Monday, January 20 in Big Loft was a strange day for Mayor D.L. Garner, Jr.
He was not at work, of course. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day across the United States, and, those in the South who still weren't with that program were sleeping off whatever they had done on the 19th – Lee-Jackson Day, still observed in many places on the successive anniversaries of General R.E. Lee's birth.
Of course, to Donald Lee Garner Jr., there was another Lee birthday on that same day that was more important. One great-great-great-nephew of R.E. Lee had called another to wish him – Henry Fitzhugh Lee – a happy 46th birthday.
Of course they understood the historical strangeness of the affair, along with the current strangeness that both men had just seen the end of.
Two weeks earlier, H.F. Lee had been sounding the alarm about the dangers the LookyLou LookatYou convention would pose to public safety because of the amount of traffic and the weather and the insufficiency of the roads that had survived the Ridgeline Fire. He had been right on the order of thousands of people hurt and killed – but he had kept 12,000 of 15,000 away from it through his efforts being received by the right people.
Mayor Garner was not one of them, home sick in bed and not inquiring as he should have been about what was going on.
On the 20th, Mayor Garner was continuing to come to terms with what little he had done.
He could have given himself plenty of excuses.
He even could have hidden behind a fact he believed.
“And we know that all things work together for good, for them that love God and are the called according to His purpose” – Romans 8:28. Mayor Garner was a Christian, and so believed that.
It was possible for him to say that had he not been three days late in responding, serial killer Darcy Bowler never would have been captured at the end of a ten-year run with co-conspirators Barbara Greenwich and Trudy Baskerville.
And indeed, he had acted just in time to shut the convention down to cover the city from liability when those three women started doing what they were doing – he had literally come out of court with the restraining order necessary to shut the convention down for public safety reasons when the shooting at Skylark Hall had happened.
But this would have been an incorrect usage of Scripture.
God had worked things out for good in that the Beauty Killers had been caught.
Yet had Mayor Garner acted on Monday, when Captain Lee was calling for help, the Beauty Killers never would have closed their run in Skylark Hall. In total, 2,477 would not have been injured or sickened, and 633 would not be dead.
That was not God's failure. That was Mayor Garner's failure.
Whoever was enjoying a bottle of champagne because of the surviving Beauty Killer at last being under lock and key, he wasn't.
He probably would have drunk the whole bottle and been done with it.
He had been mixing alcohol with his anti-depressants before, just a little … but of course, even a little was too much.
He had poured all his alcohol down the drain on Wednesday afternoon when at last his cousin Captain Lee had called him at home, and at last brought him out of the fog he had settled into.
The fog was trying to settle back down on him – he had not recovered from any of it, and the guilt and shame of his lateness in preventing Big Loft its latest disaster was pressing hard upon him.
Who was this person he saw in the mirror – his illness had taken 20 pounds off of him, and the depression cycle had taken 10 more.
He himself was only 47, but the political troubles in 2019 that had caused him to be appointed mayor, the divorce his stances had precipitated after 20 years of marriage, and his illness had aged him 20 years.
It was as if the Lee sadness, his through his Lee grandmother, had jumped the Garner line and pounced in just nine months – defeat had brought out even the sad resemblance in his face.
And then Mayor Garner washed his face and shaved, and got back to his scrupulous grooming habits.
He was a wreck. It was what it was.
Yet, the thing was, he didn't have to stay a wreck.
He had passed his first two political tests in 2019, and failed his first in 2020.
But it was January. The entire year was before the city, and him. There would surely be other tests.
His cousins Captain Lee and his cousin Captain Hamilton in Tinyville had let him know: something was going on in China that might become an international issue. Both had been in Special Forces and Judge Advocate General service , and so they were working their contacts … little whispers in December were becoming more ominous in January, and Captain Lee had also added that certain senators had heard something in January that had them selling off stock like mad, along with a lot of other high net-worth people.
There would be other tests coming, for certain.
Mayor Garner would have preferred to take that bottle of champagne, guzzle it, and say good night to the world for a day, or forever.
He was still deeply depressed, and he wasn't going to just snap out of it.
Somebody – he knew who it was, because there was exactly one person left in the whole world who both loved him that much and had the money socked away – had paid a private therapist time and a half to work on a holiday and to get him appointments every day that week.
Mayor Garner put on the suit that still halfway fit – he still looked like he was in giant's robes, but it was passable for the day – and completed his preparation to head out, just in the nick of time.
There was a knock on the door.
Mayor Garner opened it, and there stood Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee.
“Ready to go, cuz?”
Mayor Garner was still not himself … he started crying.
“Harry, I failed you worst of all – you could have died out there while I was flopping around in bed! I know you paid for all this out of your own pocket! I don't deserve all this!”
Captain Lee was no stranger to what depression could do even to a strong man, and his cousin had been thoroughly broken. Nonetheless, he had rallied and returned to work when it had absolutely counted, and had gotten dressed and ready on this day – he was doing his best.
“What you deserve has nothing to do with anything: theologically speaking we should both be in hell. Presently, I am here because the same people who are about to come get you would have gotten me if I hadn't done all that I could do to help you.”
Captain Lee stepped aside, and standing by the van rented for the day was the mayor's other cousin Ironwood Hamilton, his parents Mr. and Mrs. D.L. Garner Sr., and his great-uncle Horace Fitzhugh Lee.
“Dang – the gang is all here!”
“Yes, D.L. – we are not playing with you. We love you. You have got to get better. We're going to make sure we hold you accountable to get your part done. All of us are off today, and your Uncle Horace is moving in with you all week.”
The Lee-of-the-mountain patriarch could do whatever he wanted with any of his younger male relatives … if he moved in on you, you knew you had to get it all the way together, and if he had to go that far at 88 years old, you knew you had messed up for real, but, there was hope. The elder Lee had not yet written his nephew off.
“Excuse me for five minutes – five minutes, people!”
Horace Fitzhugh Lee took out his windup watch. D.L. Garner Sr. pulled out his cell phone – “Ironwood, how do you set the timer on this thing?”
Mayor Garner went back inside, sobbed hard for four minutes, cleaned up, and then emerged again at the fifth minute.
“I'm ready, Harry.”
The mayor's mother ran around the van to come hug and kiss him as he was approaching – “Yeah, you do all that before I hit him upside his head,” D.L. Garner Sr. said before actually embracing his son as well before passing him along to Ironwood Hamilton for a high-five and a quick side hug – “Glad you're ready for the journey, Mr. Cousin Mayor,” he said.
Horace Fitzhugh Lee was not quite so warm in his welcome … his sister's grandson had been disappointing him for 20 years, and had started to do well in 2019 only to hand all the progress back in January 2020. He was not pleased, and his stance made no secret of it.
However, one cannot have deep disappointment without deep love, and the elder Lee still loved his great-nephew and had prayed, and prayed, and prayed. He came off as sternly at times as winter came off in the Appalachians he had spent his life in … but he uncrossed his arms as all the other meeting and greeting was done.
“Every man has fallen down, including me, nephew,” he said. “Welcome to the ranks of those in the family who are getting back up.”
He put out his hand, and his nephew shook it earnestly … and then at last gave in and received his nephew into his embrace.
Then, Mayor Garner got into the van, and started down the road to recovery.