Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2I didn’t get much sleep after that. Before I knew it, Reveille was upon us. Nothing metaphorical about it, someone was actually blowing the tune on a damned bugle at 11:49 at night and we all obeyed it.

Up an at ‘em, all thirty of us slipped into our authentic-looking garb, some ruining the historical accuracy by spraying on a hefty coat of deodorant or Axe Body spray beneath. We had a couple of teenagers in the group, not much younger than Jefferson Eaves. They went particularly heavy on the spray cologne.

I had two nice side pockets in my jacket. Jefferson’s diary fit into one. I slipped my smallest sketch pad and some pencils into the other. By order of Patrick, we weren’t allowed to bring phones or anything else “contrary to the historical time.” I’d been imagining Jefferson writing with a turkey feather quill pen. I knew from my research some people still used them in that era. I didn’t know what kind of pencils were available in the 1800s, though, or whether or not my recycled paper flew in the face of that edict. I was bringing them anyway.

My plan was to put the diary back on the shelf as we exited the grand old house from the door upstairs to go into battle. I was relatively certain I could slip it into its rightful place unnoticed, hence saving myself from being arrested or yelled at for removing it in the first place.

“Bad news.”

I looked up as Patrick moped down the stairs from up there.

“The weather isn’t cooperating,” he said. “My NOAA app shows a line of dangerous storms in a direct path for us. We’re going to have cancel the battle.”

A chorus of groans echoed throughout the enclosed space.

“That sucks,” Rip said.

“Real soldiers fight in all sorts of weather.” The guy who said it was one of the Axe sprayers. He’d used a lot and, incidentally, didn’t even look old enough to enlist. I wondered if he knew anything about war beyond a video game.

“Well, if one of you gets hurt, we’re liable,” Patrick said. “Bottom line, no battle as long as it’s lightning.”

“So, we go back to sleep, or what?” I asked Rip.

“I guess. Maybe we can just get a later start.” He said it again, louder, this time as a question for Patrick. “Maybe we can just get a later start?”

“Sure. Maybe. We’re stuck here. No point in driving or flying home. We have a good six hours of darkness to play with. We’ll see.”

“We’ll see,” Rip said.

I picked up my sleeping bag, rolled it into a ball, and then threw it back down to the floor.

“Where you going?” Rip asked when I turned to leave.

“I don’t know.” Fumbling around in my duffel bag, I found a box of antihistamines. The humidity was wreaking havoc on my sinuses. “Walk around some. I’m not gonna fall back to sleep.” The Axe was choking me.

“You want me to come?”

“Nah. I’m good,” I said. “Relax.”

“Won’t that stuff knock you out?”

“Never does. I’m a lousy sleeper.”

“Okay.” Rip shook his sleeping bag out, and then laid it flat. It seemed as if he was ready to go back to bed. “See you in a bit.”

“Nighty night, Bro-ham. Don’t let the bedbugs and whatever else is crawling around down here bite.”

I headed back upstairs to look at the bookshelf that had once held the diary now wedged snugly between the waistband of the uniform pants I’d put on and my Under Armor boxer briefs. I wondered if there might be more volumes, like maybe Jefferson had lost it, and then was forced to start a new book. What I found instead confirmed the worst. How I hadn’t noticed it before, I wasn’t sure.

Jefferson Samuel Eaves, June 1, 1843–October 27, 1863

The inscription was engraved onto a small piece of brass on the front of the bookshelf. “It’s a hundred and fifty-five years to the day,” I whispered. “Rest in peace, Small Jefferson. He’s with the angels now, Charlotte.” She was still at the wall fixture. “Rest in peace.”

I looked out the window. The moon was still trying to break through the clouds, winking at me and all the outdoors, and then gone again. Mother Nature appeared totally calm to my eye. Despite my unnatural childlike fear of thunderstorms, I wanted to be out there. A part of me needed to walk the ground Jefferson might have walked on. Sucking it up, taking a deep breath, steeling myself, I opened the door and stepped out into the night.

The crickets chirped, along with something else I couldn’t readily identify, a higher pitched trill, some kind of frog, maybe, or a bird that didn’t sleep at night. Was there such a thing, other than an owl? More questions for Siri or Google, but some other time.

“Did you fall in love with Calvin?” I asked toward the heavens. “Did he love you back, like you deserved to be loved?”

I kept walking until the house was out of sight. I wanted to be in darkness, away from the illumination from every window, the coach lights on either side of the front door Charlotte liked, and the lamp style ones by the driveway that reminded me of Dickensian days and Christmas carolers, even if I was in the old south two months before the yuletide.

The moon was dim now, like a gauzy, hazy glow, but I could see up ahead. Night wasn’t all blackness. There were shades of dark around me and above. The mountains were the color of ash burned over and over, a hue I knew I couldn’t match, even by moving the pencil point back and forth dozens of times over the same spot. They rose high, undulating against the deep gray horizon. The sky over them was more a newer ash color, with a sort of silver shimmer, like when the charcoal in the grill was ready for the meat. Had I not been craving a burger, I might have compared it to the lead of the pencils I’d use to draw as I sat down in damp grass to capture and reproduce what I saw.

My uniform was tight. Maybe I shouldn’t have lied about my size in order to squeeze myself into one I’d hoped would sound more appealing to the total stranger I’d told my waist measurement to on the phone. Had I become so vapid I was worried a size thirty-four pant would make me sound fat? Hell, yeah, I had. It was something I would have to work on.

Instead of gray sky, I ended up drawing a figure, a figure of a man in a Union soldier uniform. “What did you look like, Small Jefferson?” I assumed he was short, like me. Not much of an assumption, really, since he’d said so. I made his jacket too big, and drew the pants sagging at the seat. Jefferson’s brogans were large, but they still felt tight on his feet. I imagined that. I didn’t know why. Brogans was one of the words I’d come across when doing my rather perfunctory research on all things Civil War related.

When it came to Jefferson’s face, I filled it in with shadows, but no features.

“You’re handsome, I bet, in your awkward, boyish way.”

Someone had once said that to me online. I figured it meant I sounded as immature as I was.

“But you had to grow up too fast, Small Jefferson.” I yawned. The night air was making me sleepy. Maybe the dank, claustrophobic feel of the basement had been my problem. The only difference between it and a bunker in the desert was the temperature.

When I went to lie back on my elbows, the corner of my sketch pad poked me in the rib.

“s**t!” I’d been accidentally drawing in the diary, defacing a no doubt priceless artifact in US history. “Son of a—s**t!”

I wondered if I should tear out the page.

“Yeah. That’s the best option,” I decided. No one had likely counted the number of blank pages. No one would notice one less. “I hope.”

Ever so gently, I tugged down the side, where the book was sewn together.

“There, Jefferson.”

A strong gust took the sketch, which I’d laid upon my lap.

“Damn it!”

I got to my feet and heard a rip. Sure enough, the seam down the back of my light blue wool pants had split. When I reached back, I felt my wet boxer briefs clinging to my sweaty ass.

“So much for historical accuracy.” I’d seen Hanes, Fruit of the Looms, Joe Boxers, and bare booty back in the basement. At least I was wearing something under my pants. Any fool going commando in wool was going to be sorry, I’d figured at the time.

I couldn’t think about that anymore, however. The sketch was getting farther and farther away every second, as the sustained wind picked up in strength. I took off after it, down what I presumed to be a lush green hill now just another tone of dark gray.

The movement of the paper seemed to taunt me. Each time I got close enough to grab it, off it went, too high to reach, too fast to pounce upon. I kept on after it, though, stumbling over thick tree roots disturbing the evenness of the ground beneath my feet. Almost smacking into some of the trees those roots fed, I also had to fight off bugs along the way that didn’t sleep at night, even when storms were on the way.

The sky had blackened, and clouds had swallowed up the moon, like The Blob, in that cheesy movie I’d recently sat through. A jagged bolt of lightning off in the distance sent a shiver down my spine and had every hair on my body on end. Even when a huge drop of water splattered against my forehead, warning me more were quickly to come, I didn’t slow my jog, moving away from shelter, not toward it, to get back my drawing.

“Where are you taking me, Jefferson?” I asked.

With the first clap of thunder, I got my answer. My sketch, now damp from its journey, came to rest on the front of a tombstone. It was stuck there, as if glued. The wind, even stronger now, didn’t move it, but it came right off when I pulled at one corner.

The whole sky lit up for several seconds then, with four bursts of electric blue. I was reminded of my prom, the disco ball and strobe lights. That thought was silenced immediately, though, sent back into the recesses of my mind until later, because the scene around me had come alive long enough to read the gravestone’s inscription.

Unknown Soldier, Casualty of the Civil War, October 1863.

“Is this you, Jefferson? If they have your diary, how can you be unknown? I don’t get it.”

He didn’t explain. The wind didn’t help. The grass, the trees, the frogs, the sky, the stars in one corner of it the storm hadn’t yet intimidated with its intent, all silent. Even the lightning had stopped.

“I suppose—if this is your grave—you could have been buried before they found your diary. Or maybe they don’t know it’s your diary. I mean, maybe the diary wasn’t found with you.”

My hair was damp when I ran my hand through it, wet from exertion and one or two drops of rain, plus enough humidity to grow tropical plants.

“Hmm. One of your war buddies could have had your diary, but lost track of you.” I always chewed on my upper lip when nervous or thinking. I liked the scratch of my whiskers from under my lip and down on my chin when I rubbed them together. Just then, when I did it, I was reminded of kissing. “Is that what happened, Small Jefferson? Maybe?”

Jefferson offered no answer. And why would he? Just because Halloween was only a few days away, that didn’t mean ghosts were suddenly going to come out of their graves to talk to me.

“I’m at a Civil War reenactment, not a zombie convention.”

Where was the laughing moth when I needed her?

With the right book this time, I started sketching the grave marker in front of me. Its color—dull white, I presumed, that now looked light gray—allowed it to stand out amongst the canvas of night. I didn’t get past the rudimentary shape of it, consumed more about who it honored than what it looked like.

“I suppose, eventually, people stopped trying to identify you, whoever you are. Not Jefferson. Probably not.”

When the lightning flashed again, more markers were visible. The graves were not in rows, but rather scattered haphazardly. I could almost imagine the soldiers being buried where they’d fallen. It had that sort of eerie feeling about it.