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

moved him up to a .22 rimfire, then a .410 shotgun. By the end of that first summer, Fish was helping his grandfather sight-in the aught-six for deer season. The recoil of the aught-six was incredible, as was the report and muzzle flash. When his grandpa shot it, Fish felt it in his shoes and lungs. Fish remembered shouldering the rifle for the first time, placing his grandpa’s folded Army cap over its buttstock for extra padding, then sliding the bolt forward to chamber the largest brass cartridge he’d ever handled. It scared him, but it was his first summer with his grandpa. Fish hadn’t spent a great deal of time with the man prior to that and wanted dearly to please him. Fish made one good shot with the aught-six. It hurt his shoulder, but not badly enough to make him stop. He chambered another round, aimed, grimaced, and the second shot missed the target completely. After the third miss, his grandpa moved him back down to the .243. “No sense in developing a flinch,” he said. They’d work back up to the aught-six, his grandpa assured him, and then slapped him on the back and smiled a bit, his eyes shining in the bright fall field.

The three of them rode to the fields in the cab of Grandpa’s truck. Fish would do the shooting. Bread was in charge of running the spotlight. They drove back along a drainage ditch. The stars were clouded over to the west, a bank of clouds closed in on the moon. As Bread swept the spotlight along the edge of the woods, there came into focus a field of stars, the reflective eyes of a pack of coyotes. “All right,” his grandpa said, putting the truck in park. “Fischer, get as many as you can.”

It was the first time Fish had ever placed crosshairs on a live animal, unless he counted the roosting pigeons he shot with the pellet gun in the granary. But that was different. These coyotes had thoughtful eyes, full and alive and knowing. The rifle rested on the open window of the truck. Fish knew where to shoot at a coyote, or a deer for that matter, just behind the front shoulder where the lungs were, where the heart was. Fish could hear Bread breathing next to him in the cab, holding the light out over his shoulder.

“Easy, Fischer,” his grandpa said. “No different than targets.”

Fish nestled his cheek against the smooth stock and took aim. The coyotes stood with stiff tails and alert ears, what looked to be twenty of them, smallish dogs staring into the light. Fish placed the crosshairs behind the shoulder of one of the larger ones. He felt a pang of pity, but then he remembered the calf, mud-strewn and torn. There were tipping points. Things had tipped. Poor damn things. Fish rested his finger against the trigger. He exhaled and squeezed. Boom and flash filled the truck cab. Instinctively, just as he’d been taught, Fish drew the bolt back and chambered another round as his eyes readjusted. He looked through the scope. One coyote lay dead, and the others had repositioned themselves, some nervously circling their fallen chief, some looking back into the light. Fish felt a surge of fear and triumph course through his body. His pulse and breathing quickened. He placed his finger against the trigger again.

“Steady,” whispered his grandpa.

Fish tightened his lips in the darkness. He had killed his first coyote. And now he was going to kill another. He thought again of the calf. Slowly. Smoothly. Exhale. Another round. The coyotes fell like cordwood. They didn’t run. They just stood, circled each other. By the time Fish had finished, the sun was nearly rising. Grandpa took them back to the house and put on coffee and set three mugs on the counter. Bread and Fish sat at the table, feeling as if they’d crossed over into some new threshold of life. They had. They sat and tried not to grin as they sipped black coffee, which was awful, while they listened to Grandpa tell them how they could skin out the coyotes after breakfast and sell the pelts for cash. “But first let me make you men some toast,” he said.

But that was then. Now, panic was in the stars. They had crossed about fifty yards of Blind Burt Akinson’s fields. They just had to run. They had to stay off the roads, keep away from headlights, and people, and the stars, and the sheriff. Without thinking about it, the boys ran instinctively toward Fish’s grandpa. He, of all men, could sort out this kind of thing. The web of Fish’s hand still hurt from the recoil of Bread’s old man’s revolver, which Bread now carried in a cloth sack next to his handlebars. The boys once examined it in a lilac hedge when Bread’s dad was passed out in a lawn chair. It was a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, a massive handgun, the same kind Dirty Harry used. Bread pointed it out of the lilacs at a calico cat on a fence post and asked the cat in a gravelly voice how lucky it felt. The cat licked itself. The boys chuckled. The revolver’s thick, blunt-nosed bullets were the size of color crayons. It was a pistol used out west for protection from bears, and it was Bread’s old man’s constant companion. His dad didn’t carry it holstered to his belt. He carried it around the house and shop in his hand like a heavy wrench and set it wherever he planned on being for the next hour or so. It was lying on the kitchen counter when Fish burst through the door this evening.

Fish had no plan when he turned back to Bread’s house, only bravery, but was met in the kitchen with the sight of Bread’s dad twisting up the collar of Bread’s shirt in his fist. Fish froze when the door banged shut behind