“Lord, we thank You that we are still alive, and safe, and that Cousin Harry moved the house over here so the house is alive, and safe, and that although it was a lot, it was just a lot that people put houses on that collapsed, but no one was there, and so everyone is alive and safe except maybe the people that messed this up because now Cousin Harry as a trustee of this place has got to find them, but we pray they pay up so they can be alive, and safe … .”
“I see my little Cousin Amanda is thoroughly impressed with my reputation,” Col. H.F. Lee said to his wife Maggie. “Not that she should be that impressed, but, she isn't wrong.”
As a trustee of the Lofton Trust, which administered the Veteran's Lodge, Col. Lee was dead serious – dead serious about his duty to look out for the trust's interests, and part of him living at the Veteran's Lodge was specifically to look out for and get a handle on decisions of other actors that were affecting the Lodge.
“Basically, the Angel of Death is now the property manager,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent said about it. “If you are a vendor, maybe you want to check your work like your life depends on it.”
To the point of a fine Sunday morning: Col. Lee had ordered the sinkhole that was created the night before to be surveyed at first light. It was 150 feet deep.
“So, what exactly has the contractor we had out here a week ago been doing?” he asked.
“Well, we did find their work, but it's a Millennium Tower type of situation,” the on-site surveyor said. “The stabilizing that was done here was done in a way that would be appropriate half a mile toward the ridge, but not here. The hole's 150 feet deep; any kind of stabilizing would need to be at least 225 feet deep. The longest support I've seen here, Colonel, is twisted pretty badly, but could not be more than 100 feet in length.”
“How's the road, Captain?”
“What road?” the captain said. “Seriously, Colonel; half the road was gone last night, and by the time we got here all of it was gone.”
“In just eight hours – the site is still moving.”
“Yes, sir, it is. It's an old slide area, so, it's sliding. It's definitely a state corps or maybe even an Army Corps of Engineers type of problem now. Might not have been two weeks ago, but it is now.”
Six-year-old Grayson Ludlow was up, and was eavesdropping, and pulled his big Lee cousin's shirt.
“You need to fire those people,” he said. “I'm six and I know you can't put 100 where 150 goes. If I need 150 pieces for a jigsaw puzzle, I'm not going for getting 100.”
“Oh, you like jigsaw puzzles?” Col. Lee said as he picked up his little cousin with a smile.
“And big ones,” Grayson said, “but, it's kinda hard because you need table and floor space, and with nine people in my house, we usually don't have that.”
“I like jigsaw puzzles too,” Col. Lee said. “We'll start one this week.”
“OK – thanks!”
Grayson went away happy, and that was the case for Sunday until just before the Good Neighbors Fellowship.
“Hello … you have the figures … we paid them how much? … They guaranteed it for how long? … they bought used rebar from who?”
“Oh no,” Grayson's big brother ten-year-old Andrew said.
“Ain't it the truth,” Velma Trent's baby sister eight-year-old Gracie said.
“If folks don't know that this doesn't work after that thing in San Francisco, whatever happens to them is what needs to happen to them!” Andrew's eight-year-old sister Edwina said. “They need it! I'm telling you, they need all the smoke they are about to get, and I am here for it! Messing up my beauty rest over some used rebar – I don't even know what that is but it sounds dumb!”
“You know,” Andrew's nine-year-old brother George said to Gracie and Velma's nine-year-old brother Milton, “if they are selling that stuff cheap we should probably see if we can get some for our projects!"
“Man, look – you just got off being grounded and just for today!” Milton said. “And you know how your Cousin Harry was handing out groundations when he and your Cousin Maggie were keeping y'all – and is just in the mood right now to be doing some groundations to end all groundations!”
“Oh, yeah – I forgot,” George said.
“Uh, um, uh,” said George's seven-year-old sister Amanda as she was getting overwhelmed by the unsafe situations being discussed around her, “um, um – let us pray!”
Hence Amanda's sincere prayer, which was heard because …
“Wait – who did the vending – that's one of my Slocum-Bolling cousins!” Amanda's grandfather Capt. R.E. Ludlow said. “H.F., you tell him that if his company does not return the money to the Veteran's Lodge this week for messing up this job, I will roll up on him myself for scaring my grandchildren like that last night – and he knows I will! In fact, if he starts with the art of lying he and that whole branch loves to do, hand me the phone! I'll get him straight! Lying is a mortal sin – I will get him straight on that!”
“Book it,” Ludlow big sister eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said. “That cousin will be in line outside the bank at 8:00 in the morning, knowing that 'Hell to Pay' Ludlow and 'Angel of Death' Lee are just waiting on him to be foolish – the Lodge will have its money back by 9:05!”
“So, they are going to be alive and safe?” Amanda said.
“By 9:05am,” Eleanor said. “Book it!”
