Buried Roots

by Cynthia Raleigh

  “Ok, I’ll go in half on the room. His Mess?”

  “Yeah, that’s a small group of re-enactors who work on stuff together and usually travel to or group together at events. There isn’t a local group big enough to form a Unit or a Regiment, so Tom and his buddies fall in with groups from other places.”

  “I see.”

  Nina continued, “I’m going to take Aaron and all his paraphernalia over to Mom’s as soon as I pick him up from day care Friday afternoon. I’m scheduled to get off work at 3:30, but it could be sooner.”

  “Sooner? Not working a full shift?”

  “No. I’m splitting a shift with Lana, from my unit. I’m working a half shift in the morning, from 7:00 to 11:30 and she’s taking the rest of the shift. It’s our day to credify. I hate that. She’ll work on hers in the morning and I’ll do mine in the afternoon.”

  Perri grinned at the word, another of Nina’s Unique Words. “What, may I ask, is credify?”

  “Friday is my unit’s Nurse Education Day. You know, get accreditation for competencies, certify for CPR. I like credify, it says it all.”

  Perri laughed. “I will definitely have to remember that one. Anyway, about the trip, it sounds good. We’ll keep in touch over the next couple of days. Let me know if there is anything I can bring or if you need help.”

  “Will do!”

  “Thanks again for the lift.” Perri shut the door and waved to Nina as she followed the curving walk to her porch. She breathed a sigh of relief as she opened the door of her own home and shut it behind her. Her happiness at the sight of her orderly, but now fairly dusty, house emphasized how much she had missed being home. "Where does all this dust come from?" she mused to herself.

  She had stopped the newspaper while she was gone, and since she would be leaving again for a week or more, she could leave it that way until she got back. Tomorrow she would need to go to the post office for her accumulated mail. She dropped her purse by the well-worn recliner, wheeled the suitcase into the laundry room, and took the carry-on into the smallest bedroom that served as her home office.

  Perri didn’t work for any specific hospital or system, but was on the roster of a couple of different nurse staffing agencies which gave her a variety of choices for assignments. Traveling for work gave her the chance to see interesting places, big cities and smaller towns, with the time to explore, all while getting paid. Since her divorce nearly three years previously, she had spent time working her way back into a more comfortable financial situation than the one she had left. This arrangement had been a perfect way for her to be able to do that while getting to travel at the same time. Some assignments were better than others, some very much so, but that was the beauty of a temporary position; it would end before long if it wasn’t the best job.

  “Laundry can wait until tomorrow,” she said aloud as she headed into the kitchen to make a cup of hot tea. Once the kettle was on, she placed her cell phone on the counter and plugged it in to charge. Perri saw a number thirteen flashing in the window of her answering machine. She still had a land line and still used an answering machine because she liked it. She preferred the less important calls go to her land line rather than her cell phone since she was sometimes gone for weeks or months at a time. She could check the machine from anywhere but hadn’t in a couple of weeks.

  She leaned on the counter, chin in her hand, while she punched the skip button after a few seconds of each message: an overly-perky recording informing her she had won a trip to Florida to view a new condominium building, her dentist’s office reminding her she was past due for an appointment, robo-recording of 'Rachel from Card Services' enthusiastically inquiring if she wanted to lower her credit card interest rate, and a few hang ups. As she automatically skipped the twelfth message, she backtracked to listen to it. It was Nick Silver. Perri smiled. She had talked to Nick frequently while she was gone, but he had called to leave a welcome home message for her.

  Perri and Nick hadn’t seen each other over the last three months. Perri lived in Vailsburg, Indiana and Nick lived in Russellville, Kentucky. It wasn’t a long drive, but with Perri working far away lately, it just hadn’t been possible. She realized that getting to see him would be put off another couple of weeks since she was going to Virginia in a couple of days. She decided to take her tea with her for that hot bath she had been looking forward to, get in her pajamas and robe, and then call Nick. Hopefully, it would be his night off and they could talk for as long as they wanted.

  Chapter 3

  Perri had been packed and ready to go by Thursday night, just as Nina predicted. Thursday afternoon, she had gone to the grocery to pick up some ingredients to make some energy bars she normally took to work with her to keep her going. It had taken more time to do the shopping than it did to make them. As she mixed up the oats, coconut, peanut butter and other goodies around in the bowl, she wished someone would do a study on people’s grocery store behavior. Why did there always seem to be that one person who never ventured more than five feet away from her, like she was a magnet? They stopped when she stopped, looking at the exact same items she was trying to look at, reaching across in front of her, then following again if she moved on. It couldn’t be purposeful. She wondered if there was some psychological influence that some people were susceptible to that when they saw another customer looking at an item they felt the need to look at it too.

  She slept as late as she could Friday morning, which wasn’t past eight o’clock, and spent the remaining hours drinking coffee and sorting through her family tree paperwork to see if there were any court houses or other locations near their destination that might be possibilities for a document search. She hadn’t researched extensively enough yet on the lines she was working on to have a ‘most wanted list’ of documents from Virginia, but in genealogy there was almost always something worth looking for. She decided to wait until she was there and, if she had the time, do a cold search for her top surnames and see what came up. Besides, this was Nina’s vacation trip and she didn’t want to hog up the time chasing paperwork. It could have a way of absorbing every moment.

  Perri had become interested in genealogy shortly after her divorce. Joann, a coworker, had been researching for years and had some interesting tales to tell. Joann had helped Perri get started. After making a few discoveries in her family history, she found she loved it. She’d been avidly pursuing documentation to support an application for admittance to the Daughters of the American Revolution ever since.

  Perri had known about the organization for many years, but never expected to qualify to apply. She had looked up the requirements for joining and found that what she needed to do was be able to prove a direct bloodline descent from an ancestor who has been declared a Patriot of the American Revolution by their service to the Revolutionary War. This might mean military service, support services, or even providing food and shelter to the troops at some point during the conflict. She knew that two of her direct lines led back to Virginia, and at least one of them was a likely candidate; she just needed to know where to look for the proof.

  A couple of Perri’s vacations and assignment choices had been based on travel to areas where she needed to do research. Late last summer she had located the last two of the required documents for one of her bloodlines during a girls’ weekend trip to Kentucky with Nina. With those documents, she had been able to finish her DAR application and send it in. It was currently in Washington, DC, waiting to be verified by one of the national genealogists. If it was approved, she could be inducted into the local chapter of the organization. The trip had been very productive, and to top it off, she had met Nick there, although she and Nina had gotten embroiled in the middle of a couple of murders and her own life had been threatened.

  Perri shut down her laptop and placed it in its case. She set the case next to her suitcase. She was ready and had nothing more to do than wait for Nina to pick her up on the way home from dropping off Aaron to stay with his grandmother.

  Wa
iting around for something was difficult for Perri, like being the on-call nurse and not knowing if she was going to have to go to work or not. No matter how many times she was on call, no matter how many years, she still was antsy the entire time. She didn’t sleep well at night or feel she could get involved in a project or anything that might take too long, but frittered away the hours feeling agitated and at loose ends and accomplishing absolutely nothing.

  To occupy her mind, Perri muddled over the phone call with Nick for the hundredth time since Wednesday night. The conversation had started out well, and it ended well, but the middle was a little rough. Perri really wanted to see Nick and knew that he wanted to see her. She understood his reaction to finding out she was leaving town again right away. She didn’t want to damage the relationship, but at this stage, she didn’t want to make decisions based on it either. They had agreed to keep in touch at least every other day while she was in Virginia, just like they had when she was working in Seattle, and Nick would come to visit her in two weeks when she was home.

  Perri looked up at the old starburst clock on her living room wall. It had been her grandmother’s clock and was definitely dated, but she couldn’t stand to see it go when her grandmother’s house had been cleared out after she passed away. It was 4 o’clock. It wouldn’t be long before Nina came by. Perri made the rounds of the house once more, making sure she hadn’t left a faucet on or the electric kettle plugged in. She shifted her repacked suitcase and computer bag next to the front door. For the car ride, she had packed a separate tote bag with her e-reader, a couple of printed books, a book of puzzles and her favorite pen, which she was fairly certain improved her puzzle solving skills. She tripled checked to make sure her chargers and camera were packed, along with plenty of extra camera batteries for taking photos and video at the event. Then all she had to do was remember not to leave the camera at the hotel.

  Finally, her purse and the tote on her shoulder, she hauled her bags onto the porch and locked up the house. She walked around the front yard then around the back, checked on the progress of her blooming irises and the delicate new leaves on the rose bushes. As she skirted the east edge of her backyard, the neighbor's dog hurtled to the wooden fence, snarling and snapping as though it were the first time it had seen Perri. She crouched down to the terrier's level. "Every time. We do this every time, don't we?" The dog stopped momentarily, then resumed barking. Perri straightened up, laughed, and said aloud, "I'm going to get a cat if you don't watch it."

  Perri circled the house and returned to the driveway to make sure the garage door was down and locked. She had just straightened up from tugging on the handle when Nina swerved into the driveway, window down, and hollered, “Come on you, time to scoot.”

  Nina popped the trunk on the Explorer and Perri hefted her suitcase into the back, next to Nina’s already loaded suitcase. She climbed into the passenger seat and buckled in.

  Nina looked at her with surprise, “Where on earth is your travel cup? I don’t think I’ve seen you take a trip without it.”

  “I didn’t bring it this time because I always forget and leave it in the car and it gets so grimy that I don’t want to use it and it gets in the way and…”

  “Got it!” Nina shifted into reverse, “You talk to Nick?”

  “Yeah.” Perri was gazing intently out the passenger window at the passing neighborhood.

  “Uh oh.”

  “No, it’s ok. He is going to visit the weekend after I get back.”

  “I don’t want this to cause problems.” Nina said with concern as she looked both ways multiple times before pulling out on the road where the view of traffic was largely blocked by a huge sign for an in-home day care.

  “It really will be ok, Nina, we talked it out.” Perri changed the subject, “I brought some snacks.”

  “Yes! What did you bring?”

  “I made some of those energy bars, you know the ones I used to bring to work? I thought we might need them.”

  “Oh good, you mean the ones that sound healthy but aren’t? The ones with peanut butter, chocolate chips, and all that?”

  “Those are the ones. They do provide energy but they sure aren’t low-fat or low-calorie or low-sugar.”

  “That’s why I love them. I have some popcorn, chips, and a cooler with some drinks. I’m sure we’ll pick up highly fattening snacks at every gas station we go into.”

  “I’m counting on it.” Perri smiled and relaxed a little.

  ***

  Nina backed the Explorer into the driveway. There was a cooler and an odd assortment of cases and duffels on the concrete floor just inside the open garage door. Nina remarked as they walked past them, “I’m hoping there is still room for you and me after Tom gets all his stuff loaded.”

  “It looks like this will all fit ok.” Perri commented.

  “Oh sweetie, this isn’t all of it. All his weaponry and period clothing will still be inside. Can’t set that stuff outside unattended, you know.”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  The door inside the garage that led into the house opened, and Tom’s booming voice echoed, “Perri! Welcome Ma’am! Glad you are going to attend with us. Being in the company of two honorable ladies will cause the hours to pass unnoticed.”

  “Thanks, Tom. Getting into your persona ahead of time?” She laughed.

  "My Impression, Perri, not persona. We use Impression for being in-character." Tom replied as he set a box down near the growing pile.

  "I see. In the medieval group I was in, it was persona. I stand corrected. I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t been to a Civil War Re-enactment before; plenty of tilts and armor-clad battles, but not the War of the Rebellion.”

  “You’ll love it!” Tom looked pointedly at Nina.

  Nina arched one eyebrow at Perri from where she stood in the kitchen doorway. Perri responded, “I’m sure it will be very informative.”

  Tom growled good-humoredly, “Ahh, come on now.”

  “No, Tom, I mean it. You know I love history and this is a way to learn more. I’m not exactly up to par on the Civil War.” She paused, “I kind of miss those days of dressing as someone else and enjoying a day in another time. I totally get the fun of being in a group of re-enactors.”

  “Good! Glad to hear it. This event isn’t one of the big organized battles that are held around Memorial Day and mid-summer. It’s more like a demo - a demonstration event - to raise awareness of re-enactment groups. It gives people a chance to sample what it is like and find others interested in the same things. The numbers of participants have been dropping over the last few years. It’s a good chance to get some experience with different battle strategies, weapons, and…”

  Nina inserted, “I’m looking forward to the sutlers!”

  “I bet you are, and that worries me,” laughed Tom as he gathered up three of the bags.

  Perri looked questioningly at Nina, who responded, “Sutlers, the merchants. Shopping!”

  “Do you buy things there?” Perri asked her, surprised.

  “Most of it is equipment, uniforms, tools and such. Although, they do have some things for ladies, like shawls and supplies for needlework. I like shopping for Tom too."

  "You just like shopping, ma'am." Tom winked.

  "It’s hard for Tom to find items other than on the internet which means buying something based mainly on a photo and description. We try to buy gear he needs or wants while we are at one of the events.”

  Tom came back into the garage to gather up the remaining bags and said to Perri, “We could use another soldier in our group, always looking for new converts. Why don’t you bring that Kentucky boyfriend of yours up sometime?”

  Perri stammered, “Oh, Nick?”

  “Yeah. How many Kentucky boyfriends you got?” Tom laughed.

  “I’ll mention it to him. He’ll be here the weekend after we get back.”

  “You bring him over one night. I’d like to meet him.”

  “Ok, we�
��ll plan on that.”

  Nina uncrossed her arms and stood up straight, “Make sure you warn him in advance, Perri.” She laughed, “Come on in, let’s close the place up and get on the road. Promptly is turning into Eventually.” Tom snorted as he wedged another case into the trunk.

  Chapter 4

  Taking turns to drive through the night, the trip to Virginia took close to ten hours. Nina, Tom, and Perri arrived in Midlothian at four a.m. They stiffly stepped out of the SUV into the deserted parking lot of the chain hotel and stopped to stretch arms and legs that had been immobile too long.

  “Are we going to be able to check in now, or do we need to wait?” Nina asked Tom.

  “You can check in now, I made sure they knew you wanted early registration.”

  Yawning, Nina answered, “It’s early alright. I’m going to lie down and have a real bit of sleep until at least around brunch time, you agree Perri?”

  “I’m all for that, but I am curious to see what goes on at an event like this.”

  Tom opened the back of the Explorer. “Once you two are in your room, I'll change into my kit and then I need to get over to the site. Most people will have arrived last night and I don’t want to miss morning roll call. I want you to have the Explorer, Nina. Can you drive me over before you get too settled in?”

  Nina sleepily mulled over the question, then answered, “That sounds fine, honey.”

  “Ok, good. When do you think you will come by?” he asked.

  “I would say by lunchtime. We’ll try not to sleep too late.”

  Tom smiled and said, “Alright, let’s get moving.” The three of them walked toward the brightly lit lobby doors which whooshed open as they approached.

  ***

  Perri and Nina woke up just before 10 o’clock. They had breakfast in a 24-hour diner across the street from the hotel then headed west on Highway 60 toward the site of the event.