Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 2-3

I’d never felt so stupid in my life.

“Can’t you do anything right?” A voice from the past reminded me I had.

Dragging the pontoon from the river once we’d arrived at our destination was a piece of cake with so many men. Dozens of soldiers milled about, while others dragged and erected more pontoons as supports. The work went remarkably swiftly. It wasn’t long at all before something that looked like an actual bridge started to take shape.

I helped by securing the decking to the uprights. The activity kept me going, but every time I took a break, some part of my body would start to ache.

The fighting had diminished. I assumed that meant we had held off the bad guys and could now cross our bridge in relative peace and safety for crackers. I hoped they were the buttery, oval shaped ones made by elves.

Once the bridge looked near completion, I decided to forgo the snack. What good were crackers without cheese, anyway? I thought it best to follow the bank of the river back toward where I’d started, to see if I could reconnect with Rip and my rightful battalion. I wanted to say goodbye to my new buddy first, though, but I couldn’t find him in the crowd.

Eh, I figured someone would have a record of the different groups somewhere. I could search him out later, on f*******: or i********:.

Looking for the Civil War Reenactor I Floated Down the Tennessee River with in a Pontoon. There was a Craigslist Missed Opportunity gay s*x ad headline one didn’t see every day. I couldn’t wait to write it.

The smart thing to do currently was to take off, I knew, even if exhaustion was willing me to rest first. I didn’t immediately know how long we’d been at our little game, but it felt like hours of running, floating, dragging pontoons, and ducking bullets. This s**t was no joke.

“Hey. Where you going?”

With one hell of a hike ahead of me to get back to the house, I considered pretending I hadn’t heard the voice call out, the voice of the man who’d taken me under his knowledgeable blue uniformed wing. As it was, I figured I’d be lucky to get back to the basement by daybreak, by the time I reversed all the time I’d been on my feet and in the boat. Was our pretend mission not over? God! I hoped it was. If not, I was relatively sure my only option was quitting. I was completely ready and willing to call myself the word. I’d even put it on a T-shirt. Goose Tucker Is A Quitter.

“Goose!” he called out again.

“Yeah?” I couldn’t ignore him. I was a quitter, but hopefully not an asshole.

“Where you going? The work isn’t finished.”

Uh-oh. Was I about to get in trouble? “I, uh, figured I should get back to my own troop. I don’t want them to think I went AWOL.”

“Ah. You’ll miss the celebration.”

“The Cracker Line is open! Full rations, boys!” I did my best “raise the roof” dance.

“Well, not yet,” my new friend said, “but soon, we hope. Be careful making your way back.”

“I will. Thank you for taking care of me. I don’t think I’d have made it through the night without you.”

“You’re welcome.” He extended a hand. “I’ve been doing this a while. Years, in fact.”

“I’m green as hell.” His grip was firm in mine, but his skin was cold.

“Well, you did fine. Really.”

“Either way, I’m not sure I have it in me to ever do it again. I’m Goose, by the way.”

“Goose. Yes. I know.”

“Oh, yeah. You called me that. You know everyone here by name? You must be, like, the big boss man or something, the one who puts the whole thing together. I came with my brother-in-law, Rich ‘Rip’ O’Neill.”

“Rip and Goose. Goose, like the Christmas dinner fowl?”

“Yeah. Maxwell, actually. Max Tucker.” I explained the metamorphosis from there. “So…Goose.”

“I see. Well, it’s nice to meet you, Goose. I’m Jeff—”

“I could use a hand over here,” someone gruffly interrupted.

“Jeff.” I got a tingle. We were still holding hands. “Jeff.”

“I know my way with a hammer,” Jeff said. “I better go.”

“Okay. It was nice to meet you.” I still had his hand.

“You, too.”

I finally let go.

“See you around,” he called back as he walked away.

“Yeah. See ya, Jeff.”

I headed back to the house with Jeff on my mind. Jeff, maybe Jeffrey. Or was it Jefferson? One hell of a coincidence that would have been, but why hadn’t I asked?

“s**t!” It hit me then, all that floating, all that water. Was the diary safe?

I reached into my pocket. It was still there, definitely damp, but none the worse for wear, thank goodness.

“That’s kind of a miracle,” I muttered. Then an answer came to my first question, too. I didn’t ask about Jeff’s name, for fear it would ruin the fantasy. I probably wouldn’t try to find the reenactment roster, either. That way, I could just pretend. I was getting good at make-believe, on and off the imaginary battlefield.

About halfway back to the house, my legs started to object to all the walking. They were wobbly and sore, and I found myself practically collapsing with every step. Dawn was breaking. The game was over. f**k it, I decided.

“I need to rest,” I told the man in the moon, now smiling full and bright at me.

A large oak tree beckoned. The ground beneath it was drier than some of the spots to either side. It was certainly drier than the river I’d spent half the night in.

“Five minutes,” I told myself.

Unbuttoning my long coat took the final bit of energy I had. I wished I’d had my phone to check the actual length of my river adventure, and to find out if Florence Nightingale was an American. Somewhere in the back of mind, I thought she was. Another corner therein was trying to convince me she was European. It wouldn’t hurt me to sign up for an online History class when I got home, I decided. Either way, my night adventure felt like a full night of work to start off what was supposed to be a week’s vacation.

“Good night, grass. Good night, tree. Good night, Jeff. Good night, moon.” I brought my knees in and wrapped my arms around myself. It would have been nice to have Jeff with me, still. Being wrapped in his arms would have kept me warm and feeling safe. I let my weariness do it, and soon fell asleep.

“Goose!”

Once again, I was being shaken awake before I was ready to get up.

“Goose. Where the hell have you been?”

“Rip. Hey.”

Dawn had broken. It was drizzling, and thunder still rolled far off in the distance.

“Whoa.” I smacked my lips. His color combination assaulted my eyes, olive cargo shorts and a blue and black buffalo plaid shirt. “How close to the house am I?”

“Not very. It’s going to storm some more. Heavy storms, Patrick said. What are you doing out here?”

“Taking a nap, obviously.” I stood and hiked up my trousers. Despite how tight they felt, they kept falling down. “How was our mission?”

“Nonexistent. Patrick threw in the towel.”

“Wuss! We did ours.”

“We who?”

“I wandered off, as you can see, and ended up with this other group doing the same battle as us, The Cracker Line…Browns Ferry? Was that what it was called? Anyway, I helped build a bridge and got shot at.”

“Where?”

“Right down there.” I pointed southward. “Way down.” I could hear rain in the trees, now, but couldn’t yet feel it reach us underneath them. “I met this guy, Jeff. Hung out with him. He was nice.”

“I didn’t hear any of that.”

“I thought I heard you guys. There was a lot of shooting! A lot! Sounded pretty real.”

“Are you okay, Goose? I promised Shelby I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”

“Seriously, Rip?” I shoved him. That pissed me off.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. Sorry, Bro-ford.”

“The f**k, man?” I walked away, a clap of thunder my dramatic exit music.

Rip ran to catch up. “She worries out of love, Goose.”

“Worries I’m nuts.”

“Come on, man.” Rip tried to take my hand, like Jeff had. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

“Why? If you’re going to think it, you might as well say it, right?”

“Your sister loves you,” Rip said again. Then he looked around and whispered. “So do I.”

I stopped to stare at him, at his stupid face, with his stupid puppy dog eyes and his stupid straight man brown porn-stache. He thought he looked like Magnum P.I. I thought he looked like the man on the Pringles can when he let the thing get too bushy, and then like Gomez Addams when he trimmed it. Had we been lovers, instead of brothers-in-law, the rain drop that hit me in the eye would have made the setting romantic, like in The Notebook. Since we weren’t, it just annoyed me. “I’m good. Thanks.”

“Cool.” Rip smiled. “Me hungry. Let I buy you breakfast.”

I smiled, too. “Ass.”

“There’s a diner on the way to the airport.”

“Wait. We’re done? I thought this was a weekend.”

“Storms.” Rip pointed at the overcast sky. “Unrelenting, relentless, not about to relent. Get it?”

“So, we’re going home?”

Rip shrugged. “That was the plan.”

“Then let’s do it.” We headed for the house at a much quicker pace.

“Are you sure what you did last night wasn’t a Sudafed dream?” he asked me.

“No. Look. The hem of my pants is still soaking wet. Oh.” I turned. “See?”

“Dude!”

“I split my pants.”

“So I noticed. Seeing all kinds of splits back there I wish I wasn’t.” Rip put his arm across my upper back and closed one big, manly hand around my shoulder for a gentle shake. “Well, I’m glad you had fun.”

“I wouldn’t call it fun, but it was certainly an experience I’ll never forget. Thanks for getting me out of the house.”

Rip drew me close, throwing me off balance. “We’ll do it again. Something else. Now, let’s haul ass. We’ll grab your s**t and you can change your clothes. Pants with a hole in the back might slow us down at airport security—or else make the strip search easier. Come on!”

“Right behind you,” I hollered as Rip started jogging. I needed to remove my drawing of Jefferson from his journal before I forgot, so I could put the old book back on the shelf where it belonged. Once the sketch was safely in my pad with the ones of the leaf, the house, and the tombstone, I held my topcoat over the diary for protection, to give it one last look. I noticed writing behind the page where I’d stuck the picture I’d drawn and then tore out, even though I was certain I had slid it in where the writing had stopped, near the middle. “What the…?”

This is not so much a story of battle, as it is of comradeship. Sailing down the Tennessee River with Goose was—

I rubbed my eyes. Maybe Rip was right. Perhaps I’d been dreaming, and still was. How did a blank page suddenly have writing on it, writing that began to describe what had just happened—or hadn’t happened? The wool of my coat was doing a pretty good job of keeping the rain off the printed page so far but wouldn’t be much good if it came down harder, I assumed. I had to read fast, before the deluge, before I woke up, because no way in hell was any of this real.

Sailing down the river with Goose was surely an interesting experience to be recorded. A wee bit too talkative and slack with work…

I was ready to grumble, but how could I? Jefferson’s take was accurate.

…I cannot really pinpoint what about him had me so enamored.

“You were enamored?” That further cemented the notion this was all fantasy. Were it not, I might have considered skipping, despite the weather. Of course, in a dream, rain might not get me wet. Alas, even in pretend or a state of delusion, I was too lazy to put forth the effort. I just stood there to finish reading the words that said delusion was ascribing to the ghost I’d hung out with all night. Yeah. Sure. The ghost I’d hung out with. I’d lost my damned mind.

He was small, but handsome and rugged, for sure. His voice and words were tinged always with humor, friendliness, and something indescribable that made me really want to spend more time with him. Alas, war takes everything we are given in the end. This man came upon me unintentionally, in error, but left of his will, or that of his superior, I suppose, if I must be fair. Our time was brief, and that is the end of that.

My hand was shaking as I turned the page. That was the end, the end of the diary. I flipped another couple of pages—more than a couple—fifteen, to be exact. Then I fanned them, creating a sputtering sound as I looked for ink amongst the yellowing whiteness of paper. Not one more word had been written. Then again, I was sure there hadn’t been anything there before, either.

I pinched myself hard.

“Ow!”

So, I wasn’t dreaming. No, I was wide awake. Sight, the sky was a swoosh of gray and white, like raw marble. Sound, birds took over where crickets left off. Smell and taste, my morning breath explained the distance Rip kept when we hugged. And my sense of touch was fully activated as well. I pinched myself harder, just to be sure.

“Ow!”

All five senses were on point.

“Goose! Drag your ass.”

That was Rip. Rip was yelling. Rip was yelling, and I was awake. So, what did that mean as far as Jefferson and the time I’d spent with him, the exploit he’d written about? It had felt so real.

I gasped. I had to get a handle on that, too. Gasping was becoming a habit.

“What if what happened wasn’t a game? What if it was real, at least to Jefferson? What if the whole area was haunted, as the museum brochure claimed? Maybe Small Jefferson had drawn me into his past.

Maybe I’d really spent an entire night with a ghost.