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Pa was with Marie. The new mother was about as worn out as it was possible to be, and Doctor Paul Martin had expressed some concerns about her fatigue. Predictably, Pa was at her side, trying to coax her into getting some rest while she remained awake and pestered him with anxious questions about their premature baby son.
Adam had many of those questions himself.
Had Pa been with him, his first would have been how something this tiny could also be a living thing.
He was used to life coming in big packages. Ranch hands, made bulky from years of hard work; horses, even when first born, struggling to their shaky legs within minutes; Pa, a giant of a man and a giant in Adam’s young eyes; heck, even seven-year-old Hoss, shooting up and filling out so quickly that Hop Sing was at his whit’s end.
This tiny, fragile, palmful of an infant didn’t fit in with the rest of his world at all.
‘Joseph,’ Pa had called him. From Marie, ‘Petit Joseph.’ And when Hoss caught on, ‘Little Joe.’
All in a matter of two hours or less.
Once the doc had satisfied himself that the little fellow was finally breathing like he should be—though the sound was painfully loud—he had quickly excused himself to attend Marie. Even from his own room, Adam could hear she and his father arguing. She wanted to get up and look after her baby, he knew, but Pa was having none of it. She had lost a lot of blood, he said; she needed rest.
Adam wasn’t at all sure how he ended up as the first pair of arms to hold the little boy.
Pa was holding Marie’s hand; Marie was gripping the bedsheets; Paul was desperately trying to get the little boy to take his first breath, for which he needed both hands; and Hoss was hopping around the room in utter hysterics, convinced that his brand-new baby brother would live only minutes in this world.
And all the while there stood Adam, babe in hand, heart in throat.
He had told himself, time and again, that he would not love Marie’s boy. He didn’t like Marie, so he wouldn’t like her son, either. And it had been easy, too, while the baby was still just a bump in his step-mother’s stomach.
Then, without warning, the doctor had passed him a filthy, squirming, too-warm little thing of three pounds and told him to hold on for dear life because Marie was weeping and begging Paul to tell her what was going on and Pa’s eyes were shiny even as he tried to comfort her and Paul said he had to do something, and fast.
Adam had felt his heart squeeze in his chest like an overripe fruit, close to bursting. In that wild moment, he suddenly thought that if this tiny stranger didn’t make it, then Adam would surely die with him.
Two hours later, the new baby had finally stopped crying. When he had, so had Hoss, and the exhausted seven-year-old had collapsed on Adam’s bed as soon as they entered the room and fallen fast asleep. His almost-thirteen-year-old big brother wasn’t far behind.
After all of that commotion, the house was eerily quiet.
Adam bounced the baby as gently as he could while pacing the confines of his own room. It was dark outside, but he didn’t dare light any wicks for fear of waking either of his… either of his brothers.
Marie had given him a new brother.
It was a wild, unexpected thought.
Marie had given him something that he loved, and it made him angry, because he didn’t want to love something new and yet he couldn’t help it. The baby was going to die someday. Just like his mother had. Just like Inger. Just like all of those people on the trail.
He didn’t want to love something that would die.
Unconsciously, his eyes drifted towards the bed as he continued his pacing.
Hoss had come at a time before Adam had known much personal loss, and his six-year-old mind had been unable to comprehend anything but the fact that he had a brother. He didn’t have many memories from that time, but he remembered the feelings.
Now, despite jadedness and old age, he felt them again. But this time, there was fear, too.
Nothing this small was made to live for long.
The baby’s face fogged as Adam fought to control his emotions. It wasn’t fair! He had refused love all this time for this very reason, and now God had gone and forced him to love anyway, and He was going to take it away again!
He tried to logic himself out of his feelings and will them away. But the baby was still overly hot and he couldn’t make himself cold again.
He loved, he loved, he loved, and he was scared to death.
“God,” he whispered suddenly, without meaning to. “God.”
His pa always said that God knew their thoughts. That even when they weren’t praying, God still knew everything they thought and hoped and wished and believed and feared. With silent tears, Adam wondered if God knew what he was praying even when he didn’t have words for his prayer. He had fears he wanted to express, anger he wanted to unleash, doubts he wanted to unload… and hope he just wanted.
“Please,” he finished at last, when all he could think of were four childish words. “Let me keep him.”
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