HEART OF THE PONDEROSA
By J7339
... the eyelids fluttered a few times and then slowly, the flame within those emerald green eyes was extinguished and the life in his body expired.
Those people who had been standing around the bed with expressions of anxiety, were now replaced with hollow beings. Nothing held them upright except the pure
feelings of sorrow and loss.
The silver haired man standing closest to him, once a strong and powerful man, now reduced to a frail and fragile old man within a few moments. When the heart of the man on the bed had stopped beating, the older man's spirit was also lost. There were no soothing words of comfort that would bring back the life of one he treasured, no touch that would make the pain go away.
To his left, a slightly younger man, about 34 years of age, felt as if he had been pierced by a spear directly through the heart. No passages of Shakespeare came to mind when he tried to find an answer of why him and not myself.
An even larger man stood to his left and though his body radiated muscle and power, despite all his physical attributes, he failed to bring back the life of the man he so cherished. His body slumped not from exhaustion, but from the pressure of having to go on with life without him. He didn't know if he could do it.
A small Cantonese man stood in the shadows of the doorway watching the scene played out before him. No herbal remedy existed in his hidden closet that would enable this situation to be changed into a happy one. Tears slowly slid down his face for the one he could almost call 'son'.
The next morning, a gust of wind blew down an empty Virginian City street. No one walked the street, no dog was barking at the horses in the livery stable. The doors to the saloon remained silent and for the remainder of the day, businesses in town would be closed out of respect.
The only sound that could be heard was that of the church bell tolling, reverberating that a great loss had been suffered by the entire community. However, the local graveyard remained empty.
A few miles away underneath a large tree beside a crystal clear blue lake, the citizens of Virginia City gathered.
A lonely pine box lay beside a freshly dug grave. Three men were seated a short distance from the hole, seated because their legs refused to hold them up at this most
saddest of occasions.
On top of the coffin laid flowers, a photograph of a young woman with curly brown hair and emerald green eyes. Beside it lay a detailed drawing of a proudly standing black and white pinto horse. A gun belt complete with two pearl handled pistols was draped across the pine box.
A minister stood before everyone and slowly read a sermon of praise and kind words about the person who lay silently before them in eternal rest. Today, even his own sermon could not bring solace to the family or anyone else in the congregation.
Roy Coffee stood silently in the background, beside him Deputy Clem. They would both miss those slow moving games of checkers in the jailhouse on a Sunday afternoon. And the fights they would occasionally need to break up at the 'Bucket of Blood' saloon. This town would be very quiet for a very long time to come.
A few young girls clung to each other near the giant tree, thinking about how the Saturday night dances would never be the same again.
Paul Martin, the local physician also standing amongst the crowd, felt incredible sorrow at the thought that his desperate efforts had not been enough to help this family he so often felt part of. And ruefully he would have to close the cover on his thickest medical file forever. This family would need a lot of support and understanding in the coming days and weeks ahead.
Grief would be an unwelcome visitor to each of them, assaulting their senses, causing them to relive great pain and suffering. The amount of time for each of them very different, as well as the emotions that would surface; sadness, hurt, loss and anger. Unfathomable was the only word that came to mind or immeasurable when trying to describe the impact yet to come.
If someone were to take a photograph of this scene, it would as though time stood still. No one moved. The only voice to be heard was that of the minister. Thoughts from the mourners were about the person who meant the most to each of them present today, who had finally gone to dwell in the house of the lord with his mother.
A few months later, a drifter happened to be walking past that same tree, when he came across two headstones laying side by side each other at the lake.
The first one read: Marie Cartwright - Loved Always by her family.
The second, had these few words carved on it:
Joseph Francis Cartwright
Loving son and brother
31st October 1842
to 12th November 1864
22 years – Gone to his Mother
Keep Him Safe O'Lord
For he is the 'Heart of the Ponderosa'.
The end
Jules6
Yeah I know you all hate me for posting this up – this is the first piece of Bonanza anything that I wrote about 18 years ago but have been too afraid to post it up
anywhere. It was hidden away for over two years before it was published. Please be gentle – I would never deliberately kill him off in any of my other fan-fic stories.
Anybody need a tissue ?
I am slowly reworking a few of my older stories and posting them up for people to read here. More to come yet.