CHAPTER ELEVEN

"How much longer's it gonna take ya ta git that hay pushed back?" Hoss whined as he stood looking up into the loft at his older brother. "We've got the rest o' the day off, in case ya forgot!"

"It's gonna take as long as it takes! Unless of course, you wanna heft yourself on up here and help!" Adam challenged.

Hoss shook his head, a negative response to Adam's suggestion as well as a means to toss off the fallen bits of hay that had landed atop his head. "I done my chores already. Joe's already in there takin' a bath! Now why don't you quit yer jawin' 'n' hurry up so we kin get cleaned up 'n' inta town afore the Sunday mornin' bells start ringin'!"

"Hey!" Adam wondered aloud. "Would you look at that?"

"Huh?" Hoss mumbled. "Whatja find?"

His eyes glowing with wonder, Adam brushed away a few small piles of hay while Hoss made his way up the ladder and settled in behind his brother in the northernmost corner of the loft.

"Well, I'll be . . . I plum forgot about that!" Hoss said, his voice thin and airy, filled with emotion and surprise.

"Me too," Adam agreed. "I wrote about it in my journal when I was . . . well, when I was 'William'. I remembered a beautiful, blonde-haired woman, but I could never see her face in my memory. And I remembered these."

The brothers, each lost in a private moment of their pasts, sat silently as they stared intently at the initials carved into the wooden wall in the loft. Adam's fingers traced the first two initials, and then followed with the rest: A.C., H.C., J.C., and M.C.

"I don't remember much about that day," Hoss said as he picked up small pieces of hay and absentmindedly tossed them aside. Memories of his childhood with Marie came rushing to him, each one bearing both happiness and a sense of loss. "Mostly, I remember you 'n' me worryin' that Pa'd be mad at Mamma fer lettin' us carve our initials in the wall."

Adam nodded, then grinned. "I remember Joe giggling when a sharp piece of hay stabbed you in the rump . . . and I remember what Marie said."

"What'd she say, Adam?" Hoss asked, tossing yet another scrap of hay.

"She said that you, Joe, and I were forever joined together by Pa. Said she wanted a way to be connected with you and me, even though she wasn't our real mother." Adam paused, a warmth enveloping him, a mother's hug from years ago. He cleared his throat. "She watched, with that patient smile that always lit her face, while we each carved our initials in the wall. Mamma wanted us to always remember that we could count on each other for anything, anytime, anyplace . . . She did that for me, Hoss," Adam said, his voice catching as he once again traced Marie's initials on the wall.

"What'dya mean, she did it for you?" Hoss asked.

Hoss watched Adam rest himself back against the wall, knees raised, hands fiddling with a long stick of straw. His face faded to a far-away place, his eyes staring at the straw as it moved from finger to finger. He was watching a vision from the past as if it were happening in that moment.

"I know you don't remember, Hoss. I . . . Well, I'm ashamed to say, I wasn't all that nice to Marie for quite some time. I resented her coming here, taking charge of you when I was . . . I was supposed to be taking care of you."

"I don't understand, Adam. You're my brother. Marie was . . . she was my mamma."

Adam pursed his lips and clenched his jaw as he snapped the straw in half and tossed it away into the pile. Nothing to occupy his hands brought a swell of insecurity. He pinched the bridge of his nose and then swiped his hand down his face, over his mouth and off his chin.

His gestures were all too familiar to Hoss, and he empathized with Adam's struggle. "Adam, you don't hafta . . ."

"It's all right, Hoss," Adam said. "You should know . . . I just don't want to bring up anything that might cause you pain."

Hoss furrowed his eyebrows and stared for a moment at the initials in the wall. "I'd like ta hear it, Adam, but only if you wanna tell me."

Adam smiled at his brother, a half-lipped smile that opened his dimple and put a twinkle in his eyes.

Hoss listened as Adam took him back to a small cabin built along one of the many trails heading west. The cabin was a ramshackle pioneer way station, a place to rest and meet up with other wagon trains filled with people just like the Cartwrights, dreaming of a home in the new frontier. But the much anticipated way station quickly became the place where tragedy would strike, taking the life of Inger Cartwright, Hoss's mother.

" 'Take care of your brother, Adam' was the last thing she said to me," Adam recalled bitter sweetly. "You have to remember, Hoss, she'd been my mother for over a year. The only mother I'd ever known. I loved her. Very much. And she left you in my charge. At least that was my six-year-old way of interpreting what she'd said."

Hoss's stillness garnered Adam's attention. The hurt and wistful sadness in his younger brother's eyes wrenched his heart and the silence that followed hung heavily in the cool barn air.

"I don't think she meant it that way, Adam," Hoss ssaid. "But when a fella's that little, I kin see how ya'd take it that way." Hoss, shoulders slumped, tossed aside a handful of hay. "My mother was your mamma 'n' then Little Joe's mother was Mamma to us all."

Scooping straw into his palm, Adam pulled out a select piece and busied his hands once again. "You're right, Hoss. But there's more to it. You see, the men on the wagon train were busy all day. Often, even into the night. Pa was their leader, and you know Pa! Naturally, he was always available to help anyone who needed it. I knew that . . . and I respected that. So I made it my responsibility to take care of you and me so Pa could be there for the others. And when we arrived at our destination, Pa was weighed down with the struggle to build the Ponderosa, so I took on all that I was capable of doing to help. I guess I didn't look at myself as Ben Cartwright's child, but as Ben Cartwright's assistant."

Hoss leaned further into the wall, extending his long legs out in front of him. "Adam . . . Are you sayin' that Pa wasn't around fer us?"

Adam chuckled nervously at his brother's confusion. "Guess I'm not explaining it well. Pa was busy, never doubt that. And there were times when I wished he'd be home more often." He paused, sorting through the thoughts of a young boy and trying to put them into the words of a grown man. "It's not that he wasn't there for us; it was more that I was determined to fool him into thinking we didn't need him. And when he brought Marie home, I was bound and determined that I'd still be the person that Pa counted on. So, I pushed Marie away and made it obvious . . . painfully obvious, I'm afraid, that I was to take care of you and she was not needed . . . or wanted."

Hoss heard the catch in Adam's voice and his heart ached for the brother he'd known and the brother Adam had become.

"And that selfishness extended to Pa as well. If Pa had a problem, I made it known to Marie that he should come to me and not her."

Hoss looked down at his hands folded in his lap. After all these years and the tragic death of Marie, he could still hear resentment ringing in Adam's words. Resentment that thrived right alongside more guilt than any boy or man should be expected to bear.

"Then, Little Joe came along. Now, I had to share Pa's free time with you, Marie, and a baby. A baby that I thought I should be in charge of, just as I'd been with you . . . I must have made her life miserable!" Adam admitted as his eyes welled with tears.

The wind outside pushed against the barn, making the loft floor creak and moan as the horses below reacted with blows and knickers. Adam and Hoss sat in silence as a gamut of memories painted portraits in their minds. It was Adam who broke the lingering stillness.

"I remember when Joe was about eighteen-months-old. He'd had a rather fitful day, as I recall. And you had a cold, a bad one, and Marie had spent the day fussing over you. I came inside after doing the last of my chores and Marie was writing in her journal."

"I didn't know Mamma kept journals!" Hoss exclaimed.

"Only the one," Adam replied. "You know Pa has always kept them. She let him talk her into trying one, but it didn't suit her fancy. How did she put it . . . 'I keep the memories in my heart and my heart will share them with my mind whenever I ask it to'."

Adam smiled as he recalled her lilting voice. "Anyway, there she was, writing in her journal about your cold and Joe's latest escapades. Pa walked in, exhausted from a hard day. After kissing Marie, hugging you, asking about your fever, and having a brief tickling war with Joe, he looked at me and reminded me that I'd forgotten to oil the hinges on the barn door."

The anguish on Adam's face nearly broke Hoss's heart; the stoic Adam Cartwright, so distraught over something that had happened so long ago. Hoss wanted nothing more than to reach out to his brother.

"So," Adam continued as he peeled the straw into sections, "I stormed out of the house and into the barn and straight up here into what I thought would be the privacy of the loft."

Hoss sat forward, pulling his knees toward his chest. "What happened?"

"A few minutes later, Marie came out to the barn. She had Joe on her hip and you following right alongside her. She called me over to the ladder and handed Joe up to me." Adam closed his eyes and in the darkness, felt the weight of baby Joe in his arms, the smell of his soft, thick hair and the softness of his skin. "I remember thinking she was crazy for letting a little baby come into the loft. Then she helped you get up and then she climbed up herself!"

"Inta the loft?" Hoss asked, his eyes big as saucers. "Mamma?"

"That's what I said! Marie climbed up, too. I was sitting right here in the corner, holding Joe, and you were right there beside me." Adam touched his thigh, remembering a young Hoss as he scooted tightly next to him. "She crawled over and pulled a pocketknife out of her dress pocket! I tell you, the things that ran through my eleven-year-old brain would shock the men in the Nevada State Prison!"

Hoss chuckled and leaned closer to Adam, anxious for the rest of the tale.

"She set the knife down, reached for Joe, and told me to pick up the knife and open it." Adam shook his head as he reached for another handful of hay. "She said Pa was always writing things down so he'd never forget them, so maybe we needed to do the same thing. She told me to carve my initials into the wall. I gotta tell ya, Hoss, I thought maybe she'd lost her mind! The look on my face must have said exactly what I was thinking because she said Pa would never need to know."

The confusion on Hoss's face was reminiscent of Adam's face all those years ago.

"As I carved my initials, you scooted up against Marie so close you nearly sat on top of her! Guess you were worrying about what Pa would think too."

"The barn was brand, spankin' new about then, wasn't it?" Hoss asked. "Pa wouldn'tve been too happy about havin' the walls carved up, that's fer shore!"

"That's right. Anyway, as I carved, she told me that if, like Pa said, writing something down meant it was there forever, then she wanted our initials next to hers on this wall. When I was finished with mine, she had me hold your hand to help you carve yours."

"I don't remember that, Adam . . . Wish I did."

Adam smiled. "Then you and I both added Joe's. She handed Joe to me so she could do hers and when she asked where she should put them, I told her at the top, above mine. She thought about it for a minute, then she said 'no'. Said Pa's sons should always come first, before her, no matter what . . . . That her initials should be at the bottom. A.C., H.C., J.C., M.C. She did that for me, Hoss, so that anytime I doubted things, I could come out here and look at this wall. Then I'd know she wouldn't come between Pa and me."