29 april 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2721: north of there

Source

After his conversation with his eight-year-old cousin Edwina Ludlow, Col. H.F. Lee put her down on his couch – for she had gotten so relaxed she had gone right to sleep – and went and got his laptop and sat down next to her. He knew how she was, because he had his wife Maggie had kept seven of their eight little Ludlow cousins for eight weeks.

The new little Ludlow cousin that Capt. R.E. and Mrs. Thalia Ludlow were adopting came in.

“I was looking for Edwina because I wanted to talk to her,” ten-year-old Glendella Ludlow said, “but she definitely has a better idea.”

She had only known the colonel and his wife for a week, but she got right up on the sofa and snuggled up on the other side of the colonel and went right to sleep, too. He waited until both little girls were softly snoring away and then opened up the laptop to check on some things … what Edwina had said about all the kids affected about Lofton County's biggest foolery since Admiral Slocum missed 20 years of keeping the hill his church sat down from sliding all the way down into its variety – what Edwina had said, and her sensitivity to the children around her, had deeply disturbed him.

The killer empaths: that was another way to describe the branch of the Lee family that contained one Robert Edward Lee Sr., the best known representative of that ability. Col. Henry Fitzhugh Lee was out of the same branch of that family, out of a great-nephew of the general. So too was Edwina Ludlow: her great-grandmother Hilda was elder sister to his grandfather, Sgt. Horace Fitzhugh Lee, and both of them were late-born and long-lived children of that same general's great-nephew. Hilda Lee had passed on, but Horace was still living, hearty and hale at 88 years old. The Civil War was all not as far back as people sometimes liked to think, and neither was the Lee deadliness.

The modern Lee had a nickname, “Angel of Death,” for his angelic old-school Virginian manners and sensitivity – the empath – but also his record both in Special Forces and Judge Advocate General, as utterly and ruthlessly effective in both. His kill list and his successful prosecution list was long – and then he had become a police officer and continued both.

The key was, the killer was triggered by the need to defend, and it had started much earlier for the modern Lee than his Confederate uncle – 13-year-old Harry Lee had pushed a kidnapper clear off the mountain to rescue a cousin. Eight years earlier, he had been attacked at Vacation Bible School – he was five – and had come as close to killing the bigger boy as a five year old could get to doing that. That boy had tried again on the girl who would eventually become his wife … and had nearly gotten killed again by his then 16-year-old opponent … and had tried again at 45 years old to bully a whole new organization and gotten taken out at last through Col. Lee's planning with his closest friend Maj. Ironwood Hamilton, serving as police captain right there in Tinyville, VA where the colonel had evacuated to get out of the way of the sinkhole that had the Ludlows up there in Tinyville, too.

Col. Lee felt that feeling rising up in him as he looked at the already affected area of the worst mess since Slocum Slide was created – a sinkhole eating a whole neighborhood that should never have been built, over the course of an underground creek that had flowed there in the early 19th century but had temporarily changed course due to an underground rockslide that was just about eroded away, a process accelerated by development and traffic movement from the Blue Ridge Parkway far above.

But the colonel, knowing what he was, and also knowing his younger relatives were looking at him to figure out what they were and how to work with themselves rightly, acknowledged the anger rising in him and determined he would use it in a positive way … and as he looked at the map of the sinkhole and its projected full expansion, he saw something, and made a call.

“Major Jonathan Kramer,” he said, “this is Col. H.F. Lee, calling you in my civilian capacity as a member of the Lofton Trust board of directors.”

“Good afternoon, sir – Maj. Kramer, Army Corps of Engineers, at your service.”

“I have a question for you – now I am certainly not the Col. Lee who was the military engineer, but I am looking at the map of the sinkhole and its projected path. North of there, and more steeply downhill, isn't that the side of Stanley Drop?”

“Let me pull the map, sir – yes, you are right.”

“Would it be prohibitively expensive to punch a hole in the wall there and give old Stanley a waterfall?”

“An outlet for the creek up there? Possible, Colonel. It will create some problems downstream, but nothing compared what that creek just going full force into its old path will.

“The challenge, Colonel, is that we are out of time. Stanley Drop is granite, and 100 feet thick. Even if Col. Smythe likes the idea, researches it, and orders it today, we will not be through there before major thunderstorms are predicted. Nevertheless, it would be indecent not to try – I will speak with Col. Smythe.”

“That is all I ask, Colonel. The weather is not in our hands, but you know, not being indecent is underrated.”

“It is, sir – to think Edwin Ludlow left instructions about how to avoid this, and nobody followed them – it angers me, but all we have to work with is right now.”

“Agreed, Major. Thank you for taking my call in my civilian capacity.”

“Sir, it was my pleasure.”

Col. Lee hung up the phone, closed up his laptop, and slipped to his knees to talk to the One in Whose hands the weather was … he knew what the ten-day forecast said, and with all that was going to make his full effort for a better outcome for all the children whose houses were in the way of the disaster at hand.

Mrs. Maggie Lee came into the living room and found her husband praying quietly but nonetheless in great passion … there was so much that was in his heart about the evil of so many in history long ago and close at hand that would sell children's futures for profit … she did not disturb him, but gently lifted and moved Glendella and Edwina into the armchair where they happily snuggled each other and snored on, undisturbed, while the colonel poured out his heart for children like them, and asked that there be no major rain until old Stanley had his new waterfall.

“Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done,” the colonel said. “I know that full justice may require full judgment and there is an election year coming – Lofton County does not seem to learn without a disaster! If that is required, so be it – Thy will be done – but if there is yet mercy that can be applied to us, for this I pray.”