Captain Lee, in his sleep, was indeed sent home to the Appalachians in peace on a summer night in his sleep, with his grandfather – the occasion had actually been an emergency, but the grandson had toddled out of the house after his grandfather.
“Paw-Paw? Where you going?”
Instead of going back to the house and waking other people up to put the boy to bed, Horace Fitzhugh Lee had strapped his boy to his back and just taken him along.
“Well, come on and see, Henry!”
“Yaaaaay!”
The kind part of the making of an insomniac was right there – the toddler already was not asleep, but now was looking at the trees and the shadows and the Milky Way above and the lights below – for they could see the lights of Big Loft and even more distant Roanoke in the valley below, and the little “candlelights” of Miniopolis, Tinyville, Littleburg, Smallwood, and Shortport dotting the rural landscape of the county.
It was not a long journey by a mountain man's standards – a mile or so. But to a toddler, his little mind trying to take everything in, it was a eternity of wonders, played over again as he finally went to sleep while his grandfather handled the business at hand.
Horace Fitzhugh Lee was Sgt. Lee, and had served as a medic in the Korean War. When things went bump in the night, Sgt. Lee was called for. He always went. He always served. He had not thought to take his children along, and regretted it, for two of them had never seen the value, and those two had joined the “lower world” in every way and were dead by 1977.
The grandfather, having been given a grandson from one of his “lost sons,” a grandson who wanted to go along, had always taken him, everywhere that he could safely do so, and in doing so had developed the character of his grandson very early.
Peace … there was wonder, and there was service … there was even the wonder of service, because the toddler had awakened frightened by the last cry of pain given by the man his grandfather was working with – but in the next instant, the man's shoulder slipped right back into its socket, and relief came to his face. Toddler Lee remembered that – peace was an end to pain, brought by kind people. Just how his mind was not able to grasp, but he saw the man smile and start talking a little bit to Horace Fitzhugh Lee as the medic put the man's arm in a sling to keep it in place.
Toddler Lee went on back to sleep, his mind returning to all the wonders he had just seen, and they would pile on each other in the next 11 years. In manhood, past 18, after all the horrors that 18th year had brought to him and nearly out of him … during and after all the horrors of his military service experienced and personally done … when he neared the edge of his sanity, his mind recalled him to peace, traveling up and down the Appalachians with his family, and often with his grandfather, alone.
But then Maggie Thornton had come into his life, and had learned that he had learned to take himself at will to those places, and that she could help him... she found him asleep, put on the right sleep sounds, and sent him home.
Captain Lee woke up quite refreshed in time for dinner – in real time, it was only an hour, but it had been a good hour.
Later, Mrs. Thornton was just about prepared for bed when her fiance slipped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her.
“Thank you,” he said. “I have so much I need to talk with you about, but I needed to re-center, to go home … thank you … .”
“I understand, Henry – I mean, not completely, because even you have to do your share of head scratching as the healing process continues, but I am getting to learn what you need, and I appreciate what you share so I can help you.”
“Thank you, Maggie … I'm not a big talker and it is so hard to unpack … this weekend has been unbelievable and I have to work tomorrow … but, tomorrow evening … there's so much I need to share with you … .”
“Why don't we escape Big Loft tomorrow evening too?” she said.
“Good idea – I'll think of something.”
He kissed her gently on her neck, and then let go.
“Lord knows I don't want to let go of you, but, you know.”
“Of course! Soon enough, though, I'll be Mrs. Lee and you wont have to!”
“Can we go tomorrow – oh, right, I just said I have to work.”
Mr. Worley and Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton both shook their heads from a discreet distance.
“He's so smart but he's so dumb,” Mr. Worley said. “That woman would have married him months ago.”
“He's scared,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said. “So am I. Y'all real bold types in love don't understand – we don't commit easily because we know that we are going to go all in, and if y'all bold types mess it up because you know you can always get somebody else, things go bad.”
“Yeah, I can understand that.”
“You think you do,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said, “but because you walk with God, you never will. Henry and I proved it by each other, though, one hot summer in 1992. We get scared because if y'all bold types get out of pocket, we know we're going to flip out and take you somewhere you are not ready to go, and we love you, so that's scary by itself. We've been hurt and are scared of what you can do to us, but we're also scared of what we could do to you in return. Of course I can articulate all of this. Henry is not there yet, and, it's got to be worse for a man.”
“You're right, I wouldn't know about that. The whole concept is a head-scratching affair to me. You know how I am. I see it, I want it, I already know I'm going to take good care of it, I go get it – in business, and in life, because here you are.”
“Right, but, you don't understand, John – you're blessed with that. Some of us are still works-in-progress in life, although, granted, in business that's me and put any kind of work in front of Henry and he's the same. But life is different until you learn both equally well. Aaron was just like you, so I didn't have to learn until now. Henry and Vanessa's story was unique and they were really young, so he didn't have to go through that until now either. Some of us have to learn to have the same level of confidence everywhere, and John, let me tell you: it's really scary.”
The fractal was designed by the author, Deeann D. Mathews