Capt. Robert Edward Ludlow Sr. knew his wife and Lee cousins loved him; he smiled as he saw the three of them gather up the eight Ludlow little ones after dinner for indoor games so he could at last have some time to himself to deal with the birthday of Robert Edward Ludlow Jr., his son who preceded him in death.
The captain chose to take a drive, up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and one of its rest areas to view the sunset. He felt different this year … helping his son's daughters work through their feelings had allowed him to work through his own in a different way.
Eleanor … elegant at eleven, precociously mirroring her grandmothers and great-grandmothers in handling grief with dignity, including the dignity of allowing people who wanted out of her life to leave. Seeing her let her father go since he decided to leave – seeing that she had the strength and understanding to take that journey as much as she understood it – ripped the heart from her grandfather's chest, because no child should need to find that strength.
The incandescent anger of Edwina at eight … fully expressing the anger and pain that many children could not about the injustice done to her and also to her grandfather in the abandonment of responsibility by her father… this broke her grandfather's heart in a different way, because she shared his capacity for rage, and should not have had that burden of that capacity being awakened so young. Edwina wasn't kidding when she said she wanted to get some graveyard addresses and break bad on some gravestones, any more than her grandfather, who had paid to put said gravestones up for her parents, also sometimes thought about doing the same thing.
All that said … being able to honestly talk about where they all were hurting and find comfort in each other, and the fact that Eleanor and Edwina, and also Andrew and George, eldest sons of his also-lost daughter Anne, who also had joined the conversation, already had some insight into what had happened at the end … that was an unexpected blessing, and it had caused certain complications in Capt. Ludlow's feelings. He was glad for the time to just hit the road for a little while, and planned on just watching the sun go down and the stars come out before heading back.
But, alas, no. He drove up into an entire situation, in which he was the subject of the conversation!
Capt. Ludlow had rolled his window down on the drive but had parked his car under a big tree because he liked how the light was coming through it as the sun caressed the horizon. Thus, the reflection of that kept him from being seen through the windshield, and his ears told him why he had been made invisible. Two men from Lofton County's politics were having a sunset drink and conversation.
“I can't believe the baby son of old Ludlow,” one was saying to the other. “I can't believe that little milker grew up and did that!”
“He galvanized the world against us – that voice of his, and that delivery – from nobody to going viral, and oh, did he play up his moments!”
“How – how has old Ludlow beaten us through one son after another after another?”
“I honestly don't know, but, see, under the old rules we had in Virginia, he wouldn't have had this much pull because he's not in the landed branch of the family. We need to get back to the old rules because even having all white men be this influential is a problem – if it was Tarquin IV, at least he's paying enough property tax to be this much trouble!”
“To get back to what you're talking about, we would have to abolish democracy,” the other said.
“And it would avoid all the upheaval that we are about to have when these little purplers who have never run anything but their mouths are swept into office by people who do not know any better. These fools are talking about coalition government between Republicans, Democrats, and independents – this isn't France!”
“France, that men who do things our way have had to rescue in two world wars – yeah, no,” the other said with a laugh. “But France has some things going for it, just like most of continental Europe: they still respect class, and that everyone is not fit to have the money and the power. We've been from the right families for a thousand years. Now, Robert Edward Ludlow is a problem in the sense that he can buck up against us because Lord Tristan Ludlow and all those Lees are back there – he's a blue blood too and he knows how to work it to the hilt to lead the rabble – but without the vote, the rabble wouldn't be a problem, unless they really got French about it, a la 1789.”
“Nobody is about to go through all that for Bayard Heights and the high school,” the other said. “There's a lot the American rabble can lose because they don't care about each other that much. We don't either but we know how to defend the class interests – and this is where Edwin Ludlow broke rank and our fathers should have made him pay a higher price.”
“What are we doing about Baby Bob, now?”
“We really can't at this moment – everyone would know, and also, that soda company and the veterans around him and the fact that his grandmother was Hilda Lee-of-the-Mountain – that alone is too much trouble to be making in Virginia. His cousin is Col. H.F. Lee.”
“Hell-to-Pay Ludlow's cousin is the Angel of Death!” the one said and then cursed for quite some time.
“Yeah, that's a dangerous duo,” the other said. “You know Mayor Garner is their other cousin, too – Donald Lee Garner Jr.'s grandfather is Angus Lee-of-the-Mountain, and Angus and Hilda were brother and sister.”
“Wait a minute – this is a distaff Lee takeover?”
“Baby Bob Ludlow isn't trying to take over anything, but he knows the power he has at this moment. And again: he can play this on us because he can galvanize people who have no qualification to pick who rules them to go get people with no qualifications present or past to run anything into office. Not that Capt. Ludlow wouldn't have been a problem under the old rules, too, but it wouldn't be this easy to just put out the people whose families have run Lofton County for centuries. It hasn't been all bad, but the rabble, stirred up, has neither memory nor gratitude.”
“It's a good thing this is a good bottle of wine; we need it today,” the one said.
“We probably should drive back before drinking the rest of it, though,” the other said.
The two being in agreement, they got back into their car and left.
Capt. Ludlow had his phone, and had videoed it all, quietly sitting with his window that quarter of the way down. When the two men had gone, he had waited ten minutes and then driven down and stopped by the home of his cousin Hopkins Lee-of-the-Mountain to bring him and thus the family up to date about the conversation.
“Oh, they have lost their minds,” Cousin Hopkins said, “but there are more men than people know who want to roll the clock back to 1820, when only landed white men had say in the republic.”
“Well, the people are about to know about these two – I'm dropping this video to Uppity Foolery Watch and letting the chips fall where they may!” Capt. Ludlow said.
Cousin Hopkins laughed.
“You can do it from here – I'm in a good Internet spot for this region. Margie and I love Uppity Foolery Watch!”
So, by the time the two men had gotten back to Big Loft, their opinions of the people of Lofton County preceded them. It was therefore for them a good night, but about to be a rough morning.
Capt. Ludlow drove home, his car full of goods that Cousin Hopkins and Cousin Margie had bought for entertaining that just couldn't happen during the pandemic, but that would be gratefully consumed by the Ludlow ten.
“Every day is a party with eight kids in the house – you have a mountain-sized family!” Cousin Hopkins said.
So, Capt. Ludlow drove home and unloaded the car, and then joined in the games merrily proceeding at the home of Col. H.F and Mrs. Maggie Lee after bringing over some improvised snacks for everyone.
“That's just like Papa, though,” eight-year-old Edwina said. “Willing to miss some of the fun because he knew there were world-class snacks out there we could be eating now!”
“Papa is our grandfather, but has also always been our real dad,” eleven-year-old Eleanor said. “Glad we got Virginia all caught up with the adoption, but some things just are what they are.”
Sending you some Ecency curation votes!
Thank you so much!