23 april 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2715: the last treasurer
“No, I am not available to solve any more uppity Ludlow problems – aren't you the same one who called my father a sawdust-breathing, concrete-covered money grubber? Yes, both the North and Baby Bob remember!”
“Welp,” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said to ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow, “it's time for us to take a walk.”
“Yeah, because our uppity cousins calling here to have Papa bring them down is getting old way faster than Papa is,” Andrew said. “I just don't see why he is like a destroying magnet for them right now.”
“It's gravity – gravitas,” Eleanor said. “Glendella came here. Our new-old uncle and aunt who are our siblings by adoption called here. Papa wasn't looking for any of them – they found him. On a scale of one to ten, Papa's gravitas is on like 552.”
“Do you think it has to do with the fact that he and Grandma have real money now?” Andrew said. “I mean, not so much with Glendella, but Uncle Frank and Aunt Francesca never would have found him without the Ludlow Bubbly doing well, and the uppities are jealous all of the sudden – and then there are your other grandparents. At least the Carters my other grandparents have seen enough of Papa for a while.”
“Yeah, yours have more sense – they looked over the event horizon of the crushing power Papa has for people who don't do right by you, George, Amanda, and Grayson, and decided that since they didn't step up, they had better step out while they still could before that gravitas snagged them.”
“Yeah, you would have a better chance with a black hole because if a black hole is a wormhole, at least you get to see another part of the universe through the other end of gravity,” Andrew said. “But with Papa? There's nothing on the other side that you want – it's like that famous sermon, 'What in Hell do you want?'”
“Yeah, that's the kind of existential question you get to when you mess with Capt. Robert Edward Hell to Pay' Ludlow,” Eleanor said. “I found out from eavesdropping on Grandma that he actually took that nickname with him to the Army – some boys were messing with some of our girl Ludlow cousins and found out that Papa wasn't going to have that even at age 15. But beating them down physically was not even the start or the finish – it's like he set them on fire 43 years ago, and the fires are still burning. Papa has never been with the foolery.”
“But see, that takes me back to where I started, Ellie – these people calling him knew him when he was young like us!” Andrew said. “How do you know Papa, and not know Papa? He and Grandma both – they are the most loving, caring people who will get up in the morning and destroy you if they need to, and we haven't known them even 12 years yet, and we know that!”
“Yeah, but, they've known him too long, Andy,” Eleanor said. “You see he called himself Baby Bob on the phone. It's like they see him as Lil' Robert, our baby brother, but don't realize: because of the Robert Edward Ludlowness also vested in him on top of the way he eats and works out, Lil' Robert will be Big Bob Ludlow in a decade or so, rolling up on folks at like six feet eight and at least a deep baritone because if you listen he's already a boy alto and he's only five. People never realize: we grow up, and we remember. Papa is 58 now, and they are just now finding out that he is way bigger than they are, and remembers everything!”
“Oh, my, can you imagine Edwina in a decade?” Andrew said.
“I try not to, and just love on her, because she's already a contralto, and is just as big-set physically as the rest of us – six feet tall, smart as heck, and ready to give the world all its smoke back, with Papa's voice just in a woman – shoot, we all heard how she came out for Glendella the other night! She's eight, Andy -- at eighteen? I just want to get on the phone with my mother's family and tell them that they better get with your father's family and really learn how to sit down and shut up while they have time -- Edwina is already bawling them out, but she's just getting started!"
“Look, Ellie, I'm gonna need grown folks to stop with all this, expeditiously,” Andrew said. “The kids you talk down on as a grown person today – just listen to that! Just listen to the former Baby Bob Ludlow now!”
“Oh, that's right, the Ludlow Winery is in danger of going bankrupt now – it may not bankroll your annual yachting runs at Lake Esmeralda! You may have to break into your last $10 million in reserves to make up for the utter foolery of making Astor the last treasurer of your little slush fund … but you know, since I am the son of the sawdust-breathing concrete-covered Ludlow money grubber, I don't have these panics! My father taught me how to work and create money, but of course your little 68-year-old manicured, soft and now helpless hands don't know anything about that, and that's how you lost your grip on $5.7 million!”
“See, if I had $10 million left,” Andrew said, “ain't no way in the world I would call here over $5.7 million and get torn down like that.”
“But see, you don't love money,” Eleanor said. “This is why the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil, and that people that have that love get into many sorrows. The sorrows are happening right now, on the other end of the phone, and –.”
Eleanor looked through the window and just shook her head.
“The sorrows are already being set up for the next two generations – Edwina is out there taking notes!”
Andrew put his head in both his hands.
“Let me tell you what I will do for you, cousin – just know that I will toast up a glass of my bubbling sugar water – make it Fat Tuesday, actually – and let the good times roll as the price of the family yacht fleet comes down to where I could buy one and call it the Ludlow Root Beer Float, and invite you on board to drink all you need to wash down all those insults, all that disdain, all that fifty years of crow I've got for you to eat!”
“So that cousin was 18, making fun of Papa's dad who must have been older than him, and Papa heard it,” Andrew said. “Yeah, I'm gonna need everybody to stop picking on little kids and talking smack about their parents, because that indigestion when you get old is no joke.”
“Fifty-year-old crow washed down with root beer, and no veggies – yeah, that's about to hurt, a lot,” Eleanor said.
“Hey, Grandma!” Edwina said as she came into the house, “can you tell me how to season up and freeze a crow, because I want to start mine now for whoever needs it when I'm 58! That's a great idea!”
“Oh no!” Andrew said, and then his big sister took his arm.
“It's time to go work on the big jigsaw puzzle at Cousin Harry and Cousin Maggie's house,” she said.
“Yeah,” Andrew said, and off they went.