Weekend Freewrite -10/19/2019 - Single Prompt Option: Visit

Mrs. Tallie Mae Jones, born Jubilee, was a brave Black woman of now great age, from a long, brave lineage whose story had been excluded from history books before, during, and after the Civil War. Nonetheless, to ignore a thing did not make it go away.

25 years earlier, her grandson Tom Jones, with the help of his family, had done something that would have made their ancestor Hubert Jubilee proud – he had beaten trumped charges in Virginia for murder, and escaped north with his life when the Soames family had wanted to lynch him and his family anyway. He had been living well, those 25 years, defiantly awaiting full public exoneration.

This was the matter before Jetson Black, private investigator working with the Innocence Project, and the cause of his visit to Mrs. Jones. Some brave officer associated with the police commissioner's office had sent the Innocence Project the necessary information about who really had killed John Soames, and why. That was so explosive that for any non-official to expose it would possibly mean a death sentence.

But, the word had come that there had been a radical change in Big Loft's police department since the Gilligan House Burning (get caught up! Get Black, White, and RED All Over HERE for just $2.99 on Kindle, OR, if you have a lot of time, start here on Steemit). A lot of that change had been through the exercise of intellectual and also deadly force of the man Mr. Black had asked Mrs. Jones to reach out to: Captain H.F. Lee.

“That was a far sight harder than I let on,” the 91-year-old Mrs. Jones said, and Mr. Black could see it in the way her frail body shivered. “General Lee, while he was still a colonel, inherited Arlington in 1857, and certainly acted like he had the right to all its slaves. My mother's family was there then. They had taken advantage of the time before he could return from Texas to get a little distance – but not enough. Colonel Lee had them all tracked down and dragged back – he jailed the leaders and broke up every family on the plantation. It took my family 100 years to trace ourselves down after all those sales.

“I have grown up terrified by statues of that hateful, family-destroying general, reminders that Virginia still cherished that intent toward Black families. I did not want to have anyone of Lee's lineage under my roof, and especially not with the way the police have known all this time that my grandson was innocent, and did not lift a finger when he was acquitted and then threatened and shot at and had to run for his life. It got worse when I saw Captain Lee – it was like having the ghost of the general visit. I nearly fainted.”

“Mrs. Jones, if you had told me all of that, I never would have asked you to see him,” said Mr. Black.

“Well, there are more boys beside my grandson who need things to get right, and I'm glad I didn't faint. Captain Lee has a very different spirit about him than I expected. He was very gentle and respectful, as he might if he had been on a visit to his own grandmother. He listened. He took notes. He told me that since my grandson had been acquitted, there was very little information to go on to solve the case for there had been no further investigation, but he promised me he would look into the Soames case again. If he did not have that hateful family heritage, I would have found it easy to believe him.”

“Well, he can't help his name just like I didn't choose for mine to fit me so well, ” said Mr. Black, and Mrs. Jones, of the same sable hue as the investigator, laughed. “The main thing I get from you is that Captain Lee has chosen not to fit his name to the worst parts of the legacy. What I wanted to know from you, given that you are the elder with the longest view of history to bring to bear on the question: do you feel Captain Lee will welcome my visit to solve this case and a true mess of others for him?”

Mrs. Jones thought for a long time.

“I must not be prejudiced and bigoted myself,” she said. “Despite his name, and his lineage, there is a chance he might. I just felt that the Spirit of God might just really be with him. If he wasn't a Lee, I'd believe it outright.”

“Good enough for me, Mrs. Jones. I'll go see him next week. Let's see what he does with what he has. He ought to at least be able to figure out that Mrs. DeVille was lying if he is as good as they say he is. If he isn't, he's no use. If he is, and he breaks her story, that's progress we can build on for your grandson, and many others.”