He looked up at the moon and howled quietly while he peed.
Then, he gave it a shake and chuckled. She’ll never know.
“—Hi, Mr. Gray Man,” a voice rang out of the darkness like a shot.
“Son of a gun, Puck!” Grayson jumped and nearly fell off the porch trying to pull his pants up and turn away from Puck—who was up in a tree—at the same time.
Puck shimmied down the tree, fast as a monkey, and dropped into a crouch to rub Ozzie.
Grayson took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You startled me, boy. Don’t you know it ain’t polite to sneak up on a man at the butt crack of midnight?”
Puck giggled. “You said butt-crack.”
Grayson ran his hands through his hair, and a muscle jumped in his jaw, reminding his tooth to scream in pain. “What are you doing up there?”
The smile disappeared from Puck’s face. “I came to see Ozzie. Are you mad?”
Ozzie ran to the porch and grabbed his ball and came back, sliding in and dropping it at Puck’s feet, slobberingly delirious to see the kid. Puck snatched it up, apparently forgetting he was in the middle of a conversation. Grayson noticed he was limping as he ran away with the dog in pursuit.
He looked at the dark sky and gave a silent prayer; a plea for patience to deal with Puck without losing his temper and scaring the kid again, and then he muttered in an exaggeratedly-polite tone to himself—practicing, “Why yes, Puck, I am annoyed. I don’t especially like to show off my pecker to just anyone, you see. I’d much rather have dinner and a movie first, if I had my rather.”
The screen door slamming on his way back into the house punctuated his sarcasm the way his quiet voice couldn’t. Now that Ozzie had woken him, and Puck was here, it was going to be awhile before he could go back to sleep. He’d just lay awake and worry about Olivia and Graysie if he tried. May as well sit up a spell.
Time for coffee.
Twenty minutes later Grayson sat beside his brother-in-law, Jake, on the porch, sipping on a cup of java. He gave silent thanks for the Coleman camp stove and his percolator. At least some things were still quick and easy, and he had plenty of fuel for it.
The smell of coffee—with a side of worry and a slam of the screen door—had dragged Jake out of bed too. He said he wasn’t able to sleep anyway. Grayson was sure the same thoughts were keeping them both up.
When Jake had arrived earlier, with two women in tow, Grayson had wanted to punch him in the face and hug him at the same time.
After a brief shouting match about where he’d been and who’d been responsible for letting the gas go bad—and it damn well was Jake’s fault—they’d stumbled together for a very non-manly hug crowned with damp eyes.
Now they sat in near-silence, other than the crickets and cicadas, and Grayson wanted to fill it with words—words with a grown-up. Finally. Not a full-grown kid or a dog.
He really wanted to hash out the what-if’s about the women and Graysie again, but he knew he and Jake would come to the same conclusion. There were at least a half dozen ways to get to and from the beach. The chance they’d find the girls on the road was slim to none, and they didn’t have enough gas to try all the different routes; not even close.
He couldn’t help still being a bit angry with Jake about the gas he’d let go bad.
Better to talk about something else.
He searched his thoughts for something—anything. But with no news, no visitors other than Puck, and no way to watch TV, he had nothing. His only thoughts were on their family or the event that turned out the lights, and what it might be.
Or Trump.
He could talk about the mysteries of Trump all day. After reluctantly voting for the outrageously non-political Trump, just to do his part to keep Hillary out of office, he was shocked to actually see the man keeping his promises and getting things done, if you could look past his unpolished rhetoric, immature tweets and personal attacks on his own staff and the media. If the left could look past it, they might see he really did seem to be making America better—against all odds.
It couldn’t be argued that welfare hand-outs were down, illegal immigration was down. Jobs were up. The country was a trillion dollars richer. In black and white, he was doing well as a president in general. If only he’d stop setting fires so that the rest of America could see. But the way things were going, they couldn’t see past the fire, much of it flamed by the media. And Trump might really have pushed someone too far this time…
“So, Jake, what do you really think happened? What’s going on? Who did this? Russia? Maybe for Korea? Or China… they’ve always been a big helpful brother to Korea.”
Jake shrugged. “Still don’t know, man.”
Grayson eyeballed Jake.
He knew full well Jake didn’t like to talk politics. When it came to choosing sides, Jake was Switzerland. He’d need to be careful where the conversation went. “So, you don’t think this has anything to do with Trump pissing in Kim’s cheerios?”
Jake shrugged again.
Okay, Korea is off limits. Unless maybe I soften him up with a joke first. “So, if this all ends up being some pissing contest between us and Korea—and other adversaries took their side, things could get really bad.” He gave Jake a very serious look.
Jake nodded.
“No, seriously, man. Just imagine Trump and Kim together. Do you know what you get when you cross a penis and a potato?”
Jake smirked. Finally showing some life. “What?”
“A dicktator!” Grayson laughed loudly at his own joke and Jake spared him a chuckle, but then laughed louder at Grayson’s unusual silliness and his willingness to poke fun at Trump, seeing as Grayson had coaxed the whole family into voting for the man—in solidarity against what happened at Benghazi with the other candidate. They’d cast their votes against her in support of the military, and law enforcement, too, which she’d had no respect for during her campaign.
Trump, on the other hand, supported the military and the boys in blue.
“Wait!” Grayson said. “You know what led to this? Everyone in America is suddenly offended about everything. When the parties became too divisive, we started making mistakes. We shouldn’t even call this a nation anymore. You know what you call a country where everyone is pissed off?”
Jake raised his eyebrow and tilted his head.
“A Urination,” Grayson blurted out loudly. He slapped his knee and guffawed loudly, amusing Jake and getting another smile from him.
Puck ran by, chasing fireflies as Ozzie pranced around him, both of them blissfully happy. They took off together around the back of the house, disappearing from sight, but not before Grayson noticed the limp seemed to be worse the longer Puck ran around. Earlier the kid had told them Jenny had kicked him. That made Grayson feel a little bit better about the girl. If she could kick that hard…
As though he could read Grayson’s thoughts, Jake nodded his head toward the direction Puck had gone. “That kid is something else.”
Grayson nodded and smiled. The boy was growing on him.
“How old is he?” Jake asked.
“He said eighteen or nineteen, I forget which. Hard to remember he’s that old when he acts like an overgrown child.”