Day 919: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: rough hands

So, exactly what was a Black billionaire supposed to look like?

Mrs. Thornton was not brave enough to ask Captain H.F. Lee about his brother-in-law in quite those terms, although she thought he might not be angered by the question.

But one never knew. He had been that one Southern White boy who had fallen hard for a Black girl and then gone hard for the whole race – he could go from calm to ready to remove you from the earth on the subject, as his mother's family had found out – and that had been after Vanessa Morton Lee and her son Henry Victor had gone on to Heaven. The widower had not relented, and he had not given up his in-laws as they had not given up on him.

Together, they had created something worth several billion dollars – not that Captain Lee had directly done the creating, for that had fallen to Victor Morton, Vanessa's brother. But, even while away on a military career, Vanessa's widower had contributed however he could, it being the only way he could still love his wife by making sure her dream with her brother became all that it could be.

But that left Victor Morton – Mrs. Thornton was having trouble imagining him, and she realized nothing in a Southern upbringing as a White woman accounted for a Victor Morton.

Mrs. Thornton was born a Milano, and her family had enjoyed good relationships with the local Black neighbors they had – all of them loved good food and family, and the Milanos of Lofton County did not stand for the old Southern stuff that also worked against Italians (and had led to a few little-known but violent acts of domestic terrorism against Italians).

Little Maggie of the 1980s and early 90s had even had some Black “uncles” – and that was where she had to start. They were as well-off as her family, meaning quite well off, but had started where Southern Black men were expected to start – as laborers, men with rough hands and hard bodies who had invested what they earned and thus were enjoying a less laborious late middle age.

But for that matter, grandfather Nabucco Milano and all his sons looked pretty much the same – all men with rough hands and hard bodies who had worked their way to prosperity in ways that would never allow for a billionaire – that took the aggregate of more minds and bodies than any of them would ever command.

So again, Mrs. Thornton came up blank – and then almost laughed as she and Captain Lee walked up to the colossal skyscraper where Morton Technologies had its office suites.

Standing there at the top of the steps was a trim man of about 40 in a quiet suit and coat, five-feet-six, dark as the best dark chocolate, with thick glasses, thickly curled salt-and-pepper hair, and a huge smile the instant he saw Captain Lee.

Victor Morton looked like most billionaires of the 21st century – a nerd, just in richer hues than average.

But his spirit was in every way like all the men of every shade that Mrs. Thornton had loved, and she smiled as Captain H.F. Lee forgot her just for a moment and ran up the stairs as Victor Morton ran down, and the two men embraced in an open show of deep brotherly love.