Captain H.F. Lee retained sole title of being “the Angel of Death” on Big Loft's police by virtue of Mrs. Maggie Thornton, who had been secretary to five commissioners, having laid in first aid supplies including a defibrillator.
Mr. Trenton Semmes had probably been having a heart attack by the time he came to see Commissioner Winfred Scott about signing off of changes to the hiring policy on the police force – changes that at last abolished covenants that only White men could be hired as officers.
The whole thought of the savage hordes overwhelming the lily white purity of Big Loft's police was not what had finished off Mr. Semmes' heart attack.
It was that the man he had enthusiastically supported as chief had been the one to completely acquiesce to the idea.
Of course, Commissioner Scott lived in reality – there would be no savage hordes, because the Black and Latino people of Lofton County were just people.
Had the Black people of Lofton County been interested in cruelly avenging the historical wrongs, they were 39 percent of the city and also of the county – that would have been done decades earlier.
Commissioner Scott was just disoriented by it all, all the way home on public transportation.
Mrs. Della Scott was cooking when he arrived … it was cold, so she was cooking up a stew, and it smelled wonderful to the commissioner.
“Good evening, Winfred; welcome home,” she said as he came in. “I'd turn around, but I'm putting a skillet of onions caramelized in butter in the pot just now.”
“Oh, by all means carry on – I gotta change anyway,” he said, and then went to do that.
Mrs. Scott had come out into the living room by the time her husband changed, and the embrace and sweet kiss was a great help to him.
“Hard day, Winfred,” she said, as a statement of fact.
“One of the worst in a while,” he said, “but there are good odds tomorrow will beat it. Today the decision was made on a settlement, and tomorrow I've got to announce it.”
“You can't please everything, darling.”
“Have you seen the news?”
“Not yet. Been working on the stew.”
“Well, just now that one of the top headlines will be that Trenton Semmes, head of Big Loft's police officer's association, came to my office and had a heart attack, and is in serious but stable condition.”
“I suppose folks are going to guess about the parts of the settlement they might not like from that part, eh?” she said.
“Pretty much. People are going to be all keyed up tomorrow, and the bad is going to be as bad as those who think it is bad will be.”
“Folks do resist change, Winfred.”
“I know, but –.”
The commissioner shook his head, and stopped talking.
“It is no joke to watch someone nearly die in front of you,” Mrs. Scott said. “Take the time you need to process it.”
“It's not even that part – we were able to take life-saving measures on the spot. What is just disorienting is to think that people can live 40, 50, and 60 years, and just be that afraid of the future – afraid enough to die over their fearful fantasies.”
“Well, Winfred, at least he wasn't afraid enough to kill over his fearful fantasies.”
“Oh, that will come after tomorrow,” the commissioner said. “Someone is going to go there. There's just too much of that in this region. I need you to stay close to home until things settle down.”
“Done, Winfred. The last thing you need is to be worrying about me. It's going to be a terrible rest of the week in terms of weather anyway, and I'll just do things remotely for a while.”
Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash