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

she liked the idea of Cal wrestling a lion, and then walking toward her with hunger in his eyes and sweat on his neck. Her old imagined boyfriends seemed totally insufficient.

“And then we forget again!” Miranda went on, like she was trying to describe some wonderful and elusive flavor. “It’s a mystery how beautiful we can be, and how terrible too. We catch glimpses only. But it’s there. We’re not just poor damn things. Even if it feels true, it’s not the truth. There’s more to us, more for us, right now, right here, in this.”

Tiffany sat quietly a moment. She didn’t know what to do with all of that, but she had always felt, from her anonymous youth through her hungry summer, that she was worth more than the world suggested she was. She once sat in a moonlit tent, eating a stolen hard-boiled egg, and found herself marveling at the sight of her hand lifting the thing to her mouth. There seemed something miraculous about it, about just existing, that demanded to be acknowledged, celebrated even.

“I’ve heard your dad say that,” she said. “Poor damn things. He seems like a good man. People like him.”

“He is hard, but yes, he is good. Mom said it was Korea. I wish I’d known him before. I saw pictures. His smiles were bigger then. For as long as I knew him, though, he demanded peace and quiet. He loved us and was good to us. I never doubted his goodness. But there was distance. We could never rock the boat. It was hard to be a teenage girl and never rock the boat.”

“Yes.”

“But I knew he’d be good for Fischer. I knew the farm and barns and fields would be good for Fischer, for his heart, and maybe Fischer would be good for my dad. After my husband died, I watched my son wilt. I barely caught it in time. This quietness came over him. This fear of things. I knew I had to get him out into something bigger than himself, bigger than his mom. Boys need to shake their manes, as my dad used to put it. He was right. It’s been good for Fischer, this place. Do you know, he came back so changed after that first summer, so much like his dad, smiling again, proud too.”

Tiffany sensed a change in Miranda’s voice. She’d struggled with the last few words, brought back no doubt into the present, her boy lost in a forest. He was probably cold and hungry and scared. He’d shot a man. During their ride back to Claypot, Miranda described her encounter with Jack Breadwin in the hospital. His scalp was shaved and bandaged, and the left side of his face was bruised all the way down to his jaw. But that wasn’t the ugly part. The ugly part was his eye. Only one red eye looked out from the bandages, the other was covered with a patch. He was awake enough to know who she was and who her son was, and she saw fear and hate fill that eye. She rebuked him there in that hospital bed. Shouted down whatever “foul thing” lived inside him, pleaded with the humanity in him to pity his son, who was now fleeing down a river. Shame on you, she shouted. Shame! Ashes! She used these exact words as she recounted the story, which made Tiffany grow quiet. She tried to imagine Miranda saying such things at Jack’s bedside, and then leaping from a window. Miranda wept for most of the ride home, praying softly, sometimes loudly, tears streaming down her face.

“Come on,” said Tiffany, picking up her paddle. “You better teach me how to use this thing.” She dipped the blade into the black water.

Miranda remained quiet.

“Miranda,” declared Tiffany, “I give you my word that we are not stopping this canoe, not for sleep, not for food, until we have your son.”

Miranda nodded, wiped her eye, looked at the riverbanks. She inhaled and exhaled forcefully. “We’ll have to stop in a few miles,” she said, “before the rapids by the islands.”

“Before the what?”

“I feel like praying,” Miranda said. “Yes, let’s pray.” She lifted her paddle over her head with both arms outstretched. She took a massive breath.

Tiffany bit her lip. Here came the gravity.

Miranda raised her voice and called on the Father to place a hedge of protection, his own spirit hand, around the boys. She declared the canoe and the river anointed in the divine presence of the Holy Ghost. She invited Jesus, high priest, to intercede on their behalf, to bring the full work of his cross between them and any evil thing coming against them. She reminded the devil of God’s terrifying majesty, his ferocious power. She reminded the darkness that she and Tiffany were God’s daughters, loved and guarded with insatiable jealousy. She shook her paddle at the stars as she spoke, at the forest, as if power flowed from its shaft. The river trembled with her voice, and Tiffany couldn’t tell if the woman was frightening or beautiful. It felt like watching a storm approach, roll in, bend the trees in half. It really was a thing to behold.

“King Jesus!” Miranda yelled into the forest, beating her paddle skyward, and Tiffany worried she might upset the canoe. She worried about what kind of church Miranda went to. She worried about why she didn’t want it to stop.

“King Jesus!” Miranda cried. “Yes, King Jesus!”

As if in response, howls erupted from the river’s edge. Not far beyond the bank in the darkness of the cedars, the wailing of a pack of coyotes pierced the night. Their yips and cries filled the forest and then fled, tumbling away like demons downriver. Miranda lowered her paddle. Smoothed her denim dress across her lap. She let out a contented sigh.

“Yes,” she said. “That is better.”

CAL LOOKED UP FROM THE PILE OF TINDER HE’D BEEN ATTEMPTING to light. Jacks looked up too, cocked his head toward the