Image by Ilona Gr from Pixabay

Sometimes when your life is out of order, a set of fish bones not secured can bring the Angel of Death to your house.

“Wait a minute,” Sgt. Vincent Trent said behind hand to someone he knew about the captain who had created a bear visit to the Veteran's Lodge (and a visit from his daughter Gracie's cat to bring some of those bones to the Trent home). “That's not his wife peeking out there, is it?”

“No, that's a whole 'nother situation,” his fellow retired sergeant said.

But, as usual, Col. H.F. Lee, with his family's grasp for details, had also noticed, and Sgt. Trent recalled how the captain had insulted the colonel just moments before. The sergeant remembered what he had been telling people since serving with the colonel.

“Don't let Col. Lee's soft-spoken manners fool you today any more than you let his ancestral uncle and body double Gen. Lee fool you,” he once said to a fellow non-commissioned officer. “Remember that body count in the Civil War credited to Col. Lee's uncle – don't you let your mouth and your behavior have you finding out how that happened. Col. Lee's nickname [the Angel of Death] is well-earned!”

Capt. R.E. Ludlow had not noticed, having not known the captain before this date, and having rarely seen this side of his cousin Col. Lee, so he got to be shocked by the ending of the exchange already under way.

“ … I would advise you, Captain, to make the investments now that you need to make in securing your waste in advance of the lease violation and threat of eviction you will receive from the Lodge, so that if you appeal to the Trust board, a word can be put in for you.”

“Col. Lee, everybody doesn't have a silver spoon in their mouths when they are born – do you know how expensive what you are talking about is compared with ordinary trash cans?”

Col. Lee had grown up in Appalachia, the family's antebellum riches long gone and actually given up willingly by his great-grandfather Horatio who had come to the mountains to flee the temptation to re-enslave Black people as much as possible. The needless insult applied to his attempt to actually help struck deep, therefore … and then that was a captain, insulting him, a colonel.

But more to the point, insulting Col. Lee aroused the investigator in him. The captain was unnecessarily defensive, given that his position was already compromised. That suggested something else was wrong.

“I am more concerned about you and your family dealing with the expense and danger of finding another place to live in right now, and also the expense of medical bills for yourself and others that comes from attracting bears and also angry fellow soldiers who do not want their families endangered and have just as much PTSD as your record shows you have.”

That quieted the captain down, and Col. Lee's eyes saw the evidence he needed to see.

“Now, Captain,” the colonel continued, “is everyone in your home unharmed? I see that your domestic staff is here today.”

The woman – beautiful, with a heavy accent suggesting Arabic as a first language – came all the way out onto the porch, her eyes blazing with anger.

“Oh, is that what you are telling your people I am, Randy?”

And out it all came, with the colonel calmly noting, aloud, the pertinent issues.

“Unfortunately, with her not on the lease, that's another lease violation … oh, she's not even the fiancee but a mail-order bride still not married … the third this year … oh, that's likely sexual trafficking as well.”

And with just the slightest movement of his hand, Col. Lee directed the Lodge police to take the captain into custody, while the captain's woman mocked him from the porch and then from the gentler grip of another officer.

Sgt. Trent just shook his head. He had seen it coming from the insult, and it had gone from zero to the Battle of Fredricksburg in under three minutes.

Capt. Ludlow just stared. He knew his Confederate history … old, “gentle” Robert E. Lee had put an end to the careers of about a dozen generals and a colonel over the course of taking command and running the Army of Northern Virginia, and before that had inherited at Arlington and had let the slaves know there that their new master was not to be trifled with. And then there was the Civil War to consider. Lee, provoked, was utterly deadly – and that was still true in old Lee's 21st-century genetic double.

Col. Lee drove Sgt. Trent and Capt. Ludlow back to their homes, and nobody said a word … but Capt. Ludlow, having come to his home, found himself in tears. He had cheated neither on his first wife, nor on his second … he had never had a foreign affair banking on it not following him home, and he thanked God, and thanked God again when his wife and his seven grandchildren turned out to meet him.

“Thank you for protecting us, Papa!”

And they nearly killed him, piling on him with all their weight before he had really cleared the porch stairs … but Mrs. Ludlow's strength was right there, and they made it, and would continue to make it.

Meanwhile, equally faithful Sgt. Trent had not beat the news home because the women at the Lodge were talking about what had happened. The whole thing had been videoed, and Mrs. Trent had seen it.

“Poor man let Goldie get at his fish bones, and then ran into a bigger problem than a bear,” Mrs. Trent said.

“Henry Fitzhugh Lee, like his infamous general uncle, is the kindest, gentlest man you will ever meet until you cross him. You'd be better off meeting a hundred bears.”

“Yeah, you were telling me about that, Vincent.”