“Look, this is really where I need to be right now, where most things are just sitting in the life-giving soil, doing what God has for them to do. I'm not even going to buy a resort or a fashion house when I get big – I'm buying a farm or going to work in a park, and I'm going to just stay out here under the sky where I've got room between me and anything I need to break bad on but these weeds, because people get on my nerves.”
Eight-year-old Edwina Ludlow was gardening with Mrs. Maggie Lee her big cousin and discovering things about herself and her future life.
“Well, mankind started as gardeners,” Mrs. Lee said. “It's the perfect kind of job for people who like plenty of room and don't want to be crowded.”
“I like working out here with Grandma a lot and now I understand why,” Edwina said. “Did you hear that mess with those rich guys on the radio?”
“I did – just ridiculous,” Mrs. Lee said.
“It's just like no matter how much certain people get to eat, get to travel, and get to have money, they just keep messing up! I'm over it! I'm trying to get myself together – I don't need all kinds of people who don't know how to act right around me. I mean, if it comes to this family, I'm not afraid of prison and I'm young and will do the time if it comes down to backing Papa up protecting this family, because I don't play about mine –.”
Mrs. Lee internally shook her head, knowing what Edwina had been through on a basic personality just like that of her grandfather, Capt. Robert Edward “Hell to Pay” Ludlow Sr. The making of a killer had happened for Edwina just as it had for her grandfather as a child – they had the type of personality that, if cornered by abuse and violence, would turn violent in defense to a degree most humans were not prepared for. Rarely, however, would such personalities become abusive. Capt. Ludlow had served his country well for 33 years, had legally wiped out the abusers of his grandchildren in foster care, and then gone to intensive therapy to make sure he would never turn on his own family.
Edwina “Breaking Bad” Ludlow was already following in her grandfather's footsteps … so as he was getting off the path of violence save for true self-defense situations, she also, instinctively, was tracking him … just 50 years earlier.
“I don't play about mine, but, I don't need to be in situations getting all upset with stupid people because they are stupid – I need to be out here staying calm and happy with the fruits and vegetables and trees and the sky and the soil, where everything is doing what God has for it to do and so can I!”
“Well,” Mrs. Lee said, “if you want to come work out here every day, you can.”
“Yeah, I'm just going to do that,” Edwina said, “because I'm tired of being mad all the time, and other people are going to get real tired of getting me mad, and I don't need that and nobody else does either. I'm going to smell flowers and harvest summer stuff and plant winter crops and break bad on weeds and be happy. Oh yeah -- but I need you to tell all those people that are paving paradise and putting up parking lots that I am still going to have to come for them, though, as soon as I get big enough for someone to tell me where they are!”
And so, just as the Ludlow family would give to Lofton County a great architect, it also would give that architect's sister as a designer and preserver of calm outdoor spaces ... some years after Mrs. Lee's husband picked himself up off the floor, having fallen out laughing at how Edwina had uniquely misunderstood a popular song.
Col. H.F. Lee was normally the most composed person anybody knew, but there was just something about Edwina, who, like him and her grandfather, was a natural warrior on the bumpy road to becoming a peaceful person, wrapped up in the cutest little brunette package -- until she opened her mouth!
"I know, H.F.!" Capt. Ludlow said as he and his colonel cousin laughed at midnight about this incident. "She is so much one of us -- why do you think I'm out here getting my whole life together? Forget the atomic bomb -- we gotta save the people who are for over-development and urban sprawl from Edwina 'Breaking Bad' Ludlow!"
"Look, R.E. -- they better get their lives together -- they only have until she figures out how to find them on Google before she comes for them!" Col. Lee said as he fell out laughing all over again.