The Posture of Innocence, day 2
All right, @freewritehouse, @fitinfun, @owasco, @deemarshall, @mgaft1, @misschance, @iamsaray, @wakeupkitty, @scribblingramma, @icedrum (welcome, friend!) and @whatisnew -- day 2 of The Posture of Innocence! My first extended content from characters generated during freewrites, Black, White, and RED All Over is now a bonafide book on Amazon Kindle -- almost worldwide -- still working with Amazon this week and updates will be here!
Got an idea for an image for this story yesterday ... may do a separate post asking for your ideas!
Here is the prologue -- started this story at the exact two-year mark of #freewrite, so folded it into the Sunday prompt as homage -- and also day 1 proper. On to day 2 ...
When Mrs. Jones finished her conversation with Captain Lee, she waited a moment to calm herself, and then picked up the phone and dialed a number in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“Hello,” said a pleasant male voice.
“Mr. Black, it's Mrs. Jones.”
“Oh, good morning, Mrs. Jones!”
“I just called to tell you that you were right … I wasn't sure we could count on a Lee to do right, but, Captain Lee is making progress. He called me and was very kind and respectful, and told me he knows and can prove that Lilith DeVille is a bold-faced liar, and it will all be done next week.”
“Oh, he thinks it's all going to be done,” Mr. Black said with a laugh. “Your part will be done, though – if he gets his half done I'll give him the other half and see if he follows through with the public exoneration part. If he does, your family is made whole, but his adventure with me will just be beginning – and if he can get through all that, a lot of families like yours will be made whole too.”
“The work you are doing with the Innocence Project is just that important,” Mrs. Jones said. “I know that.”
“We need a battering ram, though, to get Virginia to move on some things for our people,” Mr. Black said. “If Captain Lee follows through on everything, we'll have our battering ram. So far, so good. I'll see you next week.”
Mrs. Jones got off the phone, and again wept for some time. To think she would live to see her family's ordeal end, and in a way that would mean the end of the ordeal for many other families, was overwhelming. Had she believed God could do it? Yes. Did she know God definitely took His time when it came to doing what Black people wanted Him to do? Yes … but then, God took His own time about everything, making sure that when the thing was done, it was done in the best possible way for all those He was concerned with in the time He chose to do the work.
Mrs. Jones had accepted that God might not grant her request in her lifetime, and expected it … bone cancer was slow-moving and even more slow-moving when the proper nutrition was applied, but she was now 91, and the cancer had finally gone into stage 4.
And yet, in a week or two, if she could just live a week or two … because she had thought, while sitting with Captain Lee, that she need not have survived that interview. He looked so much like his great-great-great-uncle, that Lee who was the last master of Arlington before becoming the wiliest of Confederate generals – that man given credit for not doing all the evil he could have, and not killing those slaves that displeased him out of hand.
Nor was it wise to think that it was so, so long ago. Tallie Mae Jones was 91. Her grandmother, Jonnie Custis, had also lived to 91 … meaning that she had been a child at Arlington when Colonel Lee had inherited in 1857 ... and had decided to prevent further unrest by breaking up every family on the plantation. In real terms: he had sold off Jonnie's father and elder brothers. The breach that made in the family would not yet be solved seven decades later, when Tallie Mae was born in 1928. Tallie Mae remembered her grandmother's deep sadness … and had come to understand it since her grandson had been falsely accused of murder, as if General Lee's heirs had never known of his defeat.
To think that it had come down to talking to that man's nephew as a step to getting the family back together, in 2019! Captain Lee was taller by one inch than his relative, and a decade younger than his uncle's “statuary” years as a general– just as solidly muscled and fit, and easily deadly. With that face and name, he could do anything in Virginia, including silencing a frail old Black woman with one blow. The fears still existed for a good reason; his fellow officers and higher law enforcement, according to the Lofton County Free Voice, were still being paid to sell Black people into prison, and thus reducing their lives to chattel. They had been getting away with it. There was no reason that Captain Lee should not have gone with the old program.
Except, he didn't. The walking, talking Lee statue was not quite the old Lee. He had all the famous gravity he looked like he should have had, but none of the cold, ruthless evil Mrs. Jones had expected from her grandmother's stories. His dark eyes were soft and the full tenor voice was gentle. His words were respectful, befitting a man speaking with his own grandmother, and few, so that Mrs. Jones could marshal her limited energy and get out what she had to say. He listened carefully and asked questions that were designed to draw out more information, not to subtly show his doubt of what he was hearing, or to suggest that she was senile and did not know what she was talking about. He had offered her his handkerchief when she had broken down and cried, and she had seen the tears in his eyes, although he had shown no other sign that he was moved. But he was. He was neither of stone, nor had a heart of stone.
It had remained to be seen if he had a will of iron, to expose the lies and comforts – that unyielding posture of innocence White Southerners and White America clung to even in the face of damning facts – of his own culture in order to do right by Tom Jones and his family. But, as Mr. Black had said, so far, so good.
“A Lee ought to be willful,” Mrs. Jones said after she had recovered, “and there is no reason he should be fearful enough, on his own ground, to lie. Perhaps he is telling the truth, then. I want to believe him. But I still feel I am only safe believing in Thee, Lord. Thou didst handle his uncle and take away victory and Arlington and put him to work to support his own family before the end – less severe than he deserved, but quite a fall. Handle this Lee too. I'll trust in Thee, and wait just a little more ... .”