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

sheriff didn’t stop to face the other man when he spoke, but moved with purpose toward the coffee carafes. The farmer’s lips pursed together as he followed. He seemed to boil a bit before he popped. Tiffany had seen it happen many times. She herself had caused Burt Akinson to erupt once or twice. She took pride in it. It was a game the two played.

“You know as well as I do, Sheriff—hey there, Tiff.”

“Hey, Burt,” she said.

“You know as well as I do them wardens is working according to state numbers and don’t know local needs. They think with their fancy charts since there’s no coyotes in Milwaukee, there ain’t no coyotes in Claypot, so we’re the ones have to get into that forest and push them packs of bastards off farms.” Burt said the word coyotes like oats—no coyoats in Claypot—and as he did, he held his hands in the air and threw them forward as if holding gnats at bay. Tiff shook her head and put together a fresh filter of coffee behind the lotto tickets. Burt threw his hands forward again. “Gotta push ’em back into them woods or they’ll keep coming after calves.”

Sheriff Cal plucked a cup from the stack and turned toward the older man. “Burt, I know you got cattle, and on your own land you can shoot all the coyotes you want.”

“Sheriff Cal?” said Tiff.

He didn’t hear her. “And I don’t care about state or county numbers or anything else.”

“Sheriff Cal,” said Tiff. “There’s no coffee in that one.”

“But I do care that when the wardens find dead coyotes on state land, they start asking me questions.” Cal pushed the dispenser and the carafe sputtered. “Tiff, there’s no coffee in this carafe.”

“Fresh pot’s coming,” she said.

“Thanks.”

Burt wagged his head. “We call ’em cows here, Texas Ranger. Cow farming, not cattle ranching. And those parklands sit right up against my farm,” he complained. “You know when I was a boy, them parklands belonged to my—”

“I’m making light roast, Sheriff. Do you like light roast?”

“That’s just fine, Tiff. And when wardens start asking me questions, Burt, and I tell them I don’t know who’s shooting coyotes, it makes me look like the only fool in this town who doesn’t.”

Burt wrinkled his face. “Nobody knows it’s me shooting them coyotes. And they’re bad this year, too many of ’em. I’m doing folks a favor, before the coyotes run out of calves to eat and start picking off children.”

The sheriff closed his eyes a moment, left them shut. “Tiff,” he asked, “would you please tell Burt who people say has been shooting coyotes?”

“Everyone knows Burt’s been shooting coyotes.”

The sheriff lifted his eyebrows.

Burt raised his hands and boiled. “Oh, bah,” he said, and left his hands in the air this time, as if overwhelmed by the gnats. “She knows because she just heard you talking all about it!”

“People know, Burt,” said Tiffany, and she frowned. “And who ever heard of coyotes eating children?”

“Shows what both of you know, then,” said Burt.

Sheriff Cal set his empty cup on the counter. “Shoot all the coyotes you want. Just shoot them on your own side of the fence.”

“But that land used to belong to my—”

“On your own land, Burt.”

There was deep frustration in Burt’s pinched eyes. He was killing coyotes with his pupils, and maybe game wardens too, blowing them out his nostrils.

“What’s the missus going to say,” asked Cal, “when you’ve got to sell off that new tractor to pay for shooting coyotes?”

“What’s my tractor got to do with it?”

“What’s she going to say, Burt? You got a rig so big and shiny your whole farm’s got to be leveraged on it. And how are you gonna pay a fifty-thousand-dollar fine?”

“Fifty thousand!” Burt’s eyes got wide. “For poppin’ coyotes?”

Tiffany frowned at him again, shook her head in exaggerated pity. “Missus is gonna snip your balls off, Burt.” She lifted her fingers in the air, made two neat snips, and grinned at him. Burt was a friend, and Tiffany knew how to talk to him. He used to let her parade his prize hogs at the fair when she was a girl in 4-H. Now that she’d grown, they’d often cross paths and tease each other in the Sunrise Café. Last year, during her hungry summer, Burt was kind enough to pretend he didn’t notice that she was squatting on the back forty of his property in a Coleman tent for four months, bathing in the creek, and helping herself to a few of his chickens’ eggs once a week. In late fall after the apples had all dropped, she stole a whole chicken. Burt’s wife noticed, and Burt had to drive his truck back there over the corn stubble and say something. He asked Tiffany through the wall of her zipped tent if she needed help. She told him if she needed help she’d have asked for it, and she’d thank him for minding his own business. When he told her she might get a boyfriend who’d take care of her if she’d only stop scrunching her face so much, she leapt out of her tent in her long underwear and dragged the whole works fifty yards onto state land—which was illegal without permits, but she wasn’t about to pay the money she was saving for an apartment on a corner of brambles no one ever looked at. Burt liked banter. It was his first language. And Tiffany’s work at the gas station made her well suited to it, although it never felt entirely natural to her, never her true self telling the jokes, blocking the jabs, smiling so long.

The coffee pot gurgled and hissed, and Tiffany filled the sheriff’s cup before pouring the rest into the empty carafe.

Burt took a step backward. He’d completely ignored Tiffany’s remark. “Sheriff, I—” He swallowed. “I had no idea they could do that to a man, for varmints?” His face reddened, then grew white, and then couldn’t decide which color to turn,