Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 11 *

 

Summary:  Living up to Mama’s expectations may just have some redeeming qualities.

Rating:  G  1,500 words

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

Redemption

Lannie was my name back then. Sure, Langford was my real name, but that was too much mouthful for a kid, and I guess for my ma too, because she called me Lannie. But I’d have come running to her no matter what she’d called me. I always felt safe with Ma. She was a slip of a thing, I know that now, but she seemed strong as a tree to me then. I was a scrawny young’un, a disappointment to my pa, but that didn’t matter when Ma’s arms came around me and she hugged me to her.

“Lannie, Lannie,” she’d tell me, “you’re my good boy.” And I wanted to be both those things: her boy, and good.

One Christmas when I was five or six, she gave me a toy she’d bought in town. She’d traded a dozen eggs and a bolt of homespun for a little wooden tube that looked like a telescope. When I looked in it, I saw a million colored beads in a star pattern. And when I turned the tube, the beads shifted into a flower, and then an octagon, and then an endless rainbow tunnel.

“It’s done with mirrors,” Ma said, eager as a kid herself. “It’s called a kaleidoscope.” She sounded as proud as if she’d invented it.

I played with that thing for years, but then I lost it somehow and put it out of my mind. I was good at that—putting things out of my mind when I needed to. After a bit, I never thought of the kaleidoscope again. Never, that is, until the day Adam Cartwright outdrew me in the Sazerac, hitting me in the shoulder but allowing me to live.

It was a surprise to most everyone, especially me, that he outdrew me. I had twelve notches on my gun belt by then, and figured to make it thirteen. But he was faster than I was, plain and simple. When his bullet hit my shoulder, it was shock more than pain that caused me to crumple to the floor, and everyone thought I was dead. Even me.

It had to be death that was overtaking me, I reckoned, since I’d never seen such in life as I was seeing then. I seemed to be falling, but falling up, moving faster and faster like in a runaway stagecoach. But the ride—or the fall—was smooth, not bumpy and rattly the way a stagecoach would have been. I wasn’t riding so much as flying, and there were colors all around me, swirling and shifting and whizzing by me like bullets made of diamonds and blue glass and glowing red embers.

Then the colors started forming patterns, and I thought, Oh, dying is like being inside a kaleidescope. But then the patterns started looking less like colored beads and more like tinted shadows of people and places. The people were moving around and acting out scenes from my very own life, starting with the Christmas I got the kaleidoscope and moving through every important thing that had happened to me since.

I saw Ma on her deathbed whispering, “Lannie, always remember you’re my good boy.” I saw Pa with empty eyes at her grave, and then he turned to me and his eyes stayed empty no matter how I tried to please him. I saw myself in the schoolhouse, scrawny and not too bright, wearing the dunce cap and getting in fights that I always lost. I saw myself learning to shoot and realizing it was something I was good at. Practicing my quick draw, knowing I was good at that too. Arguing with Pa, leaving home after he licked me one time too many. Skinning mules, riding drag on cattle drives, sweeping saloon floors, anything to keep from starving. Being challenged by a man too full of drink to keep his mouth shut, outdrawing him and living to see another day. Drawing faster than his two friends the very next day, and earning my belt’s third notch. Gaining a reputation. Meeting more challengers, being hired by men like Alpheus Troy, and finally meeting my match in Adam Cartwright.

As I sped along inside the kaleidoscope, I saw how it all made sense. Every choice I’d made, every reaction I’d had, everything I’d thought or said or done—they made a pattern. And I could let that pattern continue, shaping itself and my life within it, or I could break free and start making new patterns.

When that knowledge hit me, I slammed back into my body on the Sazerac floor. My shoulder hurt like the devil, and a man was pulling me up and helping me to a chair, while another man hollered for somebody to fetch the doc.

The next day I rode over to the Ponderosa to see Ben Cartwright. I thought he’d probably run me off, or maybe even shoot me on sight, but I had to try. He scowled ferociously at me, but told me to come on in. We sat in his great room, me on the settee with my arm in a sling and him glaring at me from a big chair by the fire. There was a twelve-foot Christmas tree behind him, decked out with glass ornaments and candles. The candles weren’t lit yet, but I could imagine how they’d make the glass balls sparkle, come Christmas Eve.

I took a deep breath and told him about the kaleidoscope I got for Christmas all those years past. Then I told him about the other kaleidoscope, the one I flew through when his son shot me and I’d seemed dead for a time. And I told him I’d been given to understand that a man could change, and maybe become his ma’s good boy again. I expected he’d either laugh at me or lose his temper and order me out, but he just nodded. And he’d stopped scowling.

“You’re right,” he said. “A man can change.” And then, of all things, he offered me a piece of his land to build a cabin on and plant some crops. I had to smile at that. The smile felt strange on my face.

“I can’t accept that, Mr. Cartwright,” I told him. “It’s a right generous offer, especially seeing as how I tried to kill your son—but I can’t stay here. Too many people know me, and there’s always some fool that thinks he can make a name for himself by drawing on a gunslinger. No sir, I can’t stay here.”

When I told him what I wanted to do, he insisted on outfitting me with a wagon and a draft horse to pull it, and he and his sons spent the next few days building and painting and furnishing me a rolling house. On the side of it, Adam Cartwright himself painted my new name in bright red letters outlined in yellow: Kal. Pronounced like Cal, but spelled with a K, and we all knew it was short for Kaleidoscope. I had the money Alpheus Troy had paid me, but Mr. Cartwright wouldn’t take a cent of it. I used it to buy start-up supplies such as blankets, corn meal, beef jerky, mirrors, and beads.

Now I spend my days driving from one town to the next, and my nights carving wooden tubes and fitting them with those mirrors and beads. It’s meticulous work, and I’ve spoiled a few ‘scopes, but it keeps me busy of an evening. Most are toys, but a few have been works of art if I do say so myself. I sell enough to keep my horse and myself fed, and I never stay long in one town. Since leaving Virginia City, I’ve seen San Francisco, Denver City, Santa Fe, and scores of settlements in between. And I haven’t had to shoot a man in any of them.

My hair has grown long, and I have a beard. I’m not as clean and well-trimmed as I used to be, but when I see my reflection in a mirror, I like it better. My eyes don’t look cold anymore. I pull into towns and smile when the young’uns run toward my wagon. They shout to each other and to me, racing alongside and hollering, “Whatcha sellin’, mister?” and “Where you come from?” Sometimes I don’t even sell, just stop and tell them about the sights I’ve seen: silver waterfalls crashing down rocks, hot springs steaming in the snow, sunsets and eagles and bighorn sheep. Or the people I’ve met:  Navajo farmers, Apache warriors, cattlemen and trappers and settlers. And then I pass out kaleidoscopes to the kids and drive off without asking for a penny.

Ma wouldn’t recognize me now.

On second thought, I believe she would. After all, I’m her good boy Lannie once again.

 

Character: Langford Poole  (A Rose for Lotta)

Gift: kaleidoscope 

Inspired by:  A Rose for Lotta
Director:  Edward Lugwig
Written by:  David Dortort

Link to Bonanza Brand 2020 Advent Calendar – Day 12 – The Adventure of the Antique Opera Glasses by Belle