Summary: An incident with his granddaughter brings up childhood memories for Joe. My entry for the 2021 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.

Rating:  T

Word count: 4228

Disclaimer: All publicly recognisable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author.  The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise.  No copyright infringement is intended.

 

“Just what do you think you’re doing with that?”

Cassie gulped and tried to hide the knife behind her back. Joe managed to hold back a smile as he looked at his youngest granddaughter squirming like a freshly caught fish on a hook. She took after her great uncle in more ways than one. For starters, she couldn’t lie to save herself and was as gullible as Hoss had been. Her older brothers sure took advantage of the softly spoken child as they played their pranks on her. Much as he had done all those years ago when the big galoot couldn’t see that whatever his little brother was scheming would end in disaster for one or both of them. The years had softened the grief to a point where Joe could think on his brother without feeling his chest tighten in pain and he couldn’t help but reach out a hand to the child. Her blue eyes weren’t quite as light as Hoss’s had been, but they sure could say a lot without saying anything.

“Darlin’, your mama isn’t going to be happy to see you with that. Now, hand it over … carefully.” As Cassie’s chin dropped to her chest, her tiny fingers unclenched from around the knife handle, and she held it out awkwardly towards him. He reached forward slowly to take a grasp across the back of the sharp blade and made sure it was well clear of her fingers before turning and placing it back in the knife block. “Now, want to tell me what you need such a big sharp knife for?”

Cassie’s lower lip trembled as she stared at the floor and Joe took pity on the child. No doubt one or both of her brothers had put her up to it and he’d be having a stern talk with them once he knew which one to speak with. Hop Sing had long gone to meet his ancestors, but the man’s kitchen was still as immaculate and well cared for as it had been for all those years. Only now it was Cassie’s mother and grandmother who held sway over the house and over this room in particular.

“Well?” Joe placed his hands on his hips and waited as Cassie stared at the floor.

“I … I needed it.”

“You needed a butchering knife? Whatever for?” Joe watched as tears began to drip off the child’s chin and he crouched down before her. “Darlin’, what for?”

Cassie hung her head even lower, which he hadn’t thought was possible, as more tears began to flow in earnest.

“I got ta get them back ’fore Mama and Grandma come home!”

“Get what back?”

Cassie looked up at him briefly before throwing herself into his arms. As the tears soaked into his shirt, Joe stood up with the child wrapped into his chest and waited for the storm to pass. Finally, the sobs eased, and he held out a handkerchief for Cassie to wipe her face and blow her nose.

“Mama told me not to touch them and I didn’t. Not really. I was just looking and not touching! Honest.”

Joe sat the child down on a stool and crossed his arms as he waited for an explanation that made sense. The moment wasn’t lost on him on how many times his own father had taken up such a stance and waited to hear whatever cockamamie explanation his youngest son would have for his latest escapade. Only Cassie wasn’t like him. She was Hoss all over and she couldn’t bear to be in trouble. Her story may not be making much sense yet, but he knew that it would be the truth. Unlike many of the more colorful explanations he had given his father. It wasn’t lyin’ exactly … it was just … well … not always the whole truth!

“What didn’t you touch while you were looking at them?”

“Mama’s b …buttons.”

The shiny new pearl buttons that Marie had brought back from the mercantile last week. The ones that were to finish off her best friend’s wedding dress. The ones that had been specially ordered for the occasion. Those buttons. Joe felt his heart sink a little. His daughter would be very, very unimpressed if something had happened to those very expensive and irreplaceable buttons, especially given the wedding was less than two weeks away. He tried to keep a neutral face and allow the rest of the story to come out without provoking a fresh flood of tears.

“What happened to your mama’s buttons?”

Cassie sucked in a sharp breath and slowly looked up. Her eyes pooled once more with tears as she held out her small hands, as if trying to show him she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I didn’t mean to touch them … but … well … they fell off the bench.”

Joe could hear himself in those words. Sorry, Pa. I didn’t mean it, Pa.

Just as easily as if he were in the room, he heard his father’s tired response. You never mean it, Joseph. That doesn’t make it any less broken. Or lost. Or whatever the misdemeanor of that week had been.

“So, they just up and fell off the bench all on their own?” Joe barely held back a smile as he looked at the child before him. Actually, that comment sounded just like his father!

“Well … no. I was on the stool … so I could look at them. So I didn’t mean to touch them. I was just looking! And then I fell off the stool. I … Mama’s sewing table moved and the buttons … well …. “ Cassie swallowed hard and tried to hold back the tears once more. “Well, some of them fell down ’tween the floorboards.”

Finally, something that made sense.

“And you were going to use that knife to do what? Pry up a floorboard?”

Cassie nodded miserably. She knew she wasn’t supposed to touch the knives, but she just had to get the buttons back before Mama or Grandma noticed they were missing!

Joe leaned down and lifted her chin with his finger. “Well lucky I know how to pry up a floorboard. And it doesn’t take a butcher’s knife.” He held out a hand to her and smiled. “Wanna help?”

Cassie’s watery smile made him grin as he once again saw his brother is her. Hoss would do anything to right a wrong and he could feel her relief as he picked her up and headed for the barn to get a few tools.

Hours later, as Joe sat and stared into the fire, he felt his wife’s eyes on him. Grace didn’t miss a trick and she had that way of knowing when he was holding out on her. The coffee in his cup was long gone and she offered him another.

“Sure, thanks.”

“Are you going to tell me what you and Cassie got up to today?”

Joe chewed on his lower lip before taking another drink of his coffee. “Not a lot. I was down at the corral for much of the day with Griff sorting through those horses for the next contract. He’s still about five or six short.”

When her family had given her the name Grace, they must have known that she was going to need it when she became the next Mrs. Cartwright. Or perhaps they should have called her Patience. Either way, Joe’s wife had grown very accustomed to her husband’s way of sliding off the point when he wanted to throw her off the scent. It very rarely worked, but it sure was fun watching him try.

“Really?” Her arched eyebrow should have been warning enough, but Joe wasn’t paying attention. His mind had been wandering since they sat down in front of the fire over half an hour ago.

“Yeah, he’s got some good ones there with that black mare and the sorrel and …”

Grace watched her husband as he licked his lip again in a dead giveaway. “I think Griff is big enough to decide which horse to choose. Now, what happened with Cassie while we were out?”

“Cassie? What makes you think anything happened with Cassie? We had a perfectly fine afternoon and now she’s gone home with Marie.”

Grace leaned closer to her husband and reached for his face. “That innocent face doesn’t work on me. I know you!”

Joe chuckled as he felt his wife’s finger tapping his nose. He reached up and grasped her fingers into his before kissing them.  “Ain’t that the truth?”

“You told me that Cassie would be fine here for the day. You know Matt didn’t want to take her with the boys and she couldn’t come with us to see Charlotte. It’s too soon since she lost her little one and Cassie didn’t need to see that.”

Joe sobered as he recalled the reason Marie had been to visit. Charlotte Maddison had lost another baby that had decided to come too early, and his wife and daughter had gone to see the family and take provisions for them. It was the women’s place to visit, and Matt had taken the boys with him to keep working on the top fence of their ranch. That just left Cassie and Joe had volunteered to have her for the day. Truth was, as much as he loved his boys, there was an extra special soft spot for that little blue-eyed beauty that had stolen his heart the day she entered the world.

“Cassie had been crying.”

Joe shook his head as he looked afresh at his wife. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“No, now perhaps you can tell me why. She loves being with you, so what happened?”

“Well …” Joe felt himself sliding back into the seat as he considered how to answer. It was just like old times and he smiled. “You want the Cassie answer or the Grandpa answer?”

Grace pushed him in the elbow as she let out an exasperated sigh. “I’d like the truth!”

“You know, you sound just like Pa.”

“I can see why your father had so many white hairs.”

“Why?” Joe looked at her with a childish grin. “Adam wasn’t that bad a kid!”

“Am I ever going to get an answer or are you going to keep stalling?”

“Is stalling an option?”

Grace reached over and swatted her husband in exaggerated anger. “No! It is not! Don’t make me get out the wooden spoon.”

Joe held up both hands and slid away from her. “No, not the wooden spoon! Anything but that!”

As Grace began to rise from her seat, he reached for her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. She couldn’t help but giggle at her husband’s silly expression.  Slowly, he began to sober and he looped his fingers through hers before starting again.

“That child grows more like Hoss every day.”

It didn’t matter how many years it had been; Grace could still recall the gentle giant she had known since the schoolyard, and nothing would ever quite erase her husband’s grief over losing him. She totally agreed with his assessment of their youngest grandchild, and it went a long way towards explaining the depth of the bond between the two of them. She knew about many of the youthful escapades Joe had gotten up to and dragged his older and very much more gullible brother into. She half suspected that it was Joe’ s fault that Cassie had been crying as some prank of his had backfired on the child.

“She can’t lie to save herself.”

Grace smiled at the truth of that one.

“Unlike other children we may have known.” Grace tapped at the end of his nose again.

“No idea what you mean!”

Grace was two years behind Joe at school and had been witness to many pranks and almost as many punishments. Any time he had tried to embellish a story or stretch the truth of things with his own children, she had been there with a stern expression and a twinkle of suppressed laughter in her eyes. He had only become more incorrigible with his grandchildren, and she knew that all of them adored Grandpa ‘s wild stories. It would often leave them in hysterical laughter as he acted out various tales of daring and youthful adventures.

“Stop stalling!” As Grace pretended to rise once more, Joe grasped at her waist and planted a kiss on her cheek.

“All right! All right! You wore me down. I’ll ‘fess up.”

By the time he was done explaining the whole saga of the buttons that jumped off the table all by themselves and tried to escape into a deep dark cavern in the floor, Grace was giggling again. The fact that Cassie could have cut off a finger, or worse, if she had succeeded with her rescue plan had drawn a gasp, but Joe soon had her laughing again as he described the quest to save the lost buttons and prevent the utter ruin of a local wedding. It would go down in the town’s history books as one of those landmark events that hung by a knife’s edge – quite literally!

“Well, I’m very glad you were there to save them as those buttons cost Meg a small fortune. I thought they were an extravagance, but I guess every bride wants to look her best for her husband.”

Joe looked up at his wife and smiled. There were tinges of white around her temples and threads of it through her bun that was tied loosely at the nape of her neck. The smooth skin of his bride had given way to fine lines and her hands showed the years of hard work she had done, but as he looked at her in the firelight, she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

“You sure did.”

Grace smiled at him before planting a kiss on his nose.

“You weren’t too shabby yourself. And I’m glad Cassie felt she could tell you what happened and not hide it.”

Joe looked away momentarily towards the fire and Grace felt something shift in his demeanor.

“What?”

When Joe didn’t answer, she tried again.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’. It’s been a long day and I’m gettin’ old. Time for bed.”

Grace knew that face and knew instinctively it had something to do with Hoss. She knew pushing him would achieve nothing, so she stood up and began to gather the coffee cups and place them on the tray. As she headed for the kitchen, she wondered if Joe would share it with her or not. There weren’t many things he kept from her, but she knew there were still some memories he kept all to himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Grace poured herself another coffee and watched as Joe played with the eggs on his plate. It was something he did when troubled and she tilted her head as she watched him. Something from the night before had hit a nerve and it was clearly still bothering him.

“Want to tell me about whatever has got you tied in a knot?”

Joe looked startled as he lifted his head and saw his wife watching him.

“You’ve almost turned those eggs into a stew and barely eaten two mouthfuls.”

Joe nodded as he threw the fork down on the plate.

“Those buttons.”

Grace frowned at the answer. Yes, the buttons were expensive, but she couldn’t see why Joe was upset about them as they had all been retrieved and Cassie had been saved from explaining what happened to them.

Joe licked at his lip and tried again. “Not the buttons so much … but what you said about them. That you were glad Cassie could tell me.”

Joe pushed away from the table and stood up. As he did so, he pulled a worn and tattered black hatband from his pocket. She’d never seen it before, and she waited as Joe walked around the table and pulled up the chair next to her.

“This was Adam’s. Pa bought him the silver studs to put in it when he was eighteen. Pa said he’d earned them.”

He sat and ran the hatband through his fingers, stopping briefly on each of the studs one by one as if reciting a rosary. “They cost Pa a pretty penny and he gave them to Adam to show him he counted him as a man.”

“So why do you have it?”

Grace watched her husband’s face crease into a frown.

“Because I lied.” Joe blew out a sharp breath before continuing on. “Course I was only six, but still … I knew better.”

Grace leaned across the table and reached for his hand. “I think I know most of your stories. I watched many of them unfold in front of me at school! What could you have possibly done as a six-year-old that it would still torment you now, all these years later?”

“I had only been at school for half a year and my writing was … well … as Pa put it … like chicken scratchin’s. I couldn’t spell too much, and I was still figuring out my letters. We all had to do a homework paper about someone we looked up to and the youngest ones could ask for someone older to help write it if we needed. Hoss helped me write mine.”

When Joe stopped and seemed to be staring off somewhere in the past, Grace squeezed his hand.

“Who did you write about?”

“Adam. Pa was always talking about how proud he was of his boy goin’ off to college and I figured it must be something real important if Pa made that much fuss over it. I couldn’t see what was so good about it since Adam missed me starting school. And my birthday. And a whole bunch of other things.”

Grace squeezed his hand again as she knew exactly how much he had missed his older brother and how excited he’d been when he finally returned home. She had only been seven at the time, but she clearly recalled the party Ben Cartwright had thrown and invited everyone from around the surrounding ranches and families in town to come.

“So, what does that have to do with Adam’s hatband?”

“How many times did you see me get in scraps with other boys at school?”

Grace smiled as she recalled many schoolyard fights that had featured her future husband. Of course, then, he had usually been the smaller of the two combatants and won some and lost quite a few.

“A time or two.”

“Well, I know it was before you started school, but there was a family of seven who started at school not long after I did. The Reynolds family.”

“I remember Ma talking about them and how glad she was when they left town. I don’t rightly remember them, but I know they scared her.”

“She was right to be scared of them. Pa told me years later that Mark Reynolds was the meanest drunk he’d ever met, and he dished out discipline to those young ones with his fists.  It carried over to school and I ended up on their list of people to beat on. Of course, if Hoss was around, they left me be, but there were some days when he wasn’t nearby, and things would get real mean, real quick.”

Joe licked at his lower lip as he returned to passing the hatband between his fingers.

“Johnny Reynolds and his twin brother Henry were a couple of years ahead of me and they were twice my size. I figured later they’d learned to fight defending themselves from their pa, but they took a real dislike to me. Said I was a spoiled brat. Johnny especially had a real mean streak and just after I took in my paper on Adam, he started taunting me about how Adam had run out on me and was never coming back. He kept at me and at me and finally I told him that Adam was coming back, and he had left something real special with me to hold onto until he came back.”

“Adam gave you his hatband to take care of?”

Joe shook his head as he stared at the hatband. “That’s just it – he never gave it to me. Adam left his hat hanging on that hook there.” Joe pointed across the room at the hooks that had held so many hats and so many jackets over the years. “Said he was leaving it there and would pick it up when he came back home.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“I took it. I figured I couldn’t take his whole hat as that’d be noticed, but if I took the hatband, I could stick it in my pocket, show it to Johnny as proof and have it back on ol’ Adam’s hat with nobody any the wiser.”

Grace would have smiled if her husband wasn’t so clearly wound up. His comment sounded like something any of her own children could have done. “What happened?

“I took it to school and at morning break I went behind the schoolhouse to show Johnny. He was waiting for me with Henry, and they laughed at me and took it off me before throwing it back and forth between them. I tried getting it back, but they were each a good foot taller than me and threw it over my head.”

Joe’s hands clenched tighter around the hatband and Grace could feel the anger. So long ago and yet it still rankled being pushed around by bullies. Or perhaps it had more to do with the mistreatment of something precious.

“Finally, Johnny flung it far into the tree line behind the schoolhouse and as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find it. Hoss came looking for me when the school bell rang at the end of break and I didn’t come in. I didn’t want to tell him what I’d done so I told him the boys had scared me and I didn’t want to come back in. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but it sure wasn’t the whole story. I was sure Pa was gonna skin me alive when the truth did come out.”

“I don’t imagine he would have been very impressed.”

“The whole way home from school I was trying to think what I was going to tell him. Once he knew what had really happened, Hoss tried coming up with some ideas too. Before I got a chance to ‘fess up, there was an accident with one of the hands busting a bronc and Pa was too busy dealing with that.”

Joe twisted the leather into his fingers again and frowned as he reached the next silver stud.

“It was the next day when Hoss took me to Pa and helped me tell him what happened and why I did it. I expected I was due a good tanning, but Pa got real quiet. He took me into town and the three of us looked for this in the trees until we found it. I think I was more scared of Pa acting so strange than I was of getting that tanning.”

Grace waited as her husband drifted off somewhere again. The Ben Cartwright she knew would never have allowed his son to get away with such a thing.

“It felt like another few hours before Pa called me inside. He said that he would deal with my lie and taking what wasn’t mine, but he wanted to talk to me about Adam first. He said that Hoss had told him how scared I was that Adam was gone just like Mama was gone. I don’t remember a lot of things from that time after she died, but I do remember feeling so scared that I was going to lose Pa too. I would wake up in the night and think I was all alone in the house.”

Joe stood up and walked towards the hat hooks near the door. He stared at them for a time, as if looking for hats that no longer hung there. Grace sat by the table and waited, knowing her husband kept few secrets from her. He would tell her the rest when he was ready. By the time he turned back to face her, the hatband was still clenched tightly in his fingers.

“I got my just punishment, but I got something else too. Pa gave me this to hold onto until Adam came home to claim it. Course he told me I was never to take it out of the house again!” The wry smile told Grace far more than the words.

Joe slowly walked back towards his wife and sat down again. “Eventually Adam came home as you know, and he got his hat put back together. When he left again, to go exploring the world, he gave this back to me. Said I had to hold onto it until he came back again.”

Grace leaned in to take hold of his fingers and touched the worn leather.

“But I guess the magic only works once.”

She reached up to tap his chest gently. “He’ll always be here. In your heart. And in your memories.”

“I know. And who knows … one day he just might come back to claim this.”

 

The End

Author’s Note:

Written for the 2021 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.  The game was Five Card Draw and the words and/or phrases I was dealt were:

silver studs
hatband
school
homework
(Joker)