Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 1-4

On the next page, more than a day later, apparently, Jefferson had arrived at his destination.

It is warmer here. A sweat pops out the moment I step off the train. I was greeted by a dozen rowdy men, welcomed into a comradery I didn’t expect. These soldiers are happy and cheerful today. War has not tainted them yet, as I expected it would have. When I mentioned this to one named William, he explained the down time, the waiting.

“We play. We act foolish. Sometimes, there is little else to do and potentially there will be no time for such foolishness again in our lives.”

The idea we will die seems to permeate everyone’s thoughts. William challenges this, when I say it aloud.

“Not we will, but rather we might, or he might, or he. Mourning will likely come, let’s not invite it or allow it to visit until necessary, small Jefferson.”

I like William. He is a burly man, well fed and cherubic. He could almost be Santa Claus, were he wearing red and not shades of blue. Will I have another Christmas? Will my family enjoy theirs if I am not there?

We play baseball, a crudely made version, and sing. He continues to call me “Small Jefferson,” because I am littler than almost everyone.

“Run, Small Jefferson!” he cheers when I hit the ball.

“Coming right to you, Small Jefferson!” he warns when the thwack of the bat sends a hit my way.

I later find out there is another Jefferson, a man six inches taller than I, if not more.

“Why isn’t he Big Jefferson?” I ask William.

“Because he was the only Jefferson, until you came along.” William’s embrace knocks the wind out of me. Like everything else he does, I quickly discover, he hugs with all that he has.

I have always liked singing. The men tell me I am good at it. One soldier, Wade, his brown eyes take in my voice with such adoration, dare I say, that I want to keep singing only for him. “Amazing Grace” is the tune.

I began to quietly hum the moment I read the title of the hymn. I couldn’t help it. The lyrics, those past the first two provided for me in the title and the two after that, were fuzzy. If I’d been alone down in that basement, I’d have sung them full out, though, all twelve notes it took for six words. I liked to sing, too. Though it had lost some of its fun, once I’d been told I was tone deaf.

“You were great!” He’d said that first, and the wind had been knocked out of me, just like when William hugged Jefferson, except mine was only from surprise.

It had been my first time onstage since high school, my first venture out into the world since coming home from the desert. I was having a blast as part of the ensemble in Little Shop of Horrors at the local community theatre.

Then, the punchline came. There was always a punchline, if not an actual punch. “I mean, as long as other people were singing to drown you out.”

My look had expressed my hurt, garnering an apology—sort of.

“You know I’m just kidding. Stop being so sensitive.”

My sister and Rip sang my praises, though. If not for them, I might not have gone on after opening night.

I wondered if Small Jefferson fell in love with William, or maybe Wade.

We had a few days of play, of singing and baseball, crude jokes and cigarettes, but then, word came down it was time to fight.

Several pages had been ripped out after the one on which that sentence had been written, in Jefferson’s perfect and precise cursive. The next page still attached explained why, in writing that had changed some, to become a bit sloppier and far less chipper in tone.

I will not describe war anymore. It is sad, bloody, repulsive to every sense, and why would I want to relive it after? Why would I wish to be reminded of it ever again in my life, of watching someone I cared for slowly dying in my arms, of men in agony, whose only relief would be the end of breath?

I have been at this for years, now.

I gasped.

“What?” Rip was still awake.

“Nothing.”

There were a lot of pages gone. That explained that, too.

Were there happy moments in those pages I burned? Yes. Did the unhappy ones go up in flames with my written words? No. Still, it was something that seemed appropriate, as I turned from age eighteen to nineteen to twenty, here in another strange place, farther and farther from home.

“He’s twenty now,” I whispered. “My God.”

I’d been deployed for years myself, so why was it so surprising young Jefferson—Small Jefferson—had been at war so long, too?

“So many pages.”

I had no answer. Still, I was shocked, somehow. I probably would have ripped the recollections of war from my diary as well, those that recounted the worst days I was where I was.

I’m in Tennessee now. The lilting accent of those who were born and grew up here is sweet to my northern ear. They are my enemy, I am told. Yet there are soldiers who join us who speak the same or similarly from other southern states. Not everyone here is on the same side. Not every northerner is for The Union. Not every southerner is against America. Borders and boundaries do not make up a mind or create values. They shouldn’t. Yesterday, I met a former slave who goes by the name of Calvin. He is jovial and kind, despite what he has been through in his short time on Earth. Two years younger than I, he seems far more adult. His beautiful face smiles for me when I sing or tell the one joke I know, one he has likely heard a dozen times.

“What is the difference between a boy running after a girl and running after a carriage?”

“I don’t know, Jefferson. What’s the difference?” He knew.

“One chases the miss and the other missed the chaise.”

I didn’t get it. The only chaise I knew was a chair, a lounge chair. What did that have to do with a baby carriage?

I sneezed.

“Bless you,” someone said.

“Thanks.”

Siri helped explain the riddle, by informing me a chaise was a horse drawn vehicle, often one built for two, with a folding top.

Duh. Maybe I did need sleep. The whole thing was in the setup. The joke was cute, and Jefferson making Calvin smile made me smile, too.

Tonight, when no one was watching, Calvin held my hand.

Aww. Yay. My heart went pitter-pat for Jefferson.

I have grown to adore him more and more with each passing day, each passing hour. No words were needed between us to know something was building, something like love. He whispers we shall kiss someday. I’m impatient and ask why not now?

“Soon,” is what he tells me. “Soon.”

We find an acorn while walking a day later, a rarity the squirrels have not stowed away for a winter ahead.

“For you.” Calvin snatched it up and handed it to me. He dropped to one knee and presented it, like a young man to the one he wishes to be with for life. I smiled at the sweetness of it. My heart beat quicker.

When I went to take the nut, Calvin pulled it away.

“This is worth more than any jewel,” he tells me. “From this, life can be born. Let’s plant it in the earth, so that it may grow, like my love for you, until this tiny acorn reaches the sky in another form from what it is now.”

We did as Calvin wished. The ground was cool, but we hoped something would sprout, to live on long after we are gone.

“A man and a man cannot produce their offspring as a man and woman can. This tree will be our child. We will come back to see him grow, as we live in every other way as any man and his wife can.”

It was the sweetest damned thing I’d ever read. The tree would be their child. I turned the page eagerly to see what happened next. It sounded like Calvin was about to propose. Had he? Did they kiss? Did they make love?

Back home, things would be brown by now. Autumn starts stripping the green from us early, if I remember right. I haven’t been back there now for two Thanksgivings and two Christmases. Everything is still as green as summertime here, even though we are in October.

“A weather report?” I ask in my head. Still, I keep reading.

Food has been scarce. Our hope is to remedy that over the next night and dawn by reopening a route to Chattanooga from Browns Ferry on the Tennessee River.

I gasped again. “They’re doing what we’re doing.”

“What now?” Rip asked, turning over to face me with a grunt.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Stop talking to yourself. People will think you’re crazy.”

The battle cry has gone out. Here we begin. How will it end, for me, and for me and Calvin? I guess time will tell.

I turned the page. There was nothing there. I turned another, and another, and another. They were all blank. Every one.

“No.”

But one was marked now; I could see it in the light from my phone, marked from the tear that fell from my eye.