NOW:
In the days that followed his conversation with Adam, Ben spent increasingly more time alone.
He wanted to be alone. Away from the three sons who shared his home and always seemed to be secretly appraising him, their eyes glistening with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as they anxiously awaited another angry tirade that never came.
What was it he had told his children when they had been tantruming young boys? If you cannot be kind then do not expect others to remain around you. These warning words had always come just before he had sent his sons to their respective rooms. The message behind the action was clear. If you could not be forgiving or kind, then remove yourself. It is not up to others to soothe your discontent, or placate your bad moods. It's up to you to change them. This was a lesson he had been careful to teach each of his sons that lately he had seemed to forget himself.
Taking Adam's advice, he had apologized to Jamie; then, leaving his youngest son in the care of his two older brothers, Ben had packed his saddle bags with supplies and took his leave of the ranch house.
He rode without intention of where he and Buck would end up. Eventually, when they arrived at a particularly isolated spread of Ponderosa land, he did stop. Setting up camp in a small clearing, he spent his days meandering the immediate landscape and his nights beneath a grand congregation of beaming, bright stars. In conjunction with his campfire, they illuminated his thoughts and fears, casting a grim light on his behavior toward and beliefs about his oldest son.
It was impossible not to think of Adam out here, among the wilderness and the stars. While he refused to entertain speculation about his travels in recent years—where his son had been, who he had been chasing, or the veritable safety of his arduous job—the distant memories of their travels west seemed suddenly so clear and close. How many nights in his son's early years had they sat together beneath stars such as this? Times when Ben had held his boy so close, never dreaming of a day when he would be willing to let him go.
It's you and me, he always whispered, words for only he and his baby son to hear. You and me against this land and difficulties lay ahead. We're partners in this endeavor; whatever we find at the end of this long, arduous road will be ours to share.
It had been a very long and difficult road, especially in the beginning. Adam had been a colicky baby; he had cried so much the first year of his life, always wanting to be held, always needing so much from the only parent he had left. Maybe it was because of this that Ben grew accustomed to holding onto Adam tightly and keeping him close early on. He had wanted him close, needed him close, his son the only remaining evidence of the woman who he had once loved so deeply. A woman who their beautiful boy would never know as a tangible being. She would exist only in stories, a singular picture, and a music box—all things Ben would be late to share with her son.
Everything had been so painful back then. Each moment heart wrenchingly bittersweet. He had loved his wife and he adored their son, but to have his son had always meant losing his wife. It was a great tragedy that both would never be allowed to live at the same time.
He could have hated his son for the loss of his wife; he could have held Adam accountable for Elizabeth's death. People would not have judged him for rejecting a child that had come into the world under such circumstances; it was not an uncommon occurrence for a man who suddenly found himself without a wife to abandon their child, the pain of keeping it just too much to endure.
Shamefully, he had to admit, if only to himself, he too had thought of doing such a thing. Not abandoning his boy outright, rather finding a family with which he would live. His older brother, John, and his wife, had extended a gracious offer: if Ben were to bring his baby to Ohio, they would raise him alongside their son, William. Adam could be told he was their own, or the truth; the choice was up to Ben. But it was not until the offer had been extended that Ben realized he had no choice to make, because from the very beginning, he had not been capable of letting his son go.
John called him foolish for keeping his child, selfish for setting out on such a difficult journey with his tiny son in tow. If he wanted to travel west, did it not make more sense for him to do so alone? He could send for his son after, protecting his baby from the trials and tribulations of such a tumultuous journey. Whether it was ultimately for better or worse, Ben refused to heed the suggestions, and he and Adam had set out together and alone.
Those first few years had been the most stressful and difficult. Ben had learned to rely on his son early on, the neediness of his child propelling him ever forward, giving him reason to take step after step.
Adam had uttered his first word clenched in the lap of his father whilst they sat atop the front of the covered wagon. Their bodies swaying beneath a darkening sky as their horses trudged along, pulling them closer and closer to their still elusive goal. He had been the only person to hear his son speak, this word that was spoken so forcefully and deliberately as he squirmed restlessly beneath his father's grip.
Stop.
Adam could have picked any word to be his first, but that was the one he had chosen. His second word had quickly followed his first—although not on the same day. No was another word of protest he had added to his sparse lexicon. And, suddenly, there it was, the beginning of the battle of wills between father and son that would span years.
Stop. No.
The duo was repeated endlessly in the dim light of a boarding house where Adam finally took his first steps. Afraid of the splinters in floorboards and sharp edges of the furniture that seemed to fill up all the floor space of the small room, Ben had been hesitant to allow his son to stand on his own. He was so afraid of how a fall could hurt. But Adam had been determined to pull away as he took those first few shaky steps.
And so, Adam learned to walk, and he learned to run shortly after that. With each step forward his son took, Ben seemed to linger behind him, always watching, always waiting to pull him back from unforeseen danger, always holding on.
Adam was three when he declared he did not want to be held quite so close, protectively between his father's arms and chest. He was four when he ceased wanting to sit on his father's lap. He was not a baby, he had said. He wanted to sit on his own. It was an assertion that whether Adam remembered or not was prompted by his cousin Will's influence. It would be the first change one cousin would invoke the other to make, but it would not be the last.
Even as tiny children, Adam and Will had not gotten on well. The differences of their personalities, or the differences of those of their fathers had rendered such a thing difficult, if not downright impossible. John and Ben were as different as the sun and moon, the women they had loved even more so. Elizabeth had softened Ben's gruff edges; John's wife had sharpened his instead. She was a vengeful woman, terse, commanding, and impossible to please. She looked upon her son, hatred shining in her emerald eyes. Adam had won her over with his quiet demeanor and politeness, both qualities that could be attributed to his shyness, no doubt. For a boy who wanted so badly to pull away from his father and explore out on an open trail, the vastness of the city made him nervous, uncertain, and clingy.
The time they had spent in Ohio with John's family had been both a burden and a gift. A gift, because it was the last time Ben would see John alive, and a burden because of all the other things he would witness that he would forever wish would have remained unseen. John was not the father he could have been; he did not rear his son with a forgiving hand.
It was silly the things people believed about others. In comparing the brothers, most had believed John's stability was more favorable for raising children, and there were others who called Ben selfish for not allowing his son to be raised by someone whose income and house was established and wife was alive. The truth would become a lonely cross for Ben to bear.
Years later, he would wonder if Adam remembered his uncle or aunt, how the latter had acted toward Will or how the former had acted toward him. He would ask Adam eventually when the fateful telegraph had arrived, notifying the family of Will's supposed death. Adam had declined recalling anything of value, citing his youth at the time, but in eyes lurked another response, a hint of the dark memories he never dared speak of. Maybe if they had spoken of it then, things would have been different. Maybe they could have understood each other's reactions to what was to come—or maybe it would have made things a lot worse. Just like things in Ohio had been worse. Worse than Ben could have ever imagined. Worse than anything Adam had ever been exposed to before.
Ben would always look back at that time and be overcome by shame and relief. Had he been a weaker man when his first son had been born then Adam would have been forced to endure the childhood Will had. Had he been a stronger man then he would have found a way to help Will much earlier than he eventually did. When his nephew was still a boy and had room to grow into something other than what he had. Instead, continuing west, he had left his nephew behind, resigning himself to holding Adam a little closer and tighter than ever before.
Stop. Looking up at the stars above him, Ben swore he could hear the echo of his son's words long passed. No.
Their memories of Ohio faded with distance and time, soothing any lingering ill feelings born from the visit. Adam bounced back from the experience quickly, once again repeating his first words, each time with renewed force and determination as he struggled to pull further and further from his father's grasp. Even so, Ben found himself uneager to let go, his concern for his nephew always enduring in the back of his mind. Often, he would find himself wishing he had done more for Will. But it was not right for a man to take a child away from his parents, just because they decided upon more rigid parenting practices than he thought acceptable. Besides, how John dealt with Will was nothing in comparison to how their father had once dealt with them—this thought was a poor excuse and an even worse comfort.
Time ticked past and brought with it more change. With Inger and Hoss, Ben and Adam's family grew and then shrank. They settled upon the Ponderosa and their family grew to include Marie and then Joe, and then with Marie's death it shrank once more. As his eldest son needed him less and less, Ben seemed to rely on Adam more and more. His enduring presence at his father's side became not unlike a talisman.
Adam was and would always serve as a propelling influence for Ben, his life the very reason his father's own had been so successful. Adam's own success and sparse failures began to serve as proof of something. He had been born to a father whose grandiose dreams required hardship and sacrifice. He had not had much early on, and he would experience more losses in his formative years than any child should. But somehow, he had endured the traumas gracefully; he had emerged articulate, compassionate, capable, and strong. He had weathered his father's dream unafraid to conceive of his own.
The year Ben learned of his brother's death and Will's disappearance, was the same one Adam first requested to be allowed to attend college. He had been fifteen then, not too far from the age of which a young man would embark on such scholastic pursuits, but word of John's death and Will's unknown status had rendered Ben incapable of allowing it. Not with the memories of John and Will and Ohio becoming suddenly unearthed, lingering too close to be ignored. No. He needed to keep Adam close; he needed to know where his son was while he so desperately searched for that of his brother.
It was a search that would be fruitless in the end, and fully abandoned the subsequent fall when Adam's request for further schooling had been voiced once more. Ben had looked at his son then, a boy who was somehow both so young and old. With so much life experience already behind him, he had so much more life to live, and like his father before him, he had grand plans for the future.
Adam wanted to be an engineer, something he had thought at length about. He had been so articulate and thoughtful when making his argument to learn this new skill for the benefit of them all that Ben had no choice but to agree. And so, suddenly, a new standard was set—a precedence that would exist alongside their consistent battle of wills—with all the things Ben had not been able to provide his son early on in life, as Adam moved into adulthood, there were very few wants Ben would dare refuse him.
Loosening his grip, ever-so-slightly, he had sent Adam back East where he could obtain a degree of higher learning whilst still under the protection of family—someone who could be trusted. He arranged for Adam to stay with Elizabeth's father. Though the elder man was fond of drink, there was no liquor strong enough to compete with the love he held for his daughter's son.
Leaving home, Adam went to college still displaying hints of a boy, but when he came back there was no denying he had become a man. Still, he returned to his father's rules and house, seemingly content to allow Ben to hold on to him forever. It was not the most prevalent of arrangements, Ben always knew that. His love for and expectations of his sons were not to be rivaled, everyone was aware of that. The Ponderosa was a family operation; its growth and needs declared the closeness and unity of a father and his adult sons necessary, as strange as it was sometimes perceived as by an outside eye. Did they not want wives, children, houses of their own? When people asked such questions, Ben was always careful with his reply. Of course, they did, he would say, but only if the time was right.
More years passed, each coming and going at a maddening speed. Each marked by more battle of wills between him and Adam, something that, back then, was not looked upon as a bad thing. There had been a time when their disagreements were good—as tense as they could sometimes be. With their differing opinions they forced each other to grow. Adam forced his father forward and into the future with his talk of windmills, mining, and improvements to streamline and foster growth in their timber operation. And with his skepticism and converse opinions, Ben made Adam stronge. Determined. Capable of explaining or defending his actions and opinions to even the most defeatist of men.
It was not until his son's thirty-forth birthday that Ben noticed changes in his oldest son's demeanor. Ever-so-slight at first, they grew over time as Adam's mood shifted, his tolerance of his father's lingering grip following suit. The rules that had long governed their interactions had begun changing. Everything became a struggle. A fight. Not a debate meant to benefit and strengthen both parties, rather words said with the intention to wound.
Ohio, Ben would sometimes think, those old, ugly memories rushing back, as he helplessly watched his son become more distant, aloof, and restless, the cracking in his once congenial demeanor only hinting at the turmoil lurking beneath. It was obvious Adam was longing for something; searching for something; struggling with something. He had been joyful, exuberant, and satisfied until the moment he was not. Until the life he had built alongside his father ceased to appease him, and he shifted his focus to things that would frequently lead him away from home.
Cattle drives and business travel to San Francisco. A winter spent back East with his mother's father. A handful of women he had courted, one right after the other to distract himself, but from what Ben did not know. Still, at the end of each of his escapades, Adam always returned, back to the home he had built with his family, back to a father who had no intention of ever letting him go.
Then, out of seemingly nowhere, came Adam's relationship with Laura Dayton, his undeniable fondness for her daughter Peggy. While his friendship with the little girl blossomed, he could not seem to decide what to do with her mother. He did not seem to know whether he wanted her as his fiancé or friend. He never once admitted to courting her; he never owned up to any feelings he had. The closest verification Ben ever received regarding his son's intentions toward the widowed woman was an irritated, I don't know. For such a simple statement, it said more than anything else could have.
If Adam did not know how he felt about Laura Dayton, then that was as good of an indication of absence of feelings as any, because if he had loved her then he would have been certain of everything of which he seemed so afraid. He would not have doubted his intentions. He would not have hesitated. He would have been sure.
And as time unfolded, it proved that Adam was sure—just not about the feelings most people had expected. He did not want to marry Laura, at least not after impulsively asking her and having her abruptly decline. It was good she declined, because it gave Adam an opportunity to take a step back and look upon his feelings and the situation clearly. He was neither sad nor particularly upset that he had been rejected. In fact, he seemed relieved. It was a feeling that, for the briefest of moments, Ben allowed himself to share. Then Will had begun to express interest in Laura, and things between Ben and his eldest son were destined to be forever changed.
No, Ben thought, his gaze slipping from the stars above to settle upon the flames of the campfire. He had not come out here to think of Will. This trip had been designated for memories of someone else. But it was impossible to think about Adam leaving home without considering the role Will had played. Or what he himself had or had not done to prevent the situation from deteriorating.
If he had been bothered or intimidated by his cousin's sudden appearance, Adam had given no overt indication. He accepted Will's presence in the family without comment or complaint. It was not until Will began to strike up a friendship with Laura and Peggy Dayton that things between the cousins began to sour.
Adam had not wanted to marry Laura, that much was clear. However, what had changed between the time she had announced her intention to move to San Francisco and the evening Adam had come home engaged to her seemed destined to remain a mystery. There had been an accident, involving the thoroughfare and the drunken Bonner Brothers, that much was known. Adam had been impossibly tightlipped on further details.
Though flabbergasted, Ben had tried to be happy for his son. He had really tried, but something about the way things had unfolded had seemed inexplicably wrong. He could not help thinking of Ohio again, all the things Adam had seen and experienced but denied remembering. He could not help wondering if, on some unconscious level, his son did remember some of what took place back then, and if that was why he had interjected himself, putting an end to Will's building interest in Laura.
Will was not fit for marriage, that was obvious from the start. Then again, neither was Adam. This was something it pained Ben to think, although denying something never stopped it from being true. It was his son's behavior that hinted at such a sorrowful thing.
In the months that he spent betrothed to Laura, Adam refused to set a wedding date. He missed their engagement party. He went days without looking in on her and Peggy, choosing instead to run away to San Francisco for a trip that was hardly needed. He was still struggling with something—that much was perfectly clear. But what exactly, Ben would never be certain.
Whatever it was he seemed to work it out on his own. Adam returned from San Francisco wanting not only to set the wedding date but also wanting to build Laura a house. In hindsight, he had seemed more excited about the prospect of the house than he did the marriage, declaring he wanted to build it alone. He wanted to do everything on his own. It was the ultimate assertion of independence to a father who was still intended to hold on to him if by only the thinnest of threads.
Then came the fateful afternoon, the horrendous fall that injured Adam's back and took the use of his legs. It was not a matter of when Adam would walk again, it was if.
At thirty-five Adam had learned to walk again, and there had been so much more at stake the second time around. Ben looked upon the house that they shared, each corner of their furniture suddenly seeming too sharp, each floorboard a bit too splintered and hard. No one could fault him for being worried, for adjusting his grip upon his injured son and looking upon him the way he had not in years, as though he was that toddler again, always fighting for independence, a chance to be allowed to stand on his own before the time was exactly right.
A subsequent fall was bound to be tragic—even the doctor had warned them of that—and it was not as though Adam's recovery could unfold without another. In order to learn to walk, one must fall. Adam had to learn how to hold himself upright again, to stand tall and erect on muscles which protested the tiniest of movements. Everything hurt him, it seemed. The repetitive exercises. Being forced to stand up while his weight was supported by the arms of another. Being forced to sit down. The only way for him to improve was to endure more and more pain. He had put on a good face for Laura and Peggy during the day, but it was not until the nights that his efficient mask would begin to slip.
The nights were full of brutal spasms and pain, stifled groans, and silent tears. Adam was strong, there was no denying that. But no one was that strong. It was during those prolonged nights Ben became accustomed to holding his son close. Adam had needed so much from him then, constant attention and care, protection and support, all things his father so readily gave, each seeming to break his son's spirit a little more. Things were changing between them; they both knew that. Whatever reality they were entering into was not going to be the same one they had once known.
For the first time in his life, Adam had looked at his father's helping hands with not just impatience but scorn, and for the first time in a very long time, Ben found himself unwilling to let his son go. It did not matter what Adam wanted; what he needed took precedence over all else.
Then more change had come. More struggle. Adam stood and walked, abruptly stepping aside so that Will and Laura could marry, something which had taken the rest of the Cartwright family by surprise. Ben had wanted to be happy, but he was just so damn confused. He would never fully understand the events that had led Adam to do such a thing. His son would never volunteer any information on why or how he had come to such a decision outside of a terse, "Will and Laura, they're in love." The words were an admission of sorts, at least to Ben. They proved his previous belief about Adam wanting to come in between Laura and Will wrong. But if that had not been the problem, then what was?
Will and Laura certainly seemed happy, at least at first. Adam was the one his father could not cease worrying about. Though his back eventually healed, it was his mood that seemed to atrophy. In an odd way, he seemed to regress. Speaking to him was like dealing with an aggrieved teen. He was often angry, his mood impenetrable by outside forces. He was unhappy, that much was obvious to anyone who came across him. What remained elusive was why.
As Adam's father, the man who had stood by his side bolstering him while he grew and flourished for so many years, Ben certainly had his fair share of theories. The first had to do with Adam's age, the second with the love he had not meant to feel for Peggy Dayton, and the third were his own memories of Ohio. Had the past caught up with Adam? Leaving him burdened with memories too dark and cumbersome to ignore?
Ben would never truly know, because Adam refused to speak of anything of value. Instead, he clung to his friendship with Peggy. To his building frustration and discontent. To the negative feeling attached to all things he was unwilling or unable to speak about. Ben found that the very first words Adam had spoken suddenly became the ones he himself so often imported when thinking about his eldest son.
He wanted so badly to say: No, you did not want to marry Laura. Stop acting like you did. No, it is not appropriate for you to keep company with a child. Stop pretending it is. No, you are not a good influence on Peggy—at least not anymore, not right now. Maybe you could have been, but something deep inside of you is preventing you from seeing clearly. Perhaps it's the feelings you want so badly to dismiss and ignore, but things do not get better just because you think they should. Difficulties never pass until they've finally taught you what you needed to learn. Stop running away from whatever this lesson is. Feel your feelings, so they can pass and you can move forward from where you've become stuck.
Then came Laura's tragic death. Her body had been a horrendous discovery, in more ways than one. Adam seemed to change further after that. Then came the day Laura's diary was shared among the town; a book that contained an alluring tale full of romance, longing and deception. Adam's skepticism of Will seemed to grow at a staggering pace as he avoided Ben completely.
He and Adam should have talked about everything back then—Laura's death, what was best for Peggy, the scandalous diary, Will, and Ohio—instead they spoke about nothing. Maybe if they had spoken then things would be different. Adam would have been able to articulate his skepticism of Will, or at least understood it. Ben would have been able to explain his need to protect his nephew in the ways he had once failed to.
Back then, he had been too quick to look past Will's shortcomings and faults. Now it was all time had allowed him to see. Alongside Will's mistakes stood his own and Adam's. None of them were innocent in how things had turned out. Each of them had been so limited to their own perspectives that they could not begin to understand any other. They were all too focused on their own goals to think of that of the greater good. Adam had wanted Peggy. Will had wanted nothing. And Ben had wanted both his son and his nephew to do anything other than what they did.
Everything had unfolded at a maddening rate, each event leading to the next, each coming too quickly to think about or negotiate successfully. And when it had finally been all over, it had been just that: over. It had all been over. The life Ben had known was left irrevocably changed.
Adam had left, disappearing in an instant like the sparse cloud of dust caught in the wind which had begun to blow around Ben as he sat beneath the stars. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he wrapped his hands around his middle, holding himself tightly to contend with the changing weather and the power of his memories.
Was that not the problem with considering the past? In recognizing the faults of another, one always was forced to examine their own. He had failed Adam; he was certain of that now. In trying to protect the son of someone else, he had forgotten to defend his own. So focused on Will, he had not seen that the things Adam was struggling with were equally as hard. He had been so busy holding on to the past that it had prevented him from seeing the present.
He and Adam's rapport had been defined by their battle of wills from the start. He had long grown accustomed to their eternal game of push and pull. How was Ben supposed to know that their last argument would be just that? That day was not the first occasion an argument had driven Adam out of the house. How was he supposed to know his son had no intention of coming back? So accustomed to holding on to Adam, he had not realized how easily his son could slip from his grasp. So used to the eternal push and pull of their relationship, he had not thought to take note of the moment his son stopped defending himself.
Now, returning to Virginia City, Adam had stopped fighting completely. And was not that within itself the problem? Having no immediate desire, no concept of how to engage Adam, Ben had fallen back into their old habit of push and pull, not realizing that taking up the defensive position was something his son would refuse to do.
Adam was not asking for forgiveness. He was not defending his mistakes or justifying the past. He had moved on. It could not be that the past did not matter, or that he believed it had not shaped the present they now knew. He simply was not holding on to it anymore. He was not allowing it to dictate his future, opinions, or moods.
Adam had changed; it was Ben who had not. Even now he was depending on his son to push him forward, propelling him into the future as he remained determined to drag his heels. It was he, not Adam, who had become stuck, holding on to the past like it meant more than the moment in front of him.
Adam was right—even after all this time. They did not have to talk about the past; they did not have to agree. They did have to learn to coexist peacefully. Until they could do that, they could not be around one another. It was just too provoking to see one another, to trust oneself not to lean on old ways and habits that had become obsolete.
"Alright," Ben whispered to the dark, silent landscape around him as he finally resigned himself to follow his son's lead. He would find a way to move past how he felt and until he found it, he would give Adam what he wanted. He would leave his oldest son alone.
TBC