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

The boys were still on board when the raft broke up in the storm, spinning and tilting, water washing up on the deck, the boys shielding their faces from the wind and noise. Fish had never seen a storm like that. Wrath was real. Bread had been wrong about God not doing anything. He could do something, all right. And it made Fish lie down on the sand to die. The image of the raft spinning and reeling beneath that terrible funnel cloud played again and again in Fish’s mind. It felt like judgment, and it didn’t matter if they were strong or good. They were fatherless. They were lost.

When the storm came, the raft drifted into a part of the river that was wide and flat. Sandbars and cattails reached out into the channel. And then the rain got heavier. And then came wind and hail. And when the boys picked up their poles to try to push their way into the cattails, the hail and lightning became so fierce they were forced to take cover in their flannels and wait. Blind to the storm, Fish thought the wind sounded very much like a train, distant at first, and then rumbling up from downstream. He’d heard of a storm sounding like a train. The hum became feverish, whistling on its tracks until it shook the river in ways wind shouldn’t be able to.

He and Bread clutched the ropes holding the deck together. The first thing to give was the wicker railing. The branches and skulls rattled and splashed, and then they stopped splashing. They tore off and flew, coyote skulls and deer skulls lifting off into the green and black. And when the ropes securing the A-frame broke, they snapped so sharply Fish thought the raft was lightning struck. He tore back his flannel hood and looked up just in time to see the cedar logs lift into the air, unfolding like the hind legs of a giant locust. After the legs tore away, the ribs broke. It wasn’t until he was neck-deep in water, holding on to a cedar log under each armpit, that he realized the deck had broken apart. He was too stunned by the sight he saw in that strobe of lightning. There on the riverbank—he could have thrown a stone to it—stood the heart of the storm, churning and booming, the engine itself. Lightning flashed white and black. The thundercloud had an arm. It was black and dangling. And that arm reached down to the earth and did violence to it, searched the ground for whatever it was it wanted. In the space of two or three flashes of lightning, Fish watched the arm grab hold of a grove of cedar trees. As easily as a hand pulling weeds, the funnel cloud twisted them in a knot and tore them free. The arm whipped itself farther inland and made a crackling knot of a stand of pines. Lightning flashed again. Fish closed his eyes and clutched his logs. Hail beat his face. Somewhere in all of that light and darkness and noise he heard Bread’s yell. Fish! Fish! Fish! But Fish felt too choked by the storm and river to answer. There seemed so little air in all that wind. He just held to his logs until the funnel cloud broke apart, dropped its debris, and he felt river bottom with his toes. He let himself down from his logs, parted the stew of broken cattails, and fell upon the shore.

Now lying on the sandbar was all there was left to do.

Bread came back from kicking sand.

“You’re a liar, Fish, for everything you’ve ever said,” Bread shouted, and it stung worse than Fish’s welts. Bread seemed switched on. He paced and spat, wrung out the sleeves of his shirt. “If you weren’t all I got, I’d leave you here for the coyotes! But you are all I got, and I’m gonna fix this dang raft and drag you on it, and we are going to make it to that armory! Now give me that barlow knife.”

Fish winced when Bread mentioned the armory. Liar, he thought. I am a liar. I am not good. There was nothing for them at the armory. Fish opened his mouth to confess, and he knew that when he did the destruction would be like that storm, his tongue a hand reaching down to wring life from the earth. It would wreck the past. It would wreck the future. Bread would abandon him, stalk off into the woods. But Bread had to know. It was too cruel to let him hope anymore. They were not warriors. They were not beavers. They would never become tankers like Fish’s dad, because Fish’s dad was dead. There was nowhere left to go. They were without food. The river claimed all their gear except what they carried in their pockets or belts. They were finished.

“Bread, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Bread.

Fish lifted his head from the sand, his mouth open.

“I said shut up, Fish!” Anger flashed in Bread’s eyes, righteous anger, and yet there was kindness in it somehow. “The knife!” Bread yelled. “Give it over so I can do what you won’t!”

Fish caved. Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn’t have the courage to tell Bread the truth. Fish was too much of a coward to face any more wrath today. His throat clamped shut. He’d just lie there and die. Hide and wait, cling to the sand. He reached into his wet pocket and pulled out the barlow. Bread snatched it away. The revolver still sat in his belt. Bread adjusted it, shook his head at the sand, and walked back toward the remains of the raft.

Fish let his head hit the sand and stared out at the river. The storm had blown the raft into a side channel, and the slower water was littered with cattails and branches, tufts of grass, peppered with raindrops. Mats of pine needles