Chapter Four: Holes in the Reasoning

The morning came as it so-often did, demanding a series of unforeseeable things from the Ponderosa's patriarch. While his oldest son's activities were not far from his mind, sleep had done nothing to calm Ben's headache. It had settled into the left side of his head, seemingly embedding itself into the very bone of his skull, punctuating its presence with a dull, incessant ache. The last thing he wanted to do was speak of Adam or digging holes, or speak to Adam about digging holes.

Awakening early, he had been tempted to partake in more powder and spend the day in bed. He couldn't do that, however; the expectations of the day were not agreeable to such a thing.

Settling into his chair at the breakfast table, Ben left his plate empty and drank three cups of coffee, hoping the strength of the black liquid would be enough to chase away his headache. It didn't work. It left him feeling nauseated and his stomach turning, and earned him a particularly displeased look from Hop Sing.

"Something wrong, Pa?" Hoss asked as he cleared the food from his plate for the third time.

"No," Ben said.

"You sure?" Little Joe pressed. "You're awfully quiet this morning."

Ben cast his gaze across the table and appraised his oldest son with guarded eyes. Adam neither appeared interested nor affected by his father's attention. He pushed the remainder of his breakfast around his plate, abandoned his fork, and reached for his coffee cup. To Ben, he looked so normal. The thought that he could do anything other than was expected or asked of him seemed so far away.

Placing his coffee cup back on the table, Adam finally took note of his father's frozen gaze. "I'd like to head out to the east pasture today," he said. "There's a hole in the fence line. Needs to be fixed."

Adam sounded so normal, Ben thought, the request so damn fitting of the dependable man he was. And as Hoss and Joe looked first at him, then at Adam, and then traded a glance between themselves, Ben hated to decline his oldest son's request. He really did.

"No," he said.

"No?" Adam's brows furrowed.

"No," Ben repeated. "I'd like you to head into town and handle the supply run today."

Though he hadn't intended to delegate the task to Adam, he felt confident in the decision. The notion his oldest son could be distracted and forgo the direction in favor of digging holes seemed highly unlikely. It was straightforward as far as jobs went; neither it nor the landscape he would travel was aimable for digging holes. Adam would ride into town, collect the mail and the items on the list Hop Sing would provide, then he would return home. It sounded so simple when Ben thought about it.

Apparently, it sounded simple to Adam too, because he shrugged nonchalantly. "Alright," he said.

And so, later that morning, Adam climbed in the seat of the buckboard and directed the horses toward town. It wasn't until the afternoon had all but slipped away to make room for the evening hours that Ben realized his son had yet to return. It was a fact that seemed to overwhelm him, Hoss, and Little Joe all at the same time, as they all silently congregated in the ranch yard to anxiously await Adam's return.

Maybe Adam wasn't the only one who needed to deal with some unsavory emotions the Eastgate desert had left him with. Maybe Ben and his other two sons needed to process some things as well. They all knew Adam wasn't missing; he had just been deterred. He would come home eventually. Still, this knowledge did nothing to calm the concern etched in their faces, or silence Hoss's request when it eventually came.

"Let me go look for him, Pa," he said.

"No," Ben said.

"It shouldn't have taken this long," Joe protested, joining in his older brother's fight. "Something could have happened."

"I am sure nothing happened," Ben said. It was a statement even he had trouble believing. He looked upon his sons. "The two of you stay here," he said, punctuating the instruction with a firm nod. "I'll go after him."

He was not certain what made him give such an order. What difference did it make if he found Adam with his other sons or alone?

Maybe it was because he didn't want to feed into Hoss and Joe's worry, or because he didn't want to confront his own. Or maybe such a thing was for Adam's benefit. He was a grown man, after all, quite capable of taking care of himself and returning home at whatever hour he pleased. Ben didn't have any real power over him. Not at his age. It was respect for his father that made Adam aimable to following his rules. And so, maybe it was fear that made Ben take that ride alone. Fear the consideration Adam had once taken to adhere to his father's expectations was slipping away, being cast aside to make room for something new.

Either way, Ben didn't know why he wanted to go alone. When he finally came upon the buckboard as it sat abandoned on the side of the road, it was a decision he regretted instantly. Then, turning his head rapidly as he surveyed the surrounding land, his dark eyes finally set upon Adam and he was overcome by relief.

Having strayed a slight distance from the road, Adam was crouched down on a small dirt patch located in between the sagebrush bushes scattered throughout the horizon. From afar it looked like he was kneeling, but as Ben quickly closed the distance between them, it became apparent he was not.

Knees bent, his weight rested on his calves, the toes of his boots embedding deep crevices into the dirt as he leaned over, Adam dug frantically at the ground, painstakingly excavating every dense particle of resistant dirt with his bare hands.

Walking around the place where Adam was digging, Ben stopped just beyond the hole. Facing his son, he said and did nothing as he waited and watched. Waited for Adam to notice him. Watched as one minute after another passed with his son's attention rooted on the hole, his hands stained with a striking mixture of dry dust and wet blood. His hands were scratched, his knuckles chewed up from the coarse earth. His shirt was untucked, the knees of his black pants stained by the land, his hairline saturated with sweat, as was his face and a great deal of his shirt. He wasn't wearing his jacket. With the way he was moving, he hardly had to worry about keeping warm. Still, the hole in front of him was too shallow to have been the focus of his attention for long.

Ben surveyed the surrounding ground, his eyes widening as a deep shocked gasp escaped his lips.

The land was speckled with small, hollow trenches. Adam had spent the afternoon digging holes. Seeing the aftermath in person was every bit as bad as Hoss, Little Joe, and Hop Sing had suggested it was. It was a horrendous thing to take note of, an excruciating display to be forced to see. He looked at Adam again and where his son had remained, his only focus digging deeper and deeper still, but why and for what there seemed to be no clear reason.

"Adam," Ben said firmly, half-expecting the word to go unnoticed.

Leaning back abruptly, Adam sat on the back of his legs, rested his hands on his knees, and peered up at his father, his breaths thick with exertion. "What?" he asked. Despite the holes surrounding him, the pits he had dug with his bare hands, it was his tone of voice that was the most unnerving. He sounded normal. It was as though there was nothing bothersome about what he was doing. As though his father had come upon him doing something entirely commonplace.

"What are you doing?" Ben asked.

"Digging."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"You won't like it."

"Tell me anyway."

"Even I don't like it."

"Adam."

"I'm looking for something."

"What?" Ben asked as a strange feeling began to overcome him—an odd combination of hope and dread. Maybe Adam had a good reason for doing what he was. Maybe there was a logical explanation that could not be easily gleaned.

Adam chewed his bottom lip, beads of sweat dripping off the sides of his face and falling hopelessly to the ground. "I don't…" he began and then stopped. He didn't appear uncertain of the answer to the question, rather ashamed to admit it outright. "You won't understand," he said eventually.

Ben's expression softened. "Try me."

"I'm not even sure I understand."

"Then let me help you understand."

Smiling, Adam's eyes sparkled with doubt. "I don't know if you can," he said. "You may be wise, Pa, but you are far from omniscient."

"What's going on here, Adam?" Ben asked softly. "Why the sudden need to dig holes?"

"I'm looking for something."

"And what exactly is that?"

Adam looked at the hole in front of him, then at the others he previously dug, and then back at his father. His eyes were wide, his expression uneasy as though he already knew his reasoning was flawed. "Gold," he said quietly. "I'm looking for gold."

Mouth hanging open, Ben was too alarmed to immediately reply. He couldn't help thinking about the stretch of land where those three cattle had died, the earth beneath the grouping of pines that hadn't been cut, Hop Sing's garden behind the house, and now this clearing full of nothing but sagebrush, dry earth, and rock. How could Adam be looking for gold in places he was fully aware it would never be found?

"Son," Ben said, lifting his arms to indicate the landscape surrounding them. "There isn't any gold out here."

"I know that," Adam said, his nose crinkling with annoyance.

"Then why are you looking for it?"

It was such a simple question; if only the answer could have been as straightforward.

"I don't feel...well," Adam said. He was speaking slowly, each word carefully chosen. "I'm not sick, or anything, but… I just… don't feel right. I… think that I might feel better if I could find some gold."

Blinking, Ben stared dumbly at his son. It was such a thoughtfully spoken reply; it really was too bad the message the words had formed was so ludicrous and unsettling.

"You've been digging holes trying to find gold," Ben said, his words equally as slow and carefully chosen. "This entire time, that's what you've been up to?"

"I told you that you wouldn't understand. That you couldn't do anything to help."

The former statement Ben couldn't contradict, however, there was no limit to the things he would do to disprove the latter. "Stand up," he said. "Dust yourself off. It's time to go home."

Adam looked longingly at the hole he had so painstakingly dug. Just when Ben began to think his son was going to refuse his direction, he adhered to it. Standing up, he brushed his palms against the dust clinging to his pants. It was an action that did more harm than good; the dirt-blood mixture that had clung to his hands left telltale streaks upon his clothes.

They didn't talk as they walked away from the holes, and no one spoke when they finally arrived back home. Hoss and Joe were still waiting outside when they rode up; they looked at Adam, their eyes frozen on his dirt-covered clothes and the cuts marking his hands, and seemed to understand there wasn't anything to say. Everyone knew what he had been doing. They were all aware of the task that had kept him from following through with his trip into town; there was little point in drawing further attention to it.

Leaving the horses to be cared for by Hoss and Joe, Ben ushered Adam into the house. He directed him up the staircase and then asked Hop Sing to warm enough hot water to fill the bathing tub. The tub was moved into Adam's room, then filled, and then Ben left his son to clean up alone.

Retiring to the seat behind his desk, he drank two brandies and mulled over what Adam had said about the holes. When a reasonable amount of time had passed—or at least enough for a man to have finished a bath—he procured a glass of water and ascended the staircase once more.

Entering his own bedroom, he poured what was left of the envelope of sleeping powder into the glass, swirling it slightly to ensure it dissolved. Glass in hand, he strode to linger outside of Adam's closed bedroom door.

"Adam?" he asked, rapping the knuckles of his free hand against the wood grain. "Are you decent?"

"Uh," came the reply. "Hold on." There was a brief pause, the sound of indiscriminate rustling, then footsteps. "Okay," Adam said finally.

Ben opened the door and found his son standing directly behind it, his hair still wet and dripping, his dark blue bathrobe clinging to his hastily dried skin.

"Drink this," Ben said.

Accepting the glass, Adam held it up high to inspect the peculiar cloudiness of the water. "What'd you put in it?"

Ben stared at his son's hand. Though the dirt had been washed away a collection of varying scrapes and scratches still marked his fingers and the back of his hand. The skin was red and angry from being scrubbed, cleaned thoroughly enough to emancipate any dirt that wanted to remain embedded beneath tiny slits of skin. Adam may have been acting strangely, but he was far from incautious. He knew the havoc allowing dirt and grime to linger in even the smallest of cuts could wreak on a man's health.

"Pa?" Adam prompted.

"Just drink it."

"But—"

Grasping the glass, Ben directed the rim of it toward Adam's lips. "Drink it," he said. He held tight and firm until his son finally opened his mouth, and even then he held onto the glass, tipping it back to ensure every drop was consumed. It was a heavy-handed instruction, more fitting of a child than a man—there was no denying that—but, in the moment, he felt like it was all he could do.

Hand falling to his side, Adam drank the liquid in a series of quick gulps, cringing over the gritty aftertaste when Ben finally pulled the empty glass back.

"It'll help you sleep," he explained. "Son, I really think you're in need of a good night's sleep."

Adam looked at his father doubtfully, his lips forming a small, doleful smile. "What you really mean to say is you need me to sleep, so you don't have to worry about me pacing or disappearing and digging holes. You're the one you hope the night assuages, so that you wake up in the morning and suddenly decide what needs to be done with me. I told you, Pa, there's nothing you can do to help, because there's no way to fix it. If there was, I would have done it already, without your help and on my own."

Extending his free hand, Ben cupped the back of Adam's neck and squeezed. "Sleep," he ordered gently. "You'll feel better in the morning, you'll see." Even though he made the assurance, he wondered how it could possibly be true.

That night, it was Ben who stalked the distance in front of the fireplace into the early morning hours. It was he who struggled to relax enough to sleep.

TBC