Day 921: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: describe your table

After Maggie Thornton had gotten on her plane, her fiance Captain H.F. Lee checked his watch. It was still one hour before his flight was to start board, and although he had flown Mrs. Thornton to and from Virginia in first-class, he was content with economy – so, an hour and about 10 minutes.

He walked the entire terminal, to stave off the inevitable until he was aboard the flight with the sheer physicality of double-time marching.

When he had introduced his beloved to his Lee grandparents and his cousin Hoppy, and they had all loved her, he had been on stage performing as the third man in the string band Tricolor Sounds … and so he had been able to put that excess of emotion there.

When he had been accepted by his beloved's family, the Milanos, he had sung them an entire concert of Italian songs, and had astonished them … they had not believed the quiet Anglo-Saxon had it in him, but he did …

When in church with the Mortons on Sunday morning, after Victor Morton and Mama Morton and the Morton family heads had accepted his darling, and then to have her show her gorgeous voice and start harmonizing with him … he had been in a Black church, and so it was all right for him to shout.

But he had been going out of his mind since Sunday dinner, truly overjoyed … as he had sat with Mrs. Thornton at his side, and the complete love and peace all around, he had thought of a verse from Psalm 23: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

The need to get on top of the highest structure necessary and shout praise to God for at last seating him again at the table of life that he had longed for ran into the necessity – fully ingrained – to maintain public decorum because of his position in life as an officer of the law – a police captain – and simultaneously, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

However, Captain Lee knew that physically, it was too much – the double-time marching was compensating for his hyperventilating, but when he sat down, he was going to pass out. He was truly overjoyed, and the physical reaction was not within his control if there was no other way he could physically express himself.

Still, he had planned for this in his long, sleepless-for-over-excitement night before… his flight went from New York to St. Louis to Roanoke, so, eight hours with the layover … that and the strongest tranquilizer he was prescribed for, and when he went down, he would stay down. His plane would land in Roanoke at 5:45am, by which time he would be awake and clear-headed enough to drive to his apartment in Big Loft, shower, change, and be at work at his usual 7:45.

And so it was that all anyone knew in three entire airports was that a particular passenger had come up completely breathless to the gate, had trouble catching his breath when at last seated, but had taken the appropriate medicine and fallen into an exhausted sleep with a pleasant smile, a smile that broadened out as he returned a stewardess's greeting at the end of his eight-hour flight.

Only he knew how close three entire airport roofs had been to not being only for the birds.