Image by Frederic Willocq from Pixabay
Colonel Henry Fitzhugh Lee was known to have two distinct sides to his personality.
If you made yourself his enemy, on the battlefield, in the military courtroom, and in terms of crime in Big Loft, VA where he had a soon-to-end but spectacular career as a police captain, his nickname “Angel of Death” was very apt as a last thought before prison or the grave swallowed you up.
But even there … that angelic side of him … all the men who served under him knew of his deep, powerful concern for their well-being, and of course as an officer and gentleman he was impeccable in his manners.
The irony, to the man himself: had he his way, doing things like holding little boys who were crying themselves to sleep for joy until they slept would have been the plan for his life, had his wife and son survived childbirth. Everything else – everything else – was just Plan B.
While holding his precociously overburdened ten-year-old cousin Andrew Ludlow, and watching the child rest peacefully, Henry Fitzhugh Lee realized that life had come full circle, and he had the opportunity to get back to Plan A.
It had been a long, long arc from Andrew's age, and similar temperament … young Harry Lee, like the grandfather who had adopted him after his parents' death, had been marked out for leadership very early. Long before the new decade that had seen him become an adult, and enter West Point even before that, the child had gone with his grandparents on their healing journeys up and down the Appalachians and been a fine extra nurse. He also effortlessly organized his little cousins and friends in the considerable work and lots of play there was for them to do, growing up self-sufficient and off-grid in the Blue Ridge in the 1980s.
By age 13, Harry Lee already had taken on the responsibility of a man. A kidnapper had snatched up a female cousin, and Harry had climbed – still being small enough – through a rock chimney and cut the kidnapper off at a pass, thrown dirt in his eyes to make him drop the child, and pushed the kidnapper clean off the mountain. That was that. Another Lee man, mild-mannered at home, ruthless in defense, had come of age … and would be married by age 17, and widowed at 18. Not yet two decades of life yet, and he had lived an entire span … and then started a whole new one, for another 27 years.
But at bottom, that Lee ferocity, famously seen in American history in Col. Harry “Light-Horse” Harry Lee in the Revolutionary War and in his son Robert E. in the Civil War, was well-used in military service but was not meant for that. Plan B was spectacular in Lees … but, after all, it was just Plan B.
The modern Lee, sitting and holding his beloved Ludlow nephew, decided he was going to be spectacular in Plan A. Losing the police job due to other people's mess-ups and Covid-19? Thank God. Being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and so never again going to be exposed to combat situations? Thank God. There was still going to be some connection there … Special Forces needed a bit of a 21st century overhaul, and some general with a spectacular understanding was going to need to prepare some models for that … it was a task without glory, and Generals Lee tended to do well in those … that was out there, and there was probably no avoiding being recalled for that. But still: that could be worked into Plan A. So too civilian life as a trustee of the Lofton Trust, and maybe some private investigator work on the side … he had managed to get Special Investigations spared on the Big Loft police force, and he knew the men he had trained were going to come to him if things got sticky in a case.
The “Lil' Captain” of the seven Ludlow grandchildren, already so much modeling after his captain grandfather and colonel cousin, was enjoying his secure rest … Andrew smiled in his sleep as his big colonel cousin just held on. Andrew was getting tall, and lap time was getting rarer, and Col. Lee was not even as tall as Capt. R.E. Ludlow, Andrew's grandfather and adoptive father … but Col. Lee thought back to his own adoptive father, Sgt. Horace Fitzhugh Lee, and how on the worst and most critical day of his life, his grandfather had gotten him onto his shoulder when he was eighteen, carried him out of a bad situation, and held on until his sanity had returned. Horace Fitzhugh Lee, after his service as a military medic in Korea, had gotten home and been spectacular on Plan A … and now, his grandson was going to fully follow in his footsteps.
Sometime later, after his good nap, Andrew told his eleven-year-old sister Eleanor about a strange dream he had.
“I was in Heaven,” he said, “although not real Heaven because there's a street of gold there, not soft clouds and stuff, but anyway, there was this mighty angel there, and he was crying in the light … because he got to put his sword up at last.”
Eleanor thought about this.
“That was God showing you the heart of Cousin Harry, now that he is happily married, and moving down here to be with us.”
“Whoa,” Andrew said.
“Our great-great-grandmother was Hilda Lee, Cousin Harry's great-aunt, so you have some of the Lee ability to see things about people and patterns, too,” Eleanor said. “Cousin Harry did 27 years alone, but is really a family man – it's so obvious that's what he is, so he's not going back to be lonely and go to war unless the country really needs that, or unless somebody comes around here acting really dumb.”
“Now, wait – between him and Papa and Sgt. Trent all being here – and Sgt. Trent's shooting mama?” Andrew said. “I feel like we need to put up a sign warning people not to do any dumb stuff here!”
“There is a sign,” Eleanor said. “This place is called the Veteran's Lodge. If folks read that coming in, and still don't get, we can't help them.”
“Maybe we need to teach people how to read,” Andrew said.
“Andy,” Eleanor said as she put her arms around him, “you worry too much. Let's just pray that God give people understanding, and go get some of this jump-rope that Velma and Vertran are getting next door.”
“OK,” he said, and after they prayed, followed his sister back into the joys of childhood.
“See, this is how I keep you on Plan A, too,” Mrs. Maggie Lee said as she wrapped her arms around Col. Lee.
“OK,” he said, note-perfect an octave lower than Andrew, and cracked his wife up.
