| General Fiction posted April 24, 2024 | Chapters: |
...14 15 -16- 17... 
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Tales of Ben Persons
A chapter in the book Right in the Eye
Right in the Eye, ch 16
by Wayne Fowler
In the last part Ben Paul traveled to Creede, Colorado, where he met Sylvia, Livvy’s granddaughter. They agree to share notes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ben prayed there would be no fires anywhere in Creede, but especially at Sylvia’s house.
The Creede Hotel was the oldest in town. There was no doubt that it had been there when his father called it home, when his father rode the stage as shotgun guard. And when he was deputy sheriff. Ben Paul’s mother, Beth, told him many of the stories that his father had related. Many of them happened right here in the very town, maybe involving that very hotel, that very room.
Ben Paul would have done just about anything to have known his father. He’d asked God many, many times if maybe God couldn’t find a way to give him the calling he’d given his father.
Then Ben Paul worried that he wasn’t worthy.
Sure, he’d made him a preacher, a pretty decent one by all accounts. And then, after short apprenticeships in neighboring towns, he became the pastor of his local church, the one he’d grown up in. Ben felt blessed, wonderfully blessed. He was a leader in the community, influential. The church had grown and undergone three different renovation additions. People were being saved. All was good. God was good. Ben considered his calling request to be vanity and pride.
But that never stopped him from at least wanting to know all he could about his father, the first Ben Persons. Tony Bertelli of St Louis helped him greatly. The few weeks Ben spent in St Louis culminating with his shooting the attacker was life-changing. That was when he grew up and first began to truly understand his father.
Ben Paul’s room in the Creede Hotel didn’t have a clock, so he looked at his watch about every forty-five minutes all night long. Sylvia knew things that he didn’t.
And she was such a pleasant person.
He looked at his watch for the last time at 4:30 and decided he didn’t dare remain in bed and finally drop off for a decent sleep… and risk being late. He cleaned up and walked Main Street, wondering what it would have been like to walk it with a gun – at night, with a dozen or more saloons of men in varying degrees of drunkenness. He wondered how many of the townsmen, with no church at the time, were saved. He wondered what that knowledge would do to a man with a calling.
+++
“Right on time. Come in! Put anything in your coffee?”
“Believe it or not, I often put in an ice cube, especially when I want to drink it the same day as my company.”
“Well, come in, come in. If it’s too hot, well, there’s the ice cube, or we’ll just wait for it to cool. I have all day. I see you have a notebook. You came prepared.”
“’Fraid it’s empty. In case I needed to write something down? Ordinarily, I have a very good memory, but when emotions kick in … well, you never know.”
“I would imagine, learning that your father, who you never met, had been a cowboy and a sheriff’s deputy back in the gunslinger days.” We both let that lay.
Breakfast finished, it was all Ben could do not to suggest they get right into the papers.
“Well let’s get started. The kitchen table, or my little umbrella table out back?” Sylvia asked.
“Awfully nice outdoors this morning,” Ben replied. “But you may want a wrap, or something.”
Sylvia took a sweater from a hook near the back door. She was halfway out the door before remembering that she needed her mother’s papers. Her turning into Ben was a moment of embarrassment for both of them, with Sylvia’s face planted into Ben’s chest.
Ben steadied her before backing out of the way. “Oops” was all he could manage. If compelled, he would admit to enjoying the momentary contact.
“I’m a goofball. Sorry. I forgot Mom’s notes.”
“Mustn’t forget those.”
Sylvia looked at him askew, thinking to herself, who says mustn’t?
Settled in, Sylvia held the papers close to her chest, holding them with both hands. Ben felt like a kid promised a puppy, or an ice cream, and the parent holding on, waiting until he was calm enough to handle such treasure without making a mess. Ben maintained control, inwardly begging to see the precious notes.
“Well, I guess the best way would be for you to just read them, and comment at appropriate intervals when you can add what your mother can add to what my mother remembered.” She handed the set to Ben, who first looked at the expensive paper, and fancy cursive, obviously written with a fountain pen that flowed a little too freely. Then he read the first line:
I thought I was going to die!
Ben Paul understood that Livvy’s daughter wrote those words as if projecting herself into her mother’s situation, that she felt her mother’s feelings. It was too raw, too … something. His father’s first love, a girl, a woman, who thought she was going to die. Death was all too … This person was dead. His mother was dead, and the man he desperately wanted to know was long dead. And the girl he loved thought she was going to die. Ben realized that he would have to read the notes with a less personal eye, try to become a little bit more objective or he wouldn’t make it through. Maybe it was because he was 81 and closer to death that he fought for control. He couldn’t say.
“I, I didn’t think it would be like this,” Ben said, emotion obvious in his voice.
Sylvia looked at him with eyes of compassion. “Take your time, dear.” She rested her hand on his arm. “I cried most of the way through them.” She hadn’t, but she did cry through parts and thought it the right thing to say.
Ben took a deep breath and continued reading:
Mom was still in Alpine. She walked the Gold Stake Saloon side due to it’s being less onerous than the bawdy Queen and Avalanche. She must have been in shock because the first thing she recalled was a putrid smell and a man brushing her breasts of his vomit. And then the most wonderful thing, an angel appeared, a big, strong, beautiful boy, man really.
Most men want to fight. It seems it their first impulse. One woman, two men, a fight ensues – boxing, punching, throwing to the ground and wallering. At least decent girls could use the opportunity to flee. Mom’s savior angel gently removed the drunken beast’s hands and blithely suggested he hobble to the creek to clean up. ‘Hobble’ was what Mom said he said.
Ben wondered at the woman’s language, at her generationally removed position as she wrote from memory her mother’s memories - memories offered to him here by Livvy's grand-daughter.
Then he looked at her and she thought she was truly going to die. She had Sandy (the kitten) in one arm and what was left of a sack of flour in the other. And she was covered, even in her hair with filth. I believe had she another arm she would have shed her dress and run home completely exposed. No, I jest, but Mom said that she was in a horrid condition.
Ben indeed brought replacement flour as promised. Next she saw him, he was finishing shoeing a troubled horse for Mr. Hobbs.
She thought he was an angel.
Ben laid aside the page. It took him a moment. Sylvia allowed him peace.
“Mother never knew this story, how God prevailed upon my dad to arrive at that exact moment.”
Sylvia hadn’t thought of the encounter in those terms.
Ben picked up the next page:
It was after their first real kiss. She loved him and would happily spend her life with him, knowing that he had a calling from God. My mother said that it was ‘puppy love’. It might have been, then. But it would have matured, as would both of them. Even after falling in love with William. Mother said that she loved Ben to this day, wherever he is, despite her undying love for William.
Ben managed to overcome the point of view issue, Sylvia’s mother writing the events and feelings of her mother. "William was your father?"
"My grandfather."
Ben nodded understanding, ackowledging the fact he should have surmised.
Sylvia knew where Ben was in his reading when he looked up from the page. “I’ve never known love like that.” She glanced into Ben’s eyes, but quickly looked away. “My grandmother was blessed.”
“She was,” Ben agreed. “As was my father. And my mother. You know she was married to him less than a year?”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Ben made a quick dismissive hand gesture, not meaning anything in particular. He pulled the paper back into his vision range.
Grandpa bought and then sold the Alpine livery. They then moved to Creede. Mom was in a tizzy, knowing that Ben was a deputy sheriff there. But alas, he’d moved on – his calling. She heard several stories of his Creede exploits, however. Billy, the sheriff’s helper told Mom several of them.
“Excuse me, Ben. Please keep reading. I’ll be in the kitchen. Just yell for me when you reach a place where you can fill in some blanks for me.”
“I will, Sylvia, I will.” Ben caught himself, nearly calling her dear.
Ben read Billy’s accounts of Ben’s ministering to himself and others who were put in jail. How Billy was a jailed jailer, his sentence to run until Ben returned to Creede to witness to him. Ben did, and Billy got saved. And released from jail.
Ben knew this to be the Billy that helped his father take care of an evil man named Mason Salinger at Clabber Creek.
Billy also told Livvy’s daughter, Martha, about Ben’s campaign to rescue wayward women, finding them homes, and in many cases, husbands.
Ben marveled that his father seemed to have that particular ministry in addition to his preaching and helping people get saved. He’d heard all the Chicago events that his father had related to his mother, Beth. Ben made a mental note to share those with Sylvia, as well as the stagecoach robbery that Ben interrupted, the one that caused James Coley, also known as Thomas Coleman to get saved and become a preacher.
In the last part Ben Paul traveled to Creede, Colorado, where he met Sylvia, Livvy’s granddaughter. They agree to share notes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ben prayed there would be no fires anywhere in Creede, but especially at Sylvia’s house.
The Creede Hotel was the oldest in town. There was no doubt that it had been there when his father called it home, when his father rode the stage as shotgun guard. And when he was deputy sheriff. Ben Paul’s mother, Beth, told him many of the stories that his father had related. Many of them happened right here in the very town, maybe involving that very hotel, that very room.
Ben Paul would have done just about anything to have known his father. He’d asked God many, many times if maybe God couldn’t find a way to give him the calling he’d given his father.
Then Ben Paul worried that he wasn’t worthy.
Sure, he’d made him a preacher, a pretty decent one by all accounts. And then, after short apprenticeships in neighboring towns, he became the pastor of his local church, the one he’d grown up in. Ben felt blessed, wonderfully blessed. He was a leader in the community, influential. The church had grown and undergone three different renovation additions. People were being saved. All was good. God was good. Ben considered his calling request to be vanity and pride.
But that never stopped him from at least wanting to know all he could about his father, the first Ben Persons. Tony Bertelli of St Louis helped him greatly. The few weeks Ben spent in St Louis culminating with his shooting the attacker was life-changing. That was when he grew up and first began to truly understand his father.
Ben Paul’s room in the Creede Hotel didn’t have a clock, so he looked at his watch about every forty-five minutes all night long. Sylvia knew things that he didn’t.
And she was such a pleasant person.
He looked at his watch for the last time at 4:30 and decided he didn’t dare remain in bed and finally drop off for a decent sleep… and risk being late. He cleaned up and walked Main Street, wondering what it would have been like to walk it with a gun – at night, with a dozen or more saloons of men in varying degrees of drunkenness. He wondered how many of the townsmen, with no church at the time, were saved. He wondered what that knowledge would do to a man with a calling.
+++
“Right on time. Come in! Put anything in your coffee?”
“Believe it or not, I often put in an ice cube, especially when I want to drink it the same day as my company.”
“Well, come in, come in. If it’s too hot, well, there’s the ice cube, or we’ll just wait for it to cool. I have all day. I see you have a notebook. You came prepared.”
“’Fraid it’s empty. In case I needed to write something down? Ordinarily, I have a very good memory, but when emotions kick in … well, you never know.”
“I would imagine, learning that your father, who you never met, had been a cowboy and a sheriff’s deputy back in the gunslinger days.” We both let that lay.
Breakfast finished, it was all Ben could do not to suggest they get right into the papers.
“Well let’s get started. The kitchen table, or my little umbrella table out back?” Sylvia asked.
“Awfully nice outdoors this morning,” Ben replied. “But you may want a wrap, or something.”
Sylvia took a sweater from a hook near the back door. She was halfway out the door before remembering that she needed her mother’s papers. Her turning into Ben was a moment of embarrassment for both of them, with Sylvia’s face planted into Ben’s chest.
Ben steadied her before backing out of the way. “Oops” was all he could manage. If compelled, he would admit to enjoying the momentary contact.
“I’m a goofball. Sorry. I forgot Mom’s notes.”
“Mustn’t forget those.”
Sylvia looked at him askew, thinking to herself, who says mustn’t?
Settled in, Sylvia held the papers close to her chest, holding them with both hands. Ben felt like a kid promised a puppy, or an ice cream, and the parent holding on, waiting until he was calm enough to handle such treasure without making a mess. Ben maintained control, inwardly begging to see the precious notes.
“Well, I guess the best way would be for you to just read them, and comment at appropriate intervals when you can add what your mother can add to what my mother remembered.” She handed the set to Ben, who first looked at the expensive paper, and fancy cursive, obviously written with a fountain pen that flowed a little too freely. Then he read the first line:
I thought I was going to die!
Ben Paul understood that Livvy’s daughter wrote those words as if projecting herself into her mother’s situation, that she felt her mother’s feelings. It was too raw, too … something. His father’s first love, a girl, a woman, who thought she was going to die. Death was all too … This person was dead. His mother was dead, and the man he desperately wanted to know was long dead. And the girl he loved thought she was going to die. Ben realized that he would have to read the notes with a less personal eye, try to become a little bit more objective or he wouldn’t make it through. Maybe it was because he was 81 and closer to death that he fought for control. He couldn’t say.
“I, I didn’t think it would be like this,” Ben said, emotion obvious in his voice.
Sylvia looked at him with eyes of compassion. “Take your time, dear.” She rested her hand on his arm. “I cried most of the way through them.” She hadn’t, but she did cry through parts and thought it the right thing to say.
Ben took a deep breath and continued reading:
Mom was still in Alpine. She walked the Gold Stake Saloon side due to it’s being less onerous than the bawdy Queen and Avalanche. She must have been in shock because the first thing she recalled was a putrid smell and a man brushing her breasts of his vomit. And then the most wonderful thing, an angel appeared, a big, strong, beautiful boy, man really.
Most men want to fight. It seems it their first impulse. One woman, two men, a fight ensues – boxing, punching, throwing to the ground and wallering. At least decent girls could use the opportunity to flee. Mom’s savior angel gently removed the drunken beast’s hands and blithely suggested he hobble to the creek to clean up. ‘Hobble’ was what Mom said he said.
Ben wondered at the woman’s language, at her generationally removed position as she wrote from memory her mother’s memories - memories offered to him here by Livvy's grand-daughter.
Then he looked at her and she thought she was truly going to die. She had Sandy (the kitten) in one arm and what was left of a sack of flour in the other. And she was covered, even in her hair with filth. I believe had she another arm she would have shed her dress and run home completely exposed. No, I jest, but Mom said that she was in a horrid condition.
Ben indeed brought replacement flour as promised. Next she saw him, he was finishing shoeing a troubled horse for Mr. Hobbs.
She thought he was an angel.
She thought he was an angel.
Ben laid aside the page. It took him a moment. Sylvia allowed him peace.
“Mother never knew this story, how God prevailed upon my dad to arrive at that exact moment.”
Sylvia hadn’t thought of the encounter in those terms.
Ben picked up the next page:
It was after their first real kiss. She loved him and would happily spend her life with him, knowing that he had a calling from God. My mother said that it was ‘puppy love’. It might have been, then. But it would have matured, as would both of them. Even after falling in love with William. Mother said that she loved Ben to this day, wherever he is, despite her undying love for William.
Ben managed to overcome the point of view issue, Sylvia’s mother writing the events and feelings of her mother. "William was your father?"
"My grandfather."
Ben nodded understanding, ackowledging the fact he should have surmised.
Sylvia knew where Ben was in his reading when he looked up from the page. “I’ve never known love like that.” She glanced into Ben’s eyes, but quickly looked away. “My grandmother was blessed.”
“She was,” Ben agreed. “As was my father. And my mother. You know she was married to him less than a year?”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
Ben made a quick dismissive hand gesture, not meaning anything in particular. He pulled the paper back into his vision range.
Grandpa bought and then sold the Alpine livery. They then moved to Creede. Mom was in a tizzy, knowing that Ben was a deputy sheriff there. But alas, he’d moved on – his calling. She heard several stories of his Creede exploits, however. Billy, the sheriff’s helper told Mom several of them.
“Excuse me, Ben. Please keep reading. I’ll be in the kitchen. Just yell for me when you reach a place where you can fill in some blanks for me.”
“I will, Sylvia, I will.” Ben caught himself, nearly calling her dear.
Ben read Billy’s accounts of Ben’s ministering to himself and others who were put in jail. How Billy was a jailed jailer, his sentence to run until Ben returned to Creede to witness to him. Ben did, and Billy got saved. And released from jail.
Ben knew this to be the Billy that helped his father take care of an evil man named Mason Salinger at Clabber Creek.
Billy also told Livvy’s daughter, Martha, about Ben’s campaign to rescue wayward women, finding them homes, and in many cases, husbands.
Ben marveled that his father seemed to have that particular ministry in addition to his preaching and helping people get saved. He’d heard all the Chicago events that his father had related to his mother, Beth. Ben made a mental note to share those with Sylvia, as well as the stagecoach robbery that Ben interrupted, the one that caused James Coley, also known as Thomas Coleman to get saved and become a preacher.
Ben P. Persons: 81-year-old son of Ben Persons
Sylvia Adams: grand-daughter of Livvy and William Ferlonson
Martha Crawley: Livvy's daughter, Sylvia's mother
Billy Harper: young man helped by Ben who helped Ben kill Salinger
James Coley (Thomas Coleman): outlaw turned preacher who assisted in the Clobber Creek incident where Be Persons was killed the first time
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Sylvia Adams: grand-daughter of Livvy and William Ferlonson
Martha Crawley: Livvy's daughter, Sylvia's mother
Billy Harper: young man helped by Ben who helped Ben kill Salinger
James Coley (Thomas Coleman): outlaw turned preacher who assisted in the Clobber Creek incident where Be Persons was killed the first time
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