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“See, what you don't understand is that I am a military veteran with PTSD – 23 years in service. Every item that I have has a purpose, and moving people's gear around in situations like I have been in is tantamount to setting them up to get killed. In the Army, we practically lived on coffee – so now, I'm going to have to kill you, cousin, because clearly, you are trying to kill me.”
When things go from 0 to 1,000 in a hurry – Mr. Sammy Sampler had at last met his match in his cousin, Col. H.F. Lee, late of Special Forces and of Judge Advocate General. The civilian cousin had been caught in a violent winter storm and his officer cousin had offered him refuge overnight. Unfortunately, Mr. Sampler was one of those people who tended to nose into things and move stuff around.
Col. Lee had just returned home to Lofton County, VA, and was stocking his kitchen. His choices included some very fine coffee blended with cardamom from Lebanon, and Mr. Sampler hadn't thought that “foreign Arab stuff” was the best for a red-blooded American transitioning back to home, so he hid it.
Big mistake. Col. Lee had blocked the door the next morning, and was serious – dead serious.
“You can't do that, Harry – I'll call 9-1-1!”
“Because you are a civilian, I'll give you a sporting five-step head start to where you left your phone on my coffee table, but before you turn your back, make sure you have addressed yourself to whoever runs wherever you are going in the afterlife.”
Col. Lee looked as calm and peaceful in his robe as his ancestral uncle by the same last name and rank in 1860 might have looked in the years before the Civil War and notching about 100,000 lives on his belt from 1861 to 1865 as a general. If you knew the Lees, you knew: they were calm until they weren't, and they were deadly when they weren't. Mr. Sampler shared Col. Lee's Fairlane family grandmother, but even then: the Fairlanes had thought long and hard before allowing their daughter Linda to marry Sgt. Horace Fitzhugh Lee in 1940, because although young Horace was out of a gentle branch of the Lee family, everybody knew the relevant history. Horace's baby grandson Harry had justified all of the Fairlane concerns.
“But it's just coffee!”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that, Sammy. Coffee to die for – that's going to make for some kind of explanation, wherever you are going.”
“You've got to be kidding me!”
Col. Lee drew his revolver, cocked it, and aimed it. The man's marksmanship skills were legendary; there was nowhere in that whole apartment that was not point-blank range for him.
“You'll know in a minute and a half. Better do what you need to do, Sammy.”
So, Mr. Sampler got down on his knees and prepared to meet his God – there was still the window, but Col. Lee lived on the fourth floor, so, one way or another, this was the end.
Col. Lee was a patient man, and waited until his cousin was just sobbing and trembling on his knees before offering a helpful thought.
“You know, you'll probably fare better in Glory if you make amends for the one sin you actually can, Sammy.”
And Sammy Sampler went to the sofa, reached into the fabric slit in the back of it, pulled out Col. Lee's coffee, and handed it to him.
Col. Lee put the safety back on his gun and then opened his apartment door.
“Go and sin no more, Sammy.”
“What?”
“Go and sin no more, Sammy.”
Three months later, Mrs. Sampler came and found Col. Lee and embraced him just before he headed off for his Reserve Weekend.
“Thank you for your continuing service!” she cried. “Sammy has broken his compulsive habits – you scared him straight before someone who didn't care about him really did him in!”
“Grandma told me you needed a little help with him,” Col. Lee said.
“Thank you, Harry, for everything!”
“My pleasure and honor, Sally. I would ask you to tell Sammy I said hi, but the very thought of me will probably have that man jumping through y'all's window like he couldn't jump through mine.”
“I don't think we can have you over for Easter this year, Harry,” Mrs. Sampler said with a chuckle, “but, thank you all the same. Was your gun even loaded?”
“Of course not, Sally. That coffee is good, but not quite to die for, after all.”
