Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 19 *
Summary: It’s suddenly Christmas, and Adam has to come up with an alternative plan. The solution is quite a surprise, but one enjoyed by the whole family.
Rating: G
Words: 2,785
Part of the Art-Universe
To Build a House
He was late, excruciatingly late, but through no fault of his own. Truly.
All that happened was that after he’d finished his business at the lawyer’s office he’d checked in at Barnes’ Mercantile and discovered that they had just had a delivery of books, and no one with any sense at all could seriously expect Adam not to rummage through all the crates until he’d identified every single volume and curated a collection to be picked up when he next took a coach to town. It had been a huge shipment, and Adam was quite thorough when it came to picking out books, and so he might have dallied a tad too long and then had been caught by surprise when he left the store to find the whole city covered in freshly fallen snow.
He still had the option to avoid disaster by just booking a room in the International House or even at Widow Hawkins’s but Hop Sing had promised lamb stew for dinner, Henry wanted a bed time story, and Adam really longed for Juliet and his bed, preferably both together, so he opted to brave the ride home.
In true Cartwright fashion, at the foot of the rocks about five miles from home he was hit by an avalanche. At first, he somehow managed to get himself and his horse free but just when he thought he’d gotten away lightly, he was struck by something or other and found himself flat on his back in the snow, more than slightly dazzled, with a pounding headache and with a soft equine nose blowing hot air into his face. He soon established that he was in no shape to mount his horse again and make the final miles home.
He was clear-minded enough though to try and share body heat by clinging to his horse, but the animal apparently didn’t know anything about survival when stranded in the cold, and after a very short while had just taken off.
On second thought, perhaps it did know something about survival when stranded in the cold—at least about its own survival.
Adam had then tried to get up and somehow stagger home, but lost memory of that endeavour shortly after he’d been treated to a vision of his long-ago deceased mother, who’d scolded him for not staying at the Widow Hawkins’s and branded him a fool.
He regained consciousness in his own bed, swaddled in blankets like a newborn and with the vision of his, thankfully, very much alive wife, who scolded him for not staying at the Widow Hawkins’s and branded him a fool.
Unlike after the earlier scolding, this time he didn’t pass out again, and therefore experienced being treated to a bear hug (of which he wasn’t aware Juliet was capable), a shower of kisses on every bare patch of skin, an “Adam, I was so scared, don’t ever do that to me again”, and at least two “What on earth possessed you!”
Then another avalanche hit him, this time not of snow but of family members, who caught him up on the past week that he’d apparently spent insensible. After his horse had made it home without its rider, he was told, Joe and Hoss had gone looking for him. But despite them thankfully finding him within just a few hours, he’d had to overcome a concussion and something dangerously close to pneumonia.
“But now you’re awake, and all will be well,” Pa had concluded the tale, and then Hop Sing had entered the room with a can of hot tea and a little boy in tow, who’d scrambled into Adam’s bed and refused to leave his father’s side.
In an unfamiliar fashion that made Adam realise how dire straits must have been, Juliet had allowed Henry to spend the night with him, her tightly pressed lips telling him the four-year-old must have been terrified.
He’d spent the next day, Christmas Eve as he had at one point realised, quietly in bed recovering and being pampered by his family, and had felt surprisingly (and suspiciously) content—until, after a beef broth and biscuits dinner in bed, he’d been hit with the realisation that tomorrow was Christmas Day, and that he had no present at all for Juliet. The emerald brooch he’d commissioned at a jeweller in Virginia City had been ready for collection three days ago, but, of course, he’d failed to be conscious enough to do that.
Luckily, Adam was a quick thinker and used to engineering alternative plans. And so, after less than an hour of contemplating and plotting he knew what to do. Which had put him where he was now: in the deserted kitchen, shortly after everyone had gone to bed. Hop Sing must have prepared something or another for the coming holidays, as Adam had heard him rummaging in here for quite a time, but now everything was quiet, all lights had been dimmed, not a creature was stirring—time to get on with his deed, there was no minute to spare.
He found Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management where he knew Juliet kept it, and after a quick search found the recipe he’d hoped for, Pain de Gingembre, Gingerbread. There were few ingredients to collect, and Hop Sing’s well-stocked pantry provided them all. Nothing fancy, too, the book just requested plain flour, sugar, butter, eggs, golden syrup (Adam wondered briefly if syrup could even have another colour, decided to ask Hop Sing about it, and instantly forgot the question even occurred to him). Ginger, too, was required, which took a moment to find, as Adam had no idea in which shape or form that would come, but he spotted a neatly labelled cotton bag with a white powdered substance in it. He sent a short thanks to Arthur Barnes, the shop keeper, for putting the tab on it. Hop Sing’s Chinese script would have presented an insurmountable obstacle.
Feeling quite happy with himself and surprisingly confident—especially considering his father and brothers would never ask him to prepare food suitable for human consumption—he measured everything according to the recipe, and then, spurred by a sudden bout of courage, added a tablespoon of cinnamon to the mixture that Mrs Beeton never mentioned. But Juliet’s gingerbread always tasted like cinnamon, so it had to be in there.
He took care to be extra quiet while beating butter, sugar, and syrup to a cream, as the book commanded, so as not to wake anyone in the house, most especially not Hop Sing, who was…let’s say overprotective of his kitchen. It appeared, though, that you can hide activities in the kitchen that involve sugar from your wife, your brothers, your father, and even your fierce house keeper, but not from a four year old boy. Notably a boy who’d been influenced for years now by no one other than Little Joe Cartwright.
Adam, religiously following Mrs Beeton’s instructions, concentrated hard on working one egg after the other into the mixture, when suddenly a silvery boy voice said, “Does Mama know you’re outta bed?”
“Does she know you are?” he fired back, as if he, too, were four.
Henry chose to assume the adult role and portly stated, “I’m here on my own accord.” Closing the door behind as quietly as any seasoned nightly marauder would, he fully entered the kitchen and approached the table Adam was working on. “Can I help?”
For a moment, Adam considered sending him back to bed but then thought better of it. For one, he wasn’t sure Henry would make it back into his room on his own without rousing anyone, and then he could really use another pair of hands for the second part of his plan.
Henry was elated to get involved in the nightly baking hour. He furiously mixed flour, ginger, and cinnamon, dusting the complete workspace in the process, and then watched Adam mix both their concoctions together into a dough, cheering him on whenever he seemed to slow down. He helped rolling the dough out and transferring it to baking tins, held the stove door open and closed it after the tins had gone in, and then assisted Adam in the vital task of waiting for the cake to bake while fortifying themselves with a helping of milk and lemon biscuits (made by the resident Brit and therefore Not To Be Named Cookies).
Until this moment, Adam realised, everything he’d done had risen from desperation—and a bit of bravery—but now this actually had become an enjoyable endeavour. He, Henry, the smell of ginger and cinnamon, the warm kitchen, the sense of spending gifted time with another—it was, in every aspect, fulfilling. Only one component would make it even better, but perhaps not tonight as that would spoil the surprise. But then again—
“Tell me I’m dreaming.”
And that ended all mulling it over. Reality would tell if this was a turn to the better or the worse.
Adam was certain he and Henry must appear cookie, er, biscuit thieves caught with their hands still in the jar to Juliet. He still groped for words, when he heard Henry exclaim, “No, you’re awake! We’re, too, and we’re making cookies, and I help-ed, and I put cintamond in, and flour, and Papa mixed so hard he almost gived up but I told him, mix more, and he mixed more, and he let me open the stove, and then we had biscuits and milk. Do you wanta have some, too?”
Juliet rubbed her temples. “I am certain there’s a sane explanation for all this, it just cannot fathom what that might be. You are both supposed to be in bed, I’m not quite sure who more desperately, and yet you are here. Why?”
“To make a long story short, I’m making a gingerbread house.”
He was met with stunned silence. Juliet stared at him, obviously trying to process if the concussion was still having an effect on him or if he’d gone insane just for the sake of it.
“My Christmas gift for you is still in Virginia City, and I didn’t want to appear empty handed tomorrow,” he tried.
“It is tomorrow already, Adam. And more than a gift for me you need rest, so we can enjoy Christmas properly.” She sighed. “Henry needs sleep, too.” She gave the boy a piercing look. “Or Joe will beat you to the tree in the morning, and we don’t want that, do we?”
The smell of very ready gingerbread interrupted the discussion. Juliet opened the stove, Adam took the tins out, Henry checked the state of burning—which, thankfully, was little and easily dismissed.
“It looks good and smells delicious, I have to admit that,” Juliet said. “And we don’t want to waste good food.” She sighed again. “I might concede to the bedlam and help you get this done before sunrise.”
Helping getting this done before sunrise meant waiting for the gingerbread to cool first, which called for another batch of lemon biscuits and, this time, hot cocoa. Then Adam cut out all pieces required for a proper house, as a trained architect, he claimed, this part was his and his alone, while Juliet mixed up royal icing for gluing everything together, and Henry drew patterns into to flour dusting on the table, thus blueprinting the design he wanted to be iced on the completed house.
At four in the morning, the house finally stood, in all its glory, a little lopsided, perhaps, but decorated with white icing, almonds, dried fruit and tiny silvery pearls Juliet had produced from somewhere. Adam and Juliet looked proudly upon their achievement, Henry lay sleeping on the fireside bench, covered in flour and, on closer inspection, faintly smelling of ginger and cinnamon.
Yes, now, with all of them together, it was even more fulfilling.
Contrary to Juliet’s prediction, the boy was the first one up on Christmas morning, though admittedly beating Joe to the tree by mere seconds. The rest of the family followed soon after, diligently praising the tree, the brightly wrapped presents underneath, the festive breakfast Hop Sing had laid out, and the, if Adam said so himself, rather impressive gingerbread house he’d placed on the coffee table by the tree only hours ago.
When Hoss wondered about the house’s origin, Henry beat Adam to spilling the beans, not downplaying his own role in the making of it, but still putting the true architect of the wondrous artefact into the spotlight.
What followed were a few too many “ahs” and “ohs” and “is it even edibles” for Adam’s taste, and he decided to put a stop to it.
“It is,” he said with a tiny smile and a major lift of his left eyebrow, “actually a gift for Juliet.”
There was another round of “ohs” and “ahs”, but, thankfully, no questioning of the house’s edibility this time.
“It is meant as a symbol for the ranch house I’m going to build for you, Mylady, and this little sprite here and my humble self this coming spring.”
“I didn’t…Oh, my. Adam, are you serious?”
“I am. That’s why I went to Virginia City last week: to sign the deed for a patch of land halfway between here and the city.”
He’d known Juliet would be delighted; as much as she enjoyed the comfortable life on the Ponderosa with Hop Sing doing the housekeeping, now that Henry wasn’t a toddler anymore and Adam finally fully recovered from the injury he had sustained at the Battle of Gettysburg, she longed to have her own household, her own responsibilities—and a home just for the three of them, just like Adam did. He did not expect, though, that she would beam like that, make little dance steps and not be able to keep her hands still. Or that she would glue herself to his side and stay there, squeezing his arm and burying her face in his chest every once in a while for the rest of the morning.
He wrapped his arms around her and continued, speaking over her shoulder, “Last night, while baking this, I realised that this does not just represent a house. I didn’t build it alone. Henry helped, Juliet helped, we built it together. And wasn’t just the construction of walls and a roof, there was decorating, planning, laughing, enjoying, togetherness. What we built is a home. And that’s what I truly want to build in spring, too: not just a house, but a home.”
Later that day, Pa patted Adam’s back and said in a uncharacteristically low voice, how well he’d spoken and how true it was, and Adam quietly replied, “It’s easy to assess when you’ve grown up in a home like the Ponderosa.”
That still wasn’t the final word spoken on the matter that day, as it turned out. Just before bedtime, Henry approached him with a request he’d obviously chewed on for most of that afternoon. “Papa, when you build the new house, can you put in an extra room, so I can have a brother like you?”
Adam looked around, to where his own Pa sat comfortably on the settee, a glass of brandy in his hand, watching Joe and Hoss engaging in the usual epic Battle of Checkers on Christmas Day, and to Juliet who looked back with warm, dark eyes and a tender smile. “Well, you know what?” he said. “I think we’ll work on that.”
Florence Elizabeth was born less than two years later.
But that is a story for another day.
***fin***
My phrase: “not a creature was stirring”, taken from A Visit from St. Nicolas by Clement Clarke Moore
My character: Adam
In case you want to try Mrs Beeton’s recipe, here it is, as directly taken from the book:
Ingredients.—1¼ lbs. of flour, ¼ of a lb. of sugar, 6 ozs. of butter, 4 eggs, 1 tablespoonful of ginger, 6 ozs. of golden syrup.
Method.—Beat the butter, sugar and golden syrup to a cream, and beat in the eggs one at a time: add the flour, mixed with the ginger, till the mixture is thick enough to roll out. Roll into thin sheets, cut out with a plain round cutter, and bake on flat baking tins.
Time.—To bake, 20 to 25 minutes. Average Cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for about 4 dozen cakes.
My note: To build a gingerbread house do not cut the dough before baking. Cut rectangles for the walls and the roof out after the baked cake has completely cooled, then glue the pieces together with royal icing. Try and get some helping hands for that—if you’re lucky Adam is available.
Link to Bonanza Brand 2023 Advent Calendar – Day 20 – New Year’s Traditions by Sibylle
