25 January 2026, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2994: undertake

Sgt. Joe Wainwright had always considered Capt. R.E Ludlow the best field commander he ever served under, even understanding the limitations that the Virginian gentleman of the old Anglo-Saxon cut had.

“The main thing is, Ludlow uses his privileges to go hard for us with men like him so we get what we need, and also lays his life on the line as he expects a man like himself should. He doesn't discriminate among his own men, and he doesn't permit the higher-ups to do it, and he is skilled in the field – that's really all we need to do our job.”

Capt. Ludlow had admired Sgt. Wainwright as well, recognizing him as one of the best sergeants he had ever commanded: “Smart, tough, an uncanny sense of field conditions, and like me, crazy like a fox – may his tribe of new sergeants increase!”

And it had – the two had met again after Sgt. Joe Wainwright and his wife Melba had adopted twenty children that had been abandoned in the mountains, and soon discovered that Capt. Ludlow's two youngest, who he had assumed had died with the first Mrs. Ludlow, were among the Wainwrights – Frank and Francesca, 19-year-old twins, had Joe and Melba Wainwright as their parents.

The two men in retirement had become warm friends, each overcome with gratitude – the sergeant because Capt. Ludlow had gone the extra mile to get his unit home safely, risking his own career to get higher-ranking officers to change a plan that would have gotten everybody killed (and succeeding at the price of never being among those higher-ranking officers), and Capt. Ludlow because the sergeant and his wife had saved the life of his youngest children, and raised them into wonderful young adults.

But on a particular day, Capt. Ludlow realized what was happening with him: he was tracking Sgt. Wainwright's track. He had adopted his seven grandchildren, and then added his little cousin Glendella to them … and who knew, with things in some Ludlow houses being the way they were, how much further that could go?

“So, how did you undertake the journey of raising 20?” Capt. Ludlow said to the sergeant when they next talked.

“Well, I didn't get up one morning and said, 'Gee, let me get 20 kids into my house real quick,'” Sgt. Wainwright said. “An open heart, an open door, and the Lord adding as He sees fit -- He undertook, and just used Melba and me. He always does, actually – we don't pick our natural-born children either – so, it's just the same thing by a different path.”

“Uh oh,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Glendella came and found me, and I think a lot about what is going on in some other Ludlow homes, and what I would do … I don't think Thalia and I could bring ourselves to turn a child in need away.”

“Well, something to think about: I am both Lee-of-the-mountain and Jubilee-of-the-mountain by descent, and so plugged into the combined network of those two families in addition to me being just an everyday Black Wainwright … so even though Melba and I ended up with 20, we didn't do it alone up here. We are part of the Childkeeper's Network, which the Jubilees named after Hubert Jubilee's sister, Miriam Jubilee Calhoun, called the 'Childkeeper' for her special abilities to save children and get them up the Underground Railroad with or without their parents. She and her husband became parents to all those who could not be reunited with their families, and those numbered in the hundreds before slavery was over. Everyone locally who takes on the work continues the legacy … and if in your heart you know, Captain, that you would never turn a child in need away, you are indeed one of us. It makes sense because your grandmother, Hilda Lee, was a major force in the network.”

“Wait, what?” Capt. Ludlow said. “Oh, wait – I was one of the children kept!”

“That's right,” Sgt. Wainwright said. “I don't think you recognize, Captain, how much what is in you is in you – I don't think anyone does. But to the extent that you refuse to follow the worst examples you have seen, that means the best ones are flowering out more and more in your life.”

“The Lord Jesus Christ,” Capt. Ludlow said, “never turned anyone Who came to Him in faith away, and adds, without regard to any human difference, them to His family. When I look at the children around my grandchildren … the children that I grew up around on the mountain … Frank and Francesca among their siblings … I see what I must be ready to do.”

“Because you and your wife are Childkeepers, just like Melba and I are,” Sgt. Wainwright said. “Nobody ends up taking in 20 children – or eight – by mistake. Your network is the Trents and Lees who are your neighbors … but Melba and I are here for you too, and then there's our more distant cousins Ironwood and Agnes Hamilton, whom the Lord has handed eleven children by natural birth. You have all that you need, Captain. Welcome to the network.”

Much later, while lying in his wife's arms in bed, Capt. Ludlow shared the contents of that conversation with his wife, Thalia.

“Well, of course,” she said. “Remember, very early on in our marriage, Eleanor was on the way, and you predicted how that was likely to end up, and I still said yes and have never stopped saying yes right through Glendella. That is how we are called, and you didn't meet me by accident – that was God calling us together to this work. Glendella is healing just like the rest now – this is who we are and what we do.”

“Now, how am I going to square this with my 'Hell to Pay' reputation?” Capt. Ludlow said with a laugh that was half-sob as the realization of who he had been, and thus what he had been doing, for 12 years.

“Well, Mozart already settled that, Captain – you are Commendatore, who laid down his life for his daughter, and then put on stone armor and turned around and tried to rescue his own murderer with the concern a father has for a son – and although Don Giovanni is always doomed, did you notice Lieutenant G.H. Truss, who fit the role all too well, is now saved, while there are eight kids around here who know you are laying down your life every day and would lay down anyone else that needs it to make sure they are good? That's how it squares for you – you are a warrior childkeeper, like your grandmother, Hilda Lee – and it looks like Edwina, your middle natural-born grandchild, will pick up the mantle too.”

Capt. Ludlow's entire life to that point, from the viewpoint of being the middle generation between his grandmother Hilda and granddaughter Edwina, flashed before his eyes … and, it all made sense.

“Well, duh,” eight-year-old Gracie Trent next door said when the oldest Ludlow little ones were talking about it the next day with her and her eleven-year-old sister Velma. “It's just like my Grandma Jubilee is too – we were waiting on your grandfather to figure out that just because he is white doesn't mean God discriminates in making warrior childkeepers. I mean, duh!”

This tickled Mrs. Ludlow … and would also tickle the Wainwrights.