Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 1“It was a dark and stormy night, October 27, 1863,” our Civil War reenactor instructor said, peering out at us over his wire-rimmed glasses. “If it wasn’t then, it sure is now.” He had a big smile. Everything about him was big, his shoulders and chest, the reddish bushy beard that covered most of his face, and his boots. Guy must have had size fourteen feet, at least. “The sky was angry, its noise as loud as artillery fire.” Right on cue—BOOM!—a clap of thunder rattled the casement windows set in concrete block all around us. I jumped. Loud noises weren’t really my thing. We were down in the basement of a beautiful antebellum home that was now a museum. Upstairs, according to the website I’d scoured, the furnishings were antiques, the walls covered in original brocade paper, the windows with silky drapes. Where we were stuck, everything was musty, gray, and dank. “The Battle of Browns Ferry had one purpose,” our leader continued. “Food. After the Confederate victory in Chickamauga left thousands of union soldiers trapped and starving in Chattanooga, General William S. Rosecrans telegraphed Lincoln with dire news, stating our hold here could not be assured.” I couldn’t remember the instructor’s name. I wanted to say Philip? “There were very few nighttime battles during The Civil War,” he read from a hardcover text book eerily similar to one I’d used in high school more than a decade prior, “but this was one of the more significant.” “Come do a reenactment with me,” my brother-in-law, Rip, had said. “It’ll be fun,” he’d told me. So far, it felt a lot like studying for a final. When I checked my phone for the football scores, Rip nudged me. “What?” “Pay attention, Goose.” “I’m listening,” I said. Truthfully, I wasn’t. Yeah. I could be immature sometimes. I’d giggled when Rip and I first drove under the sign that read Welcome to Cocke County. “It’s pronounced like the soda, you freak,” he’d told me. “Not the body part.” I kind of thought we’d put on the uniforms, run around like kids, and yell “Bang! Bang! Bang!” I pictured it being like a production of Hamilton, only with different costumes, setting, plot, and music I would make up in my head. I had no idea so much effort was put into these things to make them accurate. We were learning about The Battle of Wauhatchie, which took place in Tennessee and Georgia. About thirty of us had gathered on the grand southern estate to relive those two days in history. According to that website I’d read over and over ahead of time, our lodgings had everything, from stunning architecture, to famous historic visitors, to secret tunnels, to ghosts. What it didn’t have on the level we were stuck in, were enough bathrooms. There were only three, which meant I’d have to fight ten or fifteen other guys at shower time in the morning, unless being accurate to the era meant we were going to go into battle stinky. At almost thirty, I was too old for that frat house crap. “Jesus!” “What?” Rip whispered. “The lightning.” The entire room had turned blue for half-a-second, accenting a bunch of backpacks and several dozen sleeping bags. I wished more than ever I was in one of the comfy rooms upstairs, with air conditioning, a soft mattress, and drapes to shut, so I wouldn’t have to see Mother Nature’s light show. We weren’t allowed to sleep up there, though. All sorts of rules applied that it was likely assumed we, as Neanderthals, would be incapable of following. The house’s management had little faith in us. Checking out some of the stains on some of the undershirts not quite covering some of the bellies around me, I could see their point. At any rate, we were stuck in an annex at basement level, with bathroom amenities that looked as if they’d come from another period in history as well. I was guessing the 1970s. “You afraid of thunder?” Rip asked me. “No.” Kind of. The old home’s exterior was white, with beautiful columns and terraces outside the upper and lower rooms. The wrought iron railings were sculptural and ornate. They’d captured my eye the moment Rip and I had driven up the long, winding driveway. I kept drawing them in the notebook I was supposed to be using for actual notes. I liked to draw. “Pay attention,” Rip said to me again. I focused in once more on our speaker. “Thirty-five of us will work to reopen a route to Chattanooga from Browns Ferry on the Tennessee River,” Paul said. Or was it Peter? I checked my notebook to see if I had written his name down. “And five of you will be the starving soldiers.” “What do they do?” I asked Patrick. According to my scrawling, his name was Patrick. “Just lie around, um, starving,” he answered. “Pretend starving, or are you telling us we don’t get to eat? Is the food authentic? What did they eat in 1863?” “Well, it’s called the ‘Cracker Line’ operation, Mr. Tucker.” “Call me Goose,” I said. “Okay, Goose. My point is, there will be crackers, for one thing.” Patrick smiled. “Also, coffee, and tea…” “Yum.” “Is this your first time with us, Goose?” “Yeah. That obvious, huh?” “It’s fine. I like questions. I also like to keep things as authentic as possible. Just think, if going twenty-four hours without eating is hard, imagine what those soldiers must have felt like day after day. If you can come away from all of this with a sense of understanding and appreciation for the plight of these frightened, hungry, devoted, patriotic men, well, I’ll have done my job. Is there anything else you’d like to know?” Damn. Suddenly, I felt pressured. “Um…Nope. Proceed.” I turned to Rip. “I should have packed more snacks. I wonder if there’s a convenience store nearby.” “Why didn’t you ask?” “After Pat said all that about appreciating the soldiers? I’d have come off as a pretty big jerk, don’t you think?” “You said it.” “We can have beer, right?” “Shh!” “Currently,” Patrick explained, “following previous battles not as successful as we might have liked, the confederates have occupied positions that require us Federals to bring in supplies from the Stevenson railroad. We must travel via wagon, up the Sequatchie Valley, and then south, over Walden Ridge, to the north bank of the river opposite Chattanooga to get rations where they are needed. The sixty-mile route is treacherous and winding. After rainy weather, this trek was taking our men over a week, and our animals were breaking down.” “There’s not a test after, is there?” I muttered. “Shut it!” Rip scolded. When Patrick mentioned a man named “Baldy Smith” I chuckled. Rip sneered. I had a feeling he was already regretting his decision to include me, as much as I was regretting saying yes. Rip and my sister had done so much for me. I owed them. This was step one in paying them back, except I was every bit as frustrating as a Civil War reenactment partner as I was as a depressed and isolating relative. “Baldy Smith,” Patrick said again, “has devised a way to open a shorter route via Kelly’s and Browns ferries.” Patrick pulled out a brittle, yellowed map we all had to gather closer to see. The guy really knew his stuff. “To do this, we must first drive the Confederates from Raccoon Mountain. With the approval of Major General Ulysses S. Grant, Hooker’s force at Bridgeport will secretly move across here.” He traced the route with a small wooden pointer. “One group will lead the advance along the line of the railroad south of the river toward Wauhatchie.” The pointer showed that proposed journey as well. “Ours will cross northwest of Whiteside to join them. At Chattanooga, we will all drift downstream, past the enemy, to Browns Ferry, where we will secure the heights overlooking the site. We will have to fight off a small counterattack, but victory shall be ours.” I was late in joining the rousing Hoorah! “Hoorah!” Better late than never, I figured. “Another brigade will then cross at Browns’ Ford’s north bank,” Patrick told us, “and a pontoon bridge will be erected. On the morning of October 30, forty thousand rations and tons of forage will have arrived because of our efforts.” “The Cracker line is open. Full rations, boys!” Once again, everyone else seemed rehearsed. The exclamation came in force, with me as an echo. “…rations, boys!” “We’ll all meet back up here at eleven,” Patrick said, “in full garb, to prepare to start the reenactment. In the meantime, feel free to roam the grounds.” The torrential rain pouring down challenged the notion. “Or not. Maybe take the opportunity to relax and get to know one another before we start.” Patrick fixed his glasses. They were always crooked. “There was downtime during war. The bond some of these men formed with one another is something else I hope we can replicate in the short time we have. Our mission will be grueling,” he continued, “but once again, keep in mind it’s nothing compared to what these actual young men went through in real life. You’ll all be leaving here alive.” Another loud crack of thunder had me airborne. “f**k!” As our compatriots dispersed, Rip was giving me stink eye. “You’re not taking this serious,” he said. “Seriously…” “What?” “I believe, seriously is the word you want. I’m not taking this seriously. You know History. I know English.” “Jerk.” Rip walked away. “What? You’re really mad?” He headed for the door in the rear of the basement and went out into the storm. “I’m angry. Angry is an emotion. Mad is an affliction.” Okay, so I wasn’t the only grammar cop in the room. “You coming?” Rip held the door for me. It was pouring, but an awning overhead kept him dry. As lighting lit up the entire black Tennessee sky twice in a matter of seconds, I wondered if the overhang would do anything to protect us from that. “I guess.” I went out. “I’ll behave. Don’t be angry.” Rip and I had known one another since entering junior high as Richard and Max. “Richard” to “Rip” wasn’t much of a stretch. I don’t even recall how it came to be. My last name, Tucker, prompted another classmate to call me “Tuck,” then “Tuck, Tuck, Goose,” and eventually, just “Goose,” which might as well have been on my driver’s license by the time I’d turned twenty. No one in my life, not family nor classmates, army buddies, nor lovers, called me anything else. Rip was family now. He and my sister would celebrate five years as husband and wife in December. Another friend of his had dropped out on the reenactment weekend late on Thursday. That was when Rip started begging me to come. “Playing pretend doesn’t really sound like my idea of fun,” I’d said, lying on the couch trying to concentrate on Gran Turismo on my PlayStation. “You stare at that game twenty-four seven. It’s exactly your thing,” he’d argued. “Yeah, but this is three fingers and a thumb. I’d have to put on pants and move my legs. It’s a whole thing.” I’d been accused of being anti-social, a hermit. That was nonsense. I left the house daily. I worked, as a cleaner at a big box store. I went in once everyone else was gone for the day and went home before any other human beings showed up to open the place. I liked the quiet at night and didn’t even mind the occasional rodent or insect. No field mouse or gray rat had ever been as mean or hurtful to me as some people I knew. No roach or wasp had been as dangerous. Twenty-foot ceilings, a maze of shelving and displays, minimal lighting, pitch blackness outside the windows, and me with a power scrubber equaled good times. Rip had once called the empty store spooky, when he’d come to pick me up at daybreak. “You can’t see a damned thing hardly anywhere in this place. Someone could be hiding in any corner, alcove, or right out in the open, for that matter, because you’re trapped in a dead-end alley of women’s underwear or garden supplies. I’d be checking behind every rack of clothing, in between these shelves.” He’d pulled out a toaster oven to peer behind it. “Someone could even be up there on top of one, ready to pounce.”