Someone To Watch Over Me
by Purple Lacey
Part 21
Buck was having a wonderful dream. An entire harem of lovely, scantily-clad women where bowing at his feet, vowing to do wonderful things to him when he was rudely pulled from sleep by a hand shaking his shoulder. He groggily lifted his head from his pillow to look around in confusion to find Ezra standing by his bed, little arm reaching out to shake his shoulder again.
“Buck!” The little boy standing there in his pajamas said as he shook.
“Ez?” the man said woozily as he blinked owlishly to keep his eyes open. “What’s the matter?”
“I didn’t get the others a gift!” The little boy wailed plaintively.
“What?” Buck asked in confusion.
“I didn’t get the others a gift. I got one for you, but I forgot about JD, and Nathan, and Josiah, and Nettie, and...”
Buck interrupted the list by saying, “That’s okay. We’ll see about getting something for them tomorrow...after the sun comes up.”
“But Buck!” Ezra fretted unhappily, “I spent all my money on your gift. I don’t have anymore. How can I buy more presents for them with no money?”
Ezra had woken up with the realization that he had forgotten about Christmas gifts for the rest of his new family and was so upset that it had driven him out of bed in the middle of the night to seek out his guardian for help. The child was certain if anybody would know what to do it would be Buck.
“It’s okay, Short Stack,” Buck tried to reassure the distressed child. The man raised the covers and reached out to pull the unresisting child into bed with him and out of the chill that was in the air of the bedroom despite the central heating. “We’ll work it out tomorrow, I promise. Just go back to sleep. Everything will be fine.”
“You’re sure?” Ezra asked anxiously.
“I’m...sure,” Buck said around a big yawn. “Snuggle up and close your eyes now. We both need our sleep.”
“Okay,” the little one sighed in relief now that he knew Buck was going to fix the problem for him.
“G’night, son,” Buck murmured already drifting back to sleep.
“Night...Dad,” Ezra whispered daringly, but the man was already out and didn’t hear.
Ezra cuddled up and relaxed against his foster father, whose arms tightened around Ezra in his sleep. Within minutes he joined Buck in slumber.
The sun had just barely begun to rise the next time Buck felt a little hand shake him awake.
“Buck! It’s day time,” Ezra said eagerly. “Can we get presents now for JD, and Nathan, and Josiah, and...”
Buck placed his hand over the little mouth to stop the recitation this time. He looked at the clock on the nightstand behind Ezra and groaned. Usually the little boy was the very devil to get out of bed in the morning. That obviously wasn’t the case this particular morning. The little red numbers only read six o’clock. Buck looked at the child watching him with wide - and very awake - eyes full of anticipation and knew there was no use in trying to get the boy to return to bed for more sleep. Buck metaphorically kissed his warm bed goodbye and gave into to the inevitable, sitting up and rubbing his hands over his stubbled jaws and then through his sleep-tousled hair.
“There’s plenty of time,” Buck assured the child. “The stores don’t open until ten o’clock, Ezra, and we need to get dressed and have breakfast first.”
“Okay!” the boy cried and pushed back the covers to scramble from the bed, eager to get the routine chores out of the way that morning so the important stuff, like the gift getting, could start.
Buck smiled in reluctant amusement as the boy ran from the room like a cat with its tail on fire. Buck climbed from his bed and headed for the shower, mouth stretched in a jaw-breaking yawn. When he emerged in his bathrobe thirty minutes later, showered and clean shaven, he found a neatly dressed Ezra perched expectantly on the foot of his bed.
With one chore out of the way, Ezra was ready to tackle the next one and said, “What’s for breakfast?”
Buck pulled clean underwear from one of the drawers and went to drag a pair of jeans and a long sleeved tee-shirt form their hangers in his closet as he answered, “It’s a little early for Nettie yet, and I don’t feel like cooking, so why don’t we have breakfast out this morning.”
“Can I have pancakes with chocolate chips and a whip cream smiley face, with bacon, and apple juice, and rambled eggs?” Ezra asked eagerly.
“Scrambled eggs,” Buck corrected absently. “Yeah, I think we can accommodate that.”
“Alright!” Ezra punched one arm in the air in excitement much to Buck’s amusement. “Jimmy at school told me he got to have that when his Daddy came to visit him once. He said it was real good.”
“Jimmy’s parents are divorced?” Buck asked curiously as he slipped his underwear on underneath the terrycloth robe then his jeans.
Watching Buck as the man slipped off the bath robe and pulled the tee shirt on then layered it with a dark blue sweater he pulled from a drawer the little boy shrugged and told him, “I guess. I just know his daddy lives far away and only comes to visit him every once in awhile.”
“What about your daddy, Ez?” Buck turned around to face the child as he asked curiously. He had heard the boy mention his mother once or twice but had never heard him speak about his father. Buck had wondered about him before and had his investigators hunting for information on him too, but he hadn’t received a report from them yet. Buck was curious about what Ezra knew about him. “Do you know where he is?”
Ezra nodded and nonchalantly answered, “He’s in the ground where the useless son of an inbreeding bitch bloody well deserves to be.”
Buck stared in shock for a moment at the child looking back at him so innocently not believing what had come out of the boy’s mouth. He was obviously repeating the phrase he must have heard many times in the past.
“Umm, Ezra,” the man looked at him seriously. “That really isn’t a nice thing to say, and I would prefer that you not repeat it again.”
The boy looked completely abashed. His little head hung and tears began to gather in his eyes as he realized Buck was upset with him.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it!” he wailed and began to curl into the tight ball that Buck was beginning to hate so much.
Buck sat down beside the boy and drew him into his arms.
“It’s okay,” Buck soothed. “I know you didn’t mean anything bad and you didn’t know any better. I’m sure you heard someone say that and thought it was okay. I’m not mad at you for repeating it. I just want you to know that I don’t care for those kind of words, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t use them anymore.”
“I won’t, Buck! I promise I won’t ever say it again!!” the child told him fervently.
“That’s my boy.” Buck told him with a hug. “I know some of the rules here are different than what you’re used to. It will take some time for us to get them all straightened out because we don’t know which ones are different yet. We have to figure that out as we go along.
I don’t expect you to read minds, Ez. If I want you to know about a rule then I know I’ll have to tell you, and just because I tell you doesn’t mean that I’m mad at you. It just means I’m helping you learn, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” Ezra answered with a sniffle from where his face was buried in Buck’s neck seeking comfort.
Buck allowed the child to snuggle against him for a few minutes then said, “I need to finish getting dressed if we want to get to breakfast. I would hate for them to run out of chocolate chip pancakes before we got there.”
His world on an even keel once again with Buck’s reassurance that he wasn’t angry with him, a little head nodded in agreement before pulling back enough to peek up at Buck and admit softly, “I really want to try them.”
“Alrighty then,” Buck said and lifted the boy off his lap to sit on the bed. “I better get a move on. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of chocolate chip pancakes, or Santa might not bring me any presents this year,” he said opening his eyes wide and slapping his hands on his cheeks in pretend horror.
Ezra was overcome with giggles at his guardian’s foolery.