Day 824: 5 Minute Freewrite Continuation: Wednesday - Prompt: radish

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After making more phone calls, Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton decided she would be best served to go down to figure out her nephew Willis Sr.'s situation at the jail at police headquarters, since she was literally down a few streets and around the corner while sitting and eating at the Rosewood Apartments with her grandson and neighbor, Captain H.F. Lee of the Big Loft police. She called her niece Donna to summon her to a family conference there, and then headed out for headquarters.

Captain Lee opted not to accompany his grandmother to police headquarters – although they were, with tacit tenderness, reconciling with one another, the family situation overall was still far too volatile. Add to that the fact that his Slocum-Lofton relatives were just part of an investigation he had just worked – they were demonstrably victims and not authors of the big con going on, but still, discretion was necessary.

Then, there was the entire idea that they would start asking for dumb favors. Dumb favors because Captain Lee could not even investigate a live attempted murder case – such cases were outside his divisional responsibility because he was head of cold cases. But that wasn't why it was dumb. It was dumb because the fastest way to set Captain Lee off was to try to corrupt him – and when the 23-year Army veteran first used to Special Forces went off, he tended to be deadly.

Grandmother Selene had not even so much as hinted as wanting a favor. She had learned about him the hard way. Surviving one attempted murder in one lifetime was enough for her, and, after 27 years, all she wanted was peace with the grandson she had once provoked beyond sanity.

Captain Lee walked his grandmother downstairs to wait for her Uber, and made sure she got into the cab safely.

“Call me when you are heading back,” he said, “and I will come down to meet you.”

One hour later, Captain Lee's phone rang.

“Hello, Grandmother.”

“I hope you still have some radish salad left, and if you do, would you please slice off a bunch more of those hot little purple radishes in there? I don't drink but I need strength!”

“Grandmother, consider your salad all purple and pretty.”

Ten minutes later he walked down and received his grandmother from the Uber. She didn't look as tired as she should have looked – she was composed but furious. Grandmother and grandson had in common that they got a lot of energy from anger and could bring their intellect to bear also – it was what made them both lethal enemies to have, although of course, styles varied.

However, Captain Lee had matured, both as a man and in Christ. Though by no means perfect, and while still struggling with the command, “In your anger, sin not,” he had learned the necessity of de-escalation both for himself and others. As he had discussed with his therapist that week, he was now called to be a man of peace, and de-escalation was a key strategy to practice.

“I am sorry to know things did not go well, Grandmother, although we hardly expected them to go well.”

She was still all woman, though a terror of a woman … her emotional set was not a modern woman's set. She was exceedingly strong, and in widowhood had been ferociously independent, but she reminded Captain Lee most of the stories of Queen Victoria, after the death of her husband Prince Albert. His grandmother still missed, and wanted, the comfort of the love of a strong man, and if the right one came along, she was receptive. Captain Lee offered his arm and shoulder, and she just melted into them for a few moments.

“We must take you as a man of jurisprudence, and so able to understand the situation,” she said, and that was just about what Captain Lee imagined a queen of English extraction would have said, albeit with a Southern grande dame's accent. “Frankly, their goose is cooked because Willis Sr. and Donna are cooking it for themselves right now, and the Lofton County Free Voice by Sunday will have turned up the heat enough to burn them to a hard crisp.

“I was trying to explain, Henry, that Willis Jr. has only one chance – just one – not to spend the next 25 years in jail, and Donna has that same chance not to be in the poorhouse. Unless –.”

Mrs. Slocum-Lofton caught herself while she was speaking, her mind adjusting her manner of conversation in process. The last time her grandson had heard of her talking disrespectfully about Black people – the people to whom, in utter and ferocious love, he had married himself – he had come in all his utter, insanely enraged grief, to avenge the memory of his Black wife and son upon her and the entire family. Henry Fitzhugh Lee was not the one to talk the n****r talk with. Mrs. Slocum-Lofton was not going that road again.

“Unless Rufus Foster is an exceptionally forgiving man,” she said, “surely he will be pressing charges tomorrow morning.”

“Good catch, Grandmother.”

He had realized her adjustment of speech, and his tone said that indeed, she had been very wise to make that adjustment! She kept going like she hadn't noticed that he had noticed, but, that was how these tacit reconciliations worked until enough trust was established to openly discuss the issues … .

“Even if he is, as a man, very forgiving, if he has gone to the Lofton County Free Voice, they will put it in his ear or some member of the family that the issue of the attempt on his life is a matter for him to pursue for the sake of the whole Black community, particularly in light of the history of servants' lives being disregarded for 400 years, and wanton killing at will by masters a common enough thing among Slocums and most of the Loftons. The Free Voice will rally the community around the Foster family and convince them to press charges and also a civil suit.”

“I think that is reasonably possible,” Captain Lee said.

“They will have some devastating editorial out by Sunday (read the first draft here), and likely by tomorrow, they will start their own investigation because they do not trust the police here, but even your colleagues are going to do this right, and Willis Sr. and Donna's neighbors are going to tell the truth. The fear of the Lofton County Free Voice, and the lawsuits already mounting up, will force it. Speaking of forcing: Donna cannot be forced to testify against Willis Sr. because she is his wife, but Willis Jr. can be. The case is air tight, even without Rufus Foster getting on the stand in either the criminal or civil trial.”

“There is just one chance – just one, and it is being frittered away as we sit here. I told Willis Sr. the only chance he has is to have Donna run home and get the books, and let me figure out how much they should have paid the Foster family over the last 40 years. I told them to multiply the number by ten, cut the check, and then have Donna just go beg for forgiveness and mercy. It still might not work, but it is the only chance.”

“I can imagine Willis Sr. and Donna's response,” Captain Lee said, “especially since we know they don't have the money.”

“But that's not the problem, Henry – if their thinking wasn't so limited, they would realize money is no object! I own three banks, and a fourth will be mine by Tuesday!”

Captain Lee stifled a laugh, imagining his neighbors looking at “that cute little old woman with that cute little business suit and cute little briefcase” going to and fro in her cute little way from Room 424, having no idea that she was buying the town's distressed financial institutions out from under everybody.

“But nooooooooooooooooooo!” the cute little tycoon continued. “Limited thinking – they started talking about how they would never kiss the richly colored hindparts of their former employees of African descent in America … .”

The cute little tycoon, and her cute little edits … Captain Lee coughed slightly, the urge to laugh becoming harder to control … no wonder he himself was so complex … given what she was like, his Slocum-Lofton grandfather must have been quite the character to have wanted her as wife. Pile that in with Lee heritage and all its hereditary challenges with depression… why the Lord had wanted to build a whole H.F. Lee out of a mess like that was just one of those things that H.F. Lee himself would only understand in eternity, and he accepted that. The only explanation clear to his mind was that the Lord had a unique sense of humor!

“Then, they lost all touch with sanity,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said. “Willis Sr. went first. He began using deeply unwise and inappropriate language on me for making the suggestion!”

There were a lot of dumb things to do in life, and cussing Selene Slocum-Lofton out had to be in the top 10 in Lofton County. But …

“But you have learned to show great understanding toward the temporarily insane, Grandmother. Remember that you are sitting here with me, and I dared worse.”

Selene Slocum-Lofton's heart melted, utterly, at that admission from her grandson … her prideful anger and her thoughts of not being willing to help pay for bail and her nephew's defense melted right down once, and then twice, at the thought that her grandson had so gently but firmly stood up for a relative with whom he was deeply estranged.

“Well, all young men seem to go through it,” she said softly. “Your grandfather was still young by today's standards but much older than me, so he was mature … he had passed those stages before we came together. Willis Sr., largely because of his mother and I, to be fair to him, has been delayed in passing through.”

This admission shocked Captain Lee … so she did know her domineering ways, along with many of the other women of the family, had contributed to the disaster at hand, to 52-year-old Willis Slocum-Lofton Sr. still being an easily offended mama's boy who would mindlessly lash out at those who offended him.

Captain Lee also registered another fact … his grandmother, perhaps by the only means possible, was being led to realize her sins, and that the love and grace of God she was receiving from him was giving her the safety she needed to humble herself.

Mrs. Slocum-Lofton crunched her salad in silence for a few minutes, getting her own composure together – the realization was hitting her hard. Still, there was so much comfort and strength radiating from her grandson … he was much like Aaron indeed … and he was like his insufferable but mighty Lee grandfather, the mountain-man Horace Fitzhugh Lee … but there was more … he was so changed, so peaceful, so full of light … and, she saw that same light in her butlers, Charles and Tracy, even in the midst of their anger and grief over their friends and family who had perished in the Ridgeline Fire.

“You told me about Willis,” Captain Lee said. “Did Donna participate?”

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said, grateful for the relief of her grandson resuming the conversation. “Her insanity is of a different sort.”

“More radish salad, Grandmother?”

“Please, Henry!”

Mrs. Slocum-Lofton looked at her grandson's back and nearly began to sob … she had nearly made the place of her own refuge, and the person who for the evening was providing it, inaccessible to her forever … she would have been swallowed up and brought down by the disintegration of the rest of the mama's boys and sociopaths she had fostered to enjoy their dependency and thus worship. Although she lightened her tone for the rest of her story, she also realized: those people might well become a danger to her, because there was more to Donna's insanity than met the eye.

On the other hand, Donna herself had already learned that evening: she was no match for her cute little aunt.

Mrs. Slocum-Lofton was smiling gamely when her grandson returned with more salad.

“We left the jail and she started screaming at me being pawed over by some new gigolo instead of caring about what she and Willis were going through.”

“What?”

“She said she could smell his cologne all over me – spicy and iron-y and wood nut notes – and that I should be ashamed to be so loose at my age!”

Cinnamon, molasses, butter, oats, almonds, and raisins – to Cousin Donna, a woman who had never eaten anything as humble as oatmeal, perhaps the odor of Aunt Mildred's recipe would be exotic. Yet the whole idea of anyone walking up to a family elder in public and accusing them of promiscuity … … Captain Lee felt himself blushing hard at the thought.

“You have fine sensibilities,” his grandmother said. “I am much older and shameless, though not in the way Donna thinks – I just started laughing, and laughed her to scorn in front of all those officers who were coming to my defense as she was yelling at me.”

Captain Lee's cell phone rang, and he checked it – “It is from headquarters, Grandmother. Please excuse me, for they would not have called unless it was of importance.”

“Oh, they just are probably telling the story,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said as her grandson answered, and she was right.

“Good evening – Captain H.F. Lee, here.”

“Lee, it's Stanton [the night captain] – there's no emergency, but you need to laugh more often, and you always teach respect for the elders we serve in the city. Boy did we get an understanding this evening!”

Captain Lee looked away from the phone with a look of puzzled horror at his grandmother, and then back at the phone.

“I'm listening, Stanton.”

Captain Stanton told it all, sparing no detail.

“And so, after that middle-aged battleaxe got finished yelling at that cute little old relative, that adorable little old woman just became hysterical from the disrespect – just started laughing and laughing – it was so bad that by the time I got there I had to hold her up.

“But the comeback, Lee – the comeback! We got to learn not to mess with these old people!”

“ 'Niece – ha ha ha ha ha ha!” she said, “first, I want to thank you for giving me this laugh – hee hee hee hee hee hee – I needed it badly! Second – ha ha ha ha ha ho hoo ho ho hoo – I'm flattered you think I could get a man at my age! Third – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – if I did have a man, I'm insulted that you think I am so dumb – whoooooo ha ha ha ha ha ha – that I would ever let you know about it, because fourth – ha ha ha ha ha ha ha – I know Willis hasn't even been charged and hasn't been put away for the 25 years, but you're already looking – ho ho ho –!'

“Lee, let me tell you – the younger woman turned beet red! The old woman had her pegged and dead to rights! And she wasn't done!

“ 'Ho ho ho – but any man who wants a formerly chaste wife like me would hardly be interested – ha ha ha ho ho ho – in you!”

“Lee, our round-heeled younger woman took off running after her lost public reputation, crying and all broken down while we applauded. That cute little old woman bowed and bowed, and walked out, head held high like the queen she is! Heck, man, if I were old enough, I'd get with one like that if I wanted someone my age with some vigor and spirit who still isn't bad looking!”

Captain Lee looked away from the phone with a look of horrified amazement at his grandmother, who blushed a little but started laughing.

Captain Stanton was laughing so hard Captain Lee had to pull the phone away from his ear.

“I wish you had been here, Lee, and just could have seen this cute little old ball of fire in person!”

“I'm sure it would have been quite the experience, Stanton,” Captain Lee said.

“Don't think so hard about it, Lee – just try to picture her in your mind!”

“A luxury I do not share with you, being more possessed of details,” Captain Lee said as his grandmother's gentle laughter filled the room.

“Eventually, Lee, I'm going to get you laughing,” Captain Stanton said. “But, it's been a rough day, man, and I get it. You have a good night, Captain.”

“You also, Captain.”

Captain Lee hung up the phone, looked over at his kitchenette, then at his living room space … the undercount of 12,000 people by his police station, revealed that morning … a dinner of oatmeal followed by radish salad … him and Selene Slocum-Lofton, reconciling … the whole family situation … a feast of absurdities to start the weekend.

Captain Lee sat down in his big chair, sighed, and then smiled.

“Every which way but loose … I should have known to not get involved again with a woman like you … I let you go out for one hour by yourself to deal with a family emergency, and you go out wearing oatmeal cologne, bewitching police captains three decades your junior, and having women running mad in their round heels!”

Selene Slocum-Lofton burst out laughing, and Captain Lee finally gave in and joined her.

Photo by philippe collard on Unsplash