Third Strike by Philip R. Craig Page B

of the Vineyard woods. The only sound was the almost subaudible hiss of the Vineyard breeze sifting through the trees. The silence was almost spooky.
    I lay there staring up into the darkness, imagining Evie’s sleek body next to mine and wondering what the hell Larry had gotten me into, and after a while, I went back to sleep.

    The next time I opened my eyes, gray light was seeping in through the windows. The sun had not yet cracked the eastern horizon, but it soon would.
    I rolled over, but it was no use. I was awake. I got up, shut my eyes against a sudden wave of dizziness, and went outside to pee. The first rays of morning sunshine were just touching the treetops, and the air was full of birdsong.
    I went back inside and got dressed, then prowled around Larry’s kitchen area for coffee. After Larry’s wine, I really needed coffee.
    All I came up with was a plastic container with a few Lipton tea bags in it. It would take gallons of tea to give me the caffeine I needed. There was no substitute for morning coffee, and Larry didn’t have any.
    I went out back. Larry’s hammock hung between a pair of oak trees off to the side of the yard. He was lying there with his arms crossed over his chest like a corpse, and if he hadn’t been snoring, I might’ve thought he was dead. Like Poor Jud, he looked peaceful and serene, and I decided not to wake him up yet.
    Rocket was lying directly under Larry’s hammock. When he lifted his head and looked at me, I snapped my fingers, and he got up and followed me back into the house. I found a piece of paper and a pencil, and wrote, “Seven o’clock. Looking for coffee. Back in a while. Brady.”
    Then Rocket and I went outside. When I got into Zee’s Wrangler, Rocket sat there on the ground and looked at me.
    â€œYou want to come?” I said to him.
    He stood up and wagged his tail.
    I reached over and opened the passenger door, and he clambered in. I guessed if Larry woke up before we got back, he’d see that my car was gone and would figure out that Rocket was with me.
    I drove out the dirt roads to the main road, then through Menemsha and Chilmark without any luck, and I ended up going all the way to Edgartown before I found an open gas station with a coffee urn. I got an extra-large, black. I thought about buying one for Larry, but I figured if he drank coffee, he’d’ve had some in his house. He probably preferred tea, or more likely some vile homemade concoction made from roots and twigs and dirt.
    I bought a doughnut, too, and shared it with Rocket as we headed back to Larry’s house.
    By the time I got there, I figured I’d been gone a little over an hour. The sun had fully risen, and I’d drunk some of my coffee, and it had turned into a bright new day, full of hope and promise after all.
    I parked in the front yard, and Rocket followed me into the house, his purpose transparently obvious. I found a bag of dog food in a cabinet and an empty bowl on the floor beside a water dish. I dumped a few cups of dogfood into the bowl, added a little water, and put it on the floor.
    Rocket gobbled it down.
    The note I’d left for Larry was right where I’d put it. I assumed he hadn’t yet come inside. I didn’t know what his sleeping habits were, or how tolerant he was of that awful wine of his, but we hadn’t gotten to bed until after two in the morning. There was no reason to wake him up.
    So I went out into the front yard, found a rock in a patch of sunlight to sit on, and finished my coffee.
    An hour or so later, when Larry still hadn’t appeared, I went around back to wake him up.
    I went over to the hammock to shake him awake, but Larry was not in the hammock.
    I stood there for a minute, looking around. I did not spot him. “Hey,” I called. “Hey, Larry?”
    No answer.
    I waited a minute, then called again.
    What the hell?
    My first thought was that while I was out trying