Drabble 16:
Six months later:
The Chicago address was correct but the brass sign by the door read "Wm. Cannon Studio." The bell rang once, twice.
Bracing against bitter wind, the messenger was met by a young man with a charcoal pencil in hand.
"Yes?"
"Telegram for a Mister Billy Blue Cannon."
Eyes rolling slightly, "That's me."
Wallet lighter by the tip and ego lighter by the laugh, William opened the telegram from Tucson.
"Dearest Blue Boy,
We all miss you greatly. Sending all of our love plus even more to come.
You are going to be a brother.
John and Victoria"
The End
~HC~
Author's Notes:Thanks so much to everyone for reading this drabble fic. It's been a great pleasure to write and I hope you've enjoyed it,whether with a smile, a chuckle, or maybe even a tear.Please leave even a short review to let me know your thoughts about it. Your feedback is greatly appreciated (and thanks to wotwasithinkin for the recent review, too!).
Regarding the story, to the best of my knowledge, the subject of John and Victoria having a child of their own was never truly explored on the show, probably due to the slowly easing content restrictions and censorship of the late 1960s and early 70s. Victoria's love of and longing for children were witnessed a number of times, with the two most important cases being Season 1, Episode 28, "Threshold of Courage," where she prays to be blessed with a child, and Season 4, Episode 5, "A Matter of Survival," where she spends a good part of the episode holding little Joey and obviously wanting to take him home with her. Perhaps the Season 1 writers initially thought to explore this in Season 2 but that never happened, allowing me to guess in this story that John objected for the reasons given. Then, little Joey's death later in Season 4 must have had a big impact on her, so placement of this story a few months after that seemed logical.
Question: Could Victoria have children? The operation to remove her spleen in Season 3, Episode 15, "The Journal of Death," might have harmed her ability to do so based on Doctor Kendel's statement about "what we discussed earlier," but I think he meant about the risk due to his not having operated in the years since the war based on the fact that women often are able to have a child following a Splenectomy. If there was more to it than that, I apologize for missing it; in that case, this story must be considered AU.
Regarding Billy Blue's use of the name William, in the very first episode, "Destination Tucson", he explains the origin of his name to Sarah Ward. However, just a few episodes later in "A Quiet Day in Tucson", when Blue is otherwise alone and introduces himself to Fergus MacLeish, he uses William.
Thanks to Cliparts dot co for use of the free clip art used to produce the cover, cliparts . co/clipart/141371 . The font used for the coverpage title is modified to be reminiscent of the High Chaparral opening titles, but it's difficult to see unless you really enlarge it.
Finally, thanks to all of the great feedback received so far, I've started a new High Chaparral story but it has some problems that I'm trying to solve. Hopefully they'll be solved before too long, so until next time:
¡Adiós, mis amigos!