The sight of the Breadwin boy firing that revolver played again in Cal’s mind—the ferocity in his eyes when he touched that thing off, the surprise when the recoil knocked him back. Cal knew the boy didn’t fire at him. It was a warning shot, plain and simple. And Cal took the warning. The boys were scared and running, and Cal wasn’t going to push that fear to a more dangerous level. He thought it best to back off, to regroup, to follow them from a distance until he knew what to do. In hindsight, Cal cursed himself for chasing them into the river like that. He should have stood onshore, reassured them, told them it was okay, told them he knew they were the good guys in all of this. Cal now questioned whether it was Teddy’s grandson who had shot Jack Breadwin after all, even if that was what the note said. The Breadwin boy looked bold enough, but Teddy’s grandson just looked scared. Cal stared right into that boy’s eyes. Poor kid. Cal wanted so badly to scoop those boys up and get them into the warm cab of a pickup, get a meal in their bellies, some burgers and fries and Cokes. It was wrong for boys to be out in the wild like this, running like criminals. In this case it was clear they were the victims. There was no doubt in his mind that Jack Breadwin, lying in a morgue somewhere, deserved exactly what he got. Cal remembered something his old police chief once said about men who hurt children, how it’d be better for them to have millstones hung around their necks and be cast into the sea. Well, Jack Breadwin would know, wouldn’t he. Poor Jack, too.
Cal couldn’t tell anymore who deserved what. Some people in town said Jack wasn’t always so much of a bastard. They said that before his wife died in a wreck, leaving him alone with a crying nine-month-old and a floundering business, that Jack may have been a screw-up but he wasn’t mean. They said he liked duck hunting in that boat of his, that he knew the river and marshes better than anybody. They said he was a fun sort of drunk, played a lot of softball. And then his wife died in the fall, and winter came, and Jack never really came out of it.
Cal looked at the pathetic, tangled pile of tinder. Cursed it. He should have gotten involved in that Breadwin kid’s life. He knew what Jack was like. But he couldn’t get involved. Cops respond to the calls. Fill out the papers. That’s how it worked.
Cal rebuilt the tinder pile as neatly as he could.
“Well,” he said to Jacks, “to hell with this job.”
He smiled to think of the Breadwin boy shooting that revolver into the air. He was proud of him in an odd sort of way. What a little man. He’ll really be something when he’s grown. Both those boys will, out here building rafts, fending off sheriffs. Damn. Cal was glad the boys had each other. It’s good to run in a pack. In Houston, Cal had a few guys in the department he could gripe to, drink beer with, but in the end they were all in it alone. They were too grown up, too busy. Every guy had his own shift, his own family, his own bills to pay. Boyhood was better. Cal remembered what it was like. Riding bikes. Building jumps. Playing outside until the dark came and the grass got cold.
“Worthless,” Cal said.
Jacks rested his chin on his paws. The dog had grown bored. The horse whinnied.
“I wasn’t talking to you, horse,” said Cal.
Cal assembled the tinder a final time. This was it. All or nothing. It was beans or tuna, but either way it was time for supper and sleep. His plan was to get after the boys in the morning. The woods were too thick to move through with any speed at nighttime. And he didn’t want to spook the boys into moving any faster than they already were. He knew where they were. They were on the river. And even if they started off onshore again, Cal would see their raft moored to the bank. It was only a matter of time. And this time he’d have a plan in place to bring them peacefully in. He’d just talk to them, tell them they were good, drop his badge in the water, tell them—and himself—he wasn’t sheriff anymore.
Cal positioned the rod, positioned the steel, and forcefully struck a spray of sparks that made Jacks lift his head from his paws. When the sparks died out, the tinder and tepee lay scattered on the ground. Cal dropped the rod and steel next to the pile. He thought about trying it one more time, but then again, he could do this all night, knocking over tinder piles.
He was about to stand up when a voice filled the darkness.
“You ain’t gonna get it started like that,” it said.
Cal spun so fast he fell back onto the twigs and tinder. His bruised tailbone shot pain through his spine. Jacks was on his feet, barking fiercely at a shadow standing several yards away in the moonlight. The man was tall. He held the reins of a horse.
“Who’s there?” Cal said. On his feet, he reached for his pistol, then remembered he’d lost it. He couldn’t find his flashlight, so he just balled up his fists, pathetic.
“It’s just me.” The figure took a few steps closer, which made Jacks bark even more. The figure stopped. Jacks wasn’t a big dog, but he could still bark in a way that made a person think twice.
Something calmed in Cal’s gut. He recognized the voice.
“Teddy? That you?” Cal reached down to calm his dog. He felt hackles raised on Jacks’ back and smoothed them with his hand.
“It’s me.”
“How long you been standing there?” Cal felt his face flush with shame. He turned to his dog, doubting the faith he placed in the animal’s eyes and ears. “Where were you on that one, buddy?” he whispered.
“I’ve come to turn myself in,” Teddy said.
Cal remembered how he tried to arrest Teddy when he’d walked his horse up that creek bed. He felt embarrassed now, partly because he’d tried to do such a foolish thing, but mostly because it didn’t work. There wasn’t much in the world more pathetic than a sheriff who couldn’t arrest a man.
“Well,” said Cal. Jacks grumbled, still unsure of the man in the shadows. Cal rubbed the back of his neck, then said the thing he’d been thinking through since his swim in the rapids. “I ain’t a sheriff anymore, Teddy, so that arrest doesn’t count.”
“Since when?”
“Since last night, and today mostly.”
Teddy tied his horse to a tree limb and walked to where the other horse was tied. He ran his hand along the animal’s neck.
“You brought my horse.”
Cal felt suddenly like a boy waiting for praise from a father, or a good grade from a teacher. There was an authority about Teddy that made a person want to please him. Teddy should be sheriff. He knew the county. He was tough. People liked him. Cal could paint houses for a living. He’d be good at painting houses. Fill all the cracks, dream about Tiffany.
Teddy turned back toward the failed fire. “Thank you,” he said.
Cal nodded.
“I’m sorry I walked off,” Teddy said. “I mean it when I say that if I’m under arrest, you can arrest me.”
“And I mean it when I say I’m not sheriff anymore.” Jacks left Cal’s side and crept up to sniff Teddy’s boots. When Teddy reached down to pet him, Jacks wagged his tail.
“Well, you still got your badge on.”
Cal looked down at his vest. The silver star held the moonlight in its crevices and crest. That star had become like a wallet or a watch. He could forget about its presence but felt unclothed without it. It made life different for a person, wearing such a thing. Cal reached up to pluck it off.
“How’d you get your dog?”
Cal fiddled with the pin clasp, but his hands were cold.
“He showed up last night.” Cal spoke into the sheriff’s star like a microphone, prying at it. “Found me washed up after I swam the rapids,” he said.
“Swam the rapids?” asked Teddy, mirth in his voice.
Cal gave up on the star for the moment. He was hungry. He was dead tired. He could deal with only so much right now. “Yes, Teddy, after I was abandoned by my guide in this black woods—which I’m getting used to, by the way—I was clipped from that mare of yours by a pine tree, crushed my tailbone, lost my boot, got dragged along a river bottom, lost my gun, and been shot at by a boy. I been pretty busy, if
you care to know!”
Teddy had been trying not to laugh, but at the mention of the boys, his head snapped up in the moonlight.
“You seen the boys?” he asked. There was that urgency in his voice again. “Where? When?”
“They’re in the river. They built a raft. I almost had ’em.”
“They shot at you? That was them? I heard the shot. I portaged at the islands.”
“They didn’t shoot at me, exactly. The Breadwin boy touched one off when I got too close.” Cal looked at Teddy’s dry clothes. “And that’s some great portage by the way. It’s a real treat to cross without a guide.”
Teddy looked at the ground and rubbed his chin. “Sheriff, how long ago did those boys put in with the raft?”
“I don’t know, Teddy.”
“How long!”
“Couple hours, maybe? Sunset. Why?”
Ted moved immediately toward his horse.
“We’ve got to move,” he said. “We can catch them by tomorrow if we move.” Ted was lifting a foot into the stirrup when the sheriff stopped him.
“Teddy, I know you want to get after them. I do too. But racing off is not the way to do it.”
Teddy pulled himself up into his saddle.
“Teddy, do not get all cowboy again! You chase them and they’re going to run even faster. There’s only one river. We know where they are.”
Teddy ignored him and fastened something on his saddlebag, turned his horse to point downstream.
“Teddy! I will arrest you again if I have to!”
Jacks barked.
Ted moved the reins in his hands. “You don’t understand, Sheriff.”
“Yes I do. Everything in me wants them back too. But thrashing through the woods at night is only going to keep that from happening. I’m with you, Ted. I’m all in. But we gotta do this calm, and in daylight.”
Teddy stopped his horse from moving side to side. “Sheriff, I hear you, and I thank you for it. But there are things you don’t know about this river.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know about this river.”
“Sheriff, there are rapids.”
“I swam the rapids.”
Teddy shook his head and said, “What you swam ain’t rapids, Sheriff.”
“What do you mean?”
“How fast do you think the water’s flowing?”
Cal opened his hands in frustration. He was at a loss.
“That’s a real important question right now, Sheriff. How fast?”
Cal gave up. He’d have to get used to it when he quit police work, he reminded himself. “I don’t know. Water’s high. Maybe two, three miles per hour.”
Teddy nodded. “Let’s go with three to be safe.”
“Ted, you gotta let me know what you’re thinking.”
“Less than one hundred miles north of here, the river drops through the Ironsford Gorge. I know a hundred miles sounds like a long ways off, but if they drift the whole time—”
“How bad’s the gorge?” Cal asked. He knew it existed, but he’d never seen it. Most of the land belonged to the National Guard armory. They used it for training. Trespassing teenagers used it for beer parties.
“It’s a half mile of river canyon that drops a quarter mile in that same length. It’s all ledge rock and falls. I don’t think the boys know it’s there. If they go in, they die.”
Cal tapped his fingers together. “If they drift, we have about thirty hours.”
Teddy nodded. “We gotta move.”
Cal looked reluctantly at his mare. He cringed to think of placing his tailbone back in that saddle, his socked foot in the stirrup. The horse eyed him in the moonlight, hateful.
“We’ll be moving slower than they will at first,” said Teddy, “but we can make up time in the daylight. We don’t stop.”
Cal stepped over his attempted fire. He was thankful, at least, to leave that failure behind. “Lead on,” he said.
Twelve
FISH STIRRED TO THE SOUND OF BIRDS. THE FIRST THING HE SAW when he opened his eyes was the limb of a birch tree, moving overhead through a purple sky. In its branches, finches and chickadees preened their feathers and flitted and sang. Fish blinked and took a deep breath and smelled river, and then heard it lapping against the logs of the raft. He sat up from the wet pile of rope where he’d slept. He was chilled, damp.
“Hey,” whispered Bread.
Bread sat cross-legged near the edge of the raft, just aft of the wicker railing. He was turning something small and metallic over in his hands, looking out at the riverbank where the white trunks of birch trees reached over the water from hedges of cedar. River grass and cattails drifted past. The river was narrow here, maybe thirty yards at its widest. Fish closed his eyes and stretched his arms overhead, wrapped his flannel more tightly around himself, and walked tentatively to where Bread sat. Fish bounced his weight on the edge of the raft once or twice. It was a stable craft.
“I’m surprised the raft didn’t get hung up during the night,” Fish said.
“It did,” said Bread. “I pushed us off a sandbar a while ago.”
Fish noticed his friend’s jeans were wet up to the hips.
“Why didn’t you wake me up? I would have helped.”
“You were snoring,” Bread said, and tried to smile. His face looked pale beneath his matted hair. Fish squatted down next to him.
“Bread?” he asked. “You slept at all?”
“A little,” he said, and he fidgeted a bit, opened his hand to look in it, and closed it again.
“We’re out of food, I guess,” said Fish, trying to see if he could cheer him. “We’re poachers now.” Maybe it was the quiet of the woods, the cold air and dark cedars, but Fish felt something too, some kind of darkness. With the busyness of boatbuilding completed, they now just drifted through a silent forest. Fish looked up at the orange and purple sky. The sun would rise over the trees soon, and then Bread would perk up. Darkness would lift.
Bread forced a grin, swallowed it, and nodded. He bit his lip and looked out at the trees.
“Fish,” he said, and then tears fell from his eyes as if they’d been dammed there. A whole river let loose. Bread wiped his face with his shirtsleeve, but more tears came. Fish leaned forward, then waited a moment, and he saw what Bread held in his hand. It was an empty brass shell casing, the Magnum cartridge that killed his father.
Bread’s face twisted up, and his body shook when he tried to speak. His voice came out in a squeal. “My dad,” he said, and shook some more. “I’m all alone.”
Fish moved toward him and patted his back, but that felt wrong, so he put his arms around him instead. What else could he do? It was the first time he’d ever hugged his friend, but Bread leaned into it and accepted it, and Fish was glad he did it. Bread felt heavy in his arms, limp, and he sobbed and sobbed, and Fish felt his shirt get wet from it all. Fish remembered how he wept when he lost his dad. It didn’t come right away. It waited. But when it came he had his mom, and she knew what to say, knew something to say. Fish didn’t. So he just held his shuddering friend in a stiff embrace and looked out at the dark trees. The woods and river, so quiet a moment ago, were filled now with Bread’s sobbing. It sounded eerie out here in the wild, louder, sadder somehow. It went on for a long time, and then it stopped. Bread wiped his mottled face.
“Sorry,” he said.
Fish shook his head. He knew. Then he said what his grandpa had told him in the parking lot of that church. “Just because he’s not with us doesn’t mean you don’t have him. You have a father.”
Bread’s eyes widened in pain, and Fish figured he’d said the wrong thing. In Bread’s face flashed guilt and fear, even anger, all balled into one frown. The tears welled up, but this time Bread choked them back with great effort.
“I don’t want him with me, Fish. I’m glad he’s dead. I prayed he’d die.” The tears broke loose again. “And I know what that means about me, how bad I am.”
Fish sat quietly on
the cedar logs, folded his legs like Bread’s. He didn’t know Bread’s trouble. Another branch filled with noisy finches passed overhead. The sky turned from dark purple to blue.
Bread closed his eyes. “I used to sit out behind my house,” he said, “and ask God to kill my dad. That’s true about me, just so you know.”
Fish sat entirely still.
“And when he didn’t die, I dared God to kill me if that’s what he’d rather do.” Bread exhaled heavily through his nose. “You know what God did?”
Fish shook his head. Bread looked away from Fish and held up the bullet casing between his fingers. He turned over the blackened brass husk once or twice in the early-morning light, and then he flicked it into the river. It made the smallest noise when it broke the surface, tiny as a frog slipping off a rock.
“God didn’t do nothing, Fish. Nothing.”
Fish did know what it felt like to think that. He remembered the silent ceiling of his bedroom that first winter, the way blankets hid him, silence answering silence. But he remembered, too, his mom’s prayers, the strange comfort that came when she laid her hands on him, murmured bubblings of the spirit, deep calling to deep. He was always reluctant to accept it. It was a warmth from outside him. That’s all Fish could call it if asked to describe it—in the middle of a cold, dark river, warmth. Fish would pray for Bread right now if he knew he could give him that feeling, but he didn’t know how to, or if he should. Fish couldn’t untangle this sort of knot. Instead, he was struck again by his friend’s strength, and shame fell on him, and he suddenly needed to tell Bread the truth about his own dad. He wanted to confess he was a liar, that there was no father waiting at the armory, that they were drifting toward something that didn’t exist, that they were more alone than Bread even knew. Tears rose in Fish’s eyes. The raft turned in the current. All was a tangle of trees and cattails and wilderness. It all looked the same. Fish felt the rising terror of lost hope.
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