions to a seamstress about what he wanted for his beautiful young wife. Further along were the ones she had stitched herself for her three children. Sarah had also brought theirs along as she and Michael had gathered their family into the Cartwright home for Christmas celebrations. The brightest and newest one belonged to the little blonde-haired angel still sleeping on her grandfather’s chest. In the middle of the fireplace was one stocking that stood out. It wasn’t red as the rest of them were. Or once had been. It had once been a vibrant blue, but had faded a little over the years. Tears pricked at her eyes as she considered the little stocking and how it came to be. Michael caught her staring at the stocking and a slow grin spread across his face.

“Mrs Miller thought I was being ridiculous.”

Joe looked up to see what he was talking about and he realised both of them were looking at the blue stocking.

“She said blue wasn’t a proper Christmas colour and I was being too indulgent in letting you choose it.”

Michael laughed as his father imitated the old widow who had tried several times over to convince him that blue was all wrong. But it was the only colour he could have chosen. It was the colour of his mama’s eyes. His father knew that and once again, he felt a wash of gratitude for the man who had understood so much when he didn’t begin to even understand himself.

“You let me choose the things that mattered.” Michael felt tears burning in his eyes as he remembered a morning long ago when he had sat up in bed and chosen the best gift anybody could have offered him. He’d chosen his father.

Hannah chose that moment to wake up and she began to suck her thumb while snuffling loudly through her blocked nose.

“Well hello there, me darlin’.” Joe allowed himself to slowly sit more upright and he tried not to frown at the kink in his neck. Hannah snuggled closer to his chest and he stroked the back of her hair as she settled again.

“Pa, I think it’s time for bed.” Michael reached across to wrap an arm around his daughter and she only protested slightly as she transferred from one set of arms to another. She burrowed her face into his shoulder and he smiled as he considered the man standing in front of him.

“Thank you.” The words were barely a whisper and Joe could see the emotion battling across his son’s face. He reached a hand to cup the side of his face and choked back the lump that almost made him stop breathing. A lifetime of words passed unspoken as he found there were no words anyway.

Alice slipped her hands around her husband’s waist as he watched the two of them climb the stairs. He slowly turned to embrace her and began to sway with her in his arms.

“May I have this dance, Mrs Cartwright?”

Alice swatted at his arm and smiled up at him. “You do know it’s almost three o’clock?”

“So?”

“Well in two hours there is going to be a horde running down those stairs.”

“So?”

“Don’t you think Michael is right? It’s time for bed.”

“Good idea!” Joe grinned at her and Alice felt her knees buckling as her breath caught in her throat.

Without warning, Joe scooped her up into his arms and it was all she could do not to squeal. The house was far too quiet and she bit her lip to keep silent.

“That used to be easier,” Joe frowned as he headed towards the stairs.

Alice smiled as she reached her hands around his neck and began massaging the muscle under her fingertips. As they passed the huge Ponderosa pine that was covered in ornaments and almost empty popcorn strings, she leaned around to whisper in his ear.

Joe stopped and looked at her. Her hair was greying and there were lines on her face where there had once been smooth skin, but at that moment, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“I love you too.”

He smiled as he climbed the stairs with his bride in his arms.

“Are you ready for your Christmas gift?”

 

 

Tags:  Adam Cartwright, Ben Cartwright, Family, Hoss Cartwright, JAM, Joe / Little Joe Cartwright, JPM