Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 8 *

Summary: Shortly before Christmas, Candy seeks someone out for a serious talk.

Rating:  G
Word Count:  965

Second Sunday

The man wearing black jeans and a matching vest pushed his way into the Bucket of Blood without haste or hesitation, his wide mouth pressed into a frown and his blue eyes fixed on his target before the bat-wing doors could even close behind him. As he walked up behind the only man drinking at the bar, the chatter from elsewhere in the saloon died away. Everyone present knew both participants in the upcoming confrontation, and everyone was curious about how the confrontation might turn out.

Despite his air of menace, the newcomer’s first words were surprisingly mild. “Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend. I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer.”

Curiously enough, the man thus accosted was also wearing black–not only pants, jacket and vest, but even a black shirt with an almost silky sheen. He didn’t turn around before answering, “What sort of thing do you mean, Candy?”

“What ‘sort of thing’ do you think I mean!” Candy snapped back in a louder tone. “You’ve come into town alone every day for a week now, and when I look for you you’re always here, with your nose in a beer. You don’t think I’d find that strange? Besides, your brothers are worrying about you.”

“You could have left it to them to take it up with me, in that case.”

“Don’t try chopping logic with me! You know Joe won’t dress you down for this, and Jamie’s too young to know how. Or why, for that matter.” Candy pushed his hands into his pockets and took a half-step back. “Do you even know when it is?”

“Second Sunday in Advent, with sixteen and a quarter days to Christmas.” There was a pause as the man took a temperate swallow of his beer. In a softer voice he went on, “She always taught Sunday school, everywhere we went…even here, though I can’t say she really saw eye-to-eye with the Reverend Watson. Not that she’d argue with him, of course.”

Perhaps because the other man was so obviously not drunk, Candy seemed to relax a little. “Linda had better ways of making her point than arguing,” he agreed. Linda Cartwright had shared her husband’s ability to slide sideways away from open disagreements without concealing her own opinions from anyone truly interested. Unlike her husband, she had retained that approach no matter the provocation. Adam still lost his temper almost as often–and every bit as loudly–as ever his father had. Candy couldn’t remember Linda ever raising her voice in anger.

Pursuing his own train of thought, the other man said gently, “No one here ever saw her at her best. She was never quite comfortable here–she was more used to city living, when we were away.”

“She was more used to running her own household,” Candy said frankly.

The other man did not protest. “Well, yes, but all the same, she made a place for herself here.”

“She did that.” Candy thought back to Linda’s first winter at the Ponderosa, when she’d taken over the space tucked into the staircase to set up her lacemaking equipment, away from the family’s comings and goings, and the soot from fireplace and stove.

Unfortunately that place was directly in front of the main gun rack.

They had moved the guns. It was easier than trying to move Linda.

As far as Candy knew, the pillow and bobbins were still there, after she’d moved into the downstairs bedroom during her illness, long after she’d joined the growing cluster of graves overlooking Lake Tahoe. And the lace she’d made there had been more gossamer than any the Silver Queens of Virginia City could boast, yet strong enough–he had a handkerchief edged in it himself, and knew–strong enough to withstand daily use. Like Linda had been, he decided, before the cancer had come.

With as much effort as if struggling for control of a heavy-laden wagon on mudslicked roads, he brought the conversation back to his original complaint. “I know the first holiday after a death is always hard….”

“…But this isn’t the first one, I admit, or even the second,” the other man cut in. “And we had time to say our goodbyes. I know I’m very lucky.”

Among the Cartwrights, that could pass for good luck indeed, Candy understood. He fumbled in his pocket for a coin and would have passed it across the bar, but the other man’s left hand prevented that, while the right hand produced a coin of its own. “I’ve already stood the house a drink; let me buy you one as well.”

Candy accepted the offer, and the beer, and drank down half of it before he spoke again. “So why here…why now?”

Finally Adam looked up at him, a smile beginning to quirk his lips. “Oh, did you think I was drinking to forget?” He threw up a hand to ward off any reply. “There’s a package I’ve been waiting for that had to come from New York City to San Francisco, and then back to Virginia City after Elizabeth approved it. I wanted my daughter’s advice and agreement on every detail of this. I’ve met every mail train and stagecoach I thought it might be on…and now it’s here. I only came to town today to get a bit of ribbon for the box.” He drew a tiny, silk-upholstered box–adorned, as promised, with a twist of gold ribbon broader than it was–from his pocket. “Today was for memories…to look back and furnish the warm place in my heart Linda will always have. Tomorrow, I’m going by McNair’s Hotel. Tomorrow I’m speaking to Rose McNair again at last.”

Link to 2019 Advent Calendar – December 9:

A Debt of Kindness by Questfan