Synopsis: Ben learns to let go.
Rating:  G  (1,730 words)

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Goodbye

Something in Ben’s ledger caught his eye, the hand writing of his oldest son. He couldn’t help feeling his heart twist a little as he touched the neat writing. This was the last entry of Adam’s before he left.

Ben hadn’t really been surprised the day Adam approached him and told him he needed to go.

But that didn’t mean that Ben didn’t fight his son every step of the way. Looking back on it now, he wished hadn’t done that. It was purely out of selfishness he did so.

Adam was his oldest; he had been there through it all. He had helped build this ranch into the enterprise it was. That is not to say that his other two boys didn’t have a large hand in it.

But it was Adam that had walked those many miles and had been deprived a true childhood. It was Adam that helped Bed drive in the first stake to this land they now call the Ponderosa.

He knew that Adam loved this land; his blood, sweat and tears were here as much as the rest of his family. But Ben had always seen something in Adam’s eyes that said that one day he was going to leave.

Maybe that is why he had hesitated in sending Adam off to school. He feared was that he might never come back. It was Marie that had finally talked Ben into letting Adam leave, by saying

“If you love someone, you have to let them go.” She was another loss in his life that Adam was there for. Almost a year after the conversation he had with Marie, he saw Adam off on the stage coach headed east. It would be four long years before he saw his son again.

When Adam did return home, Ben could help but wonder if it was a sense of duty to his father and brothers that he did so. He was relieved when he saw his son again and knew that it wasn’t just for him that he came back west.

An absent smile appeared on Ben’s face as he thought of seeing Adam for the first time since leaving for school. He had expected to see the same tall skinny boy he had sent off, but what he saw shocked him. A man stepped from the coach that day. Taller and more handsome, more mature. It was hard for him not to treat this man as the child he remembered. Over the years this proved to most difficult; he couldn’t help but treat his sons as, well, boys. A parent never sees their child as fully grow adults, but as the children that still need them.

Once again he looked at Adam’s writing in the ledger. No, his son was no child; he was a partner in running this ranch. Ben hated to turn the page. It was as if turning the page would make his son’s departure final. His life would go on, the ranch would run and spring would turn into summer, but there would be no more daily input from Adam. Now instead of wondering if Adam had finished the lumber contract or got the steers to market on time, he would wonder if he was well and if he did indeed decide to go to sea. Ben knew he would be forever waiting for that telegraph telling him his son was lost at sea.

Ben had hoped by sending Adam to San Francisco for business trips that would serve as an outlet for his need for culture and books. But it was after one of these trips that he had first seen the distance in him. Adam had always enjoyed his solitude, but in the months after finishing some shipping business in San Francisco, Ben would often find Adam outside strumming his guitar and absently looking out at nothing particular. He had begun to withdraw from his family. He still sat with them and enjoyed their company, but there always seemed to be something distant in him, something at the time Ben couldn’t really put his finger on.

Eventually Ben started to fear the words “Pa, I need to talk to you about something.” Every time Adam spoke those words Ben would brace himself, waiting for the words he knew he would one day hear. When Adam did finally tell him that it was time to go, it wasn’t at all like he had expected.

It had been a good day for all four of them. Joe, Hoss and Adam had been teasing one another the whole day. More than once, Ben remembered with a slight chuckle to himself, he had to remind the boys that if they wanted to be treated like adults, they needed to act like it. Of course everything said was said with humor.

That evening Adam had offered to help him put the horses up for the night. That’s when he brought up leaving to him. His words were simple enough; Adam way laying extra hay in Sports stall. “Pa, I’ve been thinking about moving on.”

That’s it. And that is what caught him most off guard; he had been expecting a speech and a heavily regarded explanation. Leave it to Adam to throw him off.

Instead of the reasonable talk he was hoping to have about this, Ben found himself fighting fiercely to keep Adam there with his family. Adam spoke calmly throughout the whole exchange, patting Sport on the nose. He talked about how he needed to make something for himself, follow his dreams.

“Your dreams are all here, Adam,” Ben remembered saying to his oldest. What Adam said woke him from his own dreams.

“No, Pa, this was your dream and I have always thought it was mine too. But I just don’t know if it is. Even when I was at school, my thoughts were of this place and how I could use my education to improve our home and the land. But now I’m in my thirties, everything here is in your name. Not mine.”

“No, son, it’s ours,” was the only thing Ben could say

“Pa, I need something that is mine. I need to be something other than Ben Cartwright’s son.”

“So that is all you think you are!” Ben tried to keep his voice below a roar.

“I don’t think that, but that is how I’m seen. You are the patriarch of this family and I am your son. I wanna be my own person. That’s all, Pa.”

There was nothing he could say. Once again Ben heard Marie speak to him as a whisper in the wind. “If you love him you’ll let him go,” as hard as that was going to be. Over the next few weeks he tried in vain to argue his point with his son, deep down he knew it was useless and in the end he would go. Every moment he spent arguing was time lost.

Hoss and Joseph hadn’t taken the news any better then he had. Joe had reacted in much the same way he had when Adam went away to school, with anger and Hoss looked as if he was losing one of his best friends. He was; they all were.

The day they took Adam to the coach brought back memories: the odd uncomfortable silence, nobody wanted to be the first to say good-bye. Ben spoke first. Adam needed to know that his family supported him in his decision. “Son, you have to do what is right for you. You know your home will always be here. I’m proud of you no matter what you do.”

The look he saw in Adam’s eyes let him know that his son had made the right decision. If he stayed he would always wonder “what if.”

The final boarding was called he watched as Adam said his goodbyes to his brothers, each good-bye bringing him closer to the end. Ben looked at him for a long moment and grabbed his son, hoping until the last second that he would change his mind, no matter if it was the right thing or not. Then he heard Adam speak just above a whisper, his emotions caught in his throat.

“I love you, Pa,” was all he said as he entered the coach that would take him away to places unknown.

He stood and watched the coach rush out of sight and then watched the dust the team kicked up in the distance, all the while saying a silent prayer for his son and for himself. It was Hoss that brought him out of his meditation with a gentle hand on his shoulder, urging them home.

Three men and four horses rode silently back to the Ponderosa. It was the most somber ride in recent memory for all three men. That first night at dinner Ben kept his head down, just looking at his food. He couldn’t bear to look across the table to see the empty chair where he couldn’t help but feel Adam should still be.

It had been six weeks now and Ben was barely getting used to only seeing his two sons bound down the stairs in the morning, and he often found himself thinking he need to talk to Adam about some contract or another. It was the sound of horses that finally got Ben up from his desk. Joe and Hoss must be back from town. He closed the ledger book and looked at the picture of Elizabeth sitting on his desk, and as he had many times before, he asked her to watch over their son. Joe burst into the house and Ben tried with all of his might not to admonish his son for slamming the door.

“Pa! We got letters from Adam!” Joe said with the glee of a kid receiving gifts on Christmas day.

Joe handed Ben his letter and went to read his own on the settee.

“Joseph, FEET!” Ben said as he walked over to Adam’s favorite chair to read the letter.

Opening the envelope he found only two words written in the middle of the page: THANK YOU

was all it said. He felt the sting of tears and blinked them away quickly.

He knew Adam would be okay.

The End