And here we are THE FINAL CHAPTER! With this, this story is now complete, thank you all so much for you support since I started writing this.
I will be back to this wonderful fandom which really doesn't get enough love. This was my first chaptered fic for the Waltons's and I am so glad that I found all the characters a joy to write. Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't and I was so glad this was a do moment.
And with that I will let you get on with the story.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review.
Guardians And Gladiators
Chapter 14-Confess Yourself To Heaven
THE FINAL CHAPTER-John Boy goes up to the mountain to reflect on the end of the Walton's pioneer past and what comes next.
The mountains were much the same as they ever were. It was Autumn, summer coming to an end and turning the leaves to the burnished gold that he loved so much.
Sitting in the truck John-Boy was able to lean against the mattress that had been set up for him and he was able to breathe the fresh clean air. That was the problem with hospitals he thought. There was no clean air anymore. Nothing clean, nothing sacred, nothing but sterilisation. No wonder people never wanted to go to hospitals. If the medical bills didn't send you to the poor house then the smell of the place sent you off the wall. John-Boy never wanted to go back there again.
As he told Jason that morning as his brother slung his body into the truck with a youthfulness he could not help but be envious off considering he was taped up like a vase about to break and watched about as much, he was sick of bloody hospitals.
"You and me both brother" Jason said cheerfully as they spread the blanket over their knees (not that they really needed it but Mamma had been insistent and John-Boy did not need a row with her on top of everything else that he had to deal with).
"Not to mention the bills" he muttered. Jason caught the end of that muttering that was supposed to be private and frowned.
"Don't worry about that" he said just as quiet. "I got the impression that the government might be paying for this one"
"What? Why?"
Jason made a shooshing noise and flapped his hand around remind John-Boy suddenly of Grandma when the chickens got out of their cage. He had to swallow the bizarre desire to laugh because everything was still fresh including his stiches and laughing hurt.
"I overheard Daddy telling Mamma. The Marshalls don't want it public knowledge that they shot an eighteen year old college kid. They were sent up there to blast Martha Corrine out they weren't there to shoot her out. Think about it, an old woman, two old men, two young ones and a pregnant woman? The newspapers and the magazines would hardly see you as the radicals if you all ended up being shot and it got on the front page of the newspaper? Blake was never supposed to start shooting but he jumped the gun so to speak when he realised he was losing so much money. So he turns up the other night and tells Daddy if Daddy doesn't raise a fuss then he'll pay for all the medical bills and the medical car etc."
John-Boy gave a low whistle. "And Daddy agreed to it?"
Jason shot him an incredulous look.
"John-Boy you had major surgery, your second in a year and a half and this is a Depression. Everything that's not been spent to keep us in this house is being spent on your college fund. We are just a step further away from dirt poor. Now we are just poor and your operation and all the medical tests combined amount to forty-three dollars. You figure out what Daddy agreed to"
And John-Boy could see it. If all Daddy had to do was not blab to the newspapers then that was what Daddy was going to do. Daddy who didn't want their family name broadcasted out in the world. Daddy who didn't want what had happened up on those mountains to be public knowledge beyond those who didn't have to know about it. And to the Waltons family forty-three dollars was the dream amount. To get this bill paid off kept them a step above dirt poor as Jason had said. There was a truth to it and he looked at his Daddy coming out of the house, sliding into the cab and starting the truck and he felt a great wave of sadness for the decisions that the man was often more times than not forced to make.
"So no trial?"
"John-Boy you were fighting the government, now I'm no lawyer but I assume that doesn't come with a slap on the wrist and a fine. Best for everyone involved, Blake and Lucas Avery and everyone…if we just forget that it ever happened"
Jason stressed those last few words heavily and John-Boy took the hint. Clearly a decision had been made over the last few days that they were not going to discuss what had happened in front of their parents. It was just going to be chalked down to one of those things that was written about but not talked about. Recovery came from within and John-Boy knew that out of all the lessons that they were to learn from their mother and father, grandpa and grandma, it was with increasingly gratefulness that they were here to help them through it.
He leaned back on Jason's shoulder and Jason being the man that he was now was comfortable for him to take the brunt of it.
"Thanks" he said finally seeing the sky change and the wind in his hair.
"For what?"
"For holding it all together"
"Nah" Jason said with that easy smile. "I did nothing really"
John-Boy thought though looking at his brother and his father and the way the two of them interacted with each other, Jason had in fact done a lot more than he was aware of. It was hard to think that just a year and a half ago Tip Harrison had tried to decimate his brother's confidence and in doing so had taken a swing at Jason's relationship with their father.
He had failed.
John-Boy had never been so glad for that as he had in his entire life.
"You know what you're going to do when you get there?" Jason asked finally.
"No" he said just as quietly. "No I just…it's the last link you know?"
"Of what?"
"Of the world that existed before we did. Of Rome's world and Rebecca Lee's world. Of that old fireplace that's all that's left. Of a man standing between his family and anyone that would hurt them, of wagons and bonnets and the rush for land and game and firewood. Of a community coming together."
"Jesus you make it sound romantic"
"You don't think it was?"
"No" Jason said shortly. "I don't think of anything before the invention of an indoor toilet romantic"
For a second both brothers looked at each other and then they were both laughing and their Daddy who had no doubt heard some if not all of this conversation (man had hears like a bat and with seven children that was a good thing John-Boy supposed) and he banged on the roof.
"John-Boy?"
"Yes Daddy?"
"Don't rip your stiches will you son? Your Mamma and I are not entirely happy with you going up to these hills in your conditions, may I advise you not to press your luck"
John-Boy caught Jason's eye.
"Yes Sir" they both said in unison. But they were both grinning.
John-Boy wondered if Daddy was grinning too. It felt like the end of a long race. They were slowly getting back to normal. The family, the mountain, the world.
They were mostly all packed up when they arrived and it was as simple case of helping Boon load their stuff in the truck. Wade walked over to him once ignoring the disgusted look his wife was sending the Waltons, (clearly she had decided she was not going to help and was using her 'condition' as an excuse and when Jason—as sweet as sugared milk—had told her that many a woman before her had gotten off her backside and helped she'd shot him a look like she wanted to spit at him). Wade didn't even look back.
God John-Boy hoped he was one of the Walton's that believed in divorce. Wade was too good to be left to the fate that was Vera. There had been nothing likable about her before she had been shot heavens knows there was nothing likable about her now. She was just sour, sick and sad.
Martha Corrine was inside and he went to join her.
"Good to see your doing well" she said shooting him a look that was mollified somewhat by the dour smile that was on her face. "I was worried for a second young Walton."
"I know"
She stopped sweeping for a second and when she looked at him John-Boy felt as if he was seeing a thousand years in that gaze. A thousand lifetimes, a thousand loves and laughs and losses and just the simple everyday days that you think don't mean anything and yet when you look back at your life you realise that they meant the actual world to you.
"I didn't want anyone harmed young Walton" she said softly. "I have lost a son too. Esther…you…tell her that I know what that pain is, she knows it too. God knows neither one of us would ever wish that on our worst enemy and your mother is, was and certainly will never be that"
And that John-Boy surmised was the closest thing that they would ever get to an apology.
He wasn't surprised. The old woman had her pride after all. And deep down John-Boy respected her for it for her imagined that pride would keep Martha Corrine going for a long, long time. Certainly he imagined it would have helped. He liked her. He liked her more and more each time he saw her. She had grit Martha Corrine Walton. And he was old enough to forgive.
"I know" he said finally.
"I suppose I spoke very harshly to you"
"Well I did call you an old woman"
The woman turned and looked at him and then the watery blue eyes dimmed by grief looked bright for a brief second. John-Boy took the broom out of her hands and waited and watched as she said goodbye to the house and the home that she had always thought would be her legacy and was now going to be nothing more but a bit of dirt on the highway that was progress.
That night they sat with that old spinning wheel in the parlour—as the song went watching it. Grandma muttered just what they were going to do with it? Mary-Ellen could barely thread a needle, Erin was too small to operate it and that last one ruled it out for Elizabeth completely.
"Maud might like it" Mamma had said with a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes.
"Is this her version of an apology?" Mary-Ellen asked pointing at the thing. John-Boy shot her a look and Mary-Ellen just shrugged.
"Enough" their Daddy ruled once. "It's over. It's all over. We don't need to discuss it anymore"
Mary-Ellen shrugged but didn't say anything.
There was nothing that she could say without staring a row or risking their Daddy's temper and though John-Boy might not have gotten the full story out of his brother about what exactly had transpired between his sister and their kith and kin he was sure that Mary-Ellen was going to be treading very carefully for the next few days, maybe weeks, maybe months.
"Let it go" John-Boy said finally. "It's all over now. The past and the present and the past and the—"
"Oh God he's going into story mode"
"Ben!"
But it broke the mood beautifully and John-Boy felt his Daddy touch his shoulder once as he got up and he gripped back. Grandpa did the same and he knew that it was there way of saying words that they couldn't normally express.
He did go back to writing that night sitting at his little chair and holding the pen in his hand. He saw the ink in the pot and he dipped his pen in and started writing the words flowing out of him. This was a story that might never be published but he thought that there was a story in this, not just in what had happened to him, to Martha Corrine, to Momma and Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa, Jason, Mary-Ellen, Ben, Erin, Jim-Bob and Elizabeth. To his friends and his community, Ike, Ep, Miss Mamie and Miss Emily and the Doctors who had battled to save his life. But for all the other extras in this big story, Wade, Vera, Boon. And for the people of his past who deserved their story being told.
And so he dipped his pen in his ink and wrote the opening chapter to a story he was not sure would ever be published but one that he knew he had to write.
In the beginning on Waltons Mountain a young man and a young woman built a home. Their names were Rome and Rebecca Lee. And they had no idea that this simple home would give birth to a generation.
A generation of men and woman, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters. Guardians and gladiators.
A generation of Waltons…
And there you go, I hope that you enjoyed this chapter and the story itself. I will be back, until then a massive thank you to all of you. Wishing you all the love and the happiness in the world, see you soon x.