People were slow to learn in high places in Big Loft.
Generally speaking, D.L. Garner Jr. was mellow in temperament, and he had been selected as an interim mayor for that reason … no one figured he would be more than a caretaker, and things could get back to normal if that pesky and all too dynamic Captain H.F. Lee could be made to go back to his office and sit down.
But the two men were cousins, and a certain general by the name of Lee was a common great-great-great uncle. On the average day, D.L. Garner Jr. most often walked in his mellow Garner side – but if you crossed him, or he found out you were lying to him, you met the Lee in his middle name to the full extent.
He had given this lesson to his political enemies in October, and bent them to his will.
He had given this lesson to his political and personal enemies in his ex-wife's family, and humiliated them just in time for Christmas.
But then he had gotten sick – it was not easy for him to switch into the warrior side of his nature, and it had run him down. Once run down and sick, certain people thought they could start up the old tricks on a different track while he was weak, and they had succeeded into the first full week of January.
But they didn't know how the Lees-of-the-mountain rolled – they just weren't going to let each other fall. Captain Lee had jumped the entire chain of command between himself as a police captain and his cousin's position as mayor to reach out and get through to him, and Mayor Donald Lee Garner Jr. had gotten up on that shot in the arm and had realized how he was being played.
Now, the Lee-Garner cousins were going to serve some crow to some people that hadn't had enough yet – and serve it hot.
The first thing: getting the right size of pot… the two men began exchanging documents and found out their pot was big enough and they had plenty of water to put in it.
The second thing: pulling out the right seasonings. The details Special Investigations had pulled out about the Legrees and their connections to city officials was a beautiful set of seasonings; the specific details in the more general but thorough reports of both Captain Lee and his colleague Captain Oriole were another nice set and the recordings they had made of requests what they had needed were another set.
The condiments for the stew: the bland and “happy-clappy” reports given the mayor by his aides despite information available to his office as early as Friday.
Got to have a hot, hot fire – Mayor Garner called both J.B. Madison III, editor-in-chief of the Big Loft Bulletin and James Varick IV, editor-in-chief of the Lofton County Free Voice, the only Black newspaper that ever had survived long enough to make Lofton County fear it, invited them to send a reporter to the meeting, and gave them the list of the other people invited.
Got to make sure the people invited to the feast got there … the communication the mayor sent out left no doubt that if you were going to be anywhere on Thursday in Big Loft's administration, you had better make it to his Wednesday night emergency meeting.
Mayor Garner checked himself in the mirror on his way out the door … he looked like a scarecrow, thinned out, his suit loose by comparison. The flu, the deep depression, and his general resulting malaise had put its mark on him … he felt like he had aged 20 years and looked like he had aged 10. However, that was still all right... he would be believed when he told people he had been gravely ill, and he had dragged himself back to work to meet the crisis. He looked every inch of the truth he still felt …
… But then the thought of his cousin Harry Lee having to come and kick him in the you-know-what came back to mind, just as the phone rang and Harry's grandfather applied the proverbial kick anyhow.
“Donald Lee Garner, Jr.!” cried Horace Fitzhugh Lee, “I had to come down the hill to where I could use Hoppy's cell phone! What are you doing, right now?”
“Climbing out of my sickbed to go take care of business, Big Uncle,” the mayor answered as he snapped a picture of himself and sent it to his cousin Hopkins Lee's phone.
“You better be – you don't look dead to me,” Uncle Horace growled, “and yet there are 382 dead people and the smoke from the last 35 is still coming up the ridge.”
“We're having an emergency meeting tonight so we can get it all stopped tomorrow,” Mayor Garner said.
“You're two days late, Donald, and you better pray that God forgive you for being a thousand injured people late and 385 dead people short.”
“I know, Uncle. Working to not be three – I'm headed into work right now.”
“You had better be, nephew, and you had better put a stop to this nonsense, or you take the Lee out of the middle of your name or have it taken out by those of us who don't associate with failure due to gross negligence.”
That was the mayor's serving of crow for not paying sufficient attention. Uncle Horace, the patriarch of the Lees-of-the-mountain, had served it up piping hot, and the mayor humbly ate it.
“Yes, sir. On my way now, sir.”
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash