Day 845: 5 Minute Freewrite CONTINUATION: Wednesday - Prompt: dehydrate

Source

Mrs. Della Scott had an extra basket of dried fruit and associated seeds on a delivery she was making to the Church in the Midst of Life on Wednesday, and just gave it to a man of about 45 in a fine suit and a dejected, dried-up look as he was passing down the street.

“Presented to you on behalf of the Lofton County Seed Saving Society because you look like you need some cheering up,” she said with a smile.

“Thank you, ma'am. That's the first nice thing that has happened to me today. May I have your card?”

“Sure.”

That is how Mrs. Della Scott blessed the mayor of Big Loft, VA.

It had started the day before; Mayor Garner had taken that call from Rev. Obsidian Stone, a call in which Rev. Stone had pressed his community's need to have access to the sites of their dead in the zone destroyed by the Ridgeline Fire.

To Mayor Garner, that was a minor issue: there were no real remains save for unrecognizable bone shards – potential DNA, but it was not like the Black and Latino communities could afford the kind of work that it would take to sort out the bones and ash and know who was who even if it were possible. For that matter, even the elite families of the 120 homeowners who had perished could not afford it, even if it were possible, no matter how they wished it were.

But what no one could do through DNA, the elite homeowners' families certainly wanted to do by tradition. For nearly two months, nearly all the homeowners and their survivors had refused to acknowledge or list their servants. Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton formed an important exception because she had evacuated her servants and the full households of about 50 more, and knew the household composition of many homes in those neighborhoods. She also had a lot of influence on what others did; the people in her circle of influence were more cooperative.

However, many of the homeowners were not interested in doing anything to recognize the loss of their servants except to replace them – many certainly were not interested in sharing access to their property for families they would have preferred to believe those servants did not have.

Big Loft's elite maintained the country's oldest traditions: the servant class only existed to the point that they were useful to the “better and best sort,” as James Madison had put it in the Federalist Paper no. 10, that they served. Accessories of no purpose – that is, spouses and children and older relatives that made up households that depended on the precious little these servants were paid– were not the concern of the better and best sort of people, who were so far removed that they only lived for themselves.

Or at least, that was the delusion they wanted to maintain, and wanted to maintain even more in the face of the reality that one of their self-centered neighbors had triggered the Ridgeline Fire by an excess of selfishness and arrogance. It had not been enough for their neighbor to invest in private prisons and thus modern slavery. It had not been enough for him to invest in hitmen to remove those who were in the way of the working of those modern slavery projects. He had ticked off one of those hitmen to his face, and the result had been that the elite in the way of the Ridgeline Fire and all that they possessed had their ashes mingled with that of their servants who also died just as helplessly.

Big Loft's elite did not want any reminder of the fact, and were willing to severely punish anyone who offered such a reminder. Mayor Garner offered such a reminder just as soon as he mentioned, in meetings with the homeowners or their survivors, that accommodations had to be made for the families of all the victims to have access to the site of the fire, and would the owners of the properties please list their servants to expedite the process so family members could be notified?

The blasts of fury that Mayor Garner received, over and over again, were so hot that he wondered, on a trips to the washroom, that he was not wrinkled like a prune, not transformed into a dehydrated, dried-up husk of a man – a golden raisin on the pale side, if you will. Language that you thought elite people never used, and certainly not in the presence of officials – Mayor Garner heard it.

Why? Much of Big Loft's elite had gotten old and sloppy; the kind of people who had no problem ticking off hitmen to their face also had a few representatives who in their anger would tell an interim mayor, “You political people are the last official slaves – we can remove you at our whim, Mr. Mayor, except that since you are an interim, we don't even have to be bothered that much!”

The problem, as hitman Bruce Deadwood had not been able to teach these folks even after burning up their neighborhoods, was that you never knew who you were dealing with. Mayor Garner had a common last name … but his grandmother had a father who had a father who was Colonel “Light-Horse” Harry Lee, an actual bona fide Founder of the United States. The mayor's great-great-great-uncle? General Robert E. Lee.

Thus, the elite of Big Loft had doubled down on a mistake Mary Anna Lofton had made by slapping her husband across his face for deciding to have the official death toll of the Ridgeline Fire corrected: they had doubled down on the mistake of rousing up Donald Lee Garner Jr.'s Lee blood and fighting fury.

Mayor Garner had not retaliated against his wife directly; he had not turned over the table and choked the life from her, but by the time she got back to Roanoke, her keys didn't get her into that miserable house she despised. He had the locks changed, and while she was outside having a tantrum at the door, his cousin Captain H.F. Lee swooped by in person to take her into custody for assault.

Mayor Garner had suppressed that anger until one of those people, from the world his soon-to-be-ex-wife was from, had called him a slave. He took that and all the blasts quietly, and then had the last word in every meeting:

“If you can rebuild your neighborhoods alone in the next 15 months, then more power to you. If you want to wait until the elements have had a chance to degrade your property through two winters, then more power to you. If you want the city's help before then, you're going to need to do what I am directing you to do. Is that clear?”

The blasts still came at the mayor. He stood firm, sometimes imagining his ancestral uncle in the last year of his life in 1870, having survived the fury of a war and a nation betrayed and a rebellion defeated, but having survived all of that – dying hard and painfully while still needing to support his family, but still dying only from natural causes. He thought also of his Garner father and grandfather – common men who wizened with age like things that became harder when dehydrated, harder and sharper. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger,” grandfather Donald Garner always said, and was strong in faith and intellect to the very end.

And then there was Horace Fitzhugh Lee, brother to his grandmother, great-uncle and mentor to him: “If you are right, it doesn't matter how many are against you. Stand. God is the Creator and Keeper of the side of right and truth: get where He is, and stand.”

And then there was Rev. Obsidian Stone, who had reacted to his loss of his temper and peeled him like a potato … reminding him of the evils of his own legacy and calling him to account to be different. Mayor Garner was sure he wouldn't like Rev. Stone in person, but, maybe it didn't matter, because what Rev. Stone wanted was right. The more the people who hated Rev. Stone treated Mayor Garner just as they would have treated Rev. Stone, the more Mayor Garner realized: Rev. Stone was indeed right.

So: Mayor Garner stood, and insisted on having his way. People fussed and threatened and blasted him, but, as his staff quietly observed that as people were leaving the building, cooler heads in each family were talking sense to their relatives. Mayor Garner also knew he could call Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton and have her “leak” some other benefits he could add on for timely compliance; her vast influence would ease the way.

Also, the weather was going to force the issue: the first major storm was predicted for that weekend. The families of the servants had more to lose in terms of closure, but the property owners who hoped to rebuild by the spring had much more in terms of material well-being to lose by waiting.

There was also the potential “overlooking” of a break on property taxes: while all of the homeowners were expecting that break, the assessment had already been made for the year and did not have to be adjusted. Such an adjustment, and thus reassessment and tax break, was at the discretion of the city!

A wink and a nod at the Lofton County Free Voice, too, would be helpful … they would go to town with the showdown between the mayor and the homeowners, and delight in covering every aspect of the progressive degradation of what little was left richest neighborhoods in the city just because the owners did not want their servants' families to be able to mourn their dead.

A Lee scion with too many weapons at hand to even be bothered with … that was what was roused up when Mayor Donald Lee Garner Jr. was roused up. Any Virginian should have known better. Those who didn't would learn the hard way.

But, meanwhile, in the streets, a gift of dried fruit including golden raisins was gratefully received by the mayor from a beautiful woman of mature age that he did not know … she was at least ten years older, but he saw the ring on her finger with deep regret … her spirit refreshed him, brought moisture and coolness back to his soul after the hot and bitter fight of the day.

“Oh, that's the police commissioner's wife!” Captain H.F. Lee said when Mayor Garner showed him the card back at the apartment they were sharing for the week. “She had the exact same impression on me … I was in love and heartbroken at exactly the same interval upon our first meeting. But, I thank Mrs. Scott for helping me clarify in my own mind what I still needed and wanted in a woman.”

“I surely wish I could find one like Mrs. Scott,” Mayor Garner said. “I never cheated on Mary Anna in 20 years of marriage because I hate complications, but I surely wish I had found and could now find a woman with the spirit of Mrs. Scott.”

“Well, now you know to look, and so you will find them, even in this dry and weary desert the world is becoming for men like us,” Captain Lee said. “When this time you must pass through is over, cousin, the Lord will not fail to provide for you, even as He provided Mrs. Scott to give you a few moments and a basket of relief.”

“I also wish I knew how the farmers she works with dehydrate these – these raisins are superb!” Mayor Garner said. “A thousand cuts above the supermarket!”

Photo by Erda Estremera on Unsplash