Long before Margie Milano Bell had come into the picture, Hopkins “Hoppy” Lee her groom-to-be had known her story, and he was exceptionally tender and gentle to her because of it.
Not that he knew it specifically, but he had seen the other type of man, and what they did to women, and how they ended up.
Horace Fitzhugh Lee, his grandfather, was also still alive.
No son, grandson, or nephew of his had DARED become an abuser – in fact, all that had stopped around the Lee Homestead by the 1980s just as it had around the local Jubilee Homestead some miles off.
Old Ebon Jubilee, with his imposing height and heavy staff, had been known to have made it stop around the Jubilees-of-the-mountain – Black Appalachia was not to be made a mockery of, not be called savages, where the great-great-great-grandsons of Hubert Jubilee yet walked the earth.
Horace Fitzhugh Lee had gone to see Ebon Jubilee for advice, being that one Lee in his generation not ashamed to be friends with and show respect as a disciple of a Black man.
No one knew but old Ebon Jubilee and his brothers what counsel they had given the younger Lee, until the day came.
There were a few men distantly allied with the Lees-and-Fairlanes-of-the-mountain by marriage that had proven to be abusive to their wives. Something about the “newfangled” moonshine, mixed with the “modern” drugs of the 1970s and 1980s, had brought the evil out of some of them.
Horace and Linda Lee sent word to their kinswomen: you can flee HERE for safety, and on many night missions, the Lees-and-Fairlanes-of-the-mountain did rescues.
Not that Hoppy Lee knew anything about all of those details in 1984. He was only 11 years old. He had not a clue that eventually, one of the men in question was going to get drunk and stupid enough to come settle the score with his grandfather, and that on that day, the Jubilee wisdom was going to be applied.
Hoppy Lee thought about his grandparents what pretty much everybody not making trouble did: in the century and more since Horatio Lee had come to the mountain, his sons and grandsons and great-grandsons and still greater-grandsons had been builders and peacemakers.
Horatio Lee's youngest son Horace – born all out of due time in 1932 – was the gentlest of all, and so the Fairlanes, healers and ministers all, had forgiven him his deadly Stratford-line Lee bloodline and let him marry a healer daughter of theirs, Linda. He had gone as a medic into the Korean War, and taken her knowledge with him, and returned to be “Sgt. Doc,” an advanced healer, with his newfangled Army knowledge.
So: everybody knew Horace Fitzhugh Lee was a healer, not a fighter.
Yet those who were proud, and stupid, had forgotten something very important.
Hoppy had been present when Gertie Fairlane Drumpf had come to safety.
Gertie Fairlane had been on the Black side of the family – some of the slaves the Fairlanes in the valley had owned had escaped into the Blue Ridge, and the Fairlanes-of-the-mountain, who detested slavery, had given them shelter. They had all kept the same name, even when not actually intermarrying. Many of them had married into the Jubilee and Shiloh lines nearby, but some had not gone that far north.
Gertie was as black, indeed, as the night sky upon which the Milky Way showed itself off, and as beautiful.
Her husband, however, really thought of her as a slave, and had started treating her as such in 1983.
Gertie did not know of the Jubilees-and-Shilohs-of-the-mountain – she was nearer the Lee Homestead, and so went there. This is what occasioned the patriarch of the Lee Homestead to reach out to Ebon Jubilee, who said that Mrs. Drumpf would be safer at the Jubilee Homestead where she could blend in, and what to do to put an end to things afterward.
Hoppy Lee remembered helping his grandfather treat Mrs. Drumpf's wounds … she hid her bruises for her journey, and they were harder to see because she was very dark-skinned, but he and his cousin Harry saw them and the pain in Mrs. Drumpf's spirit.
“This is the first reason you must never use your strength against a woman in this evil, unholy way,” their grandfather had said to them. “The second I will show you in due time.”
Sure enough, on one day, all the Lee grandsons of around that age were ordered to be in the treeline along Dust Ridge, so named for its unusually dry and barren condition in the dry part of the late summer. No one knew what had happened there, but there were some herbs and things that grew there that somehow did not grow in other spots, and so, an advanced healer had a reason to be there, collecting.
All of his grandsons nearly gave the whole thing away when they saw he was being ganged up on, but one cold look from their grandfather shut them all up.
The Drumpf gang – the chief of the drug users that were causing all the trouble – had come looking for Horace Fitzhugh Lee, and they thought they had caught him on Dust Ridge, with his back to the void beyond.
They had forgotten he was the last living great-nephew of the most brilliant defensive tactician Virginia had ever produced, and had not guessed that “Uncle R.E.'s” gifts were in him.
Sgt. Lee had already set his mark to stand on and just backed up to it as the ten men approached, drunk, stupid, swearing, cursing, and enjoying their moment of supposed mob violence victory.
The Lee grandsons nearly gave it away again in their terror, but again, one cold look from their grandfather shut them up.
Inevitably, Donald Drumpf went first, thinking he was just going to push the aging sergeant over the ridge.
Horace Fitzhugh Lee merely sidestepped at the last moment, and let Mr. Drumpf experience the void alone.
The rest, now that their leader had been disposed of, all charged at once, supposing the safety of the mob.
Sgt. Lee threw dust into the eyes of the first two, and then rolled under them – they flipped over him into the void, and all the others wanted to do stop their momentum toward the same fate, but, no such luck. Sgt. Lee flipped them from his position, one after another, into the void.
Dust Ridge had a lot of void. It was a country mile to the bottom of it.
All ten men experienced the terrifying journey to the bottom, each of their screams ending in a dull, distant thud.
Sgt. Lee stood up, dusted himself off, and addressed his grandsons.
“This is the second reason you are never to abuse a woman. If I find out, you're next.”
“Yes, sir,” came the awed chorus from the treeline.
“Let's go home, grandsons.”
And they all walked home, with awesome old Ebon Jubilee and his grandsons coming to walk with them.
“You followed through, Sergeant,” Mr. Jubilee said. “I expected that you would based on our family history – once upon a time, your great-uncle similarly impressed my great-great-great-grandfather.”
“Well, Elder, I dared not let you down … but White Virginia is not ready for EITHER story yet. It is sufficient that it be known that WE are not having our kinswomen abused, in any shade.”
“Indeed, my young friend. Perhaps by say, the 2020s, if you live, our families will tell it to these here, and they will live in days when Virginia can hear it.”
And Ebon Jubilee indicated Sgt. Lee's wide-eyed grandsons with the sweep of his colossal black hand.
“I pray so, my elder friend. Thank you for your strategic instruction in ending the drug ring and the domestic violence on my end of the mountain.”
“My young friend, your tactical skills were more than worthy of the strategy.”
“And we're next if we mess up,” Hoppy Lee breathed to his cousin Harry.
“You heard the man,” Harry had breathed back. “They'll get us on BOTH sides of the color line. There are a TON of Jubilees just like there are a LONG TON of Lees.”
Both Hopkins and Henry Lee had grown up to be perfect gentlemen toward women, exactly of their grandfather's cut.
Which is why Margie Bell, after surviving her abusive first marriage, had felt safe and fallen lock, stock, and barrel in love with Hopkins Lee.
Later she had told what had happened to her so he knew in detail, but had added, “I never thought I'd meet a man I don't have to be afraid of again, but you have made me feel so safe and protected and loved, Hoppy, from the first day. I'm not afraid any more and I love you for that, so much!”
“Well, thank God for Ebon Jubilee, Dust Ridge, and getting both sides of the lesson from Big Papa, early!” Hoppy had said to Harry about it.