All Right
oooooooooo
"Pa?"
Ben Cartwright started with guilt. He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep upright in the chair. His eyes darted to the small form in the bed beside him. When he saw the boy's shoulders, swaddled under several heavy layers of blankets, rising and falling with regularity he relaxed.
"Is everything all right? It's so...quiet."
The older man turned toward the door. His seventeen year old son's long, lean, and lanky figure was framed in it, backlit by the lamps burning in the hall. Hanks of Adam's black hair hung in front of his face, partially obscuring his hazel-brown eyes. Ben paused as he listened to the tall case clock by the door strike four. Dear Lord! He'd been asleep an hour. Anything could have happened in an hour.
Little Joe could have forgotten to breathe.
No.
No. That wasn't going to happen. The crisis had passed.
Ben looked at the sleeping form in the bed again and then at the drowsy one occupying the doorway and decided – at this moment – that the need of the one outweighed the need of the other.
Rising, he went to Adam.
"This is not your fault."
"Pa, it's my last winter here. We were just playing in the snow. I...wanted to have some fun with Little Joe before..." The boy's eyes were misty. "I mean...the kid'll be practically grown up when I get back. "
Joe had just turned five a few months before.
A smile felt good, even if it carried with it a bit of guilt. "I don't think your brother will have moved out and married by the age of ten, Adam. He'll be here. We'll all be here – and we'll be so proud of you."
Adam would turn eighteen in the spring. That next fall, he was going East to live with his grandfather and get a higher education. It was something Adam had long dreamed of. Something he had encouraged along with...
Marie.
"Pa?"
Ben shook his head.
A silence fell between them broken only by the sound of Little Joe's ragged breathing.
"You never answered my question. Is Little Joe going to be all right?"
The older man turned back to the bed. It had happened so fast. The boys had been playing in the snow. Joseph was so excited, bounding in and out of the white dunes. He'd seen them before, of course, but this was the first year the boy really knew what snow was. Adam had asked to have some time alone with him and they'd gone off hand in hand to where the snow was very deep to build a fort. Adam had meant to watch Joe, but when he'd become preoccupied with engineering the construction of the 'fort', his brother had decided he was being ignored and wandered off. By the time they spotted the youngest Cartwright, he was a speck of brown in the distance. He'd spoken quite sternly to him, fear making his words harsh. "Joseph! You come back here right now, young man, or you'll be facing the strap!' The result had been, the boy had taken fright and run off into the night. Joe was so small. In a heartbeat, that brown speck slipped away and was gone. Just like that, he was gone.
Just like his mother had been there – and then gone.
By the time they found the boy half-buried in a snowbank, he was half-frozen as well.
Ben returned to his small son's side and laid a hand on his curly head, feeling the remnants of the fever that had almost taken him. His eyes moist, he nodded.
"I think he's going to be all right."
There was a pause. Then Adam spoke again.
"Pa, after last night... Are you?"
oooooooooo
Hours later, after Hop Sing had come up to the room with a tray that contained a bowl of steaming broth for his young son and some sandwiches and a strong cup of coffee for him, Ben still sat in the chair beside Little Joe's bed contemplating his oldest son's question. Joseph had managed to swallow a few spoonfuls of broth before falling back to sleep. After nibbling at one of the sandwiches he had fallen into thought and remained lost in it as the day went and the night came, as Hop Sing returned to light the lamps and rekindle the fire in the room, until finally Paul Martin came, examined Joseph, and pronounced that indeed the worst was over.
'And keep that child out of the snow!' were Paul's parting words.
Joe loved snow.
Marie had loved snow.
Marie...
That day, as he looked up to see her riding toward the house, everything had gone as white as a sudden squall. He'd been blinded by the sun. It had only been for a second, but that second was long enough for his young son to pull out of his arms and run pell-mell toward his mother who was approaching at her usual heart-stopping speed. He grabbed him just as her horse went down.
Marie had told him once that it was exhilarating – riding so fast it felt the ground had fallen away beneath her and she was flying. That it made her feel alive.
Until it killed her.
All he had left of her was the child who lay in the bed beside him.
The child who, the night before, had almost died.
Ben sucked in air like a drowning man and rose. He walked to the window and pressed his hands against its wooden frame. Last night... Well, Paul had thought it would be Joseph's last night. The boy had been so sick; his fever so high and the cough so bad. The child had lain there in his bed gasping, just like his mother had lain on the ground gasping, her fingers clawing at his hand, her eyes wild with the knowledge that she was dying, that he would be alone, that their son would think she had abandoned him – that he would think she had abandoned him.
That neither of them would ever be 'all right.'
He'd been torn at first, between grief and rage. He'd warned her. Oh, how many times he had warned her! But Marie wouldn't listen. 'What is life, mon amour,' she had said to him that very day, 'if it is lived in the shadow of death?'
Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me.
Last night he had thought God was going to take Marie's son as well and he had told the Almighty that he was through.
Through.
A man, he argued, could only take so much. Yes, life was cruel. Yes, it was hard. He knew that and he accepted it. He'd been reared in the church. He knew the ritual words. God is sovereign. God is in control. Nothing happens without His express knowledge or consent, or – Ben's jaw tightened. Here was the crux...
Without His causing it.
Causing a mother to fall from her horse and be crushed by it.
Causing her infant son to watch.
Causing that same son to become lost in a world of white and to end up with a case of pneumonia so virulent it had all but crushed him as well.
Last night, as he sat in the bed holding his small son's ravaged body upright, fighting to beat the sickness out of him and the life into him, he had been crushed.
If there was a God, He was cruel.
If there was a God, He must enjoy seeing his creatures suffer, for suffering was what He caused – constant, incessant suffering that in the end bled a man out as surely as a gun shot to the belly.
There was no God.
At that moment, he had heard a sound.
His small son. Calling his name.
A second later his fingers were pushing the sodden sticky curls back from the boy's fevered brow. He was whispering in his ear.
"Little Joe, yes, it's Pa. I'm here, son. I'm here."
Joseph's vivid green eyes were a stab in the dark – an emerald blade wielded by the cruel master of the universe to remind him that he would never again see the ones so like them. His son's tiny fingers reached for him.
Ben caught them in his own and pressed them to his lips. "Joe..."
Those green eyes were bright with fever, but they were clear as the boy looked back at him over his shoulder. "Pa," Little Joe asked, his voice a breath above a whisper. "...is it...morning?"
He'd glanced out the window. It was. When he told him so, his son smiled and then mumbled something. He only caught one word.
Birthday.
Ben scowled. 'Birthday'? What could the boy mean?
Leaning in, he'd caressed his child's cheek with his fingers. It had been so hot the night before, but at that moment, he realized there had been a sudden cooling. Looking closer, he saw the boy's brow was beading with sweat.
"Joseph?"
Little Joe's smile was a pale imitation of the one he had come to love, but it was there.
"It's...morning," hi son repeated, his tongue lazy with fatigue, but those eyes wide with wonder. "God said...to...tell you happy...birthday, Pa..."
God said.
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; upon the earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things.
He is a king over all the children of pride.
God said.
oooooooooo
It was perhaps an hour later when Ben finally surrendered his place at his son's side to Hop Sing. The Chinese man had come in yet again softly scolding him that he needed to get some rest. As he descended the stairs, the morning light broke through the window above the dining room table, blinding him with its glory. Struck by the similarity to that other day when the same thing had happened, Ben paused on the stair. He raised a hand to shield his eyes and watched as the radiant beams moved through the room until they touched the sleeping form of his oldest son, Adam, who was stretched out on the striped settee Marie had loved so well. At that moment, the light splintered into a myriad of colors. As each fragment struck him, there was a flash of insight.
His land. His home.
The years he had had shared it with his beautiful wife.
The son she had given him.
Elizabeth's son; Adam, tall and strong, soon to be a man.
And sweet Inger's Hoss, who though very young, was already the gentle giant who upheld their world.
Food to fill his belly. A fire to chase away the chill. A place to lay his head. Safety for himself and for his sons.
Blessings.
Blessings all.
"Pa?"
Adam was sitting up, attempting to make something out of the tousled mess that was his black hair. Ben had to chuckle.
As if there was anyone to notice.
"Good morning, son."
Something in his voice made Adam pay attention. The boy, no, the young man rose to his feet and approached him.
"How's Little Joe?"
Ben glanced at the sunlight streaming in the window. It was only light now. The moment was gone though its memory remained, chasing away the lingering sadness of that other horrible day.
"You're brother is going to be all right, son."
Adam blinked He hesitated. Ben knew the question that was coming. Adam had admitted to being outside the door last night – to hearing words he wished his eldest had not heard.
No, that was not true.
One day Adam too would face the dark night of his soul.
He walked over to the boy and cupped his cheek with his hand. It was a sign of his son's concern and fatigue that he didn't resist.
His hazel eyes wide, Adam asked, "Pa, are you all right?"
Ben laughed as he released him. "Do you know what day it is?"
The young man frowned. Then he had it. "Pa! It's your birthday. With Joe sick, I..."
"Your brother remembered," he said, his voice catching just a bit. "It's the first thing Little Joe said to me this morning. Then he apologized.
"For what?"
Joseph had awakened again. With tears in his eyes, the boy had admitted that he had known what he was doing was wrong when he ran away from him. He said he was scared.
He wouldn't punish him.
He'd been scared too – and he'd run just as hard.
Until, like Joseph, he finally found his way home.