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

“Don’t tell me how to cut pine branches, Ted.”

“I ain’t. I’m just saying to be careful is all.”

“I know how to cut off pine branches, Ted,” said Cal, and as he said it, a particularly stubborn branch failed to sever, so Cal kicked it free and stomped it flat with his boot for good measure. He slashed and cut for the better part of an hour. They made decent progress. If they could push through it, they pushed through it. If they couldn’t, Cal cut it down. Both men were covered with welts and scratches. The sweat stung their necks. Every now and then, Cal had to stop to pull his sodden sock back onto his foot. It was rotten work, but at least a man with a machete had a way of fighting it out. To hell with pine. To hell with whiskey. Cal had a machete! What Cal didn’t know was that during the hour he was blowing off steam, Teddy was building it. Toward the end of his shift, when Cal was beginning to feel pretty emotionally stable again, pretty pleased with himself, he was startled by Ted’s enraged voice.

“Would you give over that damn chopper already!” Ted bellowed. Jacks, who had been walking at Teddy’s side, bolted into the underbrush.

Cal stood straight up. “Yeah,” he said, as calmly as a man rising from a chair. “I didn’t know you wanted it.”

Teddy strode forward and smeared bugs from his forehead, yanking the machete from Cal’s hand. His face was red and his lips were clenched. He didn’t stop walking when he grabbed the blade either. He just snatched the thing and bullied his way into the nearest tangle of pine, beating it to pieces.

Cal, who by now felt at peace with everything, empathized with Ted’s plight but couldn’t help himself from egging him on, seeing how hot the old man could get.

“Careful,” he called out. “Just be careful chopping there, Teddy.”

Ted was too angry to see the joke. He spun away from his work and shook the machete at Cal and the horses. “Don’t tell me what to do, Sheriff! Don’t you tell me how to cut trail!”

Cal stifled a smile and raised his hands in the air. Teddy turned and resumed his violence.

This pattern repeated itself a number of times, one man getting frustrated enough with the bugs and horses to steal back the hateful pleasures of the machete. Eventually, Cal knew, they’d cuss and beat their way out of this forest. And as they rode the ebb and tide of their anger, Cal couldn’t help thinking about their conversation that morning, the way he really did hate police work, the way Teddy hated his quiet life of farming. He felt that beating their way out of the forest was a continuation of that conversation, like something was being hashed out between each man and his life.

After several hours, Cal still felt the heat rising in him, but to be honest, it rose a little less. They’d made good progress, but they were also running out of steam. Cal looked forward to riding again. A breeze and passivity was what he craved now. The sky overhead was gray and framed on all sides by the spires of spruce and hemlock. Nothing but pine and drizzle and bugs and sky. Ted, it was clear now, was running on fumes. His slashes with the machete grew less adamant, halfhearted. Despite the mosquitoes, he removed his coat, and sweat and dirt stained his entire back. The neck of his shirt hung loose with rain. Eventually, he stopped and stood, stretched his back.

“Can you cut awhile?” he asked, breathing through pursed lips.

“Sure,” Cal said, dropping the reins. He wasn’t angry enough to attack the forest, but he’d do it. They weren’t fighting anymore. They were searching again. Keeping on. Finding the boys.

“Want some water?” Cal extended his canteen out to Ted.

Ted nodded, exhaled. He dumped some of the cool water on his neck, rubbed the dirt and bug bites. Then he lifted the canteen skyward and drank, his eyes closed.

Cal’s eyes followed the mist upward. He hadn’t immediately realized that there was something different about the forest’s canopy ahead of them, about twenty yards off, a new kind of green rising among the spires of the pines.

“Ted,” Cal said.

Teddy kept drinking noisily before lowering the canteen and wiping his mouth with his arm. He capped it and panted, looked at Cal.

Cal nodded up at the treetops, grinning, the broad-leafed canopy dangling over what was no doubt much more open ground.

Ted saw it and nodded, nearly too winded to smile. He stretched his back. “Hardwoods,” he said.

As the men mounted and rode out of the pine into open, moving air, Cal looked back at the path they’d carved, the cut and snapped branches, the carpet of needles and mud. It felt good to look at it. It felt like clarity. Cal wiped the welts on his neck and spurred his horse forward.

Fifteen

“AND WE ARE NOT QUITTING,” SAID BREAD. “NOW GET UP!”

Fish didn’t move. He lay on his stomach on the giant sandbar. The sand beneath him was saturated in rain and leaf litter. River water dripped from his clothes. Falling rain soaked him. After the worst of the storm, the rain didn’t quit. It fell and fell, windless now, but heavy, the occasional rumble of thunder encircling their ruin. Fish’s stomach growled. His head ached. He lowered his forehead to the cool sand. It felt fine there, just being still. This is how it ends for beavers, hungry and dying on the sand, as wet and quiet as driftwood. The storm had ruined them.

Bread glared, his hair plastered against his forehead. He had welts on his face and hands from the hailstones. Water dripped from his nose. He blew it away and started pacing, kicked sand at the river. Beyond him, closer to the vast expanse of cattails, lay the pieces that were left of the raft.