Black, White, and RED All Over, part 6-- Ironwood Hamilton from #freewrite in an extended story!
Welcome once again, and again, thank you, thank you, thank you @freewritehouse for making me the adoptee of the week! Here is your daily extra content -- part 6 of "Black, White, and RED All Over"!
Here are parts one, two, three, four, and five -- but if you are just jumping in now, this tale of law enforcement on a background of racial tension has turned a corner! In part 1, Lofton County, VA as a whole is shocked by the coming of a new and highly confrontational Black newspaper, the Lofton County Free Voice, but it is the police departments in the county that are most deeply troubled by the demand of the Free Voice for ten years' worth of records on Black citizens stopped and arrested by the police. In the end, all the departments follow Captain Hamilton's lead and release the records, but not with the same motives -- in part 5, the direction from which the "red" is coming in this story is announced, openly, if subtly!
Here in part 6 we have a moment of calm before the storm for Captain Hamilton and his police captain cousin from Big Loft, although the storm clouds are clearly visible on the horizon! After my dividing graphic, away we go ...
Monday – come rain or come shine, in coordination with understanding friends and relatives, Captain and Mrs. Hamilton went up to Roanoke, VA for two things: a dinner date, and a support group for veterans and their wives at Roanoke's Veteran's Administration Hospital. The order of those two things depended on how Captain Hamilton felt. If he were relaxed, they would have early dinner, go to the group, and go get dessert or maybe catch a movie. If he were not relaxed, the group would come first, and afterward he would feel well enough to go enjoy dinner.
Captain Hamilton carried a lot of tension quite well to externals; the average person observing him would never have known the difference between a day when he felt relaxed or one which he was very stressed. He had carried heavy responsibility since the age of 14; after 31 years, he could stay calm and functional in situations in which other people would be in a blubbering heap.
Yet no one could do this forever, and for Captain Hamilton, the support group was a necessary time for him to be in a place in which he did not have to provide the structure and the resources for things to go, and where he could discuss the events that had scarred him and how they affected his life and that of his family.
Mrs. Hamilton found the meetings difficult and wonderful at the same time. The stories were hard, and the emotions were harder – the fact that her husband was right at home with all of it was strange until he decided to share his stories … both Special Forces and JAG had provided him with some truly wrenching decisions, and memories. Rarely did he repeat a story: he had so many. She loved him all the more because he gallantly and cheerfully went about loving and serving their family even while in so much hidden pain that she didn't know about.
Mrs. Hamilton knew about plenty of the pain, of course – he told her about his meeting that morning with Mr. Varick and Mr. Turner of the Lofton County Free Voice, of the reactions that he had restrained, and of his fears, fears he expounded on with the group:
“People don't understand when they work with high-functioning PTSD survivors – any kind of close physical threat will trigger the old reactions. I look normal: I'm not, and sometimes, it's a curse to the people around me.
“I had some citizens today nearly get themselves into a cross between me and another like me with the same issues. I never should have let them sit so close, should have rearranged the room the moment I realized one of them was so angry. But I can't think of everything in advance. I'm only human, no matter what angel or devil you've heard of from your friends in Lofton County.
"The meeting was going to be tense anyhow, and I was trying to keep it from going off the rails. It went off anyhow, and I was instantly about to be in hand-to-hand combat in Afghanistan, programmed to kill a man in thirty ways. He would have been dead before either of us knew what had happened, but for the grace of God that has allowed me to get into and stay in both support groups and therapy to help me turn off those triggers.”
That other veteran spoke out.
“I was the other veteran,” said Colonel Henry Fitzhugh Lee, “serving in my capacity as police captain in Big Loft. He would never have named me, but here there is no need for the secret. As y'all know, Major Hamilton is my cousin, and he and I served together in Special Forces. I watched him once break everything but a man's neck and back in ten seconds – even in the moment of combat, he would not kill a man unless absolutely necessary. Thus he was known as 'Colonel Lee's more humane adjutant.'
“I work in Big Loft's police department, but not on street duty. I work complex investigative problems involving data and cold cases, of which Big Loft has many. He is the one you want out with the hysterical public. Not me. He is right when he describes the danger those citizens were in. I would have shot them both and never thought twice about it if I had assessed that the citizens in question were truly a threat. They weren't. They are still alive this evening. The grace of God, for me and them, was that He showed me they were just angry, not really intending harm to my adjutant and dear friend.
“Major Hamilton is not a killer, although he has killed when necessary and only when necessary. He is blessed to be good at not killing. Not I. I am a killer. I am very, very good at what I do. I have killed, many times, on behalf of my units, and regret nothing except that at Five Bright Nine, there was not even enough killing to be done to have saved more of my men. Had there been, I would have gladly done it.
"I know that I am at home, stateside, far from the scenes of battle that the major and I shared. Yet what has changed in me may never change back. All I can do is walk with the Lord, and seek the help I need – and, learn to do as Major Hamilton said, and assess situations that may trigger me so as to remove myself from them in advance.”
“That's what we are all here to help each other learn,” said Colonel John Parker, the facilitator of the Roanoke group. “We all have different practices in terms of faith or philosophy, but what we can all learn together is now how to learn how to wage peace. War is natural to proud and selfish people, but there are skills to get good at it. We can also get good at peace; there are skills and I see both of you managed to apply them in the nick of time. Thank you both for sharing.”
Mrs. Hamilton noticed that her husband had broken into a soaking sweat as he relived his day, while his cousin was much calmer – that marble front still held up. The difference between them was thus starkly illustrated.
“Thank you for talking me into making this Monday meeting, Ham; we needed that,” Captain Lee said to his cousin after the meeting ended.
“Oh, I know that – that's why I'm here every week wondering if you are going to show up half the time, Harry.”
“I give you my word that I am going to be faithful weekly from now on – things are getting too serious out here, and in this next week, we shall have to be prepared in both arts.”
“Peaceful as we can be, warlike as we must.”
“That's what you were always my humane adjutant, Ham – and now I will be your adjutant, and we pray that we can wrap all this up without too much bloodshed as peace officers, after all.”
“You know,” Captain Hamilton said, “I wonder if why things stayed so bad after the Civil War is that there was no cultural commitment to transition back to peace.”
Captain Lee shook his head, his face sad.
“Victory, defeat, and peace are three completely different things. I don't think this nation has ever pursued the third. When have we embraced the things that go with peace? Contentment with the things that we already possess – no. Contentment with our lot without envious comparison with others – no. Accepting life's ups and downs, and especially the downs, while accepting full responsibility for all of it – no. Accepting the fact that we have been wrong, from sea to shining sea, in believing and acting as if certain groups of people only existed and still exist to be ground up at our pleasure and for our profit– no. Repenting of said wrong: no.
"There can be only two kinds of peace for people eaten up with wanton materialism: the first is that they mature past that, and the second is that they die, thereby providing peace for their victims.”
“Well, that's harsh, Harry.”
“You're the humane one, Ham. I'm not. We had better pray now that the people we have to track down in the next three to five days don't make me have to show the difference.”
Mrs. Hamilton shivered at all this talk, but she accepted her husband and his veteran associates for who they had been made to be on behalf of the United States, and just started praying.
Captain Lee looked over at Mrs. Hamilton, and smiled gently.
“You see why I resist your efforts at matchmaking, my dear Agnes? Your husband is still the same kindhearted man he always was. I know that I am not.”
“Yes, you are,” Captain Hamilton said. “You didn't become a killer because you loved to kill, Harry. You became a killer like we all did, because there was no other way. Just because you were proficient at it, just because you were able to raise it to an art that saved the lives of many of those you were sworn to protect, doesn't make you any better or worse than we were. You're a brilliant defensive tactician, like Big Pappa. The tragedy is that you both have been put to the same use, and you are even better at it.”
“Which is the struggle,” Captain Lee said. “That is the struggle.”
“I know, Harry. Take it back to the Lord in prayer, especially in these next few days.”
Captain Lee and the Hamiltons parted, and Mrs. Hamilton got up her courage.
“Woody, I've never asked you about Five Bright Nine, but ...”
“A lot of it is classified, so I can't tell you about that part,” Captain Hamilton said. “Suffice it to say that Unit 6 was put on a mission that somebody above us bungled badly in terms of strategy. Harry realized it five minutes too late, but also five minutes before we were going to be set upon by a force ten times our size. Harry knew what direction they were coming from, and that they would be overconfident.
“I'm here, Agnes, in full possession of life and limb. That ought to tell you plenty, but I'll go a little further: there were nine members of Unit 6. Five of us walked away, carrying two of our brothers to safety. Harry mourns his lost two, and the 80 men we killed there on his orders – and the 50 more we killed in achieving our objective, reversing the ambush on those that sent it since we knew they expected that their ambush would have destroyed us.
“Harry is brilliant, Agnes. They lured him back here on account of “cold cases” – they knew in Big Loft that they had a problem 35 times the one in Tinyville, and they wanted to put someone in there with a reputation for handling big data problems. Harry was able to do that in JAG as well: give him 30, 40, or 100 data points, and he can figure out what a team of investigators should be doing to get things done. Yet Five Bright Nine haunts him. He mourns our dead, he is furious with the system that allowed our superiors to avoid responsibility for their deadly bungling, and he fears the living – himself.”
“Oh, Woody … that explains so many things about him …”
“One other thing. Harry absolutely detests people who bungle and don't take responsibility for what their bungles do, and unlike our shared gentleman ancestors, Harry will find a way to take such people out. That's what they don't yet understand in Big Loft and across the county on this. He and I think a big, big bungle is being planned – intentionally – for the Lofton County Free Voice. We've got maybe three days to figure it all out.”
“Unit 6, together again,” Mrs. Hamilton said nervously.
“We are peace officers now,” Captain Hamilton said, “but some folks may have to find out that if they don't want it peaceful, they can be thoroughly obliged.”