Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 5 *

Summary:   A posthumous gift from his grandfather brings back memories and an important realisation to Adam.

Rating:  G  2,110 words

Note:  This story was written for the Bonanza Brand 2020 Advent Calendar, originated in the Forums.

Grandpa’s Gift

5^th December 1852.  A letter came from Boston to tell me my grandfather was dead.

He was eighty-two, a good age.  And he’d lived a full life.  In my heart I’d known that letter would arrive sometime soon.  His health had been failing for a while, but in my mind, Boston and my grandfather are inseparable.  I can never think of one without the other.  Now Boston has a hole in it—an Abel Stoddard-shaped hole—and I shall never think of it in the same way again.

The letter was from his housekeeper, Mrs. Turnbull, and told me my grandfather’s solicitors would be in touch in due course regarding the settlement of his estate, but that she had wanted to write personally to let me know the sad news.  I have never met this long-suffering lady.  My grandfather had agreed—grudgingly, as was his wont—to a full-time housekeeper after I departed from Boston, a reluctant capitulation to his advancing years and deteriorating health.  I’d only ever encountered her before in my grandfather’s letters.  Very few people have ever lived up to my grandfather’s impossible standards and Mrs. Turnbull was no exception.  She must have been a remarkable woman to tolerate his critical eye and short temper for the last few years, although reading between the lines, I believe there must have been a genuine fondness between them.  My grandfather’s bark was always worse than his bite and Mrs. Turnbull was obviously a resilient lady.

With the letter was a small parcel, carefully wrapped in brown paper.

Your grandfather was very particular that I should send you the enclosed, wrote Mrs. Turnbull.  He had me promise many times over that I would not forget to make certain you received it.

I smiled at the image of my irascible grandfather pestering the poor woman with his stubborn determination.  When he got an idea in his head, he was like a terrier at a rabbit hole and would not give up.

Hoss and Little Joe, neither of whom had ever met Grandpa Stoddard in person, had sat in respectful silence while I read out the news of his death.  Now, as I picked up the parcel, I sensed that relax into natural curiosity, and Little Joe couldn’t stop himself from jumping up from his seat to stand beside me.  But then, what ten-year-old isn’t going to be fixated by the mystery of a wrapped parcel?

“What is it, Adam?”

Whatever it was was wrapped in several layers of protective paper.  As I laid them aside, one by one, Little Joe’s nose wrinkled.

“Phew, it smells!” he said.

Hoss sniffed the air.  “I think it’s a packet of baccy,” he said, grinning.

“Not quite,” I said, as I unfolded the last piece of the brown paper, “but close.”

There was a moment of silence as we all surveyed the contents of the parcel, now revealed in my lap: two small leather objects, both worn and both exuding the pungent reek of tobacco.

“Navy cut,” said Pa.  “Your grandfather’s favourite.  You can smell the rum, can’t you?”

Hoss looked puzzled.  “Why d’your grandpa send you two old tobacco pouches?  You don’t even smoke!”

I smiled, more to myself than at Hoss’s question.  Funny how a smell can evoke such intense memories.  The pungent odour of that navy cut took me straight back to my grandfather’s hearthside; the evenings we would sit together, I with my nose in a book, and he with his pipe in his hand.  My grandfather was never a contented man by nature, but when he was in his armchair, by the fire, with his pipe glowing in his hand, he was at his most mellow.

I picked up one of the pouches, the larger and less worn of the two.  It was a folding wallet design, fashioned from a rich chestnut brown leather, decorated on the outside with an image of a ship in full sail.  I unfastened the small brass clasp that held it closed, and there in the bottom left-hand corner, just as I had known they would be, were my grandfather’s initials—AMS—tooled into the leather.  I ran my fingertip over the tiny letters, remembering how I had worked late into the night, with only a candle for light,to add that finishing touch to the pouch.

“I made this for him,” I said, turning it over in my hand and letting my finger trace the details of the ship I’d worked—oh so painstakingly!—into the front.  “The last Christmas I was with him in Boston.  I wanted do something special for him, as a thank you for all he’d done for me.  Everyone thought he was grumpy and ill-tempered and—well, there’s no denying it—all too often, he was.  But he was kind and generous too, and he kept a roof over my head all the time I was in college.  I couldn’t have managed without him.

“I wanted to make him something practical.  He had no patience for fripperies so I didn’t want to give him something he wouldn’t find useful.  He never was one to mince his words so, whatever I made for him, I knew he’d be sure to tell me exactly what he thought, for good or for bad.”

I picked up the second pouch in my other hand.  This one was of the drawstring variety, clearly older than the one I’d made; the leather fragile and thin and bearing evidence of more than one repair.   Once there had been an anchor painted on the front.  It wasn’t visible any more because the calfskin was so worn with handling, but I knew it had been there because Grandpa had told me.

“This was the pouch I always saw him use.  I’d seen how old and tatty it was, so I had the idea of making him a new one, as a surprise.  Working leather was something I was good at so it seemed like the perfect present.”  I frowned to myself as I thought back.  “Grandfather was a hard man to impress.  I wanted so much for him to be pleased with it.”

Strange.  Even now, several years older and wiser, I still can’t explain why Grandpa’s approval meant so much to me.  Maybe it was because he was the only direct link I had to my mother, and she had been so precious to him, I wanted to prove I was worthy of her.  It’s not something I’ve ever adequately been able to put into words.  Suffice to say, I spent endless secret hours laboring over that small calfskin wallet, late at night in the privacy of my small bedroom in the eaves.  Even when it was finally finished and I hid it away in preparation for Christmas, I found myself compelled to get it out again and again, examining it with the most critical of eyes, and I would inevitably see minute flaws in the work and worry he would be unimpressed.  I knew Grandpa would pull no punches with his apparaisal of my handiwork.

“You did a good job,” said Pa, reaching out to take it from me so he could examine it more closely.  “So much detail in that ship!  It’s very impressive.”

I nodded.  I could appreciate that now, even if I’d had no faith in my abilities at the time.

“Did he like it?” asked Little Joe, impatient to hear the rest of the story.

I couldn’t answer him straight away.  I kept my head down, still holding the other small, fragile remnant of leather in one hand while the sharp memory of that Christmas morning came back to me on a pungent waft of navy cut.

Grandpa had unwrapped the little gift without a word, and without a word stood holding it in his hand, much as Pa was doing now.  I’d expected some kind of acknowledgement, for better or for worse, and when he said nothing, I’d found myself squirming.

“It’s a tobacco pouch,” I’d said, stating the obvious in my awkward attempt to break the silence.  “I saw how old and worn out your other one is, so I thought I’d make you a new one.”  When he still didn’t speak, I added, “I hope you like it, sir.”

“You made this?” he said, at last.

“Yes, sir.”

There was another long silence during which my hope evaporated.  It didn’t meet his impossibly high standards.  How could it?  I was just an incompetent boy and he was a seasoned sea captain who’d sailed the world and seen sights I couldn’t even imagine.  My handiwork was bound to appear feeble by comparison.

“You know why I’ve never replaced this pouch with a new one?”  He reached into the pocket of his jacket where he kept his pipe and tobacco, and pulled out the shabby little drawstring bag I knew so well.

“No, sir,” I said, my self-doubt deepening as I realized with a sinking sensation in my stomach that there was more to this situation than I’d considered.

“This little pouch is very special.”

We both stared at the little bag, he with an expression I couldn’t interpret, and I with deepening apprehension.

“This was made for me by your mother.  My little Lizzie.  When she was no more than a girl.”

It was painful even now to remember how foolish I had felt in that moment.  Foolish and clumsy.  As though I’d inadvertently dug a hole in my mother’s grave.  Why hadn’t I considered there would be a reason why Grandfather kept such an old and tatty object on his person.  Of course it had to be of some special import.  I just hadn’t thought about it hard enough.

“I’ve carried it with me always,” went on Grandpa  “Every day.  It’s like a good luck charm for me.  I always said, if the ship went down, as long as I had this with me, everything would work out.”

I didn’t know what to say to that; I just stood there, mutely, like the foolish boy I was.

Grandfather raised his face to me and—inexplicably—he smiled.

“And now,” he said, his voice oddly gruff,” her son has made me another.  What do we think of that, eh?”  Still holding my mother’s pouch in his fingers, he ran his hand over the front of the one I’d made for him.  “You did this yourself, did you?”

I didn’t trust myself to speak at that moment, so I nodded.

He nodded too, his eyes still fixed on the picture of the ship that I had taken such pains to get right.

“Means a lot, boy,” he said.  “It means a lot.”

I looked round at Little Joe and smiled as I nodded.  “Yes.  He did.  He liked it a lot.  And I learned something that day; something special.  I learned that the reason he’d hung on so long to this old pouch was that my mother had made it for him when she was a girl.”

Although they held their tongues out of politeness, I could tell Hoss and Joe were underwhelmed as they took in the tatty, stained scrap of a pouch.  But Pa’s face softened with surprised wonder.

“Liz?  Liz made that?”

He didn’t need to ask.  I held out the little bag and he leaned forward to take it from me, caressing it between his fingers, as I had done, with a kind of reverence.  I understood.  To touch an object that she had once held in her own hands was to be close to her again.

“I never knew,” he said.

“Grandpa wouldn’t have wanted anyone to accuse him of sentimentality.”

Pa smiled at that.  “No, you’re right.  He certainly wouldn’t.”

Until now, I thought.  Grandpa had never mentioned my mother’s tobacco pouch after that Christmas morning.  I knew he continued to carry it with him in his pocket, but from that day forward, it was the one I’d made him that he pulled out whenever he filled his pipe, and whenever I saw him do that, my heart would swell with the knowledge he approved me.

I stared across at the two pouches in Pa’s hands, knowing that was why Grandpa had sent them to me.  I might never have had the chance to know my mother, and only a short time to get to know my grandfather, but my grandfather had wanted me to know there had been a place for me, next to my mother, close to his heart.

“Means a lot, boy,” I heard him say.  “It means a lot.”

Character: Abel Stoddard

Gift: tobacco pouch

Inspired by:  Elizabeth, My Love
Director:  Lewis Allen
Written by:  Anthony Lawrence, David Dortort (creator)

Link to Bonanza Brand 2020 Advent Calendar – Day 6 – Homesick by Patina