Summary:  Preparations abound for Christmas on the Ponderosa
Rating:  G  (2,630 words)

Bonanza
~*~*~Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 16*

 A Grand Christmas

Preparations for the grand Christmas dinner were made.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Hop Sing had been at work for weeks – well, months really to make sure the larder was well supplied for Christmas Day.  Ben couldn’t count the times he’d walked into the kitchen and found the Asian man mumbling to himself as he opened bags and boxes, checking their contents and then making notes as he discovered unexpected needs – and Heaven help the man who interrupted him!  The rancher chuckled.  He knew his cook had to plan ahead and understood that his meticulous preparations entailed numerous trips to town.  He’d made the last one only the morning before.  Upon his return the Asian man started shouting orders, instructing the ranch’s hands to unload the wagon ‘chop-chop!’.  ‘Sky look most foreboding’, he said with a shake of his head.  “Lung Long most unhappy.”  Ben didn’t know about the mythical dragon the Chinese believed controlled the weather, but he did know the skies of Nevada.  He’d seen signs the day before though they were hard to read.  They could have meant anything from a heavy snowfall to a winter storm that would rage with the ferocity of Lung Long.

Unfortunately, Hop Sing’s dragon proved right.

The head of the Cartwright clan crossed to the window in the dining room, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out on a world gone white. He loved snow, though not as much as his youngest son or the boy’s mother had, and certainly not with the same enthusiasm for the cold!  He loved the peace and craved the silence it brought.  A winter storm stopped everything, closing the mountain passes and burying roads; wrapping a silent blanket around man, beast, and abode.  He’d treasured those times when his boys were small – when ‘Papa’ couldn’t do his work and so his work became their play.  Then the snow would end and a man’s ceaseless efforts to assert his dominance over the land must begin anew.  He could still see his young sons’ faces turned up; their bright eyes begging him to remain home just one more day.  Why hadn’t he, he wondered?  Ben chuckled.  Because he’d been young and foolish; full of ambition and a need to prove himself.  He was old now – older than he cared to admit.  As the Good Book said in Psalm 90, ‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten.’  God had been gracious to him.  He was almost there.  Sadly, far too many he loved had been lost far too short of that goal.

Elizabeth.  Inger.  Marie.

Hoss.

And perhaps Adam.

Even Jamie was away with friends.

If it wasn’t for Joe, he’d be alone this Christmas Day.  Ben’s gaze returned to the frosty window.

Joe who was out there…somewhere…in all that white.

His son was old enough now that he shouldn’t worry, but old habits die hard and the boy was prone to sail close to the wind whether he liked it or not.  Beaten, thrown by he didn’t know how many horses into how many fences, kidnapped – shot. Adam had confided one day that the ranch hands had a pool going with high odds that the boy wouldn’t make it to eighteen!  Joseph was over thirty now.  He’d left childish ways behind, growing into a steady, reliable man.  The proud father smiled.

Well, mostly.

Ben turned away from the window to look at the dining room table, laden as it was with their finest dishes and glassware; properly prepared for the grand Christmas dinner they would share with friends the following day.  The table was set for a dozen, though it was doubtful in this weather that most would make it.  In all likelihood it would be him, Joe, Hop Sing, and perhaps a few of the ranch’s older hands – a far cry from the Ponderosa’s Halcyon days when the house was full and rang with song and laughter.  He could still see the children – dozens of them at times – who came from local orphanages and their humble homes to enjoy – perhaps – the only carefree Christmas they had ever known.

Owning half of Nevada had to be good for something.

Didn’t it?

Ben left the dining room with its ominous window and moved into the great room.  His gaze traveled slowly from his well-worn chair to the great hearth, to the blue chair Adam loved, and finally to his third wife’s elegant settee.  The older man let out a sigh as he took a seat on it.  There were so many ghosts in the house this Christmas eve.  Elizabeth was there standing in front of the mirror, beaming at her reflection and admiring the new bonnet he had bought her to celebrate their first Christmas together.  Inger was there too.  His second wife was wearing the pair of kid gloves he’d purchased for her so her hands wouldn’t grow cold and chafed on the long trail to California.

And then there was Marie – beautiful fiery Marie.  He could see her most clearly standing at the top of the stair, her exquisite form sheathed in red satin; its décolletage glinting with the jewels he had placed around her neck before coming down himself.  Hoss, of course, was ever with him and with his brother.  They felt the big man’s presence each and every time they entered the house.  Hoss was still here, watching over them.

Ben glanced at the window, which was quickly becoming obscured with snow.

He prayed God Hoss was watching over his little brother tonight.

“Mistah Ben need anything before Hop Sing turn in?” a soft voice asked.

Ben jumped and let out a sigh.  How unkind to forget the old friend who had stood by him through thick and thin and was still with him now.

“A word, Hop Sing.  I just need…a word.”

“You still not hear from Mistah Little Joe?”

He shook his head.

“He come.  Boy not let father be alone on Christmas Day.”

Boy.

Ben chuckled.  “Joe’s a grown man now, hard as it is for either of us to accept.”

The Asian man shook his head. “Never grow up.  Always be Mistah Little Joe to Hop Sing.”

Little Joe.  He hadn’t heard that in a while.

“You see!  Boy be home by midnight.  Mazu will see that it happens.”

It was funny how Hop Sing – a self-proclaimed ‘good Baptist’ – clung to the beliefs of his childhood.  First Lung Long and now Mazu, the goddess who guided men home.  There were temples dedicated to her by emigrants who had safely reached the shores of the United States.

“I hope you’re right,” Ben replied.

“Old man learn nothing in all his years?”  The Asian man made a tsking sound.  “Hop Sing always right!”

*****

The hours trickled by excruciatingly slow like sand in an hourglass one stared at.  Hop Sing had come in at nine.  The clock had just struck half past eleven and found Ben pacing like a caged puma.  He couldn’t let go of his worry.

There was no hope that he could sleep.

Outside the snow continued to come in wave after white wave.  It was higher now than the sill and encroaching on the window’s meeting rails.  The wind howled like an Irish banshee, rattling the panes as well as his nerves.  He’d gone upstairs to make sure everything was secure and even taken a turn around the barn.  Every path led him back to the great room and his chair.  His Bible lay on it, its cover cracked and faded as the leather seat it rested upon.  So far the binding had held, but nearly fifty years of constant use had left the spine cracked and the edges of its pages worn thin.  Ben chuckled.  There were so many marks and comments in the margins one could have used them to write a second book!

It had been with him as long as his sons.

While he had given Elizabeth a trifle to make her smile that first Christmas, his steady, thoughtful and – if the truth were known – insightful New England bride had gifted him a handsome leather-bound Bible produced by Isaiah Thomas, a renowned Patriot and printer based in Worcester, Massachusetts.  It had a high quality binding and nearly fifty copperplates.  At first he had been reluctant to use it as he was sure the cost had been dear.  When he expressed this concern, Elizabeth replied that the cost of what Christ had done for men was far dearer and she had better see it falling apart by his old age!

Ben picked up the precious tome.  Elizabeth’s Bible was still intact.

Himself?

Perhaps not so much.

Bible in hand, the rancher dropped heavily into his chair.  After settling in, he found the well-worn path his fingers had formed over four decades and turned to the second chapter of Luke.  It was a family tradition to read the Gospel story on Christmas Eve and he was not a man to break with tradition – even if it meant reading it to himself!  Ben began silently but then read aloud, the sound of his own voice comforting, though he wasn’t sure why.

“And it came to pass in those days,” the old tale began, “that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed – and this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.”

Ben lifted his gaze and turned toward the dining room window to look out on the land the Lord had given him.  This was his ‘city’, the one he had chosen; God’s beautiful, bountiful wild world of the West.  He’d brought two small sons here to make a home for them and remained in that home as the third was born.  Could he have made a different choice?  Should he have? Would a safer ‘city’ have been wise, one where snow could be appreciated as it fell on paved streets and not feared as it obliterated both roads and men?

Ben’s gaze returned to the pages of the Bible and he began to read again. “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem – because he was of the house and lineage of David – to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.”

The rancher remembered each of the days when his sons had been delivered.  He remembered them with joy but also acknowledged the pain that accompanied a child’s arrival in the world.  That first breath was the beginning of a long road paved in equal measure with joy, sorrow, and uncertainty.  While God’s ‘road’ was not uncertain, as a father He most assuredly had experienced the same mix of delight and dismay when His Son was born knowing that when Jesus’ days were ‘accomplished’, His beloved child would be hated, mocked and scorned.

And put to death.

Did Mary know, he wondered, as ‘she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn’, just what it was that had entered the world?

Ben paused with his hand on the open pages.  Then he placed his fingers in another well-worn groove and opened to a later book. One written by a man named John.

The familiar words were half-read and half-spoken to the silence of the night.  “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  Ben closed the book and moved his hand to its well-worn cover.  “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

His eyes closed as he began to pray.

“Lord…Father, I thank you for the blessings of this day.  I thank you as well for the gift of your Son, who by His birth in a humble stable and death on a cross, paved the way for my sons and I to have eternal life.”  The worried father’s voice cracked.  “Lord, I ask that you make a way for my son now.  Bring Joe home.  But…if that is not your will…give me the strength to go on.

“Thy will be done.”

Ben rose.  He placed the Bible on the seat, banked what was left of the fire, and turned toward the stairs.  Visions of past Christmases visited him again as he arrived – three boys, chattering and making entirely too much noise, running down the stairs to find what awaited them under the tree.  Marie followed, her arms laden with greens to be hung.  Behind her there was a man he recognized as himself – happy, smiling.

Content.

He’d been blessed more than most.  Three beautiful wives.  Three sons who loved each other fiercely.  He loved them all more than his own life, and if the time they had been granted to share had been all too brief by his estimation, still each hour had been golden and glorious and a treasure many had never known.

It was time to go to bed, to let go of fear and trust as he had so many times before that His Heavenly Father and not he – Ben Cartwright – knew best.

The rancher felt a chill as his hand gripped the newel post and the clock by the door struck midnight.

“Merry Christmas, Pa.”

Ben stiffened.  Was this another ghost; come fresh from the blizzard outside?

Or was it an answer to prayer?

Joe smiled sheepishly as he closed the door, cutting off the winter chill that had accompanied his entrance.  He removed his hat and coat and shook a small mountain of snow from them before hanging both on a peg by the door.

“I’m sorry I’m so late,” he said.  “I was about halfway home when I came across a woman with three kids whose wagon had broken down.  It was snowing, but not this bad, so I escorted them home instead of letting them go alone.  I thought they might need help along the way.  The lady – Mary – well, she had to thank me, of course, and I wasn’t going to turn down a home-cooked meal….  By the time I started for home the snow was coming down so hard I could barely see. It got pretty rough a couple of times.  Once, I wasn’t sure I was gonna….”  His son glanced at the window; the one in the dining room that was now almost entirely obscured.  Joe winced as he turned back. “I didn’t make you worry…did I?  I mean, you know I wouldn’t miss Hop Sing’s grand Christmas dinner, right?”

He wanted to run to his son and take him in his arms and never let him go.

He imagined God felt like that too on that dark day.

“Of course, I didn’t worry,” Ben remarked as he walked to his son’s side.  “You’re a grown man.  What is there to worry about?”  He met Joe’s gaze.  “Permission?” he asked.

Joe frowned.  “Permission to…?”  The boy chuckled.  “Oh, that.  Well, I suppose if you have to…”

In the end, he didn’t have to do it.  Joseph opened his arms and threw them around him in a tight embrace. They stood there for some time, both aware of the miracle that had occurred but saying nothing.

In the end, it was a grand Christmas indeed.

Prompt: Preparations for the grand Christmas dinner (were made).

Link to the Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar – Day 17 – Standing on the Bow Rail – AC1830