LOST MARBLES
By
November 2002
Revised: March
2004
Disclaimer: I do not own the Cartwright characters but they
do linger in my mind, readily available whenever I choose to imagine. My thanks to David Dortort for creating the
Cartwright family.
Adam rode home and
dismounted from Sport in front of the barn.
He was still in an angry mood. It
had been a scorcher of a day and he was dirty, tired and miserable. He wouldn’t have had to put in such a long
day if it hadn’t have been for Joe, that damned youngest brother of his.
Joe was fifteen. He was supposed to be helping out on the
ranch, just like Adam and Hoss had to nearly every day of their lives. He was supposed to have been helping Hoss
with mending fences in the morning and he was supposed to have been helping
Adam and the ranch hands on the branding later.
That's what he was supposed to have been doing but was he there to
help? No. Instead, Joe had deliberately caused a near
free-for-all fight at breakfast, which led Ben to send his three sons in three
different directions for the day.
As Adam entered the
barn to bed down Sport, he noticed that Joe’s horse, Cochise, was not in her
stall. “Damn that little…” Adam
muttered, “He still isn’t back from town.
Hoss and I will probably end up doing his evening chores, too.”
On top of being furious
with Joe, Adam was also angry with his father for letting Joe get away with so
much. “What’s wrong with Pa that he puts
up with this? He didn’t let me get away
with half of the things he lets Joe get away with. Hoss neither.” Adam continued to grumble to himself.
As Adam was rubbing
down Sport, Hoss came into the barn.
Adam looked up and noticed that Hoss looked pretty tired too. “So, did you get that fence mended?” Adam
asked, knowing already that Hoss would have.
Good ole dependable Hoss.
Hoss sank down upon a
sack of grain before answering. “Shore,
I did. But I had to chase down about 20
cows, rope ‘em and drag ‘em back to the right side of the fence before I did. Miserable, mean, no-good, stubborn, stupid
animals,” complained the animal-loving Hoss.
If Adam hadn’t been
feeling so sorry for himself, he might have had a little sorry left over for
Hoss. As it was, he just glanced at his
middle brother and groaned, “Well, I guess your day wasn’t any better than mine
and we can both thank our little brother for this one.”
In his angry state of
mind, Adam jerked Sport’s bridle off the short wall of the stall where he had
temporarily placed it. The bridle caught
on the edge of a board, then broke when it snapped loose. Adam slammed the bridle down on the floor in
exasperation. He was just about at the
end of his own rope.
He looked to where
Hoss was sitting, then ground out his words.
“It’s a damned good thing Joe isn’t here. If I had to deal with him right now, I think
I’d just about beat his brains right out of his head.”
Hoss snickered a
little, “Nah, that wouldn’t work.
Remember, we ain’t even sure he has one of those.”
The muscles in Adam’s
jaw tightened as he retorted, “Fine, there’s another part of his anatomy that I
wouldn’t mind beating. Pa never seems to
think of it.”
Adam snatched the
bridle up from the floor and stepped into the tack room to find the tool he
needed to mend it. He started jerking
things around on the small worktable at the far end of the room. The tack room was a mess. One more chore his little brother hadn’t
gotten around to doing. Adam couldn’t
find the needle-nose pliers he needed.
He jerked open a
small drawer in the worktable and started shoving things around inside the
drawer looking for the tool. He found
the pliers at the back of the drawer and grabbed them to pull them out. In the process, a small, round, blue object
caught his eye. Well, it was small and
round all right, but it had so much oily grime on it that it only held the
promise of blue.
Adam picked it up and
rolled it around in his palm. It was a
marble. A strange, far-away look
flickered across his handsome face, then the corners of his mouth began to tug
into the beginnings of a slight grin. He
rubbed the marble against his thigh, adding yet more grime to the existing
grime on his jeans.
“Hey, Hoss,” he
called, “Come here a minute.”
“Nah, you come
‘ere. I’m sittin’ down.”
Adam snorted, then
walked the seven strides from the tack room to where Hoss was sitting.
“Hoss, look at
this. I think this is one of the marbles
I used to play with as a kid. Do you
remember me passing my bag of marbles on to you when you finally got old enough
not to lose all of them in the first day?
Geez, Hoss, this brings back some memories.”
Then Adam felt a
laugh beginning to work its way up his tall, lean frame, starting way down in
his gut. In fact, it felt like that
laugh started way down in his toes. He
handed the marble to Hoss and watched closely for a reaction from his middle
brother.
Hoss took the marble,
puzzling over the reason for Adam’s laughter.
He turned the fat, blue marble over in his hand. The marble was still deeply smudged with
grime. A slow flicker of remembrance
then danced across Hoss’s wide, good-natured face, quickly followed by a huge
face-splitting grin.
“Well, I’ll be
dad-burned. Don’t this take us back a
few years?”
**********
Little Joe
Cartwright, barely five years old, was playing at the large wooden coffee table
in front of the huge, stone fireplace in the great room of the Cartwright
home. Playing wasn’t exactly a good
description. He had his toy soldiers
spread out in front of him and he was jerkily moving them around on the coffee
table, but the outward thrust of his lower lip did not give Hoss the impression
that he was playing. It seemed to Hoss
that Little Joe more likely had revenge on his mind.
Hoss continued to
move the checker pieces whenever it was his turn. Adam had condescended to play checkers with
him tonight and here Hoss was, completely unable to concentrate. Not that he ever won against Adam anyway.
Hoss’s thoughts kept
going over the incident that happened earlier in the evening. It all started when Little Joe sneaked into
Hoss’s room and took a bag of marbles that belonged to Hoss.
Technically, the boys
were supposed to knock and get permission before entering each other’s
bedrooms, but five-year-old Little Joe conveniently seemed unable to understand
that. He pretty much went where he
wanted to go. After putting Hoss’s bag of
marbles in his pocket to play with later, he ran out of Hoss’s bedroom and
skipped down the stairs. Unfortunately,
his foot missed the last step and he sprawled forward into the great room. The bag of marbles in his pocket flew open
and Little Joe watched in horror as marbles scattered, bounced, rolled, and
skittered in all directions.
Little Joe was mad at
himself for accidentally exposing to Hoss that he even had the stupid
marbles. Hoss was yelling that Little
Joe had no right to be in his room and that he ‘stole’ the marbles. Pa was yelling because Little Joe had
scattered the marbles where people would be walking, for God’s sake. Marie, Little Joe’s mother, quietly left the
room as she had had enough for one day and was fast developing a headache. Adam pinched the bridge of his nose and
grimaced when all of the yelling began.
He had been trying to read a book and, not for the first time, found
himself fervently wishing he had a dog in his life instead of brothers.
Hoss didn't know it
yet but, when Pa furiously insisted that Little Joe pick up all of the marbles
and return the bag to Hoss with an apology, Little Joe had managed to slip the
biggest marble into his own pocket.
Later, after all the yelling and the storm of activity swirling around
him had died down, Little Joe was rather proud of this accomplishment. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with that
marble yet, but there was no way he was going to give it back to Hoss.
The next morning at
breakfast, nobody mentioned the marble incident and it was starting to look as
if there might be a chance for a less argumentative day ahead. Everyone was respectful to each other. Nobody noticed that Little Joe was a little
too respectful, especially to Hoss. This
was not a good sign. Sure enough, Little
Joe had figured out what he was going to do with Hoss’s marble and he couldn’t
wait to go to the outhouse to execute his plan.
A short time later,
Little Joe was able to slip out of the house and run to the two-holer
outhouse. He carefully held Hoss’s
marble over one the holes and watched in fascination as the bright blue marble
dropped through the hole and into the cauldron below. Curious, he pinched his nose and moved his
head above the hole to peek down. The
large, blue marble had landed on the very top of the heap and had then rolled
off to one side a bit. Little Joe
giggled.
He peeked over the
rim of the hole once more, but now he was completely taken aback by the blatant
visibility of that marble. The lumber
that was used to build the outhouse years ago had been green lumber to start
with and now those boards had shrunk significantly over the years. Numerous small slivers of sunlight filtered
between the boards into the interior of the outhouse. That blue marble was now caught in one of
those slivers of sunlight and it seemed to wink up at Little Joe.
As he continued to
stare down at the marble, Little Joe became even more uncomfortably aware of
just how bright, how blue, how big, and how visible that marble really
was. He began to have regrets. In truth, he began to worry. He had expected the marble to hide itself
better than it was doing. He figured
that the marble would have plopped itself in deep enough that Hoss might not
even have noticed it and then Little Joe would have the opportunity to
gleefully point it out to him.
Little Joe really
didn’t want Pa or Marie to discover that marble. They would know right away who put it
there. He didn’t want Adam to discover
it either. Adam could be worse than Pa when
it came to his youngest brother's misbehavior.
Little Joe pondered
on the situation but soon came to the conclusion that there was just no way he
could get that marble back out. The hole
was deep and he had nothing to poke the marble with. His little nose involuntarily scrunched up at
the very thought of poking in there with a stick. He was starting to deeply regret that that
stupid marble had not just stayed safely in his pocket where it belonged.
With trepidation,
Little Joe once again looked down into the hole. He was going to have to do something
quickly. He fully expected someone in
his family would be in need of the outhouse soon. It finally occurred to him that, if he could
get the marble to roll a little further down the pile, it might sink from sight
at its new location. Little Joe
giggled, unbuttoned the fly at the front of his pants, stepped up onto the
small platform of wood at his feet, and took careful aim.
No luck. He was out of ammo and the marble refused to
roll. Well, maybe he would get lucky and
nobody would glance very far down into the hole. He idly wondered if he was the only one who
did that. With tension drawing his
little shoulders high, Little Joe exited the outhouse. At this point, he no longer wanted Hoss to find
the marble and he vowed that he would NEVER point it out to him.
Later in the day,
there was a loud shout heard coming from the outhouse, followed by Hoss exiting
the outhouse in a rage. He had slammed
open the outhouse door with such force that the door seemed in peril of parting
ways with its hinges. Hoss was livid and
looked around frantically for the culprit.
He spotted Little Joe hiding behind the corner of the house and advanced
on his little brother.
Moments later, Adam
rushed out of the barn running as fast as he could toward the screams emanating
from the outhouse. “What the hell?” he
muttered. He was careful to keep this
under his breath as he ran because Pa had definite ideas regarding any of his
sons using swear words. He glanced back over
his shoulder to make sure that he was the only one making tracks for the
outhouse.
When Adam got to the
outhouse, he simply could not believe what was happening. Hoss was dangling Little Joe upside down by
his legs and was trying to stuff Little Joe headfirst down the hole. Hoss’s face was red, he was breathing hard,
and he was yelling something to Little Joe that sounded like, “You get down
there and you pick it up.” Little Joe
was kicking as best he could and flailing his arms over the hole, desperately
trying to thwart Hoss’s efforts.
Adam quickly decided
that Hoss was deadly serious. Hoss was a
very large boy and was perfectly capable of stuffing his much younger and much
smaller brother down the outhouse hole if he so chose. Adam jumped into what little space remained
in the outhouse and tried to separate the two.
Hoss was having none of that.
Good-natured, placid, kind-hearted Hoss was full of rage. He merely leaned in hard, keeping Little Joe
away from any attempts by Adam to rescue him.
If Hoss should decide
to throw a punch in Adam’s direction, there was every possibility that he could
lose his precarious hold on Little Joe, with disastrous results. With this in mind, Adam decided it was best
to back off. He then tried to reason
with Hoss but gave that up almost as soon as he began. Hoss was cruising on pure adrenalin and was
beyond the reach of mere words. Beyond
the reach of words from Adam, anyway.
With the sound of Little Joe screaming and sobbing at the same time,
Adam frantically dashed off in search of their father.
******
Adam and Hoss came out of their reverie
just as they heard the sound of Little Joe finally returning from town, riding
his horse too fast as usual. Hoss stood
up from his comfortable grain sack, quietly slipped his work glove on, and
carefully took the marble back from Adam again.
Adam cocked his eyebrow when he noticed a slight gleam in Hoss’s
eye. He wondered what Hoss had in mind
for their little brother. He took half a
step backward to give Hoss a little more space.
Little Joe walked
into the barn leading Cochise but stopped when he spotted Adam and Hoss
standing there. He knew they would have
something to say about him getting out of harder work today. Adam would anyway. Hoss looked pleasant enough.
Hoss sauntered over
to Little Joe and smiled in a friendly way.
He held out his hand as if to give Little Joe something. Joe automatically reached out to let whatever
was in Hoss’s hand fall into his own.
Joe looked down at the marble resting in the palm of his hand, then shot
a quizzical look at Hoss’s face.
Hoss grinned, “Joe,
do you remember me giving you my bag of marbles years ago when you were finally
old enough not to lose ‘em all in the first day?”
Joe paused briefly, then
nodded that he remembered.
Hoss looked into
Joe’s eyes and continued, “I realize that you probably lost all of the other
marbles I gave you but I thought you might like to have the particular marble
that’s in your hand. Joe, do you
remember this particular marble?”
Joe glanced at the
marble again then shook his head, “Nope.
Except for it being filthy, what’s so special about this marble?”
Hoss leaned in
further toward Joe and took Joe’s hand in his own large mitt and gently folded
Joe’s fingers snugly around the marble.
Hoss’s voice was soft
and velvety. “Do you remember throwing
my favorite marble down the outhouse when you were a kid? You must have been, maybe, five years old?”
Joe thought a minute
and then grinned. He did remember. The memory was vague, but he did remember
that awful day. Then a suspicious look
passed over his face. He jerked his arm
away from Hoss only to find his curled-up fist effectively trapped within the
confines of Hoss’s large mitt.
Hoss nodded his head
in the direction of Joe’s hand and continued to speak in his slow, laconic
manner, “I never told you this before but I managed to get that marble out of
the outhouse. Don’t ask me how I did it
because you really don’t want to know. I
wanted to put that marble, dirt and all, in amongst your toys or something to
get back at you. Pa caught me before I
could do it though.”
Hoss continued,
“Well, little brother, that was a long, long time ago and I thought I was over
that little prank of yours. Turns out I
was wrong. Uh...Pa isn’t back from
checking the herd at the South pasture yet tonight so he can’t stop me from
giving that marble to you now. For
keeps, Joe.”
After watching Joe
struggle for a while to retrieve his hand, Hoss finally opened his own hand and
released Joe. Joe furiously threw the
marble to the floor of the barn.
Adam and Hoss left
the barn with their arms crossed over each other’s shoulder and bumping into
each other with laughter as they walked.
The sound of their laughter drifted easily back to Joe. Adam finally managed to stop laughing for a
moment.
“Lord, Hoss, that was
great. You have no idea how much I
needed that! You know, I’m not nearly as
tired as I thought I was. How about we ride
into Virginia City? I’d like to treat my
middle brother to a few beers. Then we
could have a couple more beers and go howl at the moon.”
Hoss was quick to nod
in agreement, then they both burst into laughter again.
Before they reached
the front door of the house, Adam stopped.
He couldn’t help himself. He
needed to know.
“Hoss, did you really
dig that marble out of the outhouse later?
That isn’t really the same marble, is it? Please tell me that isn’t the same marble.”
Hoss gave Adam the strangest
look, then suddenly flung his head back and laughed harder than ever. He had expected to fool Little Joe, but to
unwittingly catch Adam in his snare as well had made this a rare, sweet day.
When he thought that
Adam had squirmed long enough, Hoss slapped him on the back and said through
lingering bursts of laughter, "Course that wasn't the same marble. 'Sides, Adam, you got the wrong brother. Did’ja think I was ever small enough
to fit down that little, bitty hole?”
THE
END