Summary:   Even when the time together is brief, memories can last a lifetime.

This story was originally published in the Bonanza 2009 Friendship Convention Anthology.

Word count: 3,500    Rating: K

 

A Quiet Legacy

by pjb

“If this ain’t the dumbest idea—” Joe muttered under his breath.

“Would you just hush up and help me move this danged thing!” Hoss lifted his end of the massive sideboard and waited while the smallest of the Cartwright brothers edged himself in between the other end and the dining room wall.

“What jackass put it so far back in the corner, anyway?” Joe grumbled. “When we put it back this year, we’re leaving more space at this end!”

“We can’t,” said Adam, his reasonable tone undercut with irritation. “If we move it down, it’ll block the window. Now, would you two get that blasted thing away from the wall?” The irritation was blossoming into downright aggravation.

“Well, if you’d move the table out of the way, maybe we’d have some place to put it!” Hoss pointed out.

“The table’s over as far as it can be without blocking the doorway to the kitchen!” Adam objected.

“Who cares about blocking the doorway?” demanded Joe.

“We need someplace to put this thing,” Hoss added.

“Look, just move the sideboard already! There’s plenty of room!” But his brothers stood motionless until Adam shoved the table with a fierce grunt. “There!” he snapped. “Happy now? Can we finally get that damned sideboard out of the corner?”

With an enormous, eye-rolling sigh, Joe began to inch down far enough to grasp the back corner of the sideboard. A moment later, his eyes widened. “I’m stuck!”

“What? Joe, just shove it!” Dadburn if that boy didn’t make a melodrama out of everything.

“I can’t shove it! Didn’t you hear me? I’m stuck! One of you jaspers had better move this stupid thing now!”

It was like this every spring. None of them knew just why Pa subjected them to this ridiculous exercise, but right around the time the last snows melted, the Cartwright brothers found themselves shoving furniture around and lugging pails of wash water until they were ready to drop. Adam attributed it to their father’s days at sea, when quarters were tight and everything had to be shipshape. Hoss figured it was more likely Pa’s militia days, since everybody knew officers were supposed to be pretty orderly fellows. Joe was convinced that it was simply their father’s way of torturing them after a long winter indoors when the brothers’ primary activity was getting on each other’s nerves.

Whatever the reason, the ritual was always the same. Every single inch of the house and barn had to be scrubbed and scoured. The draperies were washed and rehung, the rugs beaten to within an inch of their lives, and the floors scrubbed and oiled. The mattress ticking for all the beds had to be emptied, washed and refilled—which ones got fresh feathers depended largely on how many chickens, geese and ducks had graced the Cartwrights’ dinner table over the past year. The glass in every window squeaked after its bath of vinegar and water. Even the upholstery was soaped and rinsed until not the slightest hint of a stain lingered—no small task, considering how many muddy or bleeding men had been deposited on that settee. Bowing to Hop Sing’s experience with this chore, Pa had agreed this spring just to change the fabric completely. Three of Hop Sing’s cousins were busy at that task right now.

“What you do? Why you not finished? Hop Sing have much work for sons!” Hop Sing glared at the brothers from the now-blocked doorway. “Move table!” he added as he retreated to his domain, pigtail flying.

Hop Sing was never especially pleased to have the brothers helping him at any time since, in his opinion, they were slow and clumsy and couldn’t do anything right the first time. At cleaning time, though, his already-miniscule patience shrank tenfold. Every demand had to be satisfied immediately, and it was no excuse that the last job was not yet finished. Despite his sons’ vigorous protests, Ben always gave Hop Sing free rein to employ them whatever manner the little man deemed appropriate until the cleaning was finished. And so, every year, the Cartwright brothers took on the role of oxen, hauling heavier pieces and supplies hither and yon as an army of Hop Sing’s relatives scurried about to obey the pigtailed general who commanded the Ponderosa’s troops.

Out on the porch, Ben sorted through the contents of his desk drawer in relative peace. Some cousin or other was polishing his desk with a mixture of beeswax, lemon juice and some secret ingredient that would leave behind a faint exotic scent reminiscent of jasmine. He heard Joe yelp something about his foot, and Hoss snapped back in a most uncharacteristic manner, but he didn’t investigate. His sons knew where to find him if they truly needed him. A slight breeze threatened to dislodge his orderly stack of papers, and he set an ink bottle on top.

“Sir like coffee?” A young Chinese girl stood at his elbow with a fresh pot. How she’d managed to make coffee while the kitchen was in such disarray was anybody’s guess, but he smiled gratefully.

“Thank you, Mei-Zhen,” said Ben. She bowed slightly and poured coffee into his cup. Then, she set the pot on the table, well away from his papers, and bowed again as she withdrew.

Ben sipped his coffee, not looking now at the stack before him. He allowed his mind to drift forward to how the house would be when the work was finished. The wood would gleam in the firelight, the rich colors of the rugs and draperies would glow softly, and when he lay down to rest, even the pillow slips would smell meadow-fresh.

It was just as Inger had said. . . .

* * *

They’d been married nearly a year, but he’d rarely seen her cry. On this day, when he found her in tears down by the stream, he’d thought at first that she was simply overtired. After all, she was well along in her confinement, and they’d been traveling for weeks without a break. Adam was a good boy, but he was still a child, and sometimes he did what children did, getting caught up in his own world instead of remembering to think of others.

When the wagon train had stopped to make camp, Inger announced that she wanted to take everything out of their wagon and clean it from top to bottom. The other women exchanged looks, but they put it down to the whims of a woman in the family way, and they began to heat water and gather rags as the children unloaded the wagon.

“Take the top off, too,” said Inger. “It needs to be washed. It is so dusty. Adam, you and Robert and Jason take the wagon cover down to the stream.”

The Davidson twins, Robert and Jason, were nearly ten, and they were large and sturdy for their age. They’d taken a liking to young Adam early on, and the three boys often played together. Ben and Inger enjoyed watching Adam and his “big brothers” running around camp on late summer evenings; despite their substantial size advantage, the twins seemed to have an instinctive understanding of how to play with the smaller boy, and Adam, for his part, was not above taking advantage of the fact that he was littler and faster.

“Isn’t it going to be too heavy for them to carry?” Rebecca Cooper looked skeptical, but then, she usually did. Ben had once commented privately to Inger that Rebecca wouldn’t believe that rain fell from the sky unless she was standing out in the storm.

“They will be fine,” said Inger. “If they need help, one of the men can help them.” And with that, she turned her attention to washing trail dust off the wagon wheels.

The wagon was as clean as it possibly could be when somebody noticed that the boys weren’t back yet. Ben, who was tending to the horses, heard the ruckus before he saw it, and he dropped the harness to run down to the stream.

The boys had decided that the best way to wash the cover was simply to haul it into the stream. So, they’d shed their clothes and waded into the clear water that sparkled so invitingly under a prairie sky. Somewhere in the chore, though, they’d become more interested in splashing and playing than in washing the large canvas cover. As Ben came over the rise, he saw three dripping wet boys standing wide-eyed beside the canvas wagon cover that was now half-covered in mud as Inger began to sob.

“What’s going on here?” he thundered. He placed a protective arm around Inger as he glared at the culprits. “Adam, what happened?”

“We—we came down to wash the wagon cover, and—well, I reckon we kind of started playing. . . .” His voice trailed off. It was nothing, he wanted to say, but it wasn’t nothing, and he and Pa both knew it. Not only had Adam been disobedient, but he had upset Ma. Pa had already talked to him about how important it was for Adam to take good care of her in her condition, to be helpful and not to worry her. And now, Adam had not only failed to help her, but somehow, he’d made her cry. The thought almost made him cry, too, but he was a big boy of six, and so he just stood silently beside the twins.

Ben glared at all three of them as he held his weeping wife. “You will wash every bit of dirt off that cover,” he said. “Then, after you’ve laid it out to dry, you will get dressed and go back to the wagon—all three of you,” he added. “I will deal with you then.”

The twins exchanged fearful glances. It was one of the things they didn’t like about the wagon train. The group traveling together had become so much like a family that you might get treats from anybody, but you also might get punished by anybody, and your folks weren’t going to say anything against it. Mr. Cartwright wasn’t one who was quick to tan a boy, but when he did, that boy knew for several days that he’d been tanned.

His arm securely around her, Ben led Inger back toward the wagon. “You need to rest, darling,” he said. “You’ve been working far too hard in your condition.”

“I just wanted—I just wanted it to be nice,” she sobbed.

The ladies clustered around them anxiously. “Is she all right?” asked Marianne Weston.

“She’s just tired,” said Ben. “Will one of you ladies please see to it that the boys finish their chore?”

“Most definitely,” said Elinor Davidson in a voice that didn’t bode well for the twins. She drew the other ladies away, and Ben helped Inger to sit down in the shade of the wagon. Then, he sat beside her and held her as she wept on his shoulder.

Finally, Inger lifted her head. Ben smiled. He’d never known any other woman who could look so beautiful, even with her eyes and nose all red from crying. He held her close, kissing her damp forehead.

“Now,” he said. “What was that really all about?”

Inger dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I feel so silly,” she said. “Everyone must think I’m a very foolish woman.”

“You’re with child,” Ben said as though she needed reminding. “No one will think anything.” He stroked her cheek, still wet with tears. “What happened?”

She shifted on the hard ground to accommodate her awkward shape. “I just wanted everything to be clean,” she said.

“It’s clean enough,” said Ben, his brow furrowing.

Inger shook her head. “When I was a little girl, every year in the spring, we cleaned the whole house from top to bottom. It was a small house, and most of our furniture was homemade or cast-off from friends, but we were careful to take the best care of it that we could. We washed all the floors, and we polished all the furniture, and we beat the rugs and—we just did everything. We mended what was torn or shabby, and Mama taught me to use such tiny stitches that nobody could have seen. There wasn’t a single corner in the house that we didn’t scrub until it shone. Papa and Gunnar moved all the furniture so that we could clean behind it. We emptied out the drawers and put them in order, and we washed all the bedding and put new straw in the mattresses and my mama would put fresh new candles in the lamps even if the old ones weren’t all used up. Gunnar grumbled about being the tallest, because he was the only one who could reach up high to wipe the tops of the doorframes and the corners of the ceiling. It was a tremendous amount of work, but I loved doing it. And when we were all done—ah, Ben, there was something so wonderful about it. Our little house felt new again. Everything sparkled. Even the sun seemed to shine brighter. Mama would tuck sweet flowers in with the straw when she filled the mattresses, and our beds would smell of meadows, and we felt like the luckiest, most special family in the world because we lived in such a fine place.”

“Our beds smell of the prairies now,” Ben pointed out gently, but Inger shook her head again.

“It is just—everything is so dusty and dirty, and it all smells of horses and sweat and dung and I just—I just wanted to make our home, our little home on wheels, clean and fresh.” Tears welled up in her eyes again, and Ben cradled her lovely cheek in his hand, marveling that the harsh sun and wind had somehow failed to dry her soft skin.

“Someday,” he promised. “Someday, we’ll have a beautiful home. It’ll be the finest for miles around—you’ll see.”

“It needn’t be large, Ben,” Inger protested. “We can be just as happy in a small house, as long as we can make it special.”

“It will be,” he vowed. “And every year, we’ll clean it from top to bottom, every inch of it. We’ll make it sparkle and shine, and our family will be the luckiest, most special family in the world because we live there—together.”

Her delighted smile was a rainbow through her tears. “I love you, my darling,” she whispered. She leaned in to kiss him, and he murmured in her ear, “Too bad we don’t have the cover on the wagon.” Her laugh rang like music in his ear, and he kissed her hungrily. She was the angel who had brought him back from the dark world of bitterness and anger into a new life filled with sunlight and love, and he’d have done anything for her.

* * *

Not a fingerprint marred the surface of the tin that held his pipe tobacco. His pipes hung neatly in their stand on the gleaming surface of the table. Carefully, Ben selected a pipe without knocking the others askew. He opened the box by the edges so as not to smear the polished surface. The rich, promising scent of the tobacco blended with the savory aromas of roast pork and fresh bread that wafted from the kitchen. He dropped tobacco into the pipe bowl and used his hand to sweep up the shreds that fell to the tabletop, adding those to the bowl.

He smiled as he heard his sons’ boots on the porch. Sure enough, all three stopped to wipe their feet on the way in. It was a habit that never stuck for long, but for at least the first day or two afterward, they tended to remember.

As they headed up the stairs to clean up for supper, Ben gazed at the room. She had never seen the Ponderosa, of course, but the house was as fine as he’d promised her. The beams overhead soared, and he smiled at the thought that not a speck of dust lurked, even up where they met at the peak. The books in the bookcase stood perfectly straight, and the stove by his desk was deep black again. The new fabric on the settee—broad stripes, this time—gave the room an air of opulence. Two of Hop Sing’s cousins had spent most of a day cleaning and oiling his leather armchair, and now it was as supple and sensuous as the curve of a woman’s leg. When he went to bed that night, he would see moonlight glowing through the lace curtains that had been bleached in sunlight, and when he lay down, he would catch the slightest fragrance of the wildflowers that Hop Sing tucked inside the pillows.

He wasn’t quite certain why he’d never told anyone the real reason they did this every year. In some peculiar way, the intimacy of that moment lived as long as he kept the truth between himself and Inger. He’d never even explained it to Marie or Hop Sing—all he’d ever said was that it was a family tradition. He knew that Marie had found it curious that her rancher husband was so committed to such a domestic ritual, but to her credit, she’d never voiced this opinion aloud. After her death, Hop Sing took the custom over, arranging for crews of cousins to descend on the Ponderosa, working from dawn to dusk until every last smudge and cobweb had been banished.

Ben poked at the fire with the newly-polished poker as his sons tumbled down the stairs like a pack of puppies. The wide, gap-toothed grin on Hoss’s face looked nothing like Inger’s exquisite smile, and yet the same gentle spirit glowed in mother and son. He turned away for just a second as a wave of missing her broke over him, and then he turned back to his sons as they deposited themselves around the room.

“Joseph,” he warned before his youngest son could rest his boots on the new red and gold stripes of the settee. Joe had the sense not to roll his eyes, and Hoss chuckled as he plopped down beside his brother.

“You put your feet up here, an’ Hop Sing’s gonna cut ’em off and make ’em into soup!” he chortled.

“I wasn’t gonna!” Joe protested, and Adam, ensconced his freshly-brushed blue velvet chair, was the one to roll his eyes.

Ben watched his sons throughout dinner, smiling to himself as Adam wiped up a splash of water without seeming to notice that he did so. Joe held the platter with both hands instead of just one as Hoss speared another pork chop. Even Hop Sing set the dishes on the table with extra care.

“We felt like the luckiest, most special family in the world because we lived in such a fine place.”

Her words, spoken with that soft Scandinavian lilt, echoed in his heart again. It was true—even with all the loss and heartache they’d endured, they were the luckiest, most special family in the world. Yet it wasn’t the house that made it so, no matter how well it was kept. It was the people who lived in the house—this family who worked and played, rejoiced and mourned, argued and confided and loved here. Inger’s tradition was about far more than scrubbing floors. With her gentle words, she’d left them a legacy—a quiet way of cherishing each other by caring for the home they’d worked so hard to build together.

“Pa?”

He shook himself out of his reverie to see Hoss peering at him. “Sorry, I was just . . . thinking.”

“About what?” Hoss’s guileless blue eyes were the color of a summer sky, just like Inger’s.

“About your mother,” Ben said honestly.

“She’d have approved of your cleaning spree,” Adam said, startling Ben. Seemingly unaware, Adam continued, “I remember one time, not too long before Hoss was born. . . .”

Ben sipped his wine as Adam recounted the story. So long ago, and yet it might have been yesterday. Their lives would have been so different if she’d lived—no Marie, no Little Joe. How to have Inger, and Elizabeth, and Marie, and all their sons, without the loss . . . it was one of the mysteries he’d never unraveled.

“And the Davidson twins stayed far away from Pa after that!” Adam finished.

“I’m surprised you didn’t go with them!” Joe laughed. “Hey, Hoss, are there any potatoes left?”

“I still can’t believe she went to all that trouble just to clean a wagon,” Adam mused.

“Bet she’d have liked the job we all did on this place,” Hoss offered as he handed the dish to his little brother.

“I’ll bet she would, at that,” Ben agreed, his voice only slightly husky.

Adam winked at his father. He raised his wineglass, and by the light of fresh new candles, they toasted the memory of a lovely woman and all she had brought to them.

“We felt like the luckiest, most special family in the world.”

We are, Ben told her silently. Because we had you, my love, we are.

 

Tags:  Ben Cartwright, Family, Inger Borgstrom Cartwright, wife / wives