24
PUCK ARRIVED BRIGHT AND EARLY, knocking on Grayson’s door.
“Mr. Gray Man!”
Ozzie jumped off the bed, barking with delight, and scratched at the door.
Grayson stumbled around trying to get his pants on and led Ozzie out. He rubbed his eyes and blinked in the bright sunlight. Trying not to sound too irritated in spite of another nearly sleepless night worrying about his family, he asked. “What are you doing here so early, Puck?”
“I wanted to see if Ozzie could come out and play,” Puck muttered in a small voice, and then dropped his head. He blindly held a can up in the air. “And I brought breakfast if you can open it.”
Grayson took in a deep breath, and then sighed it out. He’d forgotten to show the boy how to use a can opener. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.” He left Ozzie out to play with the kid.
Half an hour and half a pot of coffee later, Grayson emerged outside with a better attitude. At least the boy would keep his mind off of Olivia and Graysie, and he could do with a little help around the homestead, too.
Ignoring Puck’s contribution to breakfast, he fried them some Spam and eggs using a cast iron skillet on the grill. He watched with wonder and a little bit of disgust as Puck nearly inhaled everything in two minutes flat. At one point, he thought he’d have to interfere when Puck eyeballed Ozzie eating his own breakfast.
After eating, Grayson called Puck over to the porch. He held up a spoon and the can of ravioli that Puck had brought with him. “Okay. I’m going to show you how use a spoon to open this can, and then you can help me out around here a bit and earn that breakfast. Okay?”
Puck solemnly nodded.
After thinking about it, he realized someone may have already tried to teach Puck how to open a can with a handheld can opener. While most people thought it was simple, he had seen other adults in his life that just couldn’t get the hang of it, and kids definitely had trouble with. Kids couldn’t open a can to save their life. He wasn’t surprised Puck wasn’t able to figure it out. But with the boy’s strength, there was no way he wouldn’t be able to do the spoon-trick he was about to show him, and as long as Puck could find a spoon, he’d always have way to open cans in an emergency.
He held up the spoon. “So, you grip the spoon real tight in the palm of one hand, with about half of the round end sticking out. Then you hold the can tight with your other hand, and start sawing back and forth with your spoon around the top edge. It’ll soften the metal. The longer you saw back and forth, the easier it will be to open.” Grayson sawed with the spoon back and forth until his spoon pierced through the lid with a half-inch long crack.
He showed Puck the top of the can. “See that crack? You’re in. Now you can either keep sawing around the whole circle of the can if you want to remove the entire lid, or you can poke your spoon through and sort of cut the top open. See there?” Grayson sawed at the hole, making it longer while Puck watched wide eyed.
“Then you can bend the top up and get to your food. But be careful, that jagged edge can give you a mean cut. It might be best for you to pour the food into a bowl or something. Don’t ever eat out of the can, okay?” A cut from a can could get nasty, and without medical services running, or any hospitals open, it’d be best to avoid any injuries.
Puck nodded and took off at a run toward the picnic table where they’d eaten breakfast. He grabbed his dirty paper plate and ran back, holding it out to Grayson.
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 Grayson. 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.”