Part Two
The Attic Treasure
This time it wasn’t the album I brought Grandma. No, this time I brought her something I had found in the attic. “Grams,” I called from the doorway, as I carried my bundle in to the room, “Do you know whose these are?”
She watched as I unwrapped my find. “Uh, those, I wondered what you were doing in the attic. Those belong to him, Jimmy,” she said. “They sent them to Mama when he was killed. You’ve heard the stories of Wild Bill Hickok I’m sure.”
Then it clicked, I hadn’t understood before. “Grams, are you telling me that my father and I are both named after a gunfighter and gambler?” I asked.
“No,” Grams said a note of anger in her voice, “and Mama would turn over in her grave if she ever heard you speak of him that way. No, you are named after Papa’s best friend and Mama’s too. She said that he understood her even when Elmer didn’t. That he had helped them through many a fight. That Jimmy had saved her several times and that if Papa hadn’t been there and she could have fallen for Jimmy just as hard.”
“I’m sorry, grandma,” I said, I felt as if I was a child again and she was scolding me for something I had done wrong. “I didn’t realize that before you were talking about the Wild Bill Hickok. How did Mama and Papa come to get his guns?”
“Well, let’s see, as I remember Papa told me that after he was shot that the guns were sent to Mama. That he had left a note saying that if anything happened to him he wanted her to have them. Papa said it was a sad day the day they arrived. Papa said that they thought it was something from the catalog company they were expecting. He brought it home and gave it to Mama, and she thought the same thing. He said she took it into the house and that he went on to the barn to put the horses up. Papa told me that he had never heard her scream like that. It scared him. He said he dropped everything and ran as fast as he could to the house. He found her there, crying like her poor heart was breaking. He went to her but she wouldn’t let him hold her. Papa said it took him a minute to figure out what was wrong. Said he didn’t figure it out til he spotted the contents of the package lying on the table. The day he told me the story, he had tears in his eyes by the end of the telling. Then he walked out to the barn, and didn’t come back for a while. Your grandfather told me that day was the anniversary of Jimmy’s death.
“I went to find Mama then. She was up in the attic and was looking for something. She was in a near panic. Then she when she finally found them, she looked so relieved. I didn’t want to ask any questions of her then but I wanted to know more. She obliged me though; she started telling what good friends they had been. How he had been the one to convince her that she loved Elmer so much. How he had kissed her just that once long ago and then would never talk about it again. She sounded kind of wistful when she told me that, like she had needed to talk about it with him, but never had. She told me that day that if he had talked to her about it that she probably would have fallen in love with him.” Gram paused and looked tired. I started to leave the room as she became lost in her thoughts, but her voice stopped me.
“She asked me that day to go with her to Deadwood and see his grave. She’d never been there. She’d not been to the funeral; they had already buried him before they sent her the guns. She told me that they had wanted to make the trip several times to pay their respects but something always stopped them. I didn’t see how we could do it, not with your father on the way. What we didn’t know was that Elmer was standing on the other side of the door and heard the whole conversation. When we came down stairs, he had his bag packed and hers. Papa told me that they were going a trip and would be back in a few weeks. He led her outside and there were their horses, descendents of the ones they had rode during their express days, saddled and waiting for them. Mama asked him what he had heard, and he just told her enough. He said it was about time he paid his respects to his best friend, and to the man that had given him a great gift by not ever letting her know what she meant to him. There were tears in her eyes when he finished. He helped her up onto her horse and they rode out. When they returned she looked so much better.
“Funny thing about that trip, when they came home she was calling him Kid again. And he was calling her Lou. They told us the trip had taken them back in time to when they had first met and fell in love, a time when they were young. I don’t think they ever called each other anything else from that day on.” As Gram became lost in her memories again and drifted off, I made my exit.
In the back of my mind though I made a mental note to visit Deadwood, South Dakota some day and the burial place of the man I was named after. I mean it’s not everyday you realize that you could have possibly been the great granddaughter of a famous gunfighter.