Although wildfires were by no means as common in the mountains of Virginia as they are in, say, California, one occasionally gets big enough in the Blue Ridge to require a full-on response.
Thus, Captain Ironwood Hamilton of Tinyville VA's police force and Captain H.F. Lee of Big Loft's police force did not get to go back to their departments after their Reserve Weekend; they ended up out in support of the firefighting going on at the western edge of Lofton County, blowing up through the mountains about a mile from the edge of Fruitland Memorial Park.
The tension among the police officers was as thick as the smoke blowing up the ridge … it was not lost on the newer captains that Hamilton and Lee, combined, had put a bunch of their colleagues out of work around the Gilligan House Burning, and had denied them the opportunity to enjoy the unjust gains their predecessors had enjoyed from unjustly snapping up the Black population of Lofton County to feed to private prisons.
Captains Hamilton and Lee were thinking about that whole situation too, but in a different way...
“You would think it was still 1819, with these whole convict leasing program they have going on,” Captain Hamilton growled to his cousin as a line of makeshift firefighters arrived chained together until it was time for them to be marched into the flames.
“And we know from the FOIA that as many as half of those men may be innocent,” Captain Lee growled back. “We know this. And yet, today, a whole burnt offering of some of these men is going to be made to Virginia, and to American injustice.”
“And half of our colleagues are just mad because we shut down their kickbacks,” Captain Hamilton said. “Next job: get this kind of leasing shut down in the county until all these cases are sorted out.”
Captain Lee nodded, his eyes flashing.
“Whatever you decide to do, cousin, I will back you up to the hilt. For if those of us who know what is right do not stand up, now, then there will be more flames, and more terrible than these, upon this state, and our nation.”