Day 628: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: frayed power cord

Maggie Mae Morris, or Granny Mag as she was generally known in Lofton County, VA, had come of age at a time in which law and justice, and the relationship between hard work and who prospered from it, were still quite divergent for people of African and Native descent in the United States.

From this, Granny Mag had drawn two maxims that she used for everything:

“Waste not, want not.”

“Everybody gotta defend their brothers and sisters, by any means necessary.”

Since she was a tiny, sweet little old woman, no one ever thought to connect her suddenly and rather openly updating her home's appliances with a threat working its way through the community.

It fell to Captain Ironwood Hamilton of Tinyville, VA, in the middle of one of his busiest weeks in office (read the extended story here to find out why!), to figure it out.

A rash of home invasions had been working its way southward from Washington D.C. through Virginia – violent invasions in which several homeowners had been hurt or killed. The invaders had moved on quickly, skipping from cities to nice homes in rural areas so that local police could not get much of a steady line on them.

Yet it had all come to an end in Granny Mag's house, where all six men fitting the descriptions of the invaders from Washington D.C. lay dead, in a particular way.

“Looks like electrocution to me,” Lieutenant O'Reilly of the Tinyville police department said.

“That's because it is,” Captain Hamilton said.

Granny Mag seemed very calm in that early morning as she told her story.

“I gets up early, from my days sharecropping,” she said. “I was just comin' downstairs when I heard a noise like people trying to break down my door. I done grabbed up my weapon here” – she brandished a baseball bat that seemed half as big as she was – “and turned on the light jus' as they all were a-bustin' through the door. All at once, they walked into my old frayed power cords, and they shorted out.”

Captain Hamilton looked around, and then looked around a second time.

“Yes, that does seems to fit the facts in evidence,” he said.

Lieutenant O'Reilly looked around, confused, as his superior closed his notebook.

“We'll have the bodies out of your way in just a little while,” said the captain, “ and I regret that we in law enforcement could not handle this matter before you had to see all this.”

“I seen plenty of burned dead bodies before,” Granny Mag said. “You knows what I be speaking of.”

“With sorrow, ma'am,”of course I do.”

“Just this time, it ain't my kindred. They done died in commission of a crime – it be tragic, but them wages of sin pay sooner den we reckon sometimes. I be prayin' for the families, but, it be what it be.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Captain Hamilton looked one more time: yes, every body was well inside the house, and had fallen forward.

“Come along, Lieutenant,” he said.

“But, but, Captain –.”

The captain kept up his pace until they were back at his truck.

“But, Captain, how did the frayed power cords get by the door? I mean, we stepped over them ourselves!”

“But the light wasn't on,” said the captain. “That, dear young man, is how the wages of sin pay sooner than the criminal sometimes thinks. About the rest –.”

And Captain Hamilton put his finger to his lips.