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While in the mind of things being made new and new again, Col. H.F. Lee went out to get the mail, and in his mail was a package of research materials he had requisitioned for a mystery he had been working from January to August … whole dozens of missing women and children from the families of many of the men who had served with him. His cousin and adjutant from that time period, Major Ironwood Hamilton, had also been researching deeply into Lofton County history for clues.
The case had turned on mapping, and the click of a rifle Col. Lee had heard under a purple-shaded lamp, inside Fruitland Memorial Park. As he had looked at the materials he had ordered, his blood ran cold for a moment … another huge set of "ghost cases" -- cases that nobody had officially opened but TECHNICALLY, because they involved violent death, had never closed -- had just closed. In the next minute, he was on his knees thanking the Lord for his life.
“Yes, Harry, it looks like your reputation, and your good hearing, and your listening to the Spirit of God, combined, makes you the one and only man ever to get as close to the woman's shelter that Mrs. R.M.S. Lofton set up inside her husband's property as the mailbox, to say nothing of a step past the mailbox,” Maj. Hamilton said some time later. “One of only 68 men, in 154 years, who did not go looking for some women fleeing from their husbands and disappear from the face of the earth. Today, we can easily triangulate where that shelter must be, but back in the day, no.”
“I have data on those other 67 men – all veterans of different wars, all with PTSD we could have treated now, all self-medicating and acting out,” Col. Lee said. “Nineteen were slave owners – men in the habit of violence already before military service – twenty were sons of those men, formed in the habit. This all happened long before Major and Mrs. Lofton passed away in 1899 and 1904 respectively. which means that when the Lofton Trust was setup, somebody already knew what had been going on.”
“And had decided that if women needed defending to the death, so let it be – it appears that Major and Mrs. Lofton must have agreed on that, since those 38 cases occurred between 1867 and 1889. There is a bump after World War I – another 12 cases – and 15 cases after World War II and Korea, with seven coming after Vietnam. But that tells you: not in 45 years has there been a disappearance of a pursuing man.”
“Yet they are still on guard, for I know the sound of a rifle being cocked when I hear it,” Col. Lee said.
“I would be on guard too,” Maj. Hamilton said. “Remember how we had to keep our crew from tearing up Lofton County in January?”
“Oh, I don't doubt that, Woody – there is every reason to shoot to kill when men like us are out of control and women and children's lives are at stake. They should be on guard. I am grateful to be alive. My regret that in 154 years, the changes in laws in terms of divorce and courts and community support and even policing means that no better outcome is possible. That we still have so many men feeling they are entitled to take the lives of others, including their own wives and children, when they can't get what they want out of life and are too proud to seek their healing, means we have not progressed as a culture from 1867 as much as we think we have.
“At this point, the law would require that, since there is no statue of limitation on murder, that if someone were interested in pursuing charges for the deaths of the Vietnam-era veterans, we would have to overwhelm the shelter's defenses – because today it can easily be done – and figure out who is old enough in there to have pulled that trigger and try him or her for murder. The Lofton Trust would be implicated, because somebody knows who is or was a trustee. The defense would be in the data, however … it would come down to whether the jury believed just how dangerous men like us can be, and whether the women and children in question have the right to defense.”
“Yes, indeed, we have come to a dangerous discovery all the way around,” Maj. Hamilton said, “but at least in Tinyville where I am police captain, nobody even bothered to file a missing person's report about the vets from here. Generally, the disappearance of the man was met with a certain amount of relief. I've tracked a few cases out … the widows and orphans tended to eventually come back, and get on with life over a few decades.”
Col. Lee shook his head.
“There is nothing in Big Loft either, meaning, law enforcement chose not to get involved on anyone's behalf."
"Makes you wonder how many other 'ghost cases' are really out there," Maj. Hamilton said, "since in Lofton County, things never really did settle down after the Civil War, and the life expectancies of men and women are notably off, all the way."
"It bears further investigation," Col. Lee said, "because I know the numbers you speak of. Lofton County held onto laws disfavoring women as long as it held out against civil rights -- so, to 1975 -- and notably, that's when the killing stops in these particular cases too. To return to the 67 we are concerned with at the moment, there is some record that Major Lofton directly and later the Veteran's Lodge staff did reach out to good numbers of them, to try to connect them with the help that was available.”
“This means,” Maj. Hamilton said, “that perhaps that 67 men dead represents the men who refused to be steered out of the path of self-destruction, and that good intervention by caring community makes a difference. That number could be higher, but perhaps some number of men accepted support and help.”
“When it is accepted, it makes a difference,” Col. Lee said. “We steered ours out of the path to destruction, because they trust us with their lives. But imagine … imagine being the woman or child of a man who feels that the people he thinks should care about him in the community don't, and he has nothing to lose by taking all that disrespect he feels out on you, so you know you will die if you don't get somewhere safe. Imagine being the man in pursuit, thinking the last vestige of your manhood, your right to heritage and legacy, is getting away from you, and you are going to wreak vengeance for everything you've lost on that woman or older child who dares to save herself or himself – and THAT is how you actually meet eternity, impotent, unfulfilled, completely defeated, and damned.”
“If you choose to go out like that, that's about what you deserve – death in defeat and dishonor,” Maj. Hamilton said, “but I also know that there but for the grace of God go we and all our crew that we diverted.”
“And instead we are happily married men with children all around, and the twelve around me compared to your eleven aren't even mine, but I was entrusted with my seven cousins and the other five are their friends,” Col. Lee said. “My knees are going, Woody!”
“Oh, I'm kneeling right down with you,” Maj. Hamilton said, “because it is definitely time to have some instant shout-and-thank-God church for His grace and mercy on us, and our men who may also get their work done and get their families back!”
