Weathering the Storms Box Set

Chapter 2

I 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.

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 b***r. 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.”

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.