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In that moment, her smile slowly lit the room, and her head moved onto the bed toward his. "Doc's going to do surgery on you. He learned from the best, Dr. Samuel Gross in Philadelphia. He said your arm's going to be fine, John Paul. I've read some about what modern medicine can do nowadays. They're going to clean your wound with what they call antiseptic. They even clean the surgery knives so you won’t be sick afterwards with wound infection. They’ll be changing your dressings every few days. Doc said you don’t have to lose your arm like you would have years ago. He said you were lucky nothing vital got damaged so you didn’t bleed to death. He said he’s gonna patch up the muscle that got torn in the attack. He said he’s going to scrape the dead bone and fix the torn muscle. He said your rib caught most of the wound to your chest. He said you’ll be fine. He said…”

John Paul raised his left arm to stop her mid sentence. “Don’t worry, Ginny, I will be fine.” He felt he was lying to her, putting on a brave front, but he wanted to calm her.

She hugged him and kissed his forehead. “I’m so glad you’re alive and well,” she said.

She slept an uncomfortable night in the chair next to his bed, until a male voice woke her.

“Howdy, son.” John Paul’s father appeared in the doorway of the infirmary, giving an uneasy nod to Ginny and then to his son. Surprised by his sudden entry, she looked nervously at him then back at John Paul.

John Paul’s father was nearing seventy-five years in age, older than many a man of the time. He was not as tall as his son but heavier and wider, with ruddy skin. The leathery face somewhat resembled his son’s, except for heavy creases on the lines of his forehead and around his eyes. His hair was of two shades, dark gray on top and bushy white around the temples that cried for a barber’s touch. His jowls drooped, and his grim visage shined prominently in the morning light pouring from the window, yet his eyes hid mysteriously in the cast shadows. His shirtsleeves were rolled back exposing his forearms, and his jeans were faded and worn, especially on the knees and thighs. Thick boots clopped on the wooden floor as he eased toward his son at the bed.

“I’m glad you’re OK, son. I talked to the doc. I know you got a tough patch of grass ahead of you.”

John Paul adjusted his head slightly on the pillow while his father shot a quick glance at Ginny. The father bent down and kissed his son’s forehead.

“I wish I’d heard sooner. I can’t forgive that Nathaniel boy fer doin’ this—never will.”

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Ginny said.

“No, don’t go, if you please, lady,” he said. “I wanna say somethin’ to ya’ both. I want family to hear this.”

Ginny looked into his eyes for the first time since he entered the room. She relaxed in her chair. “I know I haven’t been the best father to you over the years, Johnnie, but Lord knows, I’ve done the best I could. It ain’t been easy since your maw passed on. An’ when I heard that you were hurt real bad like this, I was never so scared in all my life. I shot right over here quick as I could.” He inhaled deeply and then exhaled, speaking slowly and deliberately.

“I’m your paw, and I have to do things at times that may not make sense to you. I know that you still want to draw and paint—be an artist, and I know I took that away from you at a young age, and I’m real sorry. But, when Jean died, I was all alone, and t’be honest, I was scared.”

Ginny’s hand moved to her face just under her eye. John Paul adjusted himself in the bed.

“For the first time in my life, after Jean died, there was no kin folks around me,” he said. “There was only my workers on the ranch, and they don’t understand you the way family does. They don't love; they don't even hate. They just work.” His baritone voice blanketed the room as he spoke. He cleared his throat, cutting another nervous glance at Ginny.

“But I needed you, son. Not just to work. I needed my son with me, so I brung ya' home from that art schoolin' your maw so wanted for you.” Ginny fidgeted in her seat and ran her fingers across the bedside Bible.

“Well, that was always a big disagreement with Jean and me,” he said. “I didn’t see much future for ya’ in drawin’ pictures, and I wanted you to grow up known’ how to put in a hard day's work, so when Jean passed....” His voice drained away. As his boots shifted along the floor, he composed himself.

“Well, maybe someday you’ll see what I mean.” His eyes shifted to Ginny and then back at his son.

“Maybe it’s my fault you been doin’ all that drinkin’ and carryin’ on into the wee hours, playin’ poker with riff-raff and such.” John Paul lifted his head from his pillow a bit, but the old man continued to talk.

“I did everything I could to keep them art pencils from you, Johnnie. Ya’ see I’m your paw, an’ you was just a kid at the time. I had to make choices for what I thought was best for you. I ain’t sayin’ I was right to do it the way I did, but that’s the way I did it. I know this: everything I did son, I did for you.” He scanned the room. Either the room’s open curtains and heavy sunlight seemed to bother him, or more likely, his eyes yearned for the sharpness they once had.

“And I know you love this gal, Ginny, here. You and her are like Jean and me when we was kids. Lordy, we loved each other so. I know Ginny’s a smart gal and folks like her a lot.” Ginny bowed her head.

“I know we ain’t always been on the best terms, Ginny, but we got a good reason to start over here, and we got somethin’ in common. We both love my son here. I guess that means we’re all family.”

She smiled at him for the first time since he entered the room. John Paul’s father snapped his hat back onto his head. He bent down to his son’s face, whispering inaudibly.

“I love you, too, pa,” John Paul replied in a hoarse voice.

The father opened his arms and waved Ginny in to him. She moved across the room and nestled herself under his thick arm.

“We’re gonna make it through this,” he said to them, “and we’re gonna make it as a family.” Ginny felt overcome with a relief she had not known in a while, the relief of shared burdens. The smile on John Paul’s face spoke to her heart and gave comfort to his father.

Three months later, John Paul was released from Doc’s care. The surgery on his arm was a success. The arm and wound in his side were healing fine. Thanks to modern medicine and to Doc’s surgery, John Paul kept his arm, which he was able to use as well as he had before the attack. He soon picked up a charcoal crayon and began drawing right away, beginning with sketches of Ginny.

A month after that, cattlemen driving their stock toward the Chisholm Trail from a trip to McCoy’s stockyards stormed across a gruesome discovery in the shallow river just downstream from the Kansas-Pacific railroad bridge. A herd of cattle crossing the Missouri River had trampled Nathaniel’s ragged body to the surface.

He was buried the next week at the cemetery with only Nathaniel’s mother, John Paul and Ginny attending. As the pine box was covered with dirt, John Paul reached into his inner coat pocket and placed the Bowie knife—Nathaniel’s prized possession—onto the casket, burying it forever along with the trouble that came with it.

In the years thereafter, people in and around Abilene often made their way past the town’s Bull’s Head saloon to a little shop right beyond the post office next to the general merchant’s store. They paid as much as a dollar a piece to marvel at the beautiful landscape paintings by famous artists of the day. Ginny, intelligent and educated, had negotiated deals (for the right price, of course) with artists like Albert Beirstadt and Frederick Edwin Church, for showing their breathtaking and sublime landscape art in the couple’s busy little shop.

Folks often came out of the general store with money in their pockets and would shop a bit more at the little place next door where the married couple, John Paul and Ginny, also sold drawings and artsy what-nots, even crayons, paints and little brushes.

Ginny, her belly swollen expecting their first child, would put money aside every week, in case the child might one day be interested in studying art back in the east.

On some days when the Kansas sun boiled over, John Paul’s father, who had been the best man at their wedding, would call on the couple for an afternoon visit at their shop where they would all enjoy a glass of iced tea and pleasant conversation.

The soon-to-be grandfather would mostly chat excitedly about the enjoyment he planned with his new grandson, whom he would call Trey in lieu of John Paul the third, which he said was “too big a mouthful to per'nounce.” Ginny playfully disagreed and insisted she was having his granddaughter. The two quibbled over the child’s gender until John Paul chimed in on the argument, and howls of laughter erupted from the trio in the tiny shop.

For many years, John Paul painted landscapes for show and for selling in the shop. However, he mostly enjoyed sketching charcoals of his beloved Ginny, who helped him onto the road past dying and into the life he chose with her.

Ginny kept John Paul’s hatbox drawing all of her life, at least until her aging years when she eventually passed on the precious sketch for safekeeping to their only child Paula Jean, who had become a fine Impressionist painter after studying art back east in the Old States.

John Paul’s father dearly loved his granddaughter, Paula Jean. He had a special affection for her.

He cherished the sparkling portrait she painted of him, which proudly hung over an inside doorway of the shop and had been marked “not for sale,” along with the words

“Family Treasure-priceless.”

END

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Michael T. Pizzolato is a retired building‑maintenance and AC technician who grew up in the dawn of television, when Westerns shaped American culture. A graduate of LSU Shreveport and a former associate editor and graphic designer for The Western Online, he now serves as editorial assistant for The Great American Western YouTube channel. His art and writing appear across the internet. In 1981, he survived a stabbing by a close friend, a moment that still informs his sense of resilience. He lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, with his cat Jeepers, rescued years ago from the motor mount of a neighbor’s Jeep.