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“One of the things about being a good investigator is realizing: individuality exists while humans have certain larger patterns of behavior that have nothing to do with assumptions about particular groups of people. Humans are forever doing human things, and when you see a human doing a particular behavior, you track that, not what you think they should be doing based on what you have been told certain humans are supposed to do based on race, gender, or creed.”
“OK, but can we talk about that part?” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said to her big cousin Col. H.F. Lee, famous in the Army and afterward for his investigative abilities. “Why do humans make up stories about each other when we could just watch and ask?”
“This, I need to hear – and from a Lee from the big Lee family in Virginia, no less!” sixteen-year-old Tom Stepforth III said.
“Believe I'll tip over and join you,” his grandfather Thomas Stepforth Sr. said as both of them shifted into listening position on their porch.
Col. Lee heard all that and smiled slightly … the Stepforths certainly had a reason to be interested, owing to stories families including his had made up to justify keeping families including theirs in slavery. But how to parse all that down to his sweet but precocious little cousin who sincerely wanted to know … how to do it justly, but age-appropriately?
“I will put it to you this way, Eleanor. When you get tired of a character in a book, what can you do?”
“I close the book and stop reading and go do something else.”
“That is what people do to other people as well – they make up stories that allow them to gain and keep control if enough people believe the story, and close the book on people's actual humanity in order to do that.”
“Oh, gee whiz,” Eleanor said. “How is anybody supposed to figure out what is really going on with anyone anytime anywhere if that's what is going on?”
“Exactly,” Col. Lee said. “Most people want their stories to be made true more than they want truth. It is why children will get caught in something and lie rather than tell the truth and accept the consequences of their behavior – it is a part of our human nature.”
“OK, but, I'm eleven and I've been in and out of foster care and I still know better than that,” Eleanor said.
“Your Ludlow grandparents have always been in your life,” Col. Lee said. “Everyone does not have that, and also, there are choices that have to be made. As a criminal investigator I can tell you: never underestimate how far people will go to have the words coming out of their mouths acknowledged as true so they can get what they want. People want control more than just about anything else.”
“They really want to say 'Let there be,' and then have it happen,” Eleanor said. “It's them playing God.”
“And failing, and trying to cover it up, and doing harm to anyone who would expose it,” Col. Lee said. “Most things in investigation among human beings really boil down to that – uncovering someone's attempt to play God and make a lie true, and then discovering the real truth.”
“I'm eleven, so, I don't really get the control part because like my baby brother says, because Papa,” Eleanor said, and Col. Lee chuckled. “Papa and Grandma too, and you and Cousin Maggie, make it so I really don't have to be bothered with that, and I kinda think God doesn't want me to be bothered with controlling everything when He's got it, so why worry about it?”
“Ah, but, see, you acknowledge God for Who He is,” Col. Lee said. “That's the rare thing.”
“OK, but can we talk about this part: what happens when people have been trying and failing until they get to like your age?” Eleanor said. “I mean, that would kinda explain a lot of weird middle-age behavior in the news and politics and all that. It would even explain my parents and Andrew's parents deciding to leave here on an overdose instead of staying and raising us and our siblings.”
“OK, we gotta hear this too!” said ten-year-old Andrew and nine-year-old George Ludlow as they came over.
Col. Lee thought for a long time about his answer here … even for him, this was deep water, but he decided to wade on in.
“I was raised by my grandparents for roughly the same reason, too,” he said. “Even though my parents did not officially commit suicide, my father had tried many things and, even married to an heiress, was still drinking. He could not get back to that old-style Lee lifestyle, and when you hit middle age, you realize that you are not going to have the time, strength, or good looks you used to have. Yes, he managed to marry a heiress, like Robert E. Lee had, but my Slocum-Lofton grandparents locked the money down to his son. He simply could not have control, and so after a lifetime of effort was drinking more and more … and we know what happens when you drive drunk for too long.”
“Wow,” Eleanor, Andrew, and George said as they came to share a hug with their big cousin.
“That's just as bad as what we went through with our parents, just in a different way,” Andrew said.
The colonel sighed.
“Human behavior has certain patterns,” he said. “Now, where we get into what I will call 'the psychology of the weird' is where we look at how the emotions and mentality of individuals and start to break under the pressure of living and trying to enthrone a lie. Now, some of what we consider weirdness we know now is neurodivergence. My family has a history of bipolar disorder, self-managed. I am the first Lee to really go into regular treatment in Lofton County, but for 44 years, I didn't know what I was even dealing with. My mind is a weird place because of that, and then tack on more than 20 years in the military. Complex PTSD is weird, too.
“But also, people make their minds weird trying to protect a lie for too long, because the person you have to lie to the most in order to protect a lie is yourself, and to do that, you have to shred your brain's interaction with reality.”
“Oh, gee, no!” George said. “I see why Papa and Grandma are just not having it – you better not get caught lying in the Ludlow house!”
“Right, because they want you to have peace with God and grow a strong mind,” Col. Lee said. “Weird things happen if you get to 46 and you've been lying to yourself all along – and to answer your question, Eleanor, that's the consequence of trying to play God on a lie for too long. Abraham Lincoln said that after the age of 40, every man was responsible for his own face. So too the clarity of one's own mind self-deception still held onto for too long starts to mess people up.”
“Well, at 40, you will have been an adult more than 20 years, and that's a long time,” Andrew said.
“And that's definitely old enough to know better,” Eleanor said. “I mean, by 40, somebody has got to have told you something!”
“Is that why we do therapy, and Bible study, and have these kinds of talks?” George said. “Is this all kind of investigation so we can really figure out the truth about how we feel and what we want and what God wants and what it's all about so we can tell the truth?”
“That's kind of deep right there,” Andrew said.
“And, correct,” Col. Lee said. “Being honest and being a good self-investigator comes before being a good investigator in the world, because there is a lot we all go through that affects us in deep ways, but if we are honest and tell the truth, we can live and have our minds right.”
The Ludlow grandchildren all came and hugged him again.
“We love you, Cousin Harry,” Eleanor said. “Thank you. This was way more than what I asked for, but it was what I needed!”
“I love y'all too, with all my heart.”
“He really does, because that was a lot,” Tom said to his grandfather. “I mean, he's not even doing white supremacy dress-up lies with them!”
“If you love your children, or your grandchildren, or your cousins, you don't lie to them,” Mr. Stepforth said. “Why do y'all think I am honest about what money cannot buy, and how I loused things up, not knowing that, with your grandmother? When you stop thinking money and status make you God, you can stop lying, and you can steer younger people around the foolishness before they have to go through it.”
“I see you, Pop-Pop,” Tom said as he came and gave his grandfather a hug. “Thank you for loving us, too – stuff I'm never going to have to go through if I just listen!”
“Why do you think I have you and Vertran all summer?” Mr. Stepforth said as he returned his grandson's embrace. “Both of you were ready for advanced understanding, in a calm place while your father works on his triggers and PTSD.”
“Yeah, he's doing a lot better, too,” Tom said. “It's like you can't tell your dad he's overreacting when you just blew up his entire kitchen and your little brother is out interviewing firemen … our family must be … what's the word … neurodivergent?”
“Oh, we are, and that's all me – a poor Black boy who thought he could be a billionaire – y'all get all the weirdness from me!” Mr. Stepforth said, with a laugh. “So the last thing you need on top of that is for me to be lying!”