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“Listen, y'all bore me. Y'all bore me. Y'all are not very original – y'all have been running in here a year on the same foolishness. All you need to do is let the state conservatorship process take its course and relieve Col. H.F. Lee of his police captaincy because of budget issues, but you keep poking that bear and he and his equally angry precinct cubs keep having dinner at your expense. Y'all keep forgetting that our mayor's name is Donald Lee Garner Jr. and that the mayor's father, Donald Lee Garner Sr., knows where every dime of city money is spent and misspent, and that Col. Lee was killing some of y'all and running the rest of y'all into prison before that even happened – and you're in Virginia, and you still don't understand!
“Y'all don't have Grant blood in you, ain't been to his tomb, haven't read his memoir, are proud to say you don't even know anyone who has Grant anywhere in their name or line, but somehow you're going to deal with the modern reincarnation of Robert E. Lee in Virginia? You are going to be out here boasting about what you're going to do like everyone from Orton Thomas last July and march yourself right up into that – like you can? Y'all bore me. We already know how this is going to come out – I'm tired of taking your money and going to court to get my firm beat down trying to get your heads out of the bear trap you keep insisting on putting your heads in!”
It is never good when the senior partner of your county's most prestigious law firm is bored with taking your money and losing … doubly not good when said partner is reading you back to 1862 in his frustration. For the city officials on this call, they at last realized that they were at the beginning of the end of the long journey they had not known they would be going on when they agreed with then-police commissioner Orton Thomas to try to get Col. Lee, acting as police captain in Cold Case at that time, to “massage” some sensitive cold case data demanded under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Orton Thomas was dead, resisting arrest by that same Capt. Lee having proven fatal for him … and on it had gone from there, to the point that the state conservatorship was almost not going to be necessary for the police department, and the city was almost out of danger, because …
“Wait a minute,” one of the officials said. “Wait a minute … .”
“Y'all are just now figuring out that all of you are going to leave before Lee does, huh? None of all bothered to read what this man did accepting a demotion from colonel to captain to go across to Judge Advocate General mid-career, learning how to be a ferocious prosecutor, and then jacking up all his superior officers that tried to get him killed in a Special Forces mission called Five Bright Nine? Y'all did not read how he and his adjutant Major Ironwood Hamilton who is also too hot for y'all to handle over as police captain in Tinyville – y'all did not read how they got every last man responsible for all that? Taking out generals and chiefs of staff as captains, and then got to ease back into the Special Forces Reserve at their old ranks because folks were scared to deny them their pensions at higher rank? Y'all let them come back up in here as police captains, and read nothing?
“Listen – the best counsel I can give all y'all because I'm running out of lawyers that want to get beat on your behalf in court for the retainers y'all want to pay – understand that Col. Lee has taken over Big Loft and half of Lofton County through his family and military connections, and you're living in Virginia! It's Lee's world! You're just living in it and trying not to die hard! Sit down and somewhere and be quiet until after the election and the state conservatorship kicks in!”
“Well, how much more are we going to have to pay you to get out us out of this mess?”
“Look, you're going to be paying my golden handshakes to the older lawyers here I need to get off the payroll – you're going to be handing over retirement retainers from here on out! Or, you can just resign and take that money and go somewhere and start over!”
This caused some consternation – proud men find it hard to give up their positions, but –.
“You're going to give them up anyway! You're all goners and you don't even know it. Any Lee, historically, will respect a surrender – if you had read Grant's memoir you would know that on both sides of the line – but if y'all stay up there, and sit up talking about your pride and your position – you should have thought about all that before you brought him in! All we're talking about is you paying retirement retainers to help you land more softly because Lee has been and is coming for all y'all, and it's too late now unless you surrender!”
Meanwhile, the man who had inspired such terror in the hearts of so many was true to traditional Lee form … he was no terror to those who had not made an enemy of him, and certainly not to his little Ludlow cousins and their Trent and Stepforth friends next door, although playing hide-and-seek with a man from Special Forces was just as hopeless as escaping as a corrupt official after getting his attention.
“But when nobody is over 12 years old, they have no way of knowing that,” Mrs. Maggie Lee said.
“And it's so sweet how he takes his time and so makes them think they have a chance, like he can't hear all that giggling they are doing,” Mrs. Velma Stepforth from next door said.
That was the secret, and it, too, was not very original … like the Lee he was body and personality double for, the mild-mannered modern Lee came off as calm almost to slow … and so people thought they had a chance. His beloved little ones experienced this as laughingly being found and chased around and scooped up and loved … his enemies in the city without the sense to surrender and run would indeed be ruthlessly and relentlessly scooped up, to the last man, but they would not enjoy it quite so much.