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

He was simply less bothered out here about who he really was. There was a freedom in that sort of acceptance he’d never really known. But Teddy stopped short of the tinder pile and stooped to retrieve something from his own kit.

“Here,” he said. “Might as well use these up.”

He tossed a small box of matches to Cal. Mercy spilled through Cal’s body. He pocketed the flint and shook the box. The matches rattled happily.

“Why not?” Cal said as nonchalantly as he could. “Might as well.”

Cal watched Ted lead the horses through the meadow. Jacks bounded along beside them. In the distance, the river sparkled through a line of trees, and Teddy became a dark and wavering silhouette. The old man walked lightly out there in the high grass. The oddest thing about Teddy, Cal thought, was the way he seemed somehow filled by all of this. If it wasn’t his own grandson they were searching for, Cal could almost be convinced that Teddy was enjoying himself amid the sleeplessness and hard riding. Teddy wasn’t known for being overly cheerful, and Cal had seen the flashpan of anger or frustration ignite the man. But out here he seemed eager, awakened. The old man had a vigor in his step Cal had never seen.

Cal crouched by the tinder pile and struck a match. The lichen caught easily. He smiled as the yellow flame licked its way up the twigs and caught hold of the larger sticks. By the time Teddy returned, Cal had managed to make a nice bed of coals. The horses stood under the shade of the apple tree and nipped at the grass where Teddy spilled a few handfuls of oats from a pouch. Jacks rested his head on Cal’s lap while Cal raked the dog’s neck. They all sat in silence, watching the coffee percolate alongside two opened cans of beans. The smell of food and woodsmoke filled the air. The plan was to leave after breakfast. The logging road would easily make up lost time.

“Ted?” Cal asked. “You like farming?”

Ted looked at him, lifted an eyebrow.

“It seems like a nice life,” Cal said. “Seems peaceful.”

Ted looked back at the coals. A thoughtful frown grew on his face.

“It’s peaceful,” he said.

Cal nodded, frowned at the fire himself. He pictured the tractor and fields again. No more people problems. No more radio calls. Just him and his dog and a list of chores. And a wife, if she’d have him.

Ted leaned back on his saddlebag and sighed. “I’ve had my share of peace. Damn near a lifetime of peace.” Cal nodded in agreement, but then noticed something about the way Ted spoke the word peace, like it was a hair he spat from his mouth.

“You can get tangled in that much peace. Get caught up in keeping it going. And then one day you realize peace and quiet was never what you wanted.” Ted glanced at him, grinned, and turned back to the coals. “No, I don’t like farming. I never did. It bores the living hell out of me.”

Cal thought of his own work, his attempt to find himself in it, and how Houston had worn him so thin, just keeping on where his heart never was.

“But what did you want to do instead of farm?” Cal ventured. If the man had wisdom on how to live, or how not to, Cal would take it. He was lost in the woods.

Teddy leaned toward the coffee pot, pulled on a leather glove, and poured two cups. He handed one to Cal and leaned back on his saddlebag.

“When I was just out of high school, I worked for cash at a feed mill. I helped Dad on the farm.” Teddy sipped his coffee and nodded appreciatively. “When I turned nineteen, I took out a loan for nineteen hundred and seventy-eight dollars, plus tax, and bought a brand-new, chariot-red Oldsmobile 88 Rocket.” Ted blew on his coffee. “My old man was hot when I drove it up the driveway. Loans were for tractors and land, he said, not race coupes. My dad and I already knew we didn’t see eye to eye. I had slicked hair and a leather jacket back then like all the other idiots.”

Cal tried to not spit his coffee back in his cup. “You were a greaser, Ted?”

Ted smiled. “No, I wasn’t no damn greaser. I was just a kid. And I had a car.” He said the word in so different a way than he said the word peace, like it was rich food, dark coffee. “Gas was cheap. The car was fast. I can still feel that 88’s pedals, smell the motor, feel the way it crouched through corners. Sometimes I’d go driving alone, but most nights I’d have Becky with me—that’s Fischer’s grandma.” Teddy’s eyes narrowed in a mischievous grin. “She had long hair then too. This one night Becky and me got some bottles of beer and had it in our heads to drive to Chicago. She had her bare legs draped out that window, sipping beer, the big moon lit up over the coast of Lake Michigan. We didn’t stop until Navy Pier, and I remember sitting on that 88’s hot hood, watching stars drop in the water, Becky dancing on the beach, spinning and spinning. I can still see her, hear her even, howling at all them buildings and stars with her hair going round. Prettiest woman I ever seen in my life.”

Teddy took another swig of his coffee.

“A month or two later I was in Korea. After my tour, I came back to a baby girl, and my father’s loans, tractors and land, calving seasons. You asked what I wanted to do instead of farming.” He looked at Cal and then back at the coals. They glowed white. “That night I roared down the lake coast in too fast a car with too beautiful a woman. I can’t name it and ain’t gonna try. I suppose there was something