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Eclipse
Asher
After the war, I considered not returning to the Ponderosa; the world had turned upside down—at least my world had—and I no longer knew where I belonged. But I didn't belong anywhere else so I returned home and found that except for a few families suffering the loss of a son or a cousin or a husband, things in Virginia City were basically the same. And at home, my father had gotten a bit grayer, my brother Hoss, a bit heavier and Joe, a bit more confident in his abilities. I slid back into my position in my family, almost as if I was playing a part; life is odd that way. Often times we just slip into a role and play it to perfection.
And soon after I was home, I fell in love with a beautiful, young woman, married her, bedded her, and a year later had a son. I named him Asher after a captain under whom I served, Captain Bracewell Asher. He was brave and noble and always led the charge into the field. One rainy day, he fell on the battlefield and during the retreat, I dragged him back with me, firing wildly at the enemy the whole time. Once we were behind the lines, I tried to stay the bleeding until a medic could treat him but he died in my arms as we sat in the mud that became scarlet with his blood. And of all the deaths during the war, his affected me the most as he clasped my arm and thanked me. He had been a great man. After his death, I was elected captain by the men—what they call a brevet rank. No pay increase but all the responsibility. Being captain, shouldering the responsibilities, made me admire him even more and deeper mourn his loss.
Two years after our marriage. my wife died and although I was heartbroken, it seemed as if I had developed callouses from all the carnage during the war and couldn't be hurt to an extreme degree. I could only feel so much pain and no more, but the impenetrable darkness that had fallen on me during the last years of the war descended again. After a while, I failed to notice the veil that had fallen over my eyes and turned the world gray. But life never remains the same—whether that's good or bad depends on where you are, I suppose.
I was a widower and Mrs. Chandler a widow. She had already seen me at my lowest point, so I suppose that's why Mrs. Chandler accepted my marriage proposal—that and the fact that since her husband had died, she had struggled. Although I don't remember her ever complaining but I had overheard the women in church talking about her endurance and selfless suffering.
Mrs. Chandler's husband, Clifton, was a farmer—at least he tried to be. But he had bought a few acres that grew nothing but scrub brush. He had bought it during the rainy season when water flowed but come summer, there was nothing but dust and dirt. I would imagine that Mrs. Chandler often beat a scorpion with her broom and brushed spiders out of her house where she crushed them under her heel.
Clifton had returned to Virginia City a few months before me. One night he came down with a bloody flux and the doctor worried about cholera. Since there was a stagnant pond on their property after the rains, it was possible. The people of Virginia City reasoned along the same lines and no one would visit to bring a dish to help out as was common among neighbors. Nevertheless, if it was cholera, Mrs. Chandler never fell to it and after Clifton quickly died, he was just as quickly buried under his own infertile ground. Mrs. Chandler moved into town and soon became a common sight as she delivered needlework goods, dresses with flounces and hand-tatted lace, to patrons of her little shop in the front of the small house she leased at the edge of town.
So since my wife had died three years earlier and with a 5-year-old son on my hands, I found I couldn't raise him alone; I don't know how my father had accomplished it, raising me from an infant to my son's age without a wife to help. He claims he always found help in a kindly landlady or a woman who would watch me while he worked, but he admitted that there had been times when I was older that he had to leave me alone in a rented room and trust I had sense enough to mind him not to light a fire in the oven or open the door to anyone but him.
"Adam," my father said the night I told him that I had proposed to Mrs. Chandler, "she's a lovely woman—quite lovely and I have to admit I've admired her myself and questioned why she was still unmarried, but are you sure this is what you want? That she's what you want?"
"Yes. I'm sure. I had thought about it many times before I even started courting her."
"Is this just because of Asher? Do you think he needs a mother?"
"Yes. And I…" I chuckled, not out of amusement but from discomfort, and my father looked at me, puzzled. "Well, Pa, I don't want to be alone the rest of my life and I'm tired of an empty bed." He started to protest, to tell me that he understood but that needing a woman to relieve my needs was a poor reason but I never gave him a chance. I put up my hand. "I know, Pa, I know. You're unmarried, have been since Joe was young, and get by fine. But we're all grown—you're not responsible for us-and you have Hop Sing to cook and keep house and you have us—Joe and his family, Hoss and his and now Ash and me. And if you find the need of a woman…" My father looked uncomfortable as we both knew who he sought when his blood heated, so I dropped that argument. "Pa, I want a family and home of my own—for Asher and me to move out to our own house again, and since…"
I stopped. I still couldn't talk about my wife's death even after three years. Asher had caught measles—an epidemic had hit Virginia City and Doc Martin was run ragged tending to the sick; the whole town was quarantined with signs at the edges of town warning people not to enter and Sheriff Coffee and Clem Foster, his deputy did their best to prevent those who were terrified of disease from leaving. Asher, who was almost two at the time, recovered relatively quickly. Except for the identifying red spots, within a week my son was his laughing, alert self. But then my wife who had cared for her sick son came down with it and died of a raging fever within another week. I don't know how things like that happen. Pa says it's God's will but if it is, I'm tempted to tell Him to kiss my ass.
"Adam, you have all of us to help you in raising Asher. Millie's volunteered to raise him with their two boys if you need a break for a few months or even longer. And Hoss is a great father—not to say you're not a good father…"
I stood up then. "Pa, I'm marrying Mrs. Chandler. I asked her and she accepted. We agreed on a small wedding next Friday, here if it's all right, with just you and the family. All's settled between the two of us." And I went upstairs. Only Asher and I slept upstairs. Pa had trouble negotiating the stairs; his back had gotten so bad that he used a cane to get about and so slept in the downstairs bedroom. Every time I looked at my father, I saw myself in another 25 years. Except I would be alone but for a son who would, I was sure, want nothing to do with me. Pa was wrong; I wasn't a good father and every day, I made one mistake after another. But I hoped, with Mrs. Chandler's help, my son could be salvaged from my inept parenting.
Oh, I was a wonderful uncle, indulgent and caring and Joe's daughter, Bethy, was my love. But when it came to Asher, I seemed to have no patience. Maybe I expected more from him, held him to higher standards or maybe, and I am ashamed to say this, I felt resentment toward my son. It was while my wife was nursing him through the measles that she caught it and soon died—but I think I told you that. It wasn't Asher's fault, I know, but I missed my wife so much at that point that I only felt half alive. I do love Asher and I tried to be patient and good but he knew—he felt my indifference. I don't know how my father could have loved me—I killed my mother by being born. One life for another. It seems a fair trade but it's not; life's scales can't be balanced that way.
And Mrs. Chandler, having no children of her own, embraced the idea of a child, even if it was my son who tended to sulk and pout and demand his own way. My father said it's because I give in to my son too much, don't make him mind, but he is a boy without a mother. But Mrs. Chandler could coax Asher out of a bad mood. One Sunday afternoon, the day being bright and full of spring's promise, my son helped her in her small kitchen, standing on a chair and cutting star-shapes out of rolled cookie dough with a metal form. I sat in her parlor—neat and tidy and bearing no marks of a man's former presence-and listened to their chatter and Asher's giggle and my heart rested. It was that day I decided that perhaps Mrs. Chandler would make a good mother for Asher; she may have had nothing in common with me except that her husband had also fought in the war, have had nothing to say to me, couldn't even bring herself to call me by my Christian name, but she seemed to love my son and he loved her and that, I was sure, was what both he and I needed. If Mrs. Chandler needed more, she didn't say.
So that night after I told my father about my upcoming marriage, I lay on my bed trying to sleep but I couldn't. I'd drop off but within an hour I was awake again, wondering if I had made a mistake asking Mrs. Chandler to marry me. We didn't love each other but then I wasn't looking for love anymore. I had never even kissed her except for the peck on the cheek when she accepted my awkward proposal; I felt a kiss was called for on such an occasion—a requirement. And even then she had dropped her eyes and looked down. I sensed she was afraid for some reason and I found that her reticence provoked a desire to overwhelm her, to show my dominance through sexual subjugation but I held myself in check; I couldn't understand this newly aroused yearning. Mrs. Chandler had every right to be to be afraid, both of me and her situation—she had conceded to marry me and by doing so, she was joining her fate with mine and it was an unsure fate at that. She had no idea what lay ahead.