Page 26 of Bad Wolf

“Correct.”

“One,” he says with a stroke of the pencil.

“My turn.” He sets himself up exactly like I showed him. There’s no misstep, just pure concentration as he too sinks the ball on his first attempt.

After hole five though, things start turning serious, and I might add, a little crazy.

“A maze for a ball. Whaaat?!” He exclaims. “Wow, now imagine if this was a puck! You’d have to turn it on its side and roll it through.”

I really want to give that a go, but we’ll never get anywhere trying to turn it all into hockey. The Astroturf is built up into a semicircle maze, and the walls are deeper than the size of the ball so there can be no cheating. You’ve got to actually go through it and there’s a pretty steep incline at the end.

“Think you’ve got this?” I say, instead of fueling his ideas.

He shakes his head, “No, I still want you to take the first shot.”

I chuckle. “Okay then.”

It is tricky, but I do it in three. “You’re up.”

“I think,” he says, getting a little lower to the ground, his hand holding onto the top of the putter, “I think I’m just gonna do what you do. There’s no way it can be done in one go.”

“Okay, just follow the route I took,” I tell him.

“Yeah, follow you…” he says, steely focused on his neon green ball.

* * *

“Hey, Knox? This one glows in the dark at night!” Jack says, reading the sign on his way out as he blows on the hot chocolate I just bought him.

“Oh yeah, cool. We’ll come back in a few weeks and check it out.”

“Yeah, we definitely need to, because that one with the crocodile and the hook was…” he blows out a breath.

“I’ll say. Twenty-two attempts is pretty amateur. Reckon you can do it in less next time?”

“Yes, I will,” he says adamantly, and nearly trips down the curb because he’s still reeling from the big defeat.

When we enter the house he now lives in just across from Casey’s, he heads straight over to Gunner.

“Dad! We need to make a crazy golf course in the yard. I need to practice.”

Gunner gets up off the couch and kisses Jack on the head.

“We do? Why? Was it so much fun that you’re changing sports?”

“No!” He steps back in disbelief and then shakes out of the horror. “There was this really hard one, harder than the one at the very end. It took me twenty-two times and even then, Knox had to help me.”

“Ah, so it got a little too crazy,” Gunner laughs at his own joke, but Jack just looks up at him.

“Okay, Son,” he tells him, “I’ll see what I can come up with.”

Just then, Coralie breezes into the room.

“Oh, hi. You staying for dinner?”

I raise my eyebrows. I know what Casey and Anna are having, I want to see what she says before I commit.

“Jack ordered tacos at seven this morning.”

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