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.
“You’re up kind of late?” Jarrod said as he stepped out
onto the veranda. The tiny ember from
his brother’s hand-rolled cigarette turned ever so slightly in his hand. Heath didn’t move at all. Jarrod wondered if Heath had even heard him.
“Could say the same about you,” came the soft reply,
“Evening Jarrod.”
Jarrod walked a little closer. The chorus of singing crickets suddenly stopped their song at
this close range, but off in the distance, their familiar melody kept humming
along.
“Want one of these?” Jarrod offered Heath one of his
patented cigars.
“No thanks, one smoke a day is pretty much my limit,” he
said, taking a hit from the cigarette he held.
Jarrod placed the cigar into his own mouth and lit it up.
“You don’t mind if I do, do you?”
“Not at all.”
The getting-to-know-each-other phase was still the norm in
the Barkley household and tonight wouldn’t be all that different. Jarrod had so much he wanted to say, but he
didn’t quite know where or how to begin, which in itself was unusual for the
lawyer, or for any lawyer, since dialogue and conversation was so much a part
of their everyday life.
He took a few steps away and decided to sit down on one of
the chairs that was on the veranda. “Is
it alright with you if I stay?”
Heath turned around and leaned back against one of the
posts, he nodded, “be my pleasure if you would.”
Jarrod decided to come right out with it. “Heath, I won’t blame you if you’re upset
with me, you have every right to be.
What I did to you today, well during this whole trial, well, I don’t
know what got into me, I don’t know what I was thinking. I should never put my work above my family.
I apologize for all of it. I hope
someday you can forgive me.”
Heath took a final puff from the cigarette and turned back
to toss it out into the dirt. He spun
back around and faced his brother. “You
got no reason to apologize Jarrod. You
were doing your job. What kind of
brother would I be if I let that make me mad?
I already told you that.”
“Still, I just don’t feel like we’ve got this settled
between the two of us,” Jarrod said, sitting forward in the chair. “I’d like to clear the air, so to speak.”
“Start over? Is that what you’re thinking?” Heath offered.
“If that’s necessary, yes, I’m willing to do that,” Jarrod
replied.
“How ‘bout we just move forward,” Heath said, watching
Jarrod closely. He could see the wheels
turning behind the icy blue eyes of his oldest brother. “You just won’t believe that I’m not taking
this personal?”
Jarrod looked over his new brother closely. A soft light filtered through the windows,
illuminating the veranda in a warm light.
He could make out the blue eyes, which stared back at him, not quite as
blue as his own, but perhaps deeper in the sense of what they had witnessed in
their short lifetime. “When it comes to
you and I, I must say that I don’t know you as well as I should. And, without getting myself in a deeper
hole, you’re not an easy man to get to know.”
Jarrod saw the corners of Heath’s mouth turn up into a small smile.
Heath also nodded.
“You know me better than you think you do,” he drawled.
Now it was Jarrod’s turn to grin. “Touché,” he said, nodding his head slightly
to Heath.
“Jarrod,” Heath started, “You did what you had to do. I told you that before the trial even
started. We talked about it, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“You do the right thing when it needs to be done, you seek
out the truth. That’s the lawyer AND
the brother in you, I respect that. I guess
you could say I’d be disappointed in anything less.”
“Even if it meant hurting you, discrediting your
testimony?” Jarrod argued.
“Now we both know the truth don’t we? That’s the important thing here. The right man is behind bars.”
“We do at that, I think I came out looking like a fool at
every angle,” Jarrod said. “I’m going
to need to have this conversation with everyone in the family. Audra will hate me for a long time, Mother
is disappointed, Nick’s mad for cross examining you in court, I tell you it’s a
good thing Gene’s away at school and not here.”
Heath let out a gentle laugh.
Jarrod couldn’t help but stare at him again. This whole case had been hard on Heath, that
he knew. He had witnessed the murder
and caught the killer, after an altercation and then he sat through the
preliminary inquest for days, while Korby Kiles ranted and raved his
innocence. After that, there was the
breakfast table incident, when Jake Kiles and his two other sons showed up and
accused Heath of lying and spewed insult upon insult on him. Through it all, Heath maintained his
composure as Jake insinuated that he was less of a man because of his
birthright, but when Jake called him a liar, that’s when Heath began to get even
remotely riled. Brother Nick on the other
hand was ready to pound the three Kiles’ bloody just for entering the
house. Deep down, Jarrod wanted to
throw a fist or two after hearing their insults, but his eyes were glued again
to the blonde brother who stood there with dignity and grace. Now he wondered if he wanted to beat up
Kiles’ because of what they said to Heath, or because he wanted to protect the
family name, his name. The insults
seemed to annoy him more than they annoyed Heath.
“Jarrod?” Heath could see that Jarrod was lost in some
deep thought.
“Huh? I’m sorry
again, I didn’t mean to stare,” Jarrod said.
“Did you find the answer you wanted?” Heath asked
him. Jarrod didn’t answer him, he
remained lost in thought.
Jarrod leaned back in the chair and continued to think
about the whole situation. Heath had
also taken a brutal beating at the hands of the Kiles’. He thought back to that night as well. He came home to find a bruised and bloodied
Heath being attended to by Mother and Audra, with Nick ready again, to go fight
his battles for him. Even after
witnessing that, and hearing Heath wince and grimace from the pain as he and
Nick helped him up the stairs later that night, Jarrod still had decided to
take on the case of Korby Kiles.
Mother nearly pleaded with him not to defend Korby. She knew what it would or could do to Heath
and Jarrod somehow convinced himself otherwise. He had to know why. What
drove him to it, was it really because he thought Korby Kiles was innocent or
was it in fact some sort of ‘test’ for this new brother.
When Jarrod had thought about it long enough, he started
to speak to Heath, who now had turned his back to his brother and stared out
into the San Joaquin darkness.
“I don’t think I defended Korby Kiles because I thought he
was innocent,” Jarrod started, “I think,” he stopped mid sentence, unable to
finish his thought. Heath remained
motionless.
“No you didn’t,” Heath answered quietly.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Jarrod
said, standing up.
Heath began to speak. “Jarrod, you didn’t defend him to
hurt me, that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Maybe not intentionally or deliberately, but maybe
somewhere back in my mind, I just keep thinking that. What kind of man does that to his own brother?” Jarrod wanted to know. “I thought that I accepted you, without
reservation, but looking back now, I feel ashamed.”
Heath finally turned around, “Jarrod, you don’t honestly
think you’re the only one who’s having those kind of thoughts? I wanted to rip apart Jake Kiles in the
dining room, but I held back, because I wanted to show you all how ‘mistreated’
I’d been my whole life, and you all felt so sorry for me. I’d have never stood for that two months
ago. And then there’s that other part
of me that wanted to show you up, I practically begged you to take the case,
just so I could show you that I could take whatever you had to throw at me, the
new ‘kid’ shows up the lawyer at his own game, you know? I just never reckoned you’d tear me apart
with the moonlight and the streetlamps.
That was very shrewd. I’ll not
underestimate your ability again.” Heath paused. “You see, this brother thing between us, is something new, I
figure we both just need some time to adjust.
We don’t need to think this much, we just need to let things
happen. We’ll make it work.”
“Are you sure you’re not the attorney in this family?”
Jarrod asked him, “That was quite an argument you just delivered.”
“You mean you bought it?” Heath asked with a smile.
“Every word of it,” Jarrod said.
“Wonder how Nick would like that?” Heath asked. “Barkley and Barkley, Attorney’s at law.”
“What could he say?
We’d pretty much have a controlling interest in the ranch, we’d
certainly be able to convince Eugene and Audra to throw in with us,” Jarrod
joked.
“Let’s just take it one step at a time, we’ll start with
being brothers,” Heath added.
“And being honest,” Jarrod replied.
“So we’re starting over?” Heath asked.
“Nope, moving forward,” Jarrod answered.
THE END