* * * * * * * * * *

At the beginning of “The Quality of Mercy,” Seth Pruitt has killed his fiancée’s father.  When Joe comes upon the scene within moments of the killing, Seth says that he did so because Sara’s father was badly injured in a mine cave-in and begged Seth to end his life as an act of mercy.  Seth convinces Joe to remain silent about the true circumstances and to allow Sara to believe that her father died as a result of the cave-in.  As time passes, Joe’s struggle with his conscience becomes more intense.  When he relays the situation to his father without using names, Ben tells him, in no uncertain terms, that what Seth did was wrong.  Later, after hearing Joe call out Seth’s name in a nightmare, Adam persuades Joe to tell him the truth.  Adam tells Ben what Joe has said.  Shortly thereafter, Joe encounters Ben in the barn and admits that he’d thought that Ben had gone to tell Sara the truth.  When Joe tries to explain why he went along with Seth’s story, Ben tells him brusquely, “There’s no more time for talk.”  He then heads for the house, leaving Joe at the barn.  Joe goes to confront Seth.  In the final scene, Sara comes to the house to tell Joe she is leaving for San Francisco.  This story comes between Joe’s confrontation with Seth and the final scene.  

* * * * * * * * * *

The hoofbeats in the yard are slow, measured, deliberate.  Usually, he rides in far too fast, in a hurry to get to the next moment, the next laugh, the next adventure.  Years of asking him not to ride so fast in the yard—years of instructing, demanding, ordering, and even shouting—have never made more than a brief dent in this habit.

But tonight, my youngest son is in no hurry.

Until I heard the hoofbeats, I didn’t know whether he would come home.  He spoke of wanting to go away, to figure things out for himself.  I didn’t think that he would do that without speaking to me.  Then again, I never thought that he would have any question in his mind about what Seth Pruitt did.  In the past few days, I have come face to face with the realization that I don’t know Joseph as well as I thought I did.

I wait quietly for him to cross the threshold.  I have made no secret of the fact that I am awake.  The downstairs lamps burn brightly.  The window behind my desk is open, the curtains moving slightly in the night’s breeze.  All he needs is a glance to know that I am up.

The hoofbeats stop.  I breathe a sigh of relief.  For a moment, I’d expected to hear them receding as he rode back out.

The grandfather clock chimes the half hour, and then the hour.  He has not come in.  It doesn’t take nearly that long to stable a horse.  I wonder if he plans to try to outwait me.  He must know that he cannot.  His stubborn streak is pure Cartwright.

Footsteps on the wooden porch.  Slow, like the hoofbeats.  And, like the hoofbeats, they stop.  I listen for any sound—a sneeze, a cough, a breath.  A sob.  But no sound betrays him.  If I hadn’t heard him walking, I would not know he was there.

I understand his hesitation.  I have been disappointed in him, and he knows it.

From the time he was a small child, my disappointment has been the most severe punishment I could mete out.  Tanning his backside, restricting him to the house, forbidding him from seeing friends—all of these were punishments that he suffered with varying degrees of good grace, and their unpleasantness faded from his memory almost as soon as the moment was past.  But if he saw in my eyes that he had truly disappointed me—this, and this alone, reached deep.  His eyes would fill with tears—not the crocodile tears he routinely employed to try to avoid punishment, but expression of genuine distress.  The stricken look on his face, the inability of my little chatterbox to utter a sound, the hands clutched behind his back, the way he would simply hang his head and try to stifle his sobs as he stood before me—all this let me know how profoundly he felt my reaction.  I would try to stand firm, to let him know that his actions had had serious consequences, but the moment always came when I simply could not let my child suffer so.  I would gather him into my arms, and he would weep, repentant and relieved, as I reassured him that, no matter what, I still loved him.

Knowing the devastating effect my disappointment has on him, I have always been careful to express it sparingly.  But this afternoon, I made no bones about my feelings.  I said little to Joseph, but he knew.

When Adam recounted what Joe had told him about Sara’s father’s death, I had to sit down.  My legs would not hold me. I had never wanted so much to be wrong.

I’d suspected something like this after Joe and I talked in his room the other night, when he was so troubled and talked of going away to think something through.  The hypothetical he recounted rang too true to be a mere fiction.  I hoped desperately that he was not speaking of himself when he described the friend who had ended the suffering man’s life.  My son could not, would not, do such a thing—I was sure of it.  But he seemed to be so tortured, so deeply invested in justifying the friend’s actions, that yes, I did ask whether he had ever seen a man as injured as the one he described.  And yes, I was vastly relieved when he said he had not.  Whatever his involvement, Joe was not the friend who had ended a man’s life.

And yet, I would never have believed that he would countenance such behavior by another man, or that he would lie to cover it up.  The fact that his lie gnawed at him gave me small comfort.

As a father, I thought I had taught my sons right from wrong.  Some truths are so elementary that they should barely require teaching.  This, I’d thought, was one of those truths:  thou shalt not kill.  In self-defense, or in defense of others, yes.  As punishment for taking the life of another, yes.  But in such a circumstance as this, where the man is innocent and has done you no harm, and he seeks to die because he is in pain—absolutely not.  A suffering man cannot be trusted to know what is best for him.  Joe should have known this.  And knowing, he should have spoken up and seen that justice was done.  But he kept silent, and he lied by his silence.  He lied to Sara.  He lied to me.

I hear nothing from the porch.  He has neither come nor gone.  It occurs to me to wonder if he is waiting for something.  For me, perhaps.  For absolution.

I don’t know where he’s been.  When I last saw him this afternoon, he admitted to me that he thought I’d gone to speak with Sara.  His statement angered and hurt me.  Surely he knew me better than that.  Surely he knew that I would not do such a thing without speaking with him.

Joseph has always been my passionate, restless one.  So like his mother—his feelings intense, his compassions deep, his loyalties fierce, his heart strong and loving.  My older sons inherited their mothers’ more moderate dispositions, for which I am grateful.  As much as I loved Marie, and still do, I cannot imagine a houseful of sons with her quicksilver temperament.  Even now, long after she is gone, our household still bears evidence of her legendary fiery temper.  We have only seven place settings of her rose-colored dishes, and five of the crystal wineglasses we bought when we moved into this house.  We started with a dozen of each.

Little Joe has always confided freely in me.  Ever since he was old enough to speak, he has regaled me with stories of his day, of everything he did or thought or felt.  I confess that at times, when he was little and I was exhausted, I sometimes merely pretended to listen.  The details about the gray horse or the trout that got away or what someone at school said were, on occasion, too much for me to absorb after a full day of trying to build a ranch.  But even when I could not listen fully, I was careful not to let him know.  Even then, when I could barely keep my eyes open, I knew that his confidences were a precious gift and that I must do whatever was necessary to avoid closing that door.

I have no doubt that I have failed my sons many, many times.  I look at them and know that I have not been as good a father as I could have been.  No man is, I expect.  Still, when my youngest son trusts me with the secrets of his heart, I can rest in the knowledge that I have done at least one thing well.

But clearly, I do not know him as well as I thought.  His comment about my going to Sara stung, and I strode into the house without looking back.  Hoss told me at dinner that, after that, Joe rode out like a man possessed.  I simply nodded.  I had no appetite.  I could not contain my disappointment in him for lying, or in myself for having failed to teach my own son the difference between right and wrong.

As we left the table after a largely silent meal, Adam caught my arm.  Softly, he said, “This hasn’t been easy for him, either.”

I regarded my eldest son.  Joe would have been surprised to hear Adam defending him under any circumstances, much less now.  I suspect that he has no idea how many times his older brother has interceded for him.  I asked the question that has tortured me since Joe first spoke of his distress.  “How could he not have known it was wrong?”

“He must have known, deep down,” said Adam.  “If he didn’t, it wouldn’t have been eating him up like this.”

“Then how could he have kept quiet?”

Adam’s eyes were gentle and sad.  “Because he gave his word,” he said.  “And that was another thing you taught him.  A man never goes back on his word.”

Adam will be an excellent father someday.  With just a few well-chosen words, he has shown me the trap in which Joe had found himself.  He could honor his promise and allow Seth to avoid punishment for his actions.  Or, he could break his word, reveal the truth about his long-time friend and ruin Sara’s chance of happiness with the man she loved.   His love for his family and friends and his fervent desire to believe the best of them, even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, has gotten him into trouble before, too.

The evening passed, not peacefully, but quietly.  Adam read a book, Hoss braided a lariat, and I stared into the fire.  The rough, comforting smell of woodsmoke enveloped me as I poked at the logs.  Occasionally, I looked up to see one of my sons watching me.  I did not speak, nor did they.

Eventually, they went up to bed.  I bade them goodnight and poked at the fire again.  I didn’t know if Joseph would come home.  Perhaps he had left on the trip he’d wanted to take.  Sooner or later, I would find out.

And then, I heard the hoofbeats in the yard and the steps on the porch.

Still, no sound from without.

I can wait no longer.  I lay the poker on the hearth and cross the room, making no attempt to muffle my own footsteps.  If he is unwilling to see me, if he wishes to turn and flee, he will have that chance.

I open the door.

He stands by the post, several feet away.  His hands are behind his back.  His head is bowed.  If he has heard the door open, he gives no sign.

“Joseph.”  My voice is quiet.

He lifts his head a bit.  The brim of his hat hides his eyes, but I can see a bruise on his jaw.

“Son.  Are you all right?”

He raises his chin.  The shadow of his hat hides his eyes, but I can feel them on me, cautious, questioning.

“It wasn’t a mercy killing,” he says at last.  “Seth murdered him.”

“Come inside,” I say, taking his arm.  He allows me to guide him into the house.  When he takes off his hat, the bruises stand in stark contrast to his unusually pale skin.  For an instant, I recall a day, years earlier, when we were battling with an unscrupulous businessman named Mark Burdette, who wanted to buy our cattle so that he could sell it at a premium.  Joseph had gone into town, and Burdette arranged for him to be beaten up.  When Little Joe came home, bruised and bleeding, I remember cradling his face in my hands as I checked to see how bad the damage was, reassuring myself that he was not seriously hurt.  For a moment, I want to do the same thing now, even though he is a far cry from that boy of seventeen.

Instead, I content myself with a swift once-over.  After so many years with sons, I am adept at assessing injuries with a glance.  Nothing serious this time, but he should put some ice on that jaw.  “I’ll be right back,” I say.

When I return a few minutes later with a chunk of ice wrapped in a towel, he is sitting on the hearth.  I sit on the table in front of him and hold the ice against the bruise, and he takes it with a nod of thanks.  I’m tempted to suggest that he move across the room, to the settee, but I remind myself that he’s a grown man who knows that heat melts ice.

“What happened?” I ask quietly.

“He told me the truth,” says Joe.  “He’d found a new vein of silver in Sara’s father’s mine.  And he and Sara’s father weren’t getting along.  Her father was against their marriage.  So, when the mine caved in, he took advantage of it.  When I told Seth I’d have to turn him over to the sheriff, he offered to split the takings of the mine with me to keep me quiet.”  He shakes his head.  “He thought I was like him. . . .”

A shiver passes through me, even so close to the fire.  Joseph could never be like Seth.  His respect for life is far too profound.  But then, my son continues, his words abrupt, jerky, shocking:  “If it had really been a mercy killing—I’m not sure it would have been wrong.”

“What?”  The word bursts forth with such force that Joe stares at me.  He swallows hard and nods.  Yes, he said what I heard him say.

“Joseph—we talked about this.  I thought you understood. . . .”  My words trail off.

“I understand what you and Adam think,” he says.  “But I don’t know if I agree with you.”

In that moment, as I remember the night we talked in his room, I know for the first time what my son’s struggle truly was.  He was not, as I’d thought, grappling with the vast difference between what he believed Seth had done and what he knew to be right.  His collusion with Seth’s lie was weighing on him, but it was more than that.  Joe even said it, over and over, but I refused to hear:  he honestly didn’t know what was right in that situation.  It wasn’t an attempt to excuse the wrong.  Faced with the moment when he had to apply what he’d learned, he’d found that what I’d taught him had somehow fallen short.  He was in the deep waters, and he no longer knew how to swim.

“But, Joe—it’s wrong!”  I don’t know how to convince him of this, but it suddenly feels terribly important that I do.  “Only God can end an innocent life.  Man doesn’t have that right.”  I feel helpless.  How can he not know this?

He meets my eyes squarely for the first time since he walked into the house.  “I know that’s what you believe, Pa,” he says.  “And I know it’s what you think I should believe.  And maybe, when I’ve thought it all through, I’ll agree with you.  But now, I’m just saying that I don’t know what I think.”  His gaze turns inward as he holds the ice against his jaw.  Half to himself, he says, “I never thought about it before—not about people, anyway.  I remember all the times we’ve put down animals who were hurting and were never going to get better, and we’ve said we’re putting them out of their misery.  When I was ten and my pony broke his leg—you said we were doing him a kindness, that he’d only suffer and he’d never get better.”

“But, son—animals aren’t the same as people!”  Even I can hear the near-desperation in my voice.

But my son’s face shows no answering anxiety.  His eyes are sad, hurting, but steadfast.  “I know that,” he says.  “But what I don’t know is why—or if—it’s wrong to do the same thing for someone who’s suffering and who asks to have that suffering ended.  I mean, what if Seth had been telling the truth?  If Sara’s father had really been dying and in horrible pain, and if he’d really begged to be put out of his misery, the way Seth said he did—isn’t it possible that it could have been right to do what he asked?  When there was no chance at all that he was going to survive, and saying ‘no’ would only have meant a longer time for him to suffer that terrible pain?”

“Son, you can never know whether death is certain,” I protest.  “There’s always a chance. . . .”

He shakes his head, smiling ruefully.  “Not always,” he says.  “But even if there is—why does a man have to live for years and years in agony?  Who are we to decide that he has to live when his suffering is so horrible that all he wants is to die?”

I pull out the arguments that seemed to convince him before.  “A man who’s suffering like that—he doesn’t know what he wants.  It’s up to his friends to do what’s best for him, even if that means going against what he says he wants them to do.”

Joe considers this.  Then, he shakes his head.  “I don’t know, Pa.  I guess it just seems that the man who is in so much pain should have some say in how much longer he suffers.  A man should have some control over his own life.”  He watches the fire for a few minutes before he speaks in a voice so quiet that I can hardly hear him.  “If I was ever suffering like that, and there was no question that I was going to die, and I was desperate for it to end—I guess I’d like to think that you wouldn’t make me wait hours, or days or weeks, for it to be over.  That if I asked you to, you’d end my suffering for me.”

I can’t speak.  What Joseph is saying shocks me on so many levels.  And yet, a tiny uncertain kernel of something, in the far back corner of my mind, wonders:  if my dying son asked, would I help him die?

Everything in me wants to say—to scream—no!  Life is sacred, and only God can decide when it’s to end.  I have held firmly to this belief my entire life.  And yet, as I sit on this table, my knees almost touching my son’s, I am suddenly not as certain as I’ve always thought I was.  In the abstract, yes.  With a stranger, or even a friend, absolutely.  But what if the injured man was my own son, broken and bleeding, in horrific pain, tears in his eyes, pale skin dotted with sweat from the sheer effort of not screaming?  What if he was badly burned in a fire, and surviving meant spending his days in a laudanum haze to keep from going mad with agony until merciful death claimed him at last?  What if he had only hours or days left on this earth, each moment more excruciating than the last, and he turned to me, begging me to end his torment—could I tell him ‘no’?  Could I look into his pleading eyes and tell him that I was sorry, but it would be wrong to end such torture early?  That I knew better than he what he wanted?  That he must endure to the end because that would be the right thing for me to do?

My son is watching me.  My youngest son.  The one I still think of as a boy when it suits me.  But he’s not a boy, hasn’t been for a long time now.  I should know that better than anyone.  Joseph is a man, in every sense of the word.  The youngster who was beaten up by Burdette’s hireling is years behind us.  And yet, for too long, in too many ways, I’ve simply shrugged him off as a boy.

How wrong I’ve been.

Joe rises.  “I’m going to bed, Pa,” he says.  “It’s been a long day.”  I smile at his understatement.  He tosses the last bit of ice into the fire, and the sizzle makes me smile more.  Carefully, he spreads the towel on the hearth to dry.  He starts upstairs, and then he turns back.  “Once everything’s taken care of, I still want to go away,” he says.

His statement surprises me.  The other night, he spoke of wanting to go away to think out his problem.  Now, there is no problem.  Seth committed murder, and the law will handle him.  Sara will undoubtedly grieve the loss of her fiancé as well as the death of her father, but this is not a problem to be solved; it is only a sad state of affairs to be gotten through.

My confusion must show, because Joe says, “I still need to figure out what I think.”

I regard my son, standing on the stairs with the purple bruise on his jaw and the pain of his friend’s betrayal in his eyes.  Another man might have walked away from the issue.  No decision presses on him now.  There is no need to grapple with the right and the wrong.  He is free to move on, to allow something else to consume his attention, if he wishes.

But Joe has never been one to let go easily.  These few weeks have cost him dearly.  It should come as no surprise that he will continue to wrestle with what has happened.  Perhaps he should.

Perhaps we all will.

I nod, permission and acknowledgement in one.  “Maybe in a couple weeks, if that’s convenient,” I suggest.  Seth’s trial should be over by then.  Joe can’t leave before the trial; he will need to testify.

“That’s what I was thinking,” says Joe, and I know that he has the same reasoning.  “Good night, Pa.”  He heads up the stairs as I bid him good night.

For a long time after Joe has gone up, I sit by the fire.  Such a strange, fantastic few days.  My son does not adhere to one of my most deeply-held beliefs.  And yet somehow, I am not disappointed in him, as both of us might have supposed.  Even though I don’t understand how he can question such a basic truth, I find that an unexpected part of me respects the fact that he’s struggling, rather than simply accepting what he’s been told.  He is my son, and yet, he is carving out his own path, separate and distinct from mine.  It may have many of the same curves and hills and dips, and yet, it is uniquely his.

And if he stumbles and falls—he will stand up again, and he will move forward.  Perhaps not in the direction I would choose, but it will be a direction which is right for him.

The towel he laid on the hearth is barely damp.  I fold it carefully and take it to the kitchen for Hop Sing to use at breakfast.  I set it on the stack of clean towels, smoothing it as if there will be an inspection.  I don’t know what morning’s light will bring.  I know only that we are all together now, and regardless of what comes, we shall continue to be together.

Of this, I am certain.

The End