Day 810: 5 Minute Freewrite: Wednesday - Prompt: backwoods

Four hours before Captain Lee had pulled off the curb with Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton to go eat pie, he had reported his interview with her to police commissioner Winfred Scott as part of his report of exactly what had happened at the Blue Ridge Station the day of the Ridgeline Fire.

Upon reading this report, Commissioner Scott went down memory lane … back to an old backwoods preacher he had heard as a child.

“If you know that you know God has giv'n you sumthin to do, and you don't do it, you sinnin' 'til you do it. God ain't got to give you no time, neither. He gonna hafta snatch some of y'all cause y'all ain't reckon on this here: He got all the time in the world, but you don't!”

An hour later, Commissioner Scott held a press conference, since it took at least an hour for even the magnificent Ms. Thornton to pull something like that together.

“The Ridgeline Fire occurred on my watch as commissioner. Therefore, the well-known failure of the Blue Ridge precinct to evacuate the Blue Ridge neighborhood portions directly below the origin of the fire is my responsibility, and on behalf of the Big Loft police department, I apologize to everyone affected, and give my thanks to Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton, who stood in the gap for her neighbors in the midst of this department's failure.

“Pursuant to our failure to respond adequately to the evacuation needs in the Ridgeline Fire was our failure to assist the coroner in achieving an accurate count of the victims. Instead, the Blue Ridge precinct reported an estimate based solely on the numbers of known property owners lost, and, since we were not where we should have been, we did not have occasion to make observations that would have given us information to make a better estimation.

“The coroner's office has at last this week released its preliminary report, and that is what has spurred me in making changes in the leadership of the Blue Ridge precinct. As much as I regret breaking up our excellent cold case division, I have moved Captain H.F. Lee to be interim division commander for the Blue Ridge precinct. It is his forensic investigative work that has allowed me to know the extent of our failure in this matter.

“Although we make bad decisions on my watch, what we will not do any more is make excuses. I have gravely failed in this matter, along with my department, and I therefore humbly present my personal and departmental apology to the families of the 12,000 service workers who also were lost in the Ridgeline Fire. As of today, in concert with the coroner, BLPD is officially updating the death count from 120 lives lost to 12,120 lives lost.”

Dead quiet. Literally. But, in his memory, before the noise of a thousand questions burst out, Commissioner Scott heard the rest of what the backwoods preacher had said:

“But once you done done it, you don't have to worry no more. No matter what happen, if you done done what God said you supposed to done did, He gonna take care of you and everyone else.”

I hear you now, Lord. I am trusting in You now. I have written my pink slip, the end of my career in disgrace, today – but I have done what You told me to do, and You've got to do the rest.