Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 2-2

I closed my drawing book. “I guess I should get inside, if it’s going to storm.” I found myself talking to the sketch of the man more so than the grave, as a yawn I tried to stifle fought through. “I’m not really nervous about the lightning. It’s thunder I don’t like. Go figure.” I felt comfortable revealing all my oddities out loud to Small Jefferson. Spirits were easier to talk to than people. “I can always make a mad dash, if I have to. Sure, I’ve let myself go some, but I can still run.”

Jefferson laughed at me, as I stretched out on my back and looked up at the sky. The sound of it was almost real.

“Stars. The stars fought. They’re winning now. The enemy storm is retreating.” I yawned again, “Hoorah,” and gave the word not one modicum of the force or feeling it usually came with.

I decided to let my eyelids fall just a moment, after placing Jefferson’s mini portrait back in the center of the journal. Figuring I was still close enough to hear thirty noisy men if they exited the house back up on the hill, I gave myself permission to drift off. “Ten minutes. Then I’ll put your diary back.” The crickets and frogs lulled me like Brahms. “Good night, Jefferson, wherever you are.”

The next thing I heard was a resounding, earth shaking BOOM! My eyes flew open. I’d definitely been asleep. The question was, how long? Two minutes? Ten? Forty-five? I was rather disoriented, my body prickly from the vibration attached to the sound, or maybe just from being startled by it.

“That was a close one, Jefferson.”

The intensity of the thunder indicated a strike, but the moon was shining.

“Come on, Goose!” someone yelled.

I’d likely been dreaming. A dozen guys were running toward me from atop the rise, with twice as many coming east, and even more than that approaching from the west. Our group was one of several, apparently. I hadn’t realized that. Either way, the games were on!

I scrambled to my feet, then tried to shake off the REM time mind trick and push down my boner. The sound I’d thought to be thunder was more likely simulated cannon fire—or real cannon fire. These guys hurrying in my direction seemed to be taking this stuff extremely, way, way seriously.

“Rip?” I called out to my brother-in-law, but someone else grabbed my arm.

“Come on! The gray coats are attacking.”

Suddenly, I heard the gunfire. My weapon was back at the house.

“Here.”

Someone handed me one. We were moving so swiftly, I couldn’t tell if it was Patrick or Young Mr. Body Spray. He’d been on the beefy side, too.

“Thanks. Where are we going, for crackers?” One or the other—or someone else entirely—shoved ammunition into my hands. It fell to the ground, like my cigar had earlier. “f**k! Hold up.”

My travel companion didn’t stop. When I bent to grab the bullets, he kept on yanking me. When I fell to my knees, he dragged me alongside him.

“Dude!” I gave up on the f*****g ammo, but still had a b***h of a time getting back on my feet. “Come on!”

“You, come on!”

I didn’t really feel like shooting anyway, even if just pretend, so I aimed the barrel at the ground. “Jesus. What’s the rush?”

I felt as if I was going to puke. Maybe I wasn’t good at running, after all.

“So, what exactly are we supposed to be doing?” I managed to ask, despite my queasiness and lack of breath,

“At the moment, trying not to get shot.”

The crackle of gunfire was relentless. I heard men all around me crying out, grunting loudly, and cursing a blue streak.

“Sounds like a plan.” Though it was moot, I played along, knowing my fate was in the roll of Patrick’s dice. “Guess things came up snake eyes for those poor guys.”

When I finally got a good look, I didn’t recognize the person with whom I was sprinting. My immediate assumption was that he had come with one of the other groups from another location nearby.

“We have to drive these Confederates away from the river,” he insisted.

I wondered if we were doing that. Truthfully, I had no idea. Scripts would have been nice, like when I went out for Little Shop of Horrors. Pretending to be eaten by a giant plant was way easier than pretending to fight in the Civil War. Everything Patrick had told me had gone completely out of my head.

“We’re playing decoy. Keep running.”

“I used to do five miles before my first cup of coffee. Lately, it’s more like five steps to the coffee maker and a few more to the toi—”

“Get down!” My scene partner—that’s how I was thinking of us now, as actors in a play—knocked me to the ground, interrupting my sentence. We rolled the rest of the way down the hill, then sprang to our feet, and hopped over rocks we somehow knew were there without sight.

“Jesus!”

“Keep praying, Goose. It might help.”

I slalomed in and out through dozens of small and large trees as we entered the woods, my hand in my partner’s the whole time. The river raged just up ahead, its rush of water overpowering the sound of even gunfire and human voices, both of which increased the closer we got.

“Down!” The man I was with yanked my arm hard again. It was good one of us knew what the f**k was happening, though I was starting to hope there was an actress somewhere playing Florence Nightingale, because I was going to need treatment for real injuries, not just pretend ones.

We settled in the water with a splash, where I prepared myself for freezing wetness against my skin.

It wasn’t so bad. There was no time to bask, however. We were up again, my war buddy dragging me down the river bank, sloshing and splashing with every rise and drop of our quick moving feet. He seemed to know the way, so I let him lead.

“There are pontoons we’ll use to float downriver,” my fellow soldier said. “To sneak up on the rebels.” He sounded really excited about that.

“Float?” I was less so.

“Affirmative.”

“How?”

“How do we float? It’s water. We’re in a boat. Boats float.”

Had he giggled at the rhyme? I was pretty sure he had. “Boats also sink,” I said. “That would stink. Don’t you think?”

The young man at my side definitely laughed that time.

“Patrick didn’t say anything about floating anywhere,” I told him. Then, I remembered he had mentioned pontoons. He didn’t say any of us would be getting on one, though—or in one? I didn’t know exactly what a pontoon was. Did that make me stupid? “I’m pretty sure I’m a land soldier,” I said to the guy I was trusting with my pretend life, “not a pontooner. Patrick said—”

“Patrick?”

“Yeah. See, now, it’s starting to make sense. I think when I fell asleep, I ended up with the wrong group. Maybe I should just head back and look for the men I came with.” I went to stand.

“Get down, i***t!”

That was harsh. “They’ll be looking for me.” I said. “I should—”

“Maybe you should just do what I say.”

Dude was bossy.

“You’re not getting your head blown off if I can help it,” he insisted.

“That’s a little ext—”

“Shh!”

I quieted, not because I always did what I was told, but because my sudden partner seemed so authoritative. For that very same reason, I climbed into our pontoon, praying to Jefferson Eaves above I wouldn’t fall overboard and make a total ass of myself. As good as I once was at running, swimming had never been high on my skills list.

Our pontoon had a frame constructed of wood, with canvas lashed around it. I couldn’t imagine it being watertight, not at all. Around twenty-five feet long and five or six feet wide, it was pretty damned shallow, only a couple feet deep. We definitely got in it, though, and not on it, like we would have a raft. I’d been picturing a raft.

My teammate and I were joined by a few other men at the bank to start our journey floating down the water. Someone had lit a huge bonfire, offering enough light to see them all in detail. This group was hardcore, judging by the state of their uniforms, the frayed edges, the rips, the dirt, and the blood that was probably barbecue sauce. Where did they get barbecue? I wondered if there was any left.

My first takeaway was these men had done this before and really played up the authenticity. Finally getting a good look at the kid I’d been with a while now and those in his unit, I was struck by something else.

Empathy for poor, young Jefferson Eaves, most likely, suddenly made the battle we were fighting seem far too authentic. Obvious weariness, actual blood, and the smell of fear permeated my mind more than it should have for something that was only pretend. I noticed a soldier with several wounds, one wrapped in white, another left bare, red, irritated, but scabbed over, and yet a third that was fresh looking. This boy had been through some kind of hell. I could see it. I could feel it. I could smell it.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten every single geographical point Patrick had mentioned.

“Are we on the Tennessee River?” I asked. All I could recall was Baldy What’s His Face. Maybe we were on the mighty Mississippi. “M, I, double S, I double S, I double, P, I,” I sang.

My war buddy looked at me strangely.

“No? At least I know how to spell Mississippi. Tennessee stumped me a few times when I was emailing my Bro-ham, Rip, back and forth about the trip. If there’s a way to remember T, E, double N, E, double S, double E, it isn’t engrained in my brain, like the spelling of Mississippi. It just doesn’t have the right ring to it, ya know?”

“You talk a lot,” the kid told me.

“Only when I’m nervous.”

As we pulled away from the bank, I was rather surprised Patrick’s worry about liability concerning the lightning apparently didn’t extend to riding in a makeshift rowboat with no life vests. I hoped my own policy would cover any mishaps, and that any adjuster who got involved wouldn’t consider stupidity a pre-existing condition. Deeming my agreement to participate in my current activity incredibly dumb would be difficult to argue against.

Bullets continued to fly in the distance, though we didn’t seem to be under fire at the moment. It was foggy. We had that on our side, nature’s subterfuge. I sort of recalled Patrick saying something about building a bridge. Admittedly, though I’d imagined f*****g the guy, I hadn’t once given his words my full attention.

My stomach was starting to object to the rocking and heaving of our little boat. If I didn’t fall out of the damned thing, there was a fifty-fifty shot it wasn’t going to be the only thing to heave.

“So, we’re building a bridge?” I asked.

“Our lives depend on it, and those of our starving battalion.”

I was rather hungry, now that I thought of it. “I hope someone brought beer and chips for when this whole thing is over. I wouldn’t turn down a nice Italian grinder or even a couple granola bars, either.”

“What?”

“Never mind. What are we building the bridge with? I was just supposed to shoot people. This is all out of my wheelhouse.”

“The pontoon becomes the bridge supports.”

“That’s resourceful,” I said. “But then, how do we get back down river?”

“We don’t. We just cross the bridge.”