Image by johnnyjohnson20430 from Pixabay
Nine-year-old George Ludlow knew that in the cool of the afternoon as it turned toward evening, man had once walked with God in person in the garden of Eden.
He thought that he understood it as he and his grandfather walked through Fruitland Memorial Park, its trees full with ripening fruit that anyone could pick when it was ripe, and out of which Lofton County's cooks and bakers still made their special regional treats as they had since 1850.
Here and there were patches of grass … the general's old system for resting and restoring the ground after older declining trees were removed provided mini-meadows to sit and rest in the shade during that portion's fallow years. In one such place, he and grandfather had taken an hour's nap before beginning their walk back home.
The sweet smell of fruit, the buzz of bees, the sound of the late afternoon breeze in the trees, the dappled sunshine now behind them over the Blue Ridge sending out a kaleidoscope of shadows before them … it put George in a state of mind he had never been in before.
Capt. Ludlow, seeing the change coming over his grandson, told the story of Gen. Joseph James Lofton, who had once owned Fruitland, and how he had raised his grandson Frederick James Lofton there.
“I did not move us next door by accident, George,” he said. “General Lofton had a hard relationship with his father, and then with his son … and lost his son. But guess what?”
“He got it together with his grandson!” George said.
“Exactly,” Capt. Ludlow said. “History does not repeat, but God does not change, so if a grandfather realizes how he was failed, and how he failed, and goes to God about not failing his grandchildren, then God will do what He always does.”
“Oh, He does, Papa. He does!”
There was much, much, much more to the story that Capt. Ludlow did not tell then … poor Fred had been through abuse as the daughter of a slave girl that even George, who had been neglected and abused in foster care, could not know … and then there was the matter of the Civil War happening in the middle of Fred being 12 and 16 … so George himself would not know the whole story until at least age 16. But, the good part was the good part … and so, as Gen. Lofton and his grandson had once walked and rode along the roads at Fruitland, so too Capt. Ludlow and his grandson, 156 years later, as the generations of their family healed.
“Can we stay – like forever?” George said.
“Nothing is forever, my grandson,” Capt. Ludlow said as his mind went back to how the Civil War had ended Frederick James Lofton's childhood and that of many other boys early, and forward to the known and unknown dangers of the pandemic. “Yet as long as the Lord will allow it to be in my power, we will be here.”
“That's enough for me,” George said.
From a long way off, Mrs. Ludlow saw Capt. Ludlow and George slowly returning from their walk, so relaxed they were as close to being asleep on their feet as they could be, the grandson with both arms around his grandfather's waist, with his grandfather's arm around him and his head resting on his grandfather's firm side. Both were radiant, and Mrs. Ludlow knew the life of both had changed for the better that day.
Every town needs a fruitland where everyone can go to pick and eat fresh fruit and nap on the grass patches.
I agree completely ...