Raft of Stars by Andrew Graff (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📕

little crooked on that far end,” said Bread. His comment was the pure false modesty of a true craftsman. Fish was proud as punch of the thing, and he knew Bread was too.

“It’ll do,” said Fish, nodding severely. “The Hope of Lantern Rock.”

“I been thinking about that name,” said Bread. “We ain’t on Lantern Rock anymore. We should name it something about the island, or beavers maybe.”

Fish thought about this. It was a good idea. After all, the beaver freedom and the island were what gave them the boat.

“How about Beaver’s Hope of Lantern Rock.”

Bread wrinkled his brow. “I’m not sure that has the right ring to it. Not dangerous enough.”

Fish agreed. There was something a bit too soft about their patron animal. He and Bread were warriors too, after all, braving rivers and hunting with spears and raiding poaching camps as they pleased. After breakfast, Bread had given Fish the grand tour of the poachers’ camp he had explored while Fish had slept through the night. There was the cabin and its half-buried pots and pans, a chest filled with rope. Outside the cabin were some old saws and kettles and a stack of deer skulls. Bread figured the kettles were used to boil the fat off the skulls before selling them to bankers and judges and other city people who wanted to put some horns on their walls. Except for the scarecrow head, the other skulls left behind didn’t have antlers. And there were hundreds of them, some on the ground and chewed up by mice, some tacked to tree trunks with rusted nails, others hung on old wire strung through their nose and eye sockets. Interspersed were a few coyote skulls, with canine teeth protruding from their weathered snouts. Fish touched one of the teeth with the tip of his finger. It was dull and pointed like the tip of a rifle round. The poachers must have sold hides too. How Bread could have explored this place at night, alone in the dark and shadows, was beyond Fish. Fish was glad he’d passed out. It was Bread who faced down the scarecrow while his friend lay collapsed in the spruce trees. Bread swam the river and collected the gear. Bread took the lead on the construction of the raft, ordering Fish back and forth for rope, coming up with the good ideas.

“You should name it,” Fish told him. “What do you think it should be named?”

Bread popped the last of his Slim Jim in his mouth, squinted out at the raft and the water.

“Poachers’ Hope of Lantern Rock.”

Fish liked it immediately.

“I was thinking we could dress it out with some skulls before we push off,” said Bread. “Make it fearsome, you know?”

Fish liked the idea even more.

“Only thing, though,” Bread added, “is that we ain’t really poachers. Not really.”

Fish felt the disappointment, but then nodded at the empty Slim Jim wrapper in Bread’s hand. “You got any more of those?” he asked.

Bread shook his head.

“Me neither. And we only got one can of beans, Bread.”

Bread looked at his friend. “Tuna’s gone too.”

“So starting tomorrow,” Fish explained, “we gotta kill what we eat, or we don’t eat.”

A light dawned in Bread’s eyes.

“So tomorrow we’ll be poachers,” he said.

“Tomorrow we’ll be poachers.”

“Come on,” said Bread, standing and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Let me show you what I was thinking with them skulls.”

It took until dusk for the boys to finish and outfit the raft. It was what Fish’s grandpa used to call rough work, as opposed to fine—more like sinking fence posts or slapping boards onto a chicken coop than carefully squaring a window or trimming a door with oak. It was the kind of work that needed little precision, so it went quickly and was deeply satisfying. Carry the log, lash the log, carry the skull, lash the skull. The boys were craftsmen, creators. They even had enough poles to lash together an A-frame they could throw the tarp over when the weather turned sour. They exhumed from the camp a box of old nails and a black-powder rifle with rye grass growing out of its barrel. They used the nails and river rocks to tack a railing of branches in place around the bow end of the boat, and they wove deer and coyote skulls onto it so any would-be boarders would see the gaping snouts and eye sockets as they approached. The bow end would be the galley and storehouse. They brought the old rifle on board to use as an anchor pike they could pound into sandbars. They lashed their bags to the posts of the A-frame to keep them high and dry, and hung three cast-iron pots from nails. Fish imagined drifting through the sunshine a few days from now, miles away, the pots clanging lazily with the breeze and the rocking of the ship. Maybe they could just keep going, rivers to lakes, lakes to oceans, the tropics, the desert. Fish thought of sand dunes, but decided to back up and think again about tropics instead.

At the stern they made loops of rope to hold their fish poles, so they could let out line and drift for pike and catfish in the daytime and walleye at night. They brought aboard five flat pieces of limestone from the riverbed to make a fireproof base in the galley. The poachers’ old boiling kettle would sit on top. They could boil crayfish and pike without leaving ship. The finishing touch was the antlered skull of the scarecrow.

Bread straddled the top pole of the A-frame. The sun was still large but beginning to set. The first streaks of orange and red shot across the horizon. Fish shielded his eyes and watched the silhouette of his friend lash the antlered skull to the pole. It reminded him of a picture he’d seen in school of American soldiers hoisting a flag after winning some hill. The antlers reached up like the fingers of a strong hand, grabbing