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Captain R.E. Ludlow didn't want to admit it to himself, and it wasn't helping that his grandson Robert kept reaching up and kissing the frown lines to make them better.
“Are you not feeling well, Grandpa?”
“I'm fine, Robert, just trying to understand something.”
The thing was, he realized he could actually like Vincent Trent, if he could only get over the master sergeant being Black.
Captain Ludlow was as much in an emergency situation as Sgt. Trent – the Veteran's Lodge had actually done wisely in putting the temporarily single grandfather right next door to the single father, thinking that they would understand each other … the applications didn't say that one was a not-quite confirmed but inclined toward Neo-Confederate, and the other was a proud, free Black man.
Captain Ludlow had never had a problem with Black men in subordinate positions – he had commanded them in the army and looked after their welfare without reservation, for they were his men, and, after all, his particular branch of Ludlow forebears in Virginia had been known for being “thoughtful, remarkably gentle” slave owners relying on their “natural position” than sheer brutality.
But when you are a captain, and sergeants are just moving into your neighborhood like they have as much right to be there, and they are Black on top of that, and then didn't have unruly, loud, disruptive children, but lived the same quiet and peaceful life that Captain Ludlow and his grandchildren did, that meant there was and possibly had never been a natural superior position … which meant that all the assumptions about it being right ever to treat Black men and their children as less than human were thrown into question.
That just gave Captain Ludlow dry mouth to consider it. His family would have thus been in 400 years of wrong.
“Robert.”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
“Go tell Eleanor to bring me a big glass of water, and my angina medicine.”
“Yes, sir!”