L Akers - Fight Like a Man

Grayson laughed. “You want to eat this? Now? You’re still hungry?” He hoped Mama Dee had lots of cans in her pantry…

Puck dropped down on the ground beside Ozzie, reminding Grayson of when Graysie sat crisscross applesauce in kindergarten, and shoved the square raviolis into his mouth with his hands. He’d eat one, and then give Ozzie one, sharing until they were all gone. He wiped the red messy sauce on his pant legs. Olivia would have had a heart attack.

Instead of getting up, he laid down with the dog, snuggling him close.

Grayson stood over him scratching his head. Weird time for a lay-down.

Suddenly he stood up like a jack-in-the-box. “Can I have some more water, Mr. Gray Man?”

“It’s Gray son . But yeah, sure, kid.”

The boy ran back to the table and turned up the half-full gallon of water Grayson had set out for their lunch, ignoring the paper cup he’d previously been using, drinking straight from the jug. Another cringe-worthy moment.

“Uh, you can just take that with you when you go home,” Grayson said. He had a phobia about drinking after anyone other than his wife, Olivia.

Puck’s eyes lit up. “Thank you!”

“How you doing on water at your house anyway?”

It hadn’t even occurred to Grayson to ask before. It was hard for him to remember most people didn’t put back water for just in case or emergencies. And with Puck’s mom having been gone when the power went off, he seriously doubted the boy would have known to fill up any containers with the last of the water in the pipes. But maybe Jenny had a few more crayons to Puck’s half-empty box.

“Almost out. Mama Dee had some jugs, but Jenny drinks a lot of water.”

Guess not.

“Come on, then. This is a good time to show you how to get water from a well.”

Grayson went into the barn and came back with a cylinder-shaped tube, a handful of tools, and a thick coil of rope wrapped around his shoulder. The silver cylinder was three and half inches in diameter and 52 inches long. It was made from galvanized stove pipe by an Amish man.

“Is that a rocket?” Puck asked with big, hopeful eyes.

“No. It’s an Amish water bucket. Anyone can use this on nearly any well and get fresh drinking water. You don’t have to boil it or treat it. Straight from Mother Earth.”

“That doesn’t look like a bucket. It’s too skinny.”

“That’s because nowadays, wells are thin.” Grayson turned the bucket upside down and held it out to Puck. “See here, this end has a rubber valve fastened to a shaft that runs the full length of the bucket. It opens to let water enter the bucket, and then it closes when the bucket is lifted.”

Puck looked thoroughly confused. Grayson was used to that. He’d received the same look when he’d shown the bucket to Olivia. When people thought about wells and buckets, they typically imagined what they’d seen on television on old shows like Lassie ; stone wells that were waist-high, set up off the ground, around a deep hole with a bucket tied to a rope and crank.

Those were a thing of the past.

“Come on, I’ll show you how it works.” As he walked to the back yard, he kept talking, “I bought this one online from Lehman’s, but you could make your own out of PVC pipe, if you could figure out how to do the valve on the bottom. It was less than a hundred bucks, so not worth the headache for me. And anyone could do this, even my wife, Olivia. It’s simple.”

Well, maybe not Olivia, but he’d bet her sister, Gabby, could figure it out. Olivia would think it was too hard and probably wouldn’t even try, unless he made her.

“You could also use a hand pump to get water out of your well much faster than this bucket. This one only pulls up two gallons at a time. A hand pump would be much more efficient. But I can’t find mine. Luckily, I have this, too.”

As they walked, he stole a glance at Puck to be sure he was paying attention; he may as well try to teach the boy something if he was going to hang around. “Well it wasn’t actually luck, Puck. See, when you prepare for emergencies, one is none and two is one.”

Now Puck looked even more thoroughly confused; if that was possible.

“What I mean is, if I hadn’t prepared with two different plans to get water out of my well, I wouldn’t be able to get any. Because apparently, someone stole my hand pump which was my number one plan,” he said angrily.

“Wasn’t me.”

Grayson laughed. “I know it wasn’t you. You’ve never even been here before I found you in that tree and brought you home.”

Puck stopped walking and dropped his head, looking at the ground, still as a statue.

“What are you doing?” It was as though someone had pulled his plug. Grayson stopped to wait up for him. “Come on, Puck.”

Puck didn’t move.

Grayson walked back to him. “What’s the matter, boy?”

Puck took a deep breath and spoke, without looking at Grayson. “I was here, Mister Gray Man. I took those veggies from your garden, for Jenny.”

Grayson stared at the kid long and hard, ready to give him a piece of his mind.

The boy began to tremble.

“Hey, hey… don’t. Don’t do that.”

He put his hand on Puck’s shoulder and Puck flinched and backed up.

Shocked by his response, Grayson stepped back and dropped his hand. Someone had been mean to this kid, and Grayson couldn’t stand to see the boy so full of fear. “Whoa. I’m not gonna hit you. Ever. It’s okay. But listen, Puck. If you really need something, you need to ask first. There’s nothing on this earth worse than a thief or a liar. Or a murderer. You hear me? Just don’t do it again.”

“I’m sorry.” Puck stuck his lip out and let his head hang.

“S’kay. Let’s get this project going.”

Grayson walked on ahead just as Ozzie ran over and dropped his ball at Puck’s feet. That changed his mood in an instant. As though it’d never happened, he laughed and grabbed the ball, throwing it far enough to earn a home run. Out of the park—or backyard anyway.

Would’ve made a great baseball player.

Ozzie took off to retrieve it and Puck caught up with Grayson just after he’d tipped over the old fake doghouse that covered the well-head and pulled the well-cap off. Then he pulled out the drop-pipe that housed the submersible pump motor, handing the end of it to Puck and telling him to walk it back as he pulled.

“What is it?”

“It’s what the well-pump is attached to. It doesn’t work without power, but when it does, the pump shoots the water through this drop-pipe. We have to take it out so that we can get our bucket down to the water in the actual well.”

He came to the end of the pipe, and gently pulled out his pump, hoping it wouldn’t give him any trouble if the power came back on and he had to re-install it. He laid that aside and picked up the well-bucket, running his rope through the large metal ring on the top and tying a tight knot.

He handed it to Puck.

“Okay, now you just carefully feed this well-bucket into the well. When it gets to the water, it’ll stop dropping so easily, and you’ll want to wait a minute or so to let it fill up, then pull it back out, and boom … we’ll have fresh, clean drinking water.”

Puck was excited to help. He carefully took the well bucket from Grayson and inserted it into the well, looking down his nose with big eyes at the dark hole into which he was dropping it.

“That’s it, lower it down easy…” Grayson instructed him.

The pile of rope on the ground was getting smaller and smaller. Grayson had no idea how much rope he actually had, but so far, the hole had eaten a good bit of it. A smarter man would’ve stretched the rope out beside the drop-pipe he’d just pulled out to see if he had enough to reach the water before attempting it.