Dear Readers: This was a story within my story "Reversal of Fortune". I decided to post it as a separate story for those that do not follow "Reversal". It's the story of why Charlotte Thornton doesn't cry. I hope you enjoy it.
The Button
The three men in the barracks, eager for a warm breakfast before the start of a long day of classroom time and training, quickly finished getting ready.
Jonathan Thornton, or Jack as he was now called, was the most serious of the three. He and Steven, his fun-loving side kick, had been close friends since before the Academy. They now stood next to each other as they closed up their lockers. Jim, with his flaming red hair and freckles, was across the room staring down at his uniform.
"Darn! I lost a button. Hey, Jack. You always carry an extra button with you. I've seen you fingering it. Let me have it?" Jim called out as he looked over his shoulder at Jack.
"Did you look on the floor under your cot? Maybe it rolled there", Jack responded without offering his extra button.
"Nah, it's not there. Just let me have yours."
"Sorry. You can't have it. It's not really to be loaned out."
Jack didn't elaborate and instead ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his jacket.
"For Pete's sake, Jack. It's just a button. What's the big deal?" Jim asked in annoyance.
"Leave him alone, Jim. They'll have one at the quartermaster. Come on. I'll walk there with you", Steven said as he looked sympathetically at Jack.
Rather than go to breakfast as he had initially planned, Jack sat on the tightly stretched blanket of his neatly made bunk and pulled the gold colored button from his pocket. He fingered it for a moment and then, noticing the smudges he caused, he pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed it clean again.
As he put it back in his pocket, he thought back to when he had first acquired the button. It had been more than a decade earlier when he had sneaked across the candlelit room and stolen the button off the uniform of another Mountie.
Jack sat in the barracks but his mind went back to that time years ago, remembering it as if it were just that morning.
All those years ago. When he was just a boy, wanting to be a man.
Years earlier, looking in the small mirror above the wash basin, a young Jack had run his hands over his smooth boyhood face, naively hoping to feel the stubble of an incoming beard. It didn't make sense; that he wanted to feel something just so that he could then shave it off. But as he glanced at his father's horse-hair shaving brush and the razor next to it, he once again prayed that he could be just like his pa.
All Jack wanted was to be like his pa. Yesterday, his ma had been so short-tempered and tired that she had yelled at him as he had walked around the house wearing his pa's official hat, pretending to be a Mountie, instead of doing his chores.
She had been yelling at him a lot lately. Ever since her husband, Jack's pa, had been hurt.
It's trauma to the skull, that's what the doctor had said. Jack wasn't supposed to know how bad it was, but young boys, especially those who are intelligent and curious, pick up more than adults think they do.
His ma had shooed him out of the room when the doctor came to look at his pa for the third time that week, but Jack had sneaked back and listened through the crack in the door.
After that, Jack would barely leave his pa's side.
I promise I'll get stronger and I'll teach you to be a man. A Mountie like me if you want. That's what his pa had told him. But his pa had lied. He didn't get stronger.
And then, one day, he was gone.
The day his father died, Jack's ma went on as if nothing happened. She just smiled. Kept going. Made dinner for everyone.
Jack never saw her cry that night. Or any time since then.
The day after his pa's death, his ma, had put on her only black dress, combed her hair neatly into a bun, and reminded her boys to stand up straight and not to dirty their clothes.
While she had greeted visitors, Jack, his hand concealing a pair of tiny scissors from his ma's sewing box, had approached the open casket.
Glancing around to make sure that no one was looking, he had snipped off one of the shiny gold buttons from his pa's uniform. He figured his ma would have said no if he asked her permission, and she'd be mad if she noticed. She had spent more than an hour the night before pressing the uniform and making sure every medal and detail was perfect.
But Jack wanted something. Something of his pa's to hold on to. Something to always keep close to him.
Jack's nervous little hand clenched the button as he went back to greeting visitors and then he quietly slipped it into his pocket.
He didn't notice when his ma, the last of the people to approach the casket before it was closed for the final time, gently took his pa's hand and placed it over his chest, covering the cut thread and the noticeable blank spot where the button should have been. Jack didn't see her wipe the tear from her eye before she took a deep breath and turned back to her grieving family.
Years later, as he hugged her goodbye on his way to the Academy, Jack wondered if his mother would cry if something happened to him.
Would she shed any tears if he came home injured like his pa had? Would she cry into a handkerchief if he came home in a simple pine box draped with the Canadian flag? Or would she remain stoic and go about her day as if the news of her oldest son's death was no more distressing than learning it might rain that day?
Jack never asked his mother why she didn't cry when her husband died. He knew that they had loved each other. Jack remembered how they would laugh with each other and how his mom always said that she fell in love with Jack's father from the moment she had met him.
But Jack never asked her to help him understand why she didn't cry when she had buried her beloved husband. Somehow it seemed too personal. Even for a son to ask his mother. And so he accepted her simple explanation that crying doesn't do anyone any good. He hoped that his mom had more feelings than that. But he wasn't truly sure, so he didn't ask.
Jack liked to think that he had a good memory for things. He certainly remembered every detail of his father's death. And the good times they had when they were fishing and camping. Laughing and telling stories. Hunting and doing chores.
But those were more recent memories than the memories of another death. If he had remembered the first death more clearly, rather than as if it were just a faded story or a wisp of a memory, he would have known why his mother never cried.
Jack had been just four years old at the time of the first death. His younger brother just two. At first, they were excited to have a baby sister. The idea seemed like fun, but after she was born, she was actually quite boring to the two boys.
And then, when the beautiful little girl, named Anne by her ecstatic parents, was diagnosed with a bad heart, she took so much of his parents' attention that Jack and his brother seemed to have been ignored for days at times.
His mother still fed them and bathed them. Made sure they had toys to play with. Tucked them in at night. But she no longer had time to read them bedtime stories or sing with them or make up games to occupy their days.
And then, when she was just five weeks old, pale fragile little Anne had died.
Jack's mother had cried for weeks. She still fed and bathed the boys. She made sure they had toys to play with and that they were tucked in at night. She now had the time to read to them, and sing to them, and make up games. But she didn't read, or sing, or play. She had the time. But not the energy. She walked around in a cloud of sadness, bursting into tears at any moment.
When the family walked down the street together and would pass a family with a young girl, Jack's ma would get weepy and then wipe the wetness from her eyes, hoping that no one would notice.
When she saw a parent scolding a child or complaining about how exhausting it was to have three or more children, Jack's mom would loudly exclaim that the parent didn't know how lucky he or she was. And then, she would burst into tears and hurry the family home again.
Four months after Anne's death, Jack's pa couldn't take it anymore. It tore him up every time he saw his wife mourning. At meals, she barely ate. During the day, she just wanted to sleep or stare out the window. She rarely spoke, and when she did it was with a sad weak voice. Her eyes never recovered from one bout of puffiness before she would burst into tears again.
Jack's father loved his wife more than he thought possible, but he didn't know how to fix her broken heart. And he couldn't let her go on this way.
When his wife walked in the bedroom and saw him packing a small suitcase, he sat her down on the bed.
"You need to stop this, Charlotte. We can't go on like this anymore. I'm taking the boys to Cape Fullerton for a few days. To see the ships. It will be an adventure for them. Cry all you want when we're gone. But when we come back, you need to be done. Crying never did anyone any good. I don't want the boys' only memory of Anne to be that she destroyed their ma. We loved her. But she's gone. I won't have her memory wipe out our happiness. The boys deserve better."
Charlotte knew that her husband, Thomas, was right. Crying never did anyone any good. She had cried for four months. Her daughter was still dead.
Five days later, when Jack, his brother, and his pa came back from Cape Fullerton, Jack's mom greeted them at the door with hugs and kisses. Jack never knew the real reason why his father had taken them on a trip to Cape Fullerton. That he had taken them away so his ma could cry alone until she had nothing left. All he remembered about the long weekend were the tall ships they had seen and how when they got back home, his mother had laughed and smiled and baked cookies with them.
He never saw her cry again and after a while, he forgot that she ever had. As he grew from a boy to a young adult, he never saw a tear from her. When other mothers cried as their sons left to join the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, Jack's ma simply hugged him goodbye, smiled, patted him on the back, and wished him luck.
Jack never knew of the countless times after his pa's death when his ma was on the verge of bursting into tears but then his pa's words came back to her.
Crying doesn't do anyone any good.
So she would push away her grief and go about her day with a smile for her boys.
Jack never knew that by not crying, his ma was trying to honor his pa. To not let the boys' happy memories of their father be destroyed over time by her endless grief.
He had never before guessed that the sometimes blurred ink on her letters was not from raindrops hitting the mail, but from a tear or two that had managed to escape her eyes as she had worried about her oldest son being a Mountie.
"Jack. You've missed almost all of breakfast. You'd better hurry if you want anything", Steven called out as he came back to the barracks and found Jack sitting on the cot looking at his most recent mail.
"I'll be out in a bit. I'm going to write my ma a letter," Jack answered as he saw the blurred ink and realized for the first time that the writing on the outside of the envelope was entirely clear and perfect. It was only a few words inside that were blurred.
The end