Page 30 of Lost and Found Cowboy

“I know, but I landed here again,” the boy explained as if it made perfect sense.

“Are you just making up your own rules?”

Max shrugged and offered him an impish grin. “It’s our game. That means we can make up the rules and play it however we want.”

“You can’t argue his point,” Lorna said, as she passed through the room with a wiggling baby wrapped in a towel in one arm and a stack of clean pajamas she’d just grabbed from the dryer in the other.

Mack stared across the board at his pint-sized opponent.

When in Rome...

He placed another black piece on top of the boy’s already double-stacked checkers. Then he picked up his red piece, hopped over two of Max’s black ones, then lifted the checker up and spun it around the board twice before landing in one of the farthest spaces. “All right, king me too.”

Max cocked a small eyebrow as he stared down at the board, then back up at Mack.

“I call that the helicopter move,” he said in a serious tone, and waited for the boy to challenge him.

Max studied the board then his face creased with a wide grin. “Ilikeit,” he said and slammed a red checker on top of the one Mack had landed. He picked up the rest of the red ones he’d won and crowned three more of Mack’s checkers that were in various spots on the board. “I win.”

“How do you figure?”

The boy held up his empty hands. “I’m out of checkers.”

Mack laughed, completely bewildered and besotted with this adorable kid.

“Wanna play again?” Max asked.

“No.”

The boy’s face fell.

“But I have a new game. Have you ever playedChuckers?”

His face brightened. “No. How do you play?”

“First, you have to go get the biggest bowl you can find,” Mack instructed.

The boy raced into the kitchen and came back a minute later with a large pink Tupperware bowl.

He’d had the same one growing up, except it was a faded gummy yellow, and served as the combination popcorn, pasta salad, and puke bowl. “Perfect. Now go stand over there,” Mack told him, pointing to the other side of the room then scooping a handful of checkers off the board. “And I’m going to start chucking these checkers and you try to catch them in the bowl.”

By the time Lorna came downstairs ten minutes later, the bowl had been forgotten, and the carpet was littered with black and red checkers as the game had lapsed into just the two of them hurling the pieces at each other in a version of ‘Dodge Checkers’.

She raised an eyebrow at Mack as her son dove for cover from another checker onslaught. “Is this your idea of calming him down to go to sleep?”

He ducked as a red piece sailed past his ear. “Checkers with this kid didn't feel like a calm activity in the first place. Have you ever played with him?”

She barked out a laugh. “Oh yes, many times.”

“This isn't checkers,” Max called from his spot behind the chair. “It’sChuckers. Mack taught me.”

She offered a questioning glance at Mack. “What’s Chuckers?”

“Instead of playingwiththe checkers on the board, you chuck ‘emateach other,” Max yelled then fell into a fit of giggles as he crawled out from behind the sofa and flung a black game piece in Mack’s direction.

Lorna ducked. “Super idea.”

“It started out that we were just trying to chuck them into a bowl,” Mack explained, sticking his hand out to catch a checker in midair before it hit Lorna.

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