Summary:  Jamie barely knows his eldest brother, so he writes a letter to Adam to tell him about himself.  Based on “A Matter of Faith”, with a bit of pre-canon background.  

Rating: PG
Word Count: 1901

Truth and Rain

Dear Adam,

I guess you might be surprised to get a letter from me, seeing how you came for a visit not so long ago.  It was really great finally getting to meet you.  When you were here, you said you wished there was more time for us to get to know each other better.  I feel the same way, so thought I’d tell you some things about myself, starting from the beginning.

Anyway, here it goes.  A long time ago, my ma and pa and me lived in a little house in Kansas.  Ma took in sewing, raised chickens and sold eggs.  And Pa, he did odd jobs for other folks.  To my memory, though, there was never much money.  Pa fancied himself to be a scientist and inventor, and it seems when he took those odd jobs, instead of bringing any pay home, he would come back with some new book or gadget or tool to help with his inventing.  I can still see him sitting at the kitchen table, scratching away on paper, working out different theories he had in mind.  Otherwise, he could be found out back, tinkering away at something,  He had a shed full of chemicals and equipment for experiments, and a special black notebook to keep track of it all.  He wrote everything down in the book.  Pa was sure he would someday change the world.

But all Pa’s science couldn’t save Ma when she got sick, and after she died when I was still real young, Pa didn’t want to stay in our little house any more.  He outfitted a wagon into a traveling home for him and me.  We went on the road, and after a while, I almost forgot the house in Kansas and our old life there.  It felt like we’d always lived in the wagon.

We traveled all over.  I didn’t have to go to school.  Pa took good care of me, and he was a smart man.  He taught me to read, write, and do arithmetic.  On long rides between towns he talked of science or history.  Told stories about ancient Romans and Greeks, Aztecs, Marco Polo and the Silk Road.  So I wasn’t stupid.  I just believed everything Pa told me.  And what he told me most often was that he could make it rain.  

From town to town, wherever there was drought, he told people the same thing.  He called himself B. Barnaby Garibaldi, because it sounded like a name with authority.  The name, along with “Master of the Atmospheric Arts” and some other claims, was printed big as life on a rolled up canvas attached to the side of our wagon.  When we got to a likely town, Pa would tug a rope to drop the canvas like a curtain, and once he started his pitch, a crowd would start to gather.  Pa had a keen spark of light in his eyes, and a way of talking to get folks excited.  He was going to end the drought, make the rain come.  Farms would be saved, rivers and creeks run full again.  A lot of people believed him.  So did I.  Of course, I believed in a lot of things back then.  You know – like Santa Claus?

Well, we were chased out of plenty of towns by people who weren’t about to spend money to find out if the claims were true.  Even with his wagon full of equipment and the book full of formulas, some people just wouldn’t listen.  When I’d get mad, Pa would say, “Jamie, you’ll see the day when news of our rain-making success is on every printing press in the country.  Folks will change their tune then, and they’ll be lining up.”  

Maybe a day or two down the road, a town would hire us.  With the advance payment, we’d buy all the chemicals and mix them in a cauldron boiling day and night on a tower tall enough to reach heaven.  At least it looked that high to me when I was little.   Pa consulted the book again and again, measuring, figuring, making adjustments and new notations.  He analyzed the sky without end.  I swear half my childhood was spent with my head tipped back and my eyes all squinty, watching the sky.  And sometimes, in the two weeks Pa had promised, it did rain.

Mostly it didn’t.  

I remember him waking me in the darkest middle of night, saying it was time to leave.  “Black clouds rolling in,” he’d say.  “Best get on the road before the storm hits and muddies it up.”  I didn’t know any better.  It was too dark to see if clouds were gathering or not.  Once, after waking in the morning to see we were still driving through brittle grass, I asked Pa why, and he explained.  Said the kind of rain we made would only fall over the area where we applied our technique, which was already many miles behind.  Our technique.  The rain we made.  That meant Pa and me were a team.  I was so proud of him, and of being his boy.

Bit by bit, though, I did begin to wonder.  Just like with old Santa Claus, things started to not add up.  I hadn’t been too awful old when I figured out there was no way Santa could find our wagon, leave a candy cane for me, then do the same for every single child on the wide prairie, all in one night.  With Pa’s talents, though, it took a lot of years for me to have doubts.  After all, Santa was a fairy tale for little kids.  Rainmaking was science.  So, could a man actually make rain?  And if he could, why didn’t it work every time?

The men of Grass Flats, they called Pa a swindler and a cheat, and they hurt him bad.  I can hardly stand to think of the night it happened.  The town was ablaze with light from torches, and there was fire under a pot of tar.  Those men all but killed my pa then and there.  They tarred and feathered him, threw him in the back of our wagon, and forced me up on the seat.  Someone had been holding the horses and they let loose.  The horses were so scared they took off like a bat out of hell, and I couldn’t control them.  Not far from town we crashed into a ditch.  Lucky the horses weren’t hurt, but I couldn’t get the wagon out.  Then, out of nowhere, along came a drifter, Dusty Rhodes.  He helped, and he stayed with us.

Pa didn’t die right away.  Me and Dusty took care of him, only he was hurt too bad to survive.  He was sick for days, and then one night, the light went out of Pa’s blue eyes, and he died.  

After that night, something strange happened to my doubt.  You’d think anyone who’d gone through it all wouldn’t want anything more to do with rain making.  Instead, with me, my doubts simply disappeared.  I knew my pa was a good man.  Even Dusty, who knew of the murderous hate from those townspeople, said he was one of the best.  So it had to be true – he really could make it rain.  I got real stubborn, doubled down on my belief.  Only remembered the successes.  My pa was gone, but I still had the wagon and the book, and if Pa could make it rain, then I could too.  Dusty even went along with it.  These years later, I realize he was just trying to take care of a dumb little kid who couldn’t admit his pa might not be the most honest man in the world.

Dusty went on the road with me.  Now, here’s the part of the story you’ve probably heard, Adam.  Dusty and me – our first try at making rain was in Virginia City.  I don’t have my father’s silver tongue, but somehow I got the people there to hire me.  The fact is, when people are desperate, they’ll do crazy things, and this had to be the craziest ever.  I was 13 years old!  

It didn’t turn out so good.  I suppose your Pa told you the main gist of what happened.  How again, people got angry, attacked our camp, and tore all our stuff up.  They burned the book.  Your Pa found Dusty and me sitting in the wreckage.  He’d never believed we could make it rain, but he wasn’t mean about it.  He talked to me with such kind words and said he was going to take me home with him.  And right after that – like a miracle – it did begin to rain.  In fact, it kept on raining for a couple days.  Your Pa and the mayor made the men who wrecked the camp say out loud, and even put in writing, the rain had come because of my pa – Tom Hunter.  Of course, now I’m older, I see it was all a coincidence.  No person has ever forced the sky to give rain, and as for myself, I never tried again.  

The thing is, I’ll never be sure in my mind if Pa honestly thought he could do it, or if it really was a con.  In my heart, I can’t believe it was.  I want him to have been a genius, whose every little entry into his black notebook moved him closer to his dream.  He might have someday changed the world – if only he’d had more time.  What I do know is, we were a family and he gave me a home of sorts.  It was just a wagon, but it was ours.  We took care of each other, and he loved me.  If that’s not a true and honest thing, I don’t know what is.  

You know that big shed here on the Ponderosa – the one where old stuff is stored?  It’s quite a ways back behind the barn, and I don’t have reason to go in there much.  But behind the shed, wheel-deep in weeds, there is something that belongs to me.  A wagon.  And sometimes, like today, I come out to look at it, climb up on the seat again, and remember when the wagon was my home.  It’s where I’m sitting now, writing this letter.  

I won’t lie.  I’d bring Tom Hunter back in a minute if I could.  It doesn’t mean I’m not happy with your family.  Or I should say my family, now.  I’m glad to have a real home to live in, and guess, in a way, my father brought me to it.  Because if I hadn’t believed in him so much and tried to make it rain in Virginia City, I’d never have met the man, Ben Cartwright, who took this headstrong misguided kid in, treated me with such gentleness and understanding, and even took me to be his own son.  Like Dusty would say, “one of the best”.  And that goes for the rest of you.  My brothers.  It feels good to say it.  

This letter has gotten pretty long, so I’ll sign off for now.  Like I said, it was great meeting you, Adam.  I sure hope you can visit again soon and if not, maybe you could write me about yourself sometime.   

Sincerely,

Your brother, Jamie Hunter Cartwright

–The End–

Author’s Notes:

Written for Camp in the Pines 2026.  At camp I was given the following words to include: “printing press” (Easter egg surprise) and “ablaze with light” (fishing with Hoss).  

Tags:  Ben/Jamie, drama, family