Guts

by dcat

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the TV program "Big Valley" are the creations of Four Star/Republic Pictures and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended by the author. The ideas expressed in this story are copyrighted to the author.

Guts?

Who was she kidding? Did she even realize what she said to me?

Guts would be the last thing that I would inherit from Tom Barkley. I couldn’t think of one thing I’d even come remotely close to inheriting from him. Since I’d arrived on the ranch, I tried to avoid the topic of my father as much as I possibly could, but more often than not it seemed to come up and today’s little latest outburst which followed a heated confrontation just about set me over the edge. He was a hero in all their eyes. I could see it and I could hear it in how they talked about him.

I was through listening to them all. I needed to get off by myself. I didn’t comment on what she had just said to me. I just stood there, acting like I really wasn’t listening at all, and part of me was still upset that Matt Bentell had been an invited guest to our home.

I stormed straight out right after that and headed for the stable. If I stayed there I’d want to kill Bentell for what he did to me and what he did to all the men in Carterson. I vowed I would. I owed it to all of us.

About a million different thoughts and emotions invaded my head and I just walked heavily, feeling my boot heels dig into the ground with each step I took. I had more ‘guts’ in me than anyone had. I survived that hell hole of a prison. My life had nearly always been hard. My mother was the only thing that was ever soft in my life. I earned a living when I was practically old enough to walk and talk. It was a constant struggle for my mother and me just to survive. It seemed like I never had enough food or warm enough clothes to cut the winter chill. If that didn’t take guts I didn’t know what ever would. Then there were always the taunts and the whispers about who I was and the fact that I didn’t have a father. I know that hurt her more than it could ever hurt me, since she knew who my father was all those years. She might have been a soft woman, but her strength was unmatched in my eyes.

And there I was stalking around the stalls, just itching for someone or something to hit. But I knew that even that wouldn’t cure my ‘ills.’ Like so many times before, I had to try to bury it, that I knew too. I buried these feelings right on top of all the guts I carried inside me. I could feel my muscles tightening, I was balling up my fists and I could tell a sneer was spread across my face. It was a good thing that most of the hands were off working, they’d have thought I was nuts seeing me pace back and forth like some sort of penned up animal.

Nope, the guts I had didn’t come from my father, they came from someplace that I created myself and spent a lifetime so far developing. The pain and the tears and the sadness and the joy, it was all there and Tom Barkley didn’t have anything to do with it.

Right now my guts were telling me that I needed to kill Matt Bentell and that this so-called family of mine didn’t give me or my feelings any consideration whatsoever. They couldn’t understand how I could hate him so much, still to this day and why couldn’t I get past that horrible prison I had been forced to live in. Just because I was now a ‘Barkley,’ were those things supposed to just miraculously disappear? Maybe they didn’t want to see Tom Barkley’s guts in me, maybe they just wanted Tom Barkley’s guts period

I couldn’t shake the anger that I had for Bentell or for the rest of them, even though it was two entirely different kinds of anger, it all filled my soul.

I decided to saddle up Charger and take him out for a ride. I didn’t know how long my brother Nick had been standing in the doorway watching me fight with my own demons, but there he was now and he took a few steps over.

As was becoming usual, he was the talker of the two of us.

“Where ya heading?” he asked.

“Don’t know, just need to ride,” I fired back.

“Want some company?”

“Listen Nick, you’re not gonna talk me out of how I feel,” I snapped at him.

“I didn’t ask you that and I don’t reckon I could anyway. I asked if you wanted some company on the ride.” For a change, Nick kept his cool.

“It’s your ranch, you can go wherever you’d like,” my mood was still foul.

“It’s OUR ranch, just as much yours as mine,” he answered.

“Suit yourself,” I said.

He didn’t say anything else right at that moment, he merely strode over and started to saddle up Coco. I didn’t expect he’d really come along, I figured he’d just sense the fetid mood I was in and just stay away, but I was wrong.

And then, off we rode. He let me stay a head or two in front, giving me space and not even talking at me, which, in the short time I knew Nick, had to be next to impossible for him to keep his mouth shut for this long.

We must have rode like that for at least an hour, when I finally pulled up Charger and Nick pulled up along side me.

“Why don’t you head back Nick?” I asked him.

“Not without you,” he replied.

“I’m not ready to go back, I may not ever be,” I looked him square in the eye when I spoke.

“Well that’s a bit melodramatic, don’t ya think?” he asked me.

I could feel my eyes narrow as I gave him a glare. I didn’t even have to say anything for him to know exactly what I was feeling.

“Oh come on Heath, for crying out loud, are you seriously gonna just ride out of here, out of our lives over this thing?” he was asking.

“This thing? This thing?” I raised my voice at him, causing both horses to jump a bit, “this thing damn near killed me in a war camp. I don’t need to justify that to you or anyone else in any other way. They called us prisoners of war, but no one who wasn’t there really understands what they did to us. They stick a fancy word on it and call it torture, and even just saying it seems to make it sound less horrible than what it was.” I couldn’t continue to talk to him, my voice choked up with the memories that were now rushing back into my mind, boys bloodied faces, men’s emaciated bodies, the stench we lived in, it made me sick to my stomach.

I kicked Charger to a trot and rode him up a little farther to the edge of a nearby stream that split our land from the Denhoff property. I dismounted, dropped the reigns and let Charger wander down to the water for a drink. I kept my back to Nick, for I knew he’d be riding up behind me shortly.

And sure enough, there he was, allowing Coco to do the same thing. He was right behind me, I could tell, but again, he held his tongue. I took off my hat and used the back of my sleeve to wipe off some sweat, and dry off my moist eyes and then I felt his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry Heath,” he said quietly. “I mean that sincerely. I don’t know what you went through, none of us do and you’re right, we can’t even imagine what it was even remotely like. I saw a lot of death in the war myself and I know what that was like, but I know we all have carry things deep inside that belong just to us, no one else,” he paused and I felt him remove his hand from my shoulder and he came around and stood where he could see my face. “I didn’t come out here to give you any easy solution, I don’t have any answers for you and I really don’t even know what to say to you. I guess I just didn’t want you to think you had to go through it alone. I’m here for you in anyway I can be.”

I had my head down, but after he finished talking I made eye contact with him. “I don’t know if I can just let go of it Nick, that’s why I left, if I’d stayed there I might have hurt someone.”

“You wanna hit me, go ahead,” he offered sincerely. “I can take it.”

I had to smile at that. Nick was quickly becoming the brother I’d always wanted. “No, I don’t wanna hit you,” I said and he grinned back at me. I looked back down at the ground and scuffed at it with the toe of my boot. “Why’d she say that Nick?” I asked him.

“Why did who say what?”

“Your mother, why did she say that she wanted to see some of Tom Barkley’s guts in me?”

“Mother?” He began, “I guess it’s because she sees so much of Father in you. I’d say it’s her way of letting you know that you’re a part of him, she’s making up for lost time, or trying to. She wants you to know that, that’s all.”

“But why his guts? I didn’t get to be a man because of him in any way, I did it on my own, most of the time the hard way,” I explained.

“Is that what’s sticking in your craw too?” Nick asked me bluntly.

I nodded the affirmative.

He laughed, which sort of made me madder and he took a step or two closer to me. “Heath, we all know that about you and I don’t think that’s quite what she meant. How can I explain? I think she wants you to give this thing with Bentell a try, that’s what our father would have done. See she knows that somewhere inside of you,” he tapped on my chest, “you have the power to do that. She’s asking you to find that spot and put it to use. That’s what Tom Barkley would do. She certainly wasn’t challenging your toughness if that’s what you were thinking.”

“Back to Bentell again,” I murmured.

Nick took a deep breath, “No one said any of this was gonna be easy, but that’s what makes you the perfect person to do this job Heath, that toughness, those guts of YOURS and you being able to find that little extra spot inside here,” he pointed at my heart, “that will move mountains brother.”

I shook my head a little, cuz I didn’t fully believe the sermon he was preaching at me, but I had to admit that it sure sounded nice. Maybe even a little part of me actually liked hearing what he was saying.

“Listen, let’s keep riding a might longer. Stockton’s not too far away. I’ll buy you a cold beer. I hear it does wonders to settle down a man’s guts,” he teased.

I didn’t have the answer I went looking for exactly, but maybe Nick was right, I just needed to find that one little spot and take it from there. It wouldn’t happen all at once, there’d still be a lot more that I’d need to overcome in order to work with Bentell, but maybe there was some piece of Tom Barkley’s guts in me after all. And a cold beer sounded good too.

THE END