The Leaving Season
The snows have begun to melt. The world is all high water, and mud holes, and itchy, restless men. And he's one of them. Hoss could sit in the saddle all afternoon and watch the flowers bloom. Joe rides like the Devil's on his tail, an' he'd be sparkin' every pretty girl in town if there were only more hours in the day. Ben's always got to say, at every opportunity, that "to everything there is a season."
But he watches the cows drop their calves, and Spring blows him fairy kisses that brush his cheeks- and she holds him close and whispers in his ear, like the undertone of the swaying pines, so that he has to wonder:
Is there a season for leaving, too?
A warm breeze stirs a ticklish feeling in his gut. Scout dances beneath him, lively as a yearling and raring to go… to go…
Candy holds the gelding back, twisting in the saddle in time to laugh at a joke from Joe before the youngest Cartwright boy and his mount are gone in a puff of dust and a black and white blur. Scout stretches his legs and neck, but the pinto is running hard, and they catch only trail dust and a reckless laugh.
Candy backs off the chase. His smile is fading, and the ticklish feeling is tightening his grip on the reins. He hears The Fairy calling from wild, lawless lands.
"You alright, Candy?" Hoss is grinning ear to ear. "Y' look 'bout half choked there."
His soul is impatient with itself. He cracks half a smile, and though some vague, witty words must have fallen out, he couldn't seem to feel them on his tongue. He can't remember them.
The church is busy. Even after the pastor's call for silence there are murmurs and shuffling. Little boys with their cheeks scrubbed raw whisper hastily to little girls in braids and bows. Candy tries to pay attention. His fingers drum the wooden pews, his legs, his arms, anything within touching distance.
And Springtime, The Fairy, is calling him from wild, lawless lands.
He half hears the preacher's sermon about the Christ- but he's thinking harder about Noah, and what those first steps must have been like on that new earth after the Flood, and how the world must have looked so vastly different in the light of a new age. He thinks about Adam in the Garden of Eden, and wonders how it must have been: the one man seeing the raw, wild earth with the first of human eyes, with nothing behind him but the dust from which he'd come… and a Voice.
Adam.
He eyes Ben, three seats away. His finger tapping dies quietly, and he forgets to even try and pay heed to the man at the altar. The sermon falls on deaf ears.
"Adam took a wild air one night. Next mornin'…" Hoss shrugged, his hand pausing on his horse's shining black hide.
"He just up and left?"
The big man pursed his lips. His fingers traced slow circles against the horseflesh and Candy watched the thoughts and emotions roll across his features. A bit of remorse, a touch of longing- a question, a denial, and a final sigh of acceptance.
"No," Hoss explained with the patience of familiarity, "he didn't just 'up and leave.' He talked it over, settled it with Pa, and worked out all th' plans so't we wouldn't be hurtin' for an extra set of hands."
There was a moment of long silence.
"Adam needed out."
Candy fought the burning of deep reproach and snarled at his friend. "You don't just-just drop everything and leave your family!"
Hoss chuckled. "That's what Little Joe seemed to think too." He gave Chubb a final friendly swat on the rump and sauntered out of the stall. "But the fact is he did, and he's gone… And-and it's good fer 'im to go."
"Well it's not good for anyone else."
Candy nearly jumped out of his boots. Hoss alone seemed unfazed, eyeing his younger brother with half a frown while he found a saddle that needed oiling and got to work. Joe's glare burned holes through his brother's back.
He'll never forget that look- can see the ghost of it now in the set of Joe's jaw. And he'll never forget Hoss's look: the steadfast confidence- confidence in big brother; confident that whatever happened, Adam's happiness and well-being depended on his absence; confidence that the Prodigal Son would sweep back in on the same April wind that took him away.
Hoss's is the Cartwrights' only confidence.
Springtime knocks on the church doors, and they swing open wide under the hands of the children. She seizes him fast in Her clutches. He's the first grown-up out the door, and his reflections are forgotten in an instant. The old ticklish insistence is a thrumming vitality in his young body.
The air is light. The world is fresh and new and beckoning.
Before the church is cleared Candy is mounted, his horse dancing impatient circles in the dust, the man halting… suddenly hesitant…
"Candy!" There's a laugh in Ben's voice and a twinkle in his eye. "You enjoy your day off! Tomorrow starts a busy season."
Candy spins a neat circle, bobbing with Scout's anxious movements. The April wind tugs at his hat and his grin is splitting his face in two.
"Actually, Mr. Cartwright, I-"
Ben's lip twitches minutely, and the briefest moments of anxious dread light in his eyes. The humming life of spring fever in Candy's blood dies in a sudden seizure.
He thinks of Adam… Alone now, in a world that must be so new and wide to a home-grown Nevada cowboy, with nothing behind him but a family's grief.
The family: without answers, without closure, without a son.
He feels suddenly empty.
Hoss and Joe are backing Ben now- all three waiting, watching, expecting. The storm is brewing in Joe's eyes. He wonders if they know, if they'd sensed it since the first warm breeze blew that morning. He wonders, as the eyes are burning him, if this must be what Adam felt. He wonders if he'll share this last image of his friends with the lost man.
Hoss is the one to break him, he'll joke later. Hoss with his grim, accepting look. Or Joe with his smoldering glare that hid the sorry, begging eyes of a wounded puppy.
In the end, it is Ben. Perhaps it was Ben from the start. The heavy brown gaze is unflinching and stern, and filled with a sinking sort of disappointment.
"I…" Candy swallows hard, rubbing at a worn patch on his saddlehorn, and grins. "I was wondering if you needed any extra work done… Before the week starts."
The older man's eyes soften, and a weight is lifted from Candy's soul. The disappointment is gone, and in its place is the same sort of fatherly pride he'd craved from the man since he'd first tasted it some two years ago.
"Well spend your time in town and come on home, son, we've got work to do!"
And Candy smiles at the words. Son, home. Son, home.
And he has to remember to breathe through his smile, while all his years and memories of the scruffy vagrant orphan from "Fort Despair" are cemented in his heart, in the beating heart of the Ponderosa itself.
And the April wind kisses him a final time, and carries the wanderlust away to plant in another heart: perhaps the heart of another Candy, seeking in another far-off land; or perhaps in the heart of Adam, or all the thousands of Adams scattered far and wide from the loving arms of home.
A/N: Hola, amigos! Figured this was as good a stint as any into the fandom. This particular little fic was written to a prompt from Bonanza Boomers and is also published on that site. I'm still getting a feel for the characters and the ins and outs of writing them, so any advice or helpful tidbits would be much appreciated, as would any other sort of thoughts or comments. Hope y'all enjoyed!