Raft of Stars

by Andrew J. Graff

  Cal traced the expanse of forest on the map. If he had just killed a man and—God forbid it—kidnapped two boys, that great erasure of forest is where he would head. Cal shuddered at the thought of those boys bouncing around in the back of a truck on one of those awful logging roads, nothing but the scrape of tree limbs, the glow of brake lights. If the boys were out there, it would be hell to find them. Cal looked hopefully to the south of Claypot. Teddy said his daughter, Fischer’s mom, lived in Cedar, one of the farming towns thirty miles south where the cornfields didn’t have a cedar left in them. If the boys were on their own, if they were just scared and running, maybe they would be headed that way. But then why wouldn’t they have run here, to Teddy’s place?

  “Sheriff,” said Teddy.

  Cal answered him but didn’t look up. It wouldn’t be any easier finding the boys if they’d taken off to the south. An eighty-acre cornfield could be just as disorienting as any cedar swamp. And who knows if those boys would stay on the roads or even near them. Kids could take off when they were afraid. Cal had seen it happen. They could run in circles. In the academy in Texas, Cal once assisted a search for a lost child that lasted two rain-soaked days and covered five ranches. The child was found, safe but cold, wrinkled as a prune, hunkered beneath a willow tree less than five hundred yards from his own front door. The child hadn’t answered anyone’s call. He just hid. Cal decided he would have Bobby continually check both properties, Ted’s and Breadwin’s, in case the thing resolved itself in such a way.

  “Sheriff,” Teddy said again.

  Cal looked up.

  “I know where them mugs went.”

  Cal tried not to reveal his certainty that Teddy was losing his grasp. Teddy stood in the corner of the kitchen, holding a sheet of notepaper in his hands.

  Cal forced a smile and looked back at his map. “That’s real good, Ted.” This confirmed his decision to exclude Ted from the search. It wasn’t just fire, it was confusion. He’d give the old man something to do at home to keep him occupied, something important-sounding, like manning an old radio.

  “They’re in the forest.”

  Cal looked up again, concealing nothing this time.

  “Your mugs are in the forest?”

  Ted held up the piece of paper he found. There was writing on it.

  “The boys left a note. They stopped here for supplies. They’re headed north through the forest, to the armory.”

  Cal stood straight up. “To Ironsford?”

  Teddy nodded. “It’s where Fish’s dad served.”

  Cal swallowed, looked at the floor. The thought of two boys trying to cross ninety miles of woods was unthinkable. It made Cal nervous, and the search just got a whole lot worse. Gone was any hope of cornfields or sidewalks or civilization.

  “I know where they’ll go first,” Teddy said. “There’s a path they frequent that goes as far as the river. After that, we’ll need horses. I got horses.”

  Ted was back in the plan. He had to be. If Teddy knew how to get to those boys before they got too deep into the forest, Cal was all for it. There are bad things in those woods, both two- and four-legged. Cal felt like cussing, despite his relief.

  “At least this means they’re on their own, that they haven’t been—taken.” Cal paused on the word. “But they must have seen something, seen who it was shot Breadwin.”

  Teddy shook his head, his mouth tight in disagreement.

  “What?”

  “There’s more,” said Teddy. He stopped and held out the note for Cal to read. Cal stepped forward to take it. Teddy’s eyes glistened in the dim kitchen light.

  Cal straightened the wrinkled note, began reading aloud: “Fish had me put this note on your fridge to tell you we are running away.” He stopped and skimmed the rest and pushed his lips together, swallowed.

  When he looked up, Teddy’s eyes were red-rimmed and wet, but then a different sort of question rose in his expression. Ted held his nose in the air a bit, as if he’d smelled something. Cal had forgotten about the whiskey in his stomach and stepped immediately back across the kitchen.

  “This is all right, Teddy,” he said. “This is okay. We know where they are and where they’re headed.”

  “There’s more to it,” said Teddy, and Cal heard the deep reluctance in the words.

  Cal waited. Looked at him. The question was gone from Teddy’s face. There were more important things to worry about than why the young sheriff has whiskey on his breath. Maybe Teddy hadn’t smelled it at all.

  Teddy closed his eyes as he spoke. “The note says they’re off to meet Fish’s dad at the armory.”

  “Makes sense. It’s a person to run toward.”

  Teddy shook his head. He took off his cap and wiped back his gray hair.

  “Fish’s father is dead.” The kitchen fell silent. “It’s why Fischer’s mom sends him up here to stay with me during summers.”

  “But the note says—”

  “Bread wrote the note.” There was impatience in Teddy’s voice now. “Fischer must never have told him the truth.”

  Cal stared at the note. Something turned deep in his gut, a memory of some old familiar sensation.

  “Those boys,” Teddy spoke slowly, “are running through the woods toward something that ain’t there.” He took a rattling breath.

  Cal folded his map. “I’ll be back here at dawn, Ted. I’m gonna wake up Bobby. Be ready to leave.”

  Teddy remained slumped back against the kitchen counter. He stared at the floor.

  “Teddy, you all right for this? You don’t have to come.” Few locals knew the woods better than Teddy Branson—except maybe Burt Akinson, who was not Cal’s first choice of guides—but he also didn’t want to drag a man into a search if he wasn’t clear-headed.

  Teddy stood up straight, pulled his cap down tightly on his head. He took a breath. “Can you ride a horse, Sheriff?”

  “I was planning on taking my truck.”

  Teddy shook his head. “The boys are on foot. We will be too. I’ll saddle my mare for you. All roads end at that river.”

  As the door closed behind him, Cal cussed under his breath. In his truck he took out his whiskey bottle, held it almost to his lips, and then he cussed at it and capped it and drove away.

  CAL WALKED UP THE STEPS OF A SMALL GREEN HOUSE NORTH OF Claypot and looked for a doorbell in the starlight. Jacks stood by his side, sniffing the concrete steps. Weeds grew up alongside the porch, but so did lilies and some kind of good-smelling shrub that pricked his finger when he touched it. Cal straightened his vest, quietly cleared his throat. He had almost knocked on this door once before, or at least planned to, but he never made it up the porch steps, never got out of his car in fact. But now necessity brought him here, at four in the morning. Jacks needed a place to stay. He and Teddy would be traveling on horseback, and Cal had seen how fast horses ran in the Westerns, and he didn’t like the thought of Jacks bursting his heart trying to keep up. Cal cleared his throat again. The sky to the east was beginning to color. Cal rapped his knuckles on the aluminum screen door, gently at first, then a bit louder. He looked out at the yard. His truck sat idling in the driveway next to a cherry-red Ford Fiesta with a dent in its front quarter panel, the car usually parked outside the Sit & Go gas station. Cal turned to knock again, but as he did, a porch light blinded him.

  “I’ll call the cops!” threatened a woman’s voice from within. The sheriff couldn’t see through the screen into the dark house. Jacks barked and growled. Cal held his hands up.

  “Tiff?” he said.

  “Sheriff Cal?”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence came from within.

  Cal shifted his weight on his feet, squinted his eyes. “Tiff, you ain’t pointing a gun at me, are you?”

  A light came on inside, and Tiffany Robins appeared. She carried a baseball bat in her hand and wore a T-shirt that came down about midthigh. She leaned the bat against the wall and tucked her hair behind her ears, unlocked the
screen door.

  “Sheriff,” she said sleepily. “Hey.”

  Cal lowered his hands. Jacks grumbled, but Cal reached down and smoothed the fur on his back. “Relax, boy.”

  “Sorry for the bat,” she said.

  Cal wagged his chin. “Sorry for waking you up.”

  The two stood on the porch for a moment, and Cal actually forgot what he came to say. Tiffany was pretty, there was no denying it. Cal always thought so. And she looked even prettier now, half asleep. Her legs flowed out of her shirt toward smooth bare feet. Cal didn’t know where to look at her. He tried her eyes, but the sleepiness in them felt somehow as intimate as her legs. He nearly turned to walk away.

  “You want some coffee?” she asked.

  “No, Tiff, I didn’t want to bother you. I just—”

  “Come in,” she said, already turning inside, her voice waking up. “It’s cold. Your dog can come. Come in. Give me a sec.” She turned on the kitchen light and then disappeared into a darkened hallway. Cal stepped into the kitchen, took off his hat. There was a Formica table with two chrome-legged chairs in the center of the room. He wasn’t asked to sit down, so he didn’t, but he placed his hat on the table next to a few bills and a pen or two. He looked closer and saw writing on all the papers, just words, rhyming words, lines scribbled out. Silver furred, musk and haunch. And on an unopened utility bill: She is den born, moon born, speed and fire and bristle. Cal rubbed his eyes and face. He was in need of a shave. He must have looked like an absolute fool out there on the porch, barely able to speak. He shook his head. Useless. It gave him the same sensation he’d felt in Teddy’s kitchen when Teddy mentioned Fischer’s sustained lie about his dad. Cal didn’t think he had to think about that anymore. He blew the thought away. He would leave if he wasn’t already standing in the kitchen. Jacks sniffed at something under the table, found a spot to lie down.

  A thud came from the darkened hallway. Then Cal heard what sounded like coat hangers being pushed rapidly aside. A muffled Dang it came from within.

  The sheriff opened his mouth to ask if she was okay, but closed it again. A coffee pot sat on the counter. He knew Tiffany well enough to know she wouldn’t let him leave without making him a cup. Maybe he could help things along. “Tiff,” he called out, “you want me to start the coffee?”

  More drawers, and now a running sink. “What’s that, Sheriff?” she called out.

  “The coffee, do you want me to make it?”

  He couldn’t be sure, but Cal thought he heard a blow-dryer come briefly to life.

  “Just a sec,” she called back.

  The sheriff decided to sit down on one of the chairs, just in time to stand up again. Jacks stood and barked. Tiffany appeared wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and a gray V-neck sweater. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her purple bangs framed her eyes. Because of his frequent coffee stops at the Sit & Go, she was the closest thing he had to a friend in town. Being a sheriff was kind of like being a pastor or a doctor. One gets to know the most intimate things without ever really becoming close to anybody. There was something uncomfortably paternal about it all. Cal couldn’t have real conversations with most of the people he knew, let alone ask one out on a date. He once drove thirty miles, from his cabin to Claypot, to ask Tiffany out, offer to take her to see Jurassic Park, which people said was pretty great. That’s how he’d planned to say it, People say it’s pretty great, the dinosaurs, and I was wondering if, but he couldn’t get the thing right in his mouth. When he got there, he drove right past her house. He didn’t even tap the brake. She wouldn’t be interested, and he’d be a fool. People would get the wrong idea if she said yes. A sheriff needed to remain aloof. He thought he would have learned that by now, given what had happened back home. Home. Texas. Why was he here in this awful North?

  “Tiff, I really don’t have much time. Me and Ted, we—”

  She smiled at him as he spoke, and turned to the cupboard to make some coffee. Cal caught a glimpse of a pack of spaghetti noodles and a bag of rice. There were two cans of soup, one of peaches, a jar of olives. It reminded Cal of camping food, the sort of thing that can be opened and heated. It reminded him of his own cooking. Beyond the few canned items, the cupboards were empty. There was fruit on the counter, a loaf of bread. Tiffany moved quickly with her back to him, scooping coffee as he told her why he’d come. He explained about the boys, and how he and Teddy were headed after them. “Into the woods,” he said. Her spoon paused only once, when he mentioned the shooting, and then Cal paused too when he remembered the sight of Jack Breadwin in that kitchen. He stopped talking, his thoughts turning to the forest, the enormity of it, the task at hand. Tiffany wrung a kitchen rag beneath the faucet and wiped the counter clean, twice. The coffee pot sputtered and finished brewing. The kitchen felt warm, with the pot of coffee full and black. He looked at her back, her waist, the belt loops of her jeans. He couldn’t help imagining coming home to her and embracing her waist, smelling her, saying hello, a woman smiling back at him. He forced his eyes to the floor.

  “Tiff, I just stopped by to ask if you would please watch my dog.”

  Tiffany nodded and began pouring two mugs of coffee. Cal stood and took a step toward her to receive one. Without hearing him, Tiffany turned flat up against him, nearly spilling the coffee held up between their faces. She was shorter than he was, but not by much. Cal forgot himself. Tiffany smelled like flowers, or candy. Cal couldn’t put his finger on it. She had a beautiful face. Cal swallowed and took the dripping mugs by their rims and set them on the table.

  “So, can you watch him, then?” Cal asked, the words dry in his mouth as he wiped a small spill with his sleeve.

  “Sure,” she said. “Cal?”

  He looked at her.

  She looked at him, and then shook her head.

  “It’s good to have you over,” she said. “I’ll take good care of your dog.”

  Cal thanked her and told Jacks to stay and walked to the door. The light outside was purple now. Soon it’d be pink, and the sun would rise above the brown fields surrounding Claypot. Cal felt Tiffany’s hand inside his elbow. She handed him a mug.

  “Take it with you,” she said. “Do good.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and smiled at her. “And thanks for the coffee.” He walked down the steps and called back from his truck, “And thanks for watching Jacks!” She grinned and waved at him, crossed her arms over her chest, and then she stooped to snatch Jacks’ collar to keep him inside.

  As Cal drove back to Teddy’s, he found his mind still in that small kitchen. The smell of coffee, the smell of a woman, and then it came to him. Lavender. Tiffany Robins smells like lavender. He smiled at the pink light over the fields and woods. Drove with his hands loose on the wheel. He rubbed his eyes and face and cursed himself, sat upright in his cab. He was sheriff again. Two scared boys about to lose themselves in a forest were having a very bad time.

  “Sit tight, fellas,” Cal said, pushing the wheel through a gravel turn. “Don’t run.”

  Six

  “THIS IS KIND OF A GOOD TIME!” SAID BREAD. HE AND FISH knelt in the morning sun next to the riverbank with their supplies laid out on a tarp. The dew on the grass soaked the knees of Fish’s jeans, but it didn’t bother him. It couldn’t. They’d need to get used to discomforts from here on out—the damp and dirt, maybe hunger too—they were in the wild. It surprised Fish how unshaken Bread seemed this morning after what happened the night before. But then, Fish felt less shaken too. Here they were at their favorite spot on the river, a whole mess of bushcrafting supplies before them, and they were going to build a raft and name it and take it downriver with poles. The water slid between islands and toppled over boulders. A finch sat in a tree and watched, cocked its small eye toward the boys. Yesterday was a dream. Today was a good time. They could do this.

  “Okay,” said Fish, “which of us is going to carry the barlow?”

  Bread pursed his lips and studied the pocketknife. In their rush to
leave last night, their gear became what Fish’s grandpa would have called lopsided. First on the agenda this morning, after waking amid boulders and stumbling to the river to pee in the rapids, was fixing that lopsidedness. It’s something Fish’s grandpa used to do when he took him hunting or fishing in these forests. When one of them lost too many lures or ate up his reserves of jerky, his grandpa would take a break on a stump somewhere and lay his vest and pack on the ground. Last thing you want in the bush, he’d say, pushing back the brim of his green cap, is lopsided supplies. Fish enjoyed the process. It meant a break from hiking. It meant he could take the brass cartridges out of his rifle, count them, and put them back in again. It usually meant he’d get more of his grandpa’s jerky. It’s poor form, his grandpa explained, for one guy to have all of one thing and the other to have all of another thing. If one guy has all the jerky and loses his pack, then nobody has any jerky. Gotta divvy it up, and re-divvy it. Same with lures and matches and shot shells. How many you got left?

  The boys had already divided the matches. They each had ten, and even tore the striker in half to share it. They each had two fishing lures, red and white bobbers, collapsible poles, two Slim Jims, one can of Bumble Bee tuna, two mugs, and half a pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco. They didn’t want to tear the tobacco pouch and ruin its seal, so Fish took a moist handful of the sticky black leaves, packed it like a snowball, and put it in the chest pocket of his flannel shirt. All that remained on the tarp were two Ninja Turtles—Donatello and Michelangelo, and Fish already knew Donatello belonged to Bread—the barlow knife and sharpening stone, a thumb-sized piece of flint, and the revolver with five rounds in it.

  “I think you should carry the barlow knife,” said Bread. “You know how to sharpen it better than me.”