L Akers - Fight Like a Man

Ball-caps, Levis and shit-kickers were the style around here.

The boy moved lightning quick and reached into the front of his baggy pants, pulling out a pistol and aiming it at Grayson gangster-style; sideways. “We got guns. You need to get on home, old man,” he snarled while bobbing his head side to side.

The other two boys hooted and hollered, encouraging him. Grayson noticed neither of the other two pulled out a weapon though. Normally an old man comment wouldn’t have riled Grayson up, seeing as he was hitting forty on his next birthday and already showing gray throughout his mustache and goatee, but today, it pissed him off.

It hadn’t been a good couple of days.

Definitely not a good day to have a gun pulled on him.

Ozzie went nuts; snarling and pulling at his collar. He didn’t like anything pointed at his people. Grayson gave him a jerk back. “Stay, Ozzie.”

“Yeah, you better stay, dog. Or you’ll be leaking like a sieve.” The boy bobbed his head left to right when he spoke, then looked to his crew for appreciation. “Am I right?”

They acknowledged him with bitter laughs and high fives.

The kid went too far, talking smack to Olivia’s dog.

Grayson sucked in his breath and held it a moment while he grit his teeth.

Didn’t help.

He covered the space between them in three stomps, shoving one hand into the kid’s chest and pushing him back while jerking the gun away from him with his other hand. He gave the kid a light smack on the side of the head with the butt of the gun before stepping back.

“Next time you pull on someone, you might want to turn the fucking safety off, hotshot. And here’s another piece of advice for you. If you don’t have a holster, at least carry the gun in the back of your pants. You’d rather have another hole in your ass than shoot your little pecker off, am I right?” he asked sarcastically, bobbing his own head left to right in his impression of the kid.

The boy gasped and grabbed his head and then looked at his hand.

Wasn’t a drop of blood, but a bump would surely rise.

He was furious. “Give it back!”

Grayson shook his head and smiled. “I’ll give it back to your daddy. Where you live, boy?”

His friends stepped back a few paces, and then took off at a fast run. One of them yelled over his shoulder, “Come on, Darion! Run!”

Darion took one look at his posse abandoning him, and then sneered at Grayson. “I know where you live. I’ll get my gun back, old man,” he threatened.

Grayson shrugged. “Bring your daddy, Cupcake. Otherwise I might have to give you another spankin’.”

Darion shot him the bird and ran.

Grayson stuck the gun in the back of his own shorts and leaned into the tree, looking up.

I’ll be damned.

It wasn’t an animal. It was another kid. This one looked older than the group that had run off—and younger, at the same time.

“Hey, you can come down now, they’re gone.”

He whimpered and hid his tear-stained face against the tree.

“Come on, I’m not going to hurt you. Get down from there.”

Ozzie whimpered too.

The kid stole a peek at the dog. “That dog gonna bite me, mister?” he asked in a child-like voice. “I’m afraid. He has big teeth.”

Grayson’s raised an eyebrow. Is he kidding me? What’s with the baby talk?

“Naw, he’s friendly to friendlies. Come down and I’ll let you pet him. Ozzie’s like a big teddy bear. Watch this.” He pointed his finger at Ozzie like a gun. “Bang bang!”

Ozzie fell over onto his back with his four feet in the air. He slung his head to the side and let his tongue hang out. The big ham.

A child-like giggle came from the tree, and then the kid threw down a sack. A few garden vegetables rolled out of it. He followed, scaling the tree as fast as a monkey. A big monkey. He jumped to the ground and stood back staring at Ozzie, his hand over his mouth in wonder.

Grayson was a bit astonished too. This wasn’t just kid. He was a man . A man-child? At least twenty years old and built like an ox. Grayson wasn’t a short man, but even at his six foot one inch height, he had to look up at the boy. His face was childlike, but covered in a thin sheen of pale blonde, almost white, baby-fine whiskers. His hair was the same color. Tow-headed. His features were… exaggerated. Something about him looked odd.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Fuckin’ Puck.”

Grayson raised his eyebrows. “No need to cuss me, son.”

“I’m not trying to, mister. Mama Dee would whoop me,” he replied innocently and looked toward the ground, losing eye contact with Grayson.

“You said ‘fucking.’ That’s a curse word where I come from.”

“But you asked my name.”

Grayson squeezed his eyes in confusion. Okay, one more time… “What’s your name?”

“Fuckin’ Puck.”

Grayson laughed. “Is that what your Mama Dee calls you?”

The kid looked up, but didn’t crack a smile. “No, that’s what my daddy called me. But he’s dead. Mama Dee just calls me Puck. Have you seen her?” His eyes were wide and hopeful.

“Your mama?”

“Yessir.”

“No, I can’t say that I have, son.”

“She was s’posed to be home,” he held his hand up and slowly lifted his fingers one at a time until two fingers were up as though he were giving the peace sign, “two sleeps ago. But she’s not. I was all by myself. My nightlight won’t work. Do you think she’ll be home before tonight, mister?”

Something was wrong with this kid. His cornbread wasn’t all the way done in the middle or something. He sounded like a five-year old but looked like a gorilla. “I don’t know, Puck,” Grayson wasn’t about to call him Fucking Puck. “Where did she go?”

“She went to Lumby to get our boxes. She goes every month but she always comes back the same day. Sometimes she gets home real late. I get something special for staying home.”

“Lumby?”

“The big town across the bridges. Mama Dee makes me stay home cuz I’m scared of the bridges and I track her when she’s driving.”

Track her?

Distract maybe?

“Columbia?” Not that there was a huge bridge or anything on the way to Columbia, but the interstate had plenty of bridge overpasses and there were small bridges covering creeks and lows. If the power was out in Columbia too, she might’ve got caught with no gas to get home. It was a little over an hour away—same city Graysie attended college.

“There’s no one to stay with you?”

“Jenny, but she likes to sleep in the barn. This stuff is for her.” He bent down and scooped up the vegetables, awkwardly stuffing them back into the bag.

That was odd, but Graysie had slept in the barn before. Usually, only when she had a friend over though, and most of the time, they’d end up back in the house before morning with tales of bugs, rats and scary things that went bump in the night. Girls didn’t typically like to sleep in barns.

“Is Jenny your sister?”

“No. But Mama Dee says we’re about the same age. Mama Dee says we’re all like family.”

Was Jenny the same… er… intelligence as Puck? If she was, these kids shouldn’t be left alone. If Olivia was there, she’d insist on taking care of them until their mother returned.

“Do you and Jenny want to come stay with me until your mama gets home?”

Puck dragged his enormous boot through the dirt and looked down. He whistled with his head hung low, seeming to forget Grayson and Ozzie were even there. Soon he tugged his too-big britches up until his ankles were showing, paying no mind to Grayson or his question.