Summary: Christmas brings an unexpected guest to the Ponderosa and forces Joe Cartwright to confront his past, present and future in the form of a tiny glass bird.
Rating G Words (4,750)
Written for the 2022 Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar

Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 2 *

The Glass Bird

I

“Can’t sleep?”

Joe Cartwright started and nearly dropped the fragile Christmas ornament he held.  Quickly, he hid it behind his back as he turned toward his father.  The older man was in his robe.  His thick white hair was tousled and he looked half awake.

Not surprising since it was the middle of the night.

“Gosh, Pa.  You scared ten years off of me!” he exclaimed.

His father came to his side.  “Hmm.  I seem to remember a few freckles and slightly larger ears when you were nine,” he said with a grin.

Nineteen-year old-Joe rolled his eyes.  “Don’t remind me.”  The year had been eighteen-fifty-one.  A photographer had set up a studio in Virginia City, and Pa thought it would just be the greatest thing to have an image of his two little boys – well, one little and one big boy – taken.  Adam was still at college.

The image was still here…somewhere.  Maybe buried in the back yard.

“Mrs. McCorkle thought your ears were cute.”

“Mrs. McCorkle liked to pinch ears,” he groused, feeling his.

His father laughed and pulled him into an embrace.  A second later Pa backed up.  “Now, confess.  What is that you have hidden behind your back?”

Joe’s pert nose wrinkled.  “Who me?”

“That certainly sounds like that nine-year-old boy.”

It wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong.  It was just, well, he didn’t want to talk about what he was doing or put why he was doing it into words.  That was the reason he’d come downstairs in the middle of the night – or morning, depending on how you looked at it – to do it alone.  He knew his Pa would understand if he found he wasn’t in his bed.  Still, that was part of the problem.  His brothers would make fun of him, but Pa was different.  He’d want to console him and then he’d probably fall apart.

His father was staring at him.  “It’s not one of Hop Sing’s special cookies that he’s reserved for tomorrow?”

Joe frowned. Whoo-ee!  He wasn’t that brave!  Then he realized what his father was doing – which was giving him a way out.

“You got me there, Pa.  It sure is.”

His father gave him his ‘stern’ Ben Cartwright look; one eyebrow arched and lips pursed.  “Only one?”

“Just one, sir.  I promise.”

“All right then, I tell you what.  I’ll go into the kitchen and get that glass of milk I came down for.”  Pa wagged a finger in his face.  “But, when I get back, young man, I expect you to show me both hands!”

Pa was still chuckling as he turned the corner into the kitchen.

Joe blew out a sigh.  He closed his eyes briefly, and then drew the object from behind his back.  The older man would have known it instantly. After all, he’d picked it out.  It was a lightweight and fragile, blown-glass Christmas ornament in the shape of a bird.  The colors were paler now than they’d been when he was child.  The bird’s back was more dove-gray than blue, and the white of its belly had worn away to reveal the transparent material underneath.  There were little patches of blush-pink on its sides.  They hadn’t changed much.  They reminded him of her cheeks.

Joe sniffed.

Everyone knew the story.  Pa met his mama in New Orleans and brought her to the Ponderosa.  She loved it, but missed her home.  The year before he was born, Pa sent all the way to New York to have a set of ornaments made for their Christmas tree.  They represented a lot of things Mama had known in Louisiana.  Among the fancy hats and shining gems, the glass carriages and horses, there was one bird.

This one.  A Tufted Titmouse.

In spite of the tears that threatened to fall, Joe smiled.  He didn’t remember much about his mama, but he remembered she would let him sit and hold this little glass bird each Christmas.  He swore he remembered doing it when he was just two.  It was his favorite ornament as a child because it was so small, and he loved the way its little tail lifted in the air.  It had big round eyes that seemed to look right through you.  When he got older – after his mama was gone – he’d done some reading about the Titmouse.  It was on account of how petite it was that it got its name.  The original was ‘tit mase’ and it just meant ‘small bird’.  Over the years, because it was so tiny, people started saying ‘mouse’ instead.

Sometimes Mama called him her little ‘Titmouse’.

Joe looked toward the kitchen.  He could hear his father noisily rattling around.  Probably a signal that he would soon be on his way.  After his mama died, he had made a little nest out of straw for the Titmouse to sleep in.  Every year, he was the one to put it on the tree.  It was a sacred moment for him, so he usually did it after everyone else was in bed.

Like now.

Joe reverently placed the glass bird in the nest just as his father emerged with a cough from the kitchen.  Pa stopped beside the tree and waited.  Joe pulled his hands out from behind his back and showed him that they were empty.  His father nodded his head and then reached into his pocket and produced one of Hop Sing’s special Christmas Day cookies that no one was allowed to eat until December 25^th – not even Hoss.

Pa handed it to him and then put a finger to his lips.  “Shh!”

Joe laughed.  “Mum’s the word.”

His father looked directly at the little Titmouse and then back at him.  “Yes, son.  Yes, it is.”  They stood in silence for a moment, both lost in their thoughts, and then Pa asked, “Are you coming to bed?”

He shrugged.  “I’m not really sleepy.  It’s warm down here.  I think I might read for a while.”  One of his early Christmas presents had been a copy of Charles Dickens’ new novel, Great Expectations.  Adam gave it to him and told him to read it to the end.  He might learn something.

It was a thick book.

“All right, son, but don’t stay up too late.  Tomorrow is a big day.”

As Pa headed up the stairs, Joe understood the older man’s words had to do with Christmas.

Neither one of them could have guessed that they would have to do with so much more.

II

Without realizing it, Joe fell asleep with the book in his hands.  He woke up with a start and looked at the clock, noting that the hands were placed at just past three.  As he ran a hand through his curly locks, he decided it must have been the chimes that woke him.  Then, soft as a slipper on the stair, there came a knock at the door.  Joe looked at the clock again.

Yep.  It was three in the morning.

Who the heck would be knocking?  On top of that, who the heck would be out in this weather?  It had been snowing for the last few days and, while the road to town was not impassable, it was nearly impossible.  Someone would have to be crazy to try it.

Or desperate.

The teenager considered waking his pa and brothers, but decided that was something that nine-year-old freckle-faced ears-large-enough-to pinch Joe Cartwright would have done.  He was going on twenty, for gosh sakes!  So what if his birthday was ten months away?  He was practically a grown man.  He could handle some lone wanderer in the dark.

Just in case, he grabbed the pistol out of his father’s desk drawer and tucked it behind his belt before he opened the door.

The storm had intensified since he’d been out to feed the animals and bed them down for the night. The wind rushed in and snow beat against his face.  Through it, he could just make out the outline of the barn and some kind of a carriage in front of it.  The horse that pulled it champed and strained at the bit, both wanting and needing to be fed and to find a warm place to bed down.  Stepping onto the porch, the teenager looked from side to side, but saw no one and nothing.  Puzzled, Joe scratched his head as he braved the wind and snow and headed for the carriage.  He halted when he heard someone call his name.

“Who’s there?” he replied.  “Show yourself!”

The call came again.  This time the wind didn’t carry it away and he could tell the direction.

Back, the way he had come.

“…Joe.  Little Joe…help me….”

Every instinct bred into a son of the West kicked in.  The gun was in his hand before he knew it.  Like prey, ever wary of a hunter’s tricks, he returned to the porch and searched it.  Finally, he looked behind the large wooden table that had been upturned against the wall.

“Who are you?” he demanded when he saw the figure huddled behind it.  “How do you know my name?”

“Mon Dieu,” the bedraggled creature breathed, its voice weak with exhaustion.  “Mon amour, aide moi….”

Joe froze, not because it was blisteringly cold, but because he recognized the speaker – but it couldn’t be.

Could it?

“El…Eloise?” he stammered.  A second later he was on his knees beside her, brushing snow from her honey-blonde hair and pallid face.  “Eloise?”

A hand he knew all too well reached out to touch his arm.  “Mon petit Joseph,” Eloise sighed.

Right before she passed out.

Joe didn’t know what to do, so stunned was he by the young Frenchwoman’s sudden appearance.  He’d bid farewell to Eloise Villon six months before, when the grass was green and spring was in full bloom.  That last image, of her stepping into the stage and waving goodbye, had remained with him for a long time.  He’d been angry at first – angry that she chose to go, and even angrier that she chose to go in support of her scoundrel of a brother.  Francois Villon had wrecked havoc in their lives, first threatening to skewer Hoss with a rapier for a supposed insult to his honor, and then stealing their mamas’ portraits.  Pa had been ready to strangle him, but brother Adam saved the day by playing a trick on Francois that taught the arrogant Frenchman a lesson.

Stooping, Joe placed one hand behind the unconscious woman’s back and another under her knees, and then lifted her up and bore her into the house.

III

Hop Sing was gonna kill him when he got up Christmas morning.  There was some aspic in the back of the ice box and he’d rummaged for it, managing to upset tomorrow’s figgy pudding in the process.  What was left of the cake with its nuts and candied fruit was scattered all over the floor.  He used the  aspic to make some hot bone broth, and then brewed a pot of tea to go with it.  Joe thought she’d be awake when he returned, but Eloise hadn’t moved at all.  She was still on the settee where he’d left her, covered with a blanket.  He put the tray on the low table before the fire and sat down and looked at her.  The Frenchwoman’s skin was paler than he recalled; her face, somewhat gaunt, as if she had gone without food for a while.  There were little wrinkles at the corners of her lips he didn’t remember

And, boy, did he remember those lips!

Joe smiled at the memory.  While her brother, Francois, played at being the reincarnation of a French poet who had died four centuries before – driving Pa and Adam near to distraction – he had taken on the…’odious’…job of wooing Eloise in hopes that she would talk her brother out of running Hoss through with a sword.  At first, it had been all about Hoss, but as he came to know the Frenchwoman, it came to be all about her.

Her and him.

He’d really mourned when she left.  Eloise’s smile, the way her cute little nose turned up on the end, her broken English and the laugh that accompanied it – all of these things haunted him in a way he didn’t really understand.  He didn’t think he loved her – not in a marrying kind of way, anyhow – but there was something…special…there.

Something that tied him to her.

“Ooh….”

Joe sat up straight on the table and leaned in. “Eloise?”

Long black lashes fluttered against too-white skin.  “Ooh,” she said again and frowned.

He wasn’t sure if he should wake his pa or his brothers.  They wouldn’t know what to do any more than he did.  And there wouldn’t be any going for a doctor.  The storm outside was raging and had already laid down several feet of snow.  Maybe he should wake up Hop Sing.  The Asian man knew all about herbs and that kind of thing.

If she was sick….

Eloise opened her eyes.  She stared at him a moment as if confused, and then smiled.  It was a beautiful smile that lit her large dark eyes and turned his world upside-down.  She reached out a hand and he took it, pressing it between his own as she trembled like a frightened bird.

“Es-tu reel?” she breathed.  “Peut-il être?”

Maybe he should go get Adam.  Older brother spoke more French that he did.  His vocabulary was pretty much limited to ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’

“Speak English,” Joe prompted as he stroked her forehead.  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Eloise blinked.  She nodded as she squeezed his hand.  “Little Joe…you are real!”

Then, she burst into tears.

Now, being a man who grew up in a family of men, Joe knew very little about women – other than the fact that pretty ones turned his head and made him walk into things.  You’d think since tears came to him as fast as lightning flashed, he could handle a woman crying.  No siree!  In fact, a woman crying – actually a woman sobbing as Eloise was now – made him want to run in the opposite direction.

“Coward,” he muttered under his breath.

“Qu’est-ce que vous avez dit?”

He knew that one, because he knew what he would ask her.  “I said, ‘How-are you?” he lied.

Eloise sniffed, wrinkled her little nose, and began to cry again.

Joe couldn’t stop her – and he sure didn’t want to join her.  The only thing he could think of to do was what Pa did when he fell apart.

The teenager slipped onto the settee, pulled Eloise close, and held her while she cried.  It took about five minutes – maybe ten – before her sobs turned into sniffles.  He was really amazed that no one had come out onto the landing to see what the heck was going on.  After all, they didn’t have a woman wailing away in the great room every day!  Then again, everyone was really tired.  Nature’s signs had warned them that a big storm was coming and they’d spent the last two days preparing non-stop for its advent.

When her ‘sniffs’ timed out to thirty to forty seconds apart, Joe said softly, “Eloise.  Can you tell me what happened?  Why are you here?”

“You do not want me here?”

He shook his head.  “Gosh, no.  I’m happy as a clam to see you.  But what you did was dangerous; coming out here in a carriage in the middle of a  storm. You could have been killed.”

A strange look crossed the beautiful Frenchwoman’s face before she buried it in his side.  “It is no less than I deserve!”

“Hey!  Come on now.  Don’t talk like that,” Joe protested as he felt the linen of his nightshirt turn to mush.

She sat up abruptly and declared.  ““But it is true!  There is nothing for me now!  I am…inutile!  Useless!”

“No, you’re not.  What about that crazy brother of yours?  He needs you.”

Joe thought she was pale before.  He’d been wrong.  The remaining color drained out of Eloise’s face.

“Francois?  Francois is…est morte!”

Joe’s brows peaked toward the chestnut curls brushing his forehead.  “He’s what?

“Dead!” she proclaimed.

Right before the tears started falling again.

IV

“Er…Joe.  Hey, Joe!”

A shake of his shoulder brought Joe abruptly out of the deep sleep he’d finally fallen into.  He woke with a start and went to sit up, but found he couldn’t.

That was because there was a young woman stretched clean across him.

“You think maybe you ought to…tidy up a bit before Pa comes down?” Adam asked.

Eloise’s blonde head was on his chest.  The pins in her hair had let loose during the night and her golden curls were spiraling all around him.  The only way he’d been able to get her to stop crying the night before was to lay down on the settee beside her.  It was kind of a tight fit and they got…well…kind of tangled up.

“That is, unless you want to spend Christmas in the woodshed.”

With that comment, Adam headed for the dining room.

Joe turned his head just enough to look at the clock.  He got a crick in his neck for the trouble, but managed to see the hands.  It was nearly 6:00!  Good gosh, Pa would be down any minute!  The teenager glanced at Eloise again and couldn’t help noting the smile on her lips.  Of course, nothing had happened, but from the way things looked….

He was dead.

“Good morning, Joseph!  Don’t you think it’s about time to rise and shine?” Pa asked cheerily as he came down the stairs, straightening his tie.  “After all, it’s Christmas!” the older man added as he passed the settee and headed for the breakfast table.

Joe blinked.

What?

“Mornin’, Little Joe!  Rough night?” Hoss asked on his way through.

Joe pinched himself.

It hurt.

Nope.  Not dreaming.

It was Hoss’ voice that finally woke Eloise up.  She raised her head, blinked sleep from her eyes, smiled when she saw him – and planted one on his lips.

This time his neck almost broke.  Joe craned to look at the table – at his father and brothers – and waited for the explosion.

Instead, they started laughing.

“Bonjour!” Eloise called out happily as she sat up and started fussing with her hair.

Apparently, you could feel pain when you were asleep.

He had to be dreaming.

His father rose from the table and came to stand beside the settee.  “There’s a room ready for you upstairs, young lady.  I expect you to sleep there tonight.”  Pa’s eyes moved to him.  “Alone.”

“Oui, Mister Ben!” she replied, and then merrily skipped up the stairs as if the night before had never happened.

Joe was frowning hard enough to give himself a headache.

“I have a question,” he said.

His father crossed his arms.  “Ask it.”

“You aren’t mad.”  Joe shook his head to clear it.  “I mean, how come you aren’t mad?”

“Because, dear brother,” Adam said as he joined them, “you are such a sound sleeper that you failed to hear Pa come down the stairs at four this morning.”

“And missed the lengthy conversation that I had with Miss Villon.  A conversation in which – mind you – I made it perfectly clear that she was to go upstairs to the guest room…”

Joe looked at the rumpled blanket – and at his rumpled cloths.  Then he looked around the room.  “This isn’t upstairs.”

“No, it isn’t.  I checked the guest room before I came down to speak to Hop Sing this morning and found it empty.”  Pa wagged a finger.  “This one time – just this one time, mind you, young man, I will excuse such behavior under my roof.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said, sitting up.  “Can you tell me why, sir?”

“Eloise told Pa about her brother.”

He looked at Adam.  “Then I didn’t dream that part?  Francois is dead?”

The older man nodded.  “Hung.”

“As he wanted to be,” older brother added with a sigh.  “It seems you can’t teach an old poet new tricks.”

“When?” Joe asked.

“About a month after they left here.  Late May or early June.”

“But I was writing to her then!” he protested.  “She didn’t say anything about it.  Eloise told me the last time she wrote that she’d met a nice man and was thinking about marrying him, and that Francois approved.”

“When was that?” Pa asked.

He wrinkled his brow thinking.  “September, maybe. When she stopped writing, I figured it was because she got married and her husband would be jealous.”  Pa and Adam’s stern faces told him differently.  “No?”

“No.  Sadly, Francois died, and he died without funds,” Pa replied, his tone softening.  “Eloise had no recourse but to…find an occupation.”

“In San Francisco?” Joe asked, horrified.

“Yes, son.  I’m sure you know what that means.”

He did.

Joe put his head in his hands.  “Gosh, Pa, I should have made her stay.  I should have married her.”

He didn’t see it, but his father nodded to his brothers and they both quietly exited the room.  When he looked up, they were alone.

Pa sat on the edge of the table.  “Joseph, do you love Eloise?”

“Sure, I do.”

“Enough to marry her?  To spend your whole life with her?”

He shrugged.  “I think so.  I mean, she’s pretty and funny and,” Joe smiled, “a real good kisser.”

His father sighed.  “And do you think that’s what gets a man and woman through the hard times?  A woman being a ‘real good kisser’?”

“No, sir.  I know there’s more to it than that.”

The older man stared hard at him for a moment, and then rose and crossed to the Christmas tree.  When he returned, he held out his hand.  The glass bird was in it.

Joe looked at it, and then at his pa with a question in his eyes.

“I bought this for your mother the first year we were married.  Do you know why?”

The teenager stared at the little dove-gray, blush, and white glass bird in his father’s hand.  “You told me she was homesick.”

“Yes, and that was a part of it.”  Pa’s finger brushed the feathers that covered the little bird’s head.  “Tell me, Joseph.  What do you know about the Tufted Titmouse?”

Joseph.

They were in deep waters here.

The teenager thought a moment. “They like just about every kind of tree; ones with leaves and ones without.  They like to squeeze into holes to keep warm, or sometimes crawl into crevices in rocks.”  Joe smiled.  “They have a funny little voice.  Their call sounds like ‘peter, peter, peter’.”

“What else?”

He scratched his head.  “They eat bugs and seeds.  And they’re cute?”

“There’s more than that.  For one thing, the Titmouse lives for a very short time.  Usually no more than one, or one and a half years.  It’s a fragile creature, just like this little glass bird.”  His father paused as if reliving a memory.  “Your mother left me just before Christmas the year before you were born.  She was going back to New Orleans.”

This was news to him.

“Gosh, Pa. Why?”

Ben turned the glass bird over in his fingers and then held it out to him.  “Touch it.”

He did.

“Okay….”

“How does it feel?  Fragile, or strong?”

The bird was made of blown glass that was smooth and unforgiving under his fingers.  “Pretty strong.”

His father nodded. Then he closed his fingers around it, cutting the precious object off from his sight.  “What would happen if I applied pressure?  Would it survive?”

Joe’s hand shot out.  “Pa, don’t!”

The older man opened his fingers, revealing the intact Titmouse.  “I wouldn’t.  The memories this little bird holds are far too precious.  Your mother was the same, Joseph.  Strong but fragile, just like this little bird.  It took very little to devastate her.”  Pa met his gaze.  “You know what people say about her?”

Joe was instantly hot.  “It’s not true!”

“No, it’s not,” his father replied.  Then he went on, his tone rueful.  “Some of the gossip Marie brought on herself.  It wasn’t her fault, but she was used to the big city – not Hangtown or Dry Diggings.  The women in the settlement thought she was haughty; that she looked down on them.  The opposite was true.  Your mother had a hard time accepting herself.”  Pa reached out to touch his face.  “Just like you sometimes have a hard time accepting yourself.”

Joe frowned.  “Why are you telling me this, Pa?”

“Why?  Because I see a lot of your mother in Eloise.  I just want you to make sure that you love the young lady for herself, and not for the feelings she arouses in you.”

Joe blushed.  “Pa…”

His father laughed.  “Not that kind of feelings.  I mean the feeling of…safety, perhaps?  Or maybe, unconditional acceptance?  All of you boys missed a lot.  A mother teaches you who you are.  She makes her nest a home for her chicks; a place where they know they will always be accepted and loved.”

“And what does a father do?”

His pa brushed the hair back from his forehead and then cupped his cheek with his hand.

“He teaches them to fly.”

V

Eloise spent the next week with them.  Then, like it sometimes happened, there was a sudden thaw and the Virginia City road became passable again.  Joe came down on New Year’s Day to find a note on his plate, telling him she was gone.  Eloise said she was going back to France.  He didn’t believe it until Adam told him Pa had paid her passage.  That made him mad for a while, but he realized in time that his father knew best.  The two of them – Eloise and him – they spent a lot of time together during that week.  The old feelings he’d had for her were still there, but they were tempered by the older man’s words.  There was a hole in his heart that would never heal.  He’d tried to fill it with Eloise, but that had been unfair to both of them.

It was where his mama belonged.

It was about a week after that, near Twelfth Night, when his father knocked on his door and asked to come in.  They chatted about nothing for a while, and then the older man pulled out a small wooden box.  When he opened it, Joe saw that the little glass Tufted Titmouse was inside.  Pa usually packed it safely away with the other Christmas ornaments.

He didn’t understand.

“When your mother left me, I knew I had to find a way to tell her how much I loved her.  I know your brothers told you that this was one of the many ornaments I ordered from New York that year, but that’s not the truth.  I found this little glass bird in a small shop in Pomona.  I gave it to her before Christmas.”

“How come?”

“Marie had gone to stay with a friend who owned a dress shop in that town.”  Pa smiled.  “When your mother saw me, she slammed the door in my face.  Her friend, Helena, talked her into seeing me and I gave her this.  I’m sure you wonder why.”

He sure did.

“There is one other characteristic of this little bird I didn’t mention before.”  Pa touched the tiny head and sighed.  “The Tufted Titmouse mates for life, no matter how short or long that life may be.”  His father held the box out to him.  “It’s yours, son.  It always has been.  Watch over this little glass bird with care, and when you find a woman that you can’t live without, give it to her as a promise of your undying love.”

With that his father leaned in and kissed him on the head.  “Goodnight, Joseph.”

“Night, Pa.”

Joe sat for some time with the open box on his lap, and then rose and went to his dresser and placed it beside the image of his mother.  After that, he returned to his bed, sat on the edge, and had a good cry.  He loved Eloise, but not as much as he loved that little glass bird.

It was part and parcel of his heart.

END

Character I chose: Joe Cartwright

Item given: Glass bird

Second character received: Eloise Villon

WHL for The Frenchman

Link to the 2022 Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar – Day 3 – Mayhem, It’s all Part of the Ponderosa (by BluewindFarm)