Romance by Correspondence
The Salt Block, the only saloon in Appleloosa, never closed, but its owner liked to catch a bit of shut-eye, and he would clearly have preferred it if the last few occupants of the bar went home. A large white bison snoozed by the fire, and two stallions sat at a circular wooden table, now scattered with empty brown bottles and rectangular wooden plates, salt still clinging to the edges. One, rangy and tan, curly-maned and wearing a serape, leaned back in his chair, whistling and pushing another chair back and forth with one hoof. The other, more solid one was face down on the table, salt in his blond mane and creases on his cheek where it had been pressed against the wood.
“Another saltlick,” moaned the blond-maned stallion.
“I think you’ve had enough for tonight, mister.”
He lifted his head up, salt dropping off his jawbone, snarling, “I said, gimme another saltlick!” slamming his hoof on the table, and then dropping his head back with a thud.
“Just get him another,” murmured Cheese Sandwich, with a meaningful glance at the barpony. “Braeburn here’s had a long day.”
It had been lucky that Cheese Sandwich had been between gigs when Braeburn’s letter caught up with him. Normally, he criss-crossed Equestria as Cheesy Sense dictated, and went where he liked in between. Lately, he’d been obliged to return to Ponyville on a regular basis, because his party pony magic had become fused to Pinkie Pie’s in a way that even Twilight Sparkle hadn’t been able to explain. He probably went back more than he needed to, strictly speaking, but you couldn’t be too careful.
He’d just been thinking that while it was nice to have some free time for a trip to Ponyville, he’d just been there, and it was going to be tough to come up with a legitimate excuse, even to himself. Braeburn’s letter asking him to come back to Appleloosa and organize his wedding couldn’t have been better timed. He wasn't usually asked to plan weddings, but a party was a party, and how different could it really be?
Cheese much preferred traveling by hoof, just him and Boneless 2, slipping into boxcars or rafts as the mood took him. He liked the flexibility, and it usually meant that he turned up exactly when he was supposed to be somewhere. As he got closer to Appleloosa, he became conscious of something blatantly missing: his Cheesy Sense. At first, he panicked and thought that maybe his party pony magic was going on the blink again, but nothing seemed wrong, just a stubborn lack of signal coming from Appleloosa. He shrugged it off, but he couldn’t mistake it, either. He was being asked to throw a party that his intuition somehow was not buying.
Still, he was happy to oblige a client, and maybe he could even think of Braeburn as a friend, since Braeburn stubbornly insisted that everypony was his friend, which was a rather endearing characteristic. He had hardly trotted over the town limits when a brown and blond bullet bowled him over and caught him in a strangling hug. “Welcome on back to Appleloosa, Cheese!” cried Braeburn, pinning him and sitting on his chest. “Betcha thought you’d got away from us, partner!”
Cheese wheezed, “Get off. You’re really heavy.”
Braeburn jumped up and grinned as Cheese pulled himself to his feet and began to brush off the red dust clinging to his serape, his saddle, and even his mane. Clearly, Braeburn had taken no offense; he never did. “Just so doggone glad to see you! You may have snuck out on us last time, but not this time. We’ve got a big job for you, or I should say I do. Heck, I guess we all do! Whole town’s invited to the wedding. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Oh, right, thought Cheese, as the oxygen returned to his brain. Wedding. That’s right, Braeburn’s getting married. “Congratulations. Are you going to introduce me to your fiancée?”
“Nope! Haven’t even met her yet myself!”
Cheese’s jaw literally dropped. When he was able to form words at all, he simply said, “What?”
He really wished Pinkie Pie were there. Of course, he almost always found himself wishing Pinkie were with him, just on general principles, and because she was his best friend, and um, whatever, but this time he wished she were there because a major friendship situation was blowing up that was way above his skill level. Braeburn clearly misunderstood the source of his astonishment, because he grinned again and hugged him around the shoulders, and then began dragging him towards town.
“There just aren’t enough eligible fillies in Appleloosa, compadre. That’s my trouble right there. My cousin Applejack from Ponyville, she came by a good long time ago to bring me a prime apple tree: Bloomberg, my pride and joy. I’ll introduce you later. She brought her five friends along, and you’d a thought something would click with just one of ‘em, wouldn’t you? There was this pink one—"
“Not the pink one,” Cheese blurted. “Um, no, the pink one is nothing but trouble. Plus she’s got a big, mean, scary boyfriend. You would not have wanted the pink one. Trust me.”
“Plus she talked a lot, as I recollect. That can sure get on a pony’s nerves after a while. Plus she had terrible taste in music. Then there was the dance hall girl outfit.”
Dance hall girl outfit?
“As Cousin Big Mac says, ‘ee-nope.’ So I was cudgeling my brains trying to figure how in the hay I was gonna meet a nice filly, when Sherriff Silverstar pointed out an ad in the Western Hay, Grain, and Feed. Seems they got a column for gentlecolts and fillies looking for romance. No funny stuff, mind you,” Braeburn added, giving Cheese a narrow-eyed look.
“I didn’t say anything!” protested Cheese.
Braeburn got behind Cheese and pushed him the rest of the way to town, collecting sagebrush, tumbleweeds, dust, and a few irritated lizards along the line. Finally, Braeburn let him go in front of a one-story building that did multiple duty as Braeburn’s office, seed shed, bedroom, kitchen, and the local Chamber of Commerce.
“Make yourself at home,” said Braeburn. “She’s not due till the noon train, so pull up a feed sack and I’ll put the coffee on and I can tell you all about her!”
And tell about her Braeburn did, as Cheese munched his way through half a dozen cinnamon rolls, mostly to keep his mouth occupied. How she’d responded to his ad. How warm she was, and how much she knew about fruit trees, and really seemed to care about them in a way he’d never seen outside his kinfolk. How great it was to get a letter every couple of days bulging with news and stories, and tons of support, because it could be tough sometimes, keeping up a bright face in a frontier town where everypony expected you to see the sunny side of everything. And how funny she was, after having been through more herself than seemed possible. She was just meant to be the wife of an orchard manager, and he’d gotten up the guts to pop the question by mail, and after a bit of persuasion, finally she’d given him a tentative “yes.”
Cheese felt the bottom of his stomach drop out like a grain elevator. It had nothing to do with Cheesy Sense or Pinkie Sense or anything but good old-fashioned horse sense: this wasn’t going to end well. He opened his mouth several times to tell Braeburn that he was not getting a party signal and a party signal he wasn’t getting was a party that wouldn’t be happening, but every time, he changed his mind and just bit down on another cinnamon roll.
The shrill whistle of an engine speeding its way towards Appleloosa cut into Braeburn’s monologue. “Just about time for her to get here!” he cried. “We better head on down to the station. Take your last look at Bachelor Braeburn, Cheese, because he’s never coming home.”
There was almost no one else on the platform as they stood there waiting for the train to pull in, Cheese fidgeting while Braeburn, bouncing with excitement, hoofed him repeatedly in the foreleg. As the engine rolled to a halt and the doors opened, an unmistakably mare-shaped form stepped down from the first class car. The steam rolled back to reveal a mare in a traveling cloak, with a brilliant white coat and a blazing red mane and tail. As she trotted towards them, her perfume hit them first in a deep, rolling wave. Cheese snatched off his hat and coughed behind it surreptitiously. She stopped just short of them, allowing her hind legs to swivel her forward into a dramatic pose, one hoof tip barely touching the ground.
“Are either of you,” she said in a deep alto, glancing back and forth at each of them from under darkened eyelashes, “Mr. Lonelyheart?”
Cheese shook his head in a rapid blur and jabbed his hoof frantically at Braeburn, who gulped and nodded, snatching his hat off as well. “Miss-–Miss Lovestruck?”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Lovestruck! Now that won’t do at all, will it, using our pen names, if we’re going to get to know each other better? Cherry Jubilee,” she said, lifting up a brightly polished front hoof, as though she expected it to be kissed.
“Braeburn,” muttered the blond stallion, taking her hoof and dropping his head over it. She withdrew her hoof and placed it on the ground, retreating a step or two as she looked Braeburn full in the face.
“Goodness,” she said, “you’re a bit younger than I’d imagined, Mr. Braeburn!”
Braeburn opened his mouth, closed it again, paused, and finally said, “I suppose I must be, ma’am.”
Cheese wanted no part of this. Braeburn had gotten himself into it, and as far as he was concerned, Braeburn could get himself back out. He stepped back and allowed himself a good long second look at Cherry Jubilee. Now that he thought about it, maybe her coat was a little whiter and her mane and tail a deeper and richer red than you saw on most mares. In fact, some might have said some unkind things about colors like that coming out of a bottle, but the point was that they were nice colors and she’d even picked them out herself. And sure, she looked as though she was fond of the occasional box of chocolate, but a lot of mares ate a lot of chocolate, he thought loyally, and it didn’t do them any harm that he could see, quite the reverse. Taken totally objectively, and as a neutral third party, she definitely had a certain barooomph. The real problem was that she wasn’t exactly what Braeburn had been expecting.
“I wouldn’t want you to . . . that is . . . well, you see, Mr. Braeburn,” she said, unnecessarily adjusting her pink neckerchief, “from your letters, you sounded as though you were so experienced a ranch hand and had been working with trees for so long that I naturally assumed . . .”
“Been working with trees since I was a little colt about that high,” said Braeburn, indicating his knees. “Hardly more than a foal, really.”
“I see. Well! Isn’t that nice!” she said with a brave little smile. “We can have a good long professional coze, can’t we?” she added, and tilted her head towards the doors of the train station.
“Oh, uh—after you, ma’am,” said Braeburn, gesturing for her to precede him, and looking frantically around to pick up and carry the luggage she hadn’t brought. He gave up, turned to Cheese with a wide-eyed stare that screamed Help me, and hurried after her. Cheese seriously considered looking for another way out, perhaps across the train tracks, but stopped when he heard Braeburn’s hysterical, “Let me introduce you to my friend. Miss Jubilee, Cheese Sandwich. He’s from Manehattan.” Now he was stuck, so he strolled forward with a wide super-duper smile that made his cheeks hurt.
“Manehattan,” said the elegant older mare, pressing his hoof between two of hers. “One of my distant cousins moved there some time ago. They have the dearest little filly, Cherry Blossom. Perhaps you’ve met them.”
Why was it, Cheese wondered with irritation, that everypony who wasn’t from Manehattan thought that everypony from Manehattan knew everypony else from Manehattan? There were entire neighborhoods he’d never even been to and probably wouldn’t in the foreseeable future. It might be home, but only technically. He never went there unless he had to. He couldn’t say that to her face, however. It was a lovely face, he realized, and would have been even nicer if she hadn’t put so much stuff on it, and that beauty mark was absolutely real, and he heard himself babbling something about how sorry he was, but he hadn’t. She smiled and turned away, and he took a deep, shaky breath and followed them towards the waiting room.
Braeburn held the door open, and Miss Jubilee rustled past him, her red and pink tail rippling. “Now you must tell me, Mr. Braeburn, how you shield the fruit from the frost. My poor cherries suffer so terribly from the frost.”
Braeburn stopped in his tracks so abruptly that Cheese bumped into him. “Ch-cherries?” he stuttered.
“Why yes,” she said with surprise. “I have a cherry orchard. It’s in my name. Cherry Jubilee.”
“Not---not apples?” Braeburn looked stricken to the heart.
“No. I see,” she said, after a long pause. “We’ve been writing about our trees, and seasons and pruning and harvest, and we simply never did mention what kind of fruit trees we had.”
Several ice ages came and went.
“Well! What a silly mistake on my part! I’m so sorry about the mix-up, Mr. Braeburn. Imagine not mentioning apples or cherries in my letters. I suppose Cherry Hill Ranch might be anything. It’s been a nice little day out for me. I’ll just make myself comfortable here in the waiting room, shall I? I’ve brought a good big novel with me, and I’d just gotten to a really thrilling bit, so I’ll be quite entertained until the return train comes around in several hours.”
Cheese knew what was coming next, and he dreaded it.
“Without seeing Appleloosa?”
There wasn’t much to see on one of Braeburn’s enthusiastic tours of Appleloosa, since the entire town consisted of only one street, and Cheese had been on it twice. There was a certain fascination in this one, however. Instead of excited babbling about some very ordinary high points, such as the flag pole and the post office, Braeburn provided a sparing and barely audible, “Well . . . some horses over there . . . and we got some more horses over here . . . and some trees,” while Miss Jubilee kept up a murmur of admiration. Braeburn was as easy to read as a coloring book. While Cheese supposed that was a good thing in general, in this particular case, he longed to yank him aside for a few quick lessons in good old Manehattanite insincerity.
Meanwhile, he became aware that he wasn’t exactly acting like his usual self, either. Instead of slipping through town with his hat canted down over his eyes, he was waving and smiling at everypony. They were coming out of shops and houses to say hello, and he was even able to put names to the faces. That never happened. He never went back or stayed anywhere long enough really to remember anypony. And yet, when a large lady bison who clearly knew him from somewhere advanced on him, he said unerringly, “Why, hello, Mrs. Tatanka. And how are all the little Tatankas? Six, aren’t there?”
“They’re all doing well, bless your heart for asking,” she replied, beaming at him.
“It’s Curly’s birthday next week, isn’t it?”
“Why yes, it is, Mr. Sandwich, but how did you remember a thing like that?”
How did I remember a thing like that? It wasn’t the sort of information his brain usually hung onto. He knew when he was supposed to throw a party, but that was pure Cheesy Sense. Otherwise, he only remembered a handful of important birthdays, like May 3rd.
“Lucky guess?” he ventured, with a nervous shrug, and then hurried after Braeburn and Cherry Jubilee.
“And this,” Braeburn was saying, “is the most important part of Appleloosa—our apple orchards.”
Braeburn was always a little different at this point of the tour, Cheese remembered; less boosterism, and a lot more love.
“Would you believe that none of this was here just a few short years ago, ma’am? No town, no settlement, and no apple trees. Now we’ve got ‘em as far as the eye can see. Good ones, too, with nurslings from back East. Even Sweet Apple Acres can’t say they’ve got better. And it’s been hard times, sometimes, just like I told you in my letters. You were saying frost—well, we had a winter nearly killed all our trees and us with ‘em; six solid months before the Pegasi got through. Terrible troubles with our bison neighbors, and now we live in Appleloosa like friends and kin. I know I’m just a big optimist, and some even think I’m a fool, but I’m awful proud of everything we built here. I just don’t know if I could live nowhere else in Equestria.”
Cherry Jubilee stood silhouetted against the red rock cliffs, clutching her traveling cloak. The wind must have picked up, although Cheese couldn’t feel it himself.
“I envy you, building all this up from nothing. I inherited my ranch from my family. I grew up running under those branches and bucking the fruit so it wouldn’t bruise. It takes a delicate hoof to do that. Have you ever seen a cherry orchard, Mr. Braeburn? I look at your apple orchard, and all I see is my own at home, waiting for me, with its shiny trunks and the pink blossoms in the springtime. I really wish you could have seen it.”
The three of them stood there for what seemed like a long time, as the sun slowly sank and turned the sky gold and pink, and streaked through with red as dark as Cherry Jubilee’s mane and tail. She was the first to turn away, laying her hoof on Braeburn’s shoulder.
“I think the Dodge Junction train must be nearly here. May I ask you to escort me to the station?”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Sandwich. I’m sorry I couldn’t provide the excuse for a party this time, but I’m sure you’ll come our way someday soon, maybe for my niece’s cuteceañera.”
Cheese opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a gargling noise. She turned and patted Braeburn’s cheek with a shiny white hoof.
“Please don’t feel bad, Mr. Braeburn. These kinds of mistakes happen sometimes. You learn to brush them off as you get older. They simply don’t sting the way they used to. Thank you for showing me your town and your orchards. You really ought to be very proud.”
The train pulled in, she slipped onto it in a rustle of red traveling cloak, and then the train pulled away, taking her with it. It was bringing back memories for Cheese, and they weren’t especially happy ones.
And then Braeburn had grabbed him with an agonized howl, dragging him down to the Salt Block. That’s where they’d stayed for the whole night and into the wee hours of the morning, though Cheese had had the sense to switch to sarsaparilla early in the evening.
“—shoulda known,” mumbled Braeburn. “Thought was prob'ly too good t’ be true. But you gotta hope, y’know? ‘Cause she seemed so great in her letters ‘n all.”
Because she was great in her letters, you dolt, thought Cheese. Honestly. There was nothing wrong with Cherry Jubilee. True, she’d arrived in a package Braeburn hadn’t been expecting, but it wasn’t a bad package, definitely not. If Braeburn was destined to live on an apple farm and Cherry Jubilee was destined to live on a cherry farm, then that was that, and there wasn’t a lot anypony could do about it. Still, if it had been Cheese, he wouldn’t have let something like that stop him. Destiny, schmestiny, he’d have fought back and made it work. Lucky for him he didn’t have to deal with anything like that.
Ptesan-Wi, the great white bison, rose with heavy dignity from his comfortable chair by the fireside, and made his slow way towards the swinging doors. He paused at Cheese and Braeburn’s table, looking down with pity at the young stallion with his head pillowed on his front legs.
“We have a saying.”
“You do?” asked Cheese, feeling he would regret this.
“You can’t cure stupid,” said the white bison, and continued his exit.
“You got that right.”
Cheese was surprised to feel a very small but unmistakable twitch in his flank. It absolutely couldn’t be. A party? Now? He waited for a stronger, deeper spasm, something that would boot him off towards Trottingham or Fillydelphia, but instead, there was another very faint twitch, and then nothing. It was almost as though he were already at the party—a very, very small party. He leaned far back in his chair, teetering on two of the legs, staring at the ceiling as he tried to think what kind of party this could possibly be. His eye lit on Braeburn, licking feebly at his fifth block of the evening. All four legs of the chair thudded back on the floor.
“Oh, I get it!” cried Cheese, spreading his front legs wide. “It’s a pity party!” and he blew triumphantly on a noisemaker.
Braeburn muttered something and slid under the table with a crash, but Cheese was sure that Pinkie would have been very proud of him.
Author's Note
Just how Western-related is Cheese Sandwich? I claimed to be totally unfamiliar with the genre. I lied. Put it together with my long-held idea that Cherry Jubilee might have a romance by mail with Braeburn, and here are the results.
