“No problem,” he lied.
While Teddy continued to unburden the horses, Cal set to work assembling a small tepee of twigs and sticks atop a nest of moss and lichen. He then rummaged in his pack for the flint and striker. He knew right where they were, but didn’t want to take them out. He felt self-conscious about using them in front of Teddy.
“Need a hand?” Teddy stood behind him, holding the reins of the horses in one hand and a tin pot in the other.
“Nope. Got it,” said Cal. He pulled the flint and striker from the bag and gave them a happy practice spark in the air. “Got my old flint here,” Cal said, standing up. “I’ll have it going.”
Ted looked at the tepee and frowned. “Hang on,” he said, and started to move toward the tinder and saddlebags. Cal winced at the thought that Ted found fault with his tinder pile, and was going to fix it for him like a father would fix a boy’s necktie. But Cal surprised himself and accepted the idea. He was simply less bothered out here about who he really was. There was a freedom in that sort of acceptance he’d never really known. But Teddy stopped short of the tinder pile and stooped to retrieve something from his own kit.
“Here,” he said. “Might as well use these up.”
He tossed a small box of matches to Cal. Mercy spilled through Cal’s body. He pocketed the flint and shook the box. The matches rattled happily.
“Why not?” Cal said as nonchalantly as he could. “Might as well.”
Cal watched Ted lead the horses through the meadow. Jacks bounded along beside them. In the distance, the river sparkled through a line of trees, and Teddy became a dark and wavering silhouette. The old man walked lightly out there in the high grass. The oddest thing about Teddy, Cal thought, was the way he seemed somehow filled by all of this. If it wasn’t his own grandson they were searching for, Cal could almost be convinced that Teddy was enjoying himself amid the sleeplessness and hard riding. Teddy wasn’t known for being overly cheerful, and Cal had seen the flashpan of anger or frustration ignite the man. But out here he seemed eager, awakened. The old man had a vigor in his step Cal had never seen.
Cal crouched by the tinder pile and struck a match. The lichen caught easily. He smiled as the yellow flame licked its way up the twigs and caught hold of the larger sticks. By the time Teddy returned, Cal had managed to make a nice bed of coals. The horses stood under the shade of the apple tree and nipped at the grass where Teddy spilled a few handfuls of oats from a pouch. Jacks rested his head on Cal’s lap while Cal raked the dog’s neck. They all sat in silence, watching the coffee percolate alongside two opened cans of beans. The smell of food and woodsmoke filled the air. The plan was to leave after breakfast. The logging road would easily make up lost time.
“Ted?” Cal asked. “You like farming?”
Ted looked at him, lifted an eyebrow.
“It seems like a nice life,” Cal said. “Seems peaceful.”
Ted looked back at the coals. A thoughtful frown grew on his face.
“It’s peaceful,” he said.
Cal nodded, frowned at the fire himself. He pictured the tractor and fields again. No more people problems. No more radio calls. Just him and his dog and a list of chores. And a wife, if she’d have him.
Ted leaned back on his saddlebag and sighed. “I’ve had my share of peace. Damn near a lifetime of peace.” Cal nodded in agreement, but then noticed something about the way Ted spoke the word peace, like it was a hair he spat from his mouth.
“You can get tangled in that much peace. Get caught up in keeping it going. And then one day you realize peace and quiet was never what you wanted.” Ted glanced at him, grinned, and turned back to the coals. “No, I don’t like farming. I never did. It bores the living hell out of me.”
Cal thought of his own work, his attempt to find himself in it, and how Houston had worn him so thin, just keeping on where his heart never was.
“But what did you want to do instead of farm?” Cal ventured. If the man had wisdom on how to live, or how not to, Cal would take it. He was lost in the woods.
Teddy leaned toward the coffee pot, pulled on a leather glove, and poured two cups. He handed one to Cal and leaned back on his saddlebag.
“When I was just out of high school, I worked for cash at a feed mill. I helped Dad on the farm.” Teddy sipped his coffee and nodded appreciatively. “When I turned nineteen, I took out a loan for nineteen hundred and seventy-eight dollars, plus tax, and bought a brand-new, chariot-red Oldsmobile 88 Rocket.” Ted blew on his coffee. “My old man was hot when I drove it up the driveway. Loans were for tractors and land, he said, not race coupes. My dad and I already knew we didn’t see eye to eye. I had slicked hair and a leather jacket back then like all the other idiots.”
Cal tried to not spit his coffee back in his cup. “You were a greaser, Ted?”
Ted smiled. “No, I wasn’t no damn greaser. I was just a kid. And I had a car.” He said the word in so different a way than he said the word peace, like it was rich food, dark coffee. “Gas was cheap. The car was fast. I can still feel that 88’s pedals, smell the motor, feel the way it crouched through corners. Sometimes I’d go driving alone, but most nights I’d have Becky with me—that’s Fischer’s grandma.” Teddy’s eyes narrowed in a mischievous grin. “She had long hair then too. This one night Becky and me got some bottles of beer and had it in our heads to drive to Chicago. She had her bare legs draped out that window, sipping beer, the big moon lit up over the coast of Lake Michigan. We didn’t stop until Navy Pier, and I remember sitting on that 88’s hot hood, watching stars drop in the water, Becky dancing on the beach, spinning and spinning. I can still see her, hear her even, howling at all them buildings and stars with her hair going round. Prettiest woman I ever seen in my life.”
Teddy took another swig of his coffee.
“A month or two later I was in Korea. After my tour, I came back to a baby girl, and my father’s loans, tractors and land, calving seasons. You asked what I wanted to do instead of farming.” He looked at Cal and then back at the coals. They glowed white. “That night I roared down the lake coast in too fast a car with too beautiful a woman. I can’t name it and ain’t gonna try. I suppose there was something of it in war too. All I’ve ever wanted was to do that night again and again. Beats the hell out of peace and quiet.”
Cal sat for a moment. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
Teddy looked at him.
“How’d you keep going?”
“Same as anybody else,” Teddy said. “I had a wife and daughter. People needed me.” He looked into his cup. “So you make a decision to give things up instead of burning the whole thing down. You just don’t light the match. You don’t make life even worse. You suffer when you need to. Sometimes that’s as good as it gets.”
Cal watched the man drink the rest of his cup in silence. Ted looked up at the sun, tucked a shred of tobacco into his cheek, and tossed the dregs of his coffee on the hissing coals. He hesitated a moment, spat, then stood and grabbed his kit and hefted it toward his horse.
“That Breadwin boy,” he said, “he’s a good boy. I should have killed his old man myself.”
THE BOYS HAD BEEN DRIFTING FOR A FISH ALL DAY, HUNGRY, WAITING, poling the raft into the center of the stream whenever it drifted too close to the bank. They stopped once to dig worms from the riverbank. They pinched lead sinkers onto the lines with their teeth to keep the worms on the bottom. The hooks kept snagging on rocks and sunk logs, so the boys attached red-and-white bobbers the size of nickels to the lines. Ever hopeful, they watched the bobbers trail in their wake. They even started a small fire atop their rock oven and dipped the kettle full of river water to set it boiling. Around noon, Fish caught a floating pine branch, and then both boys turned their attention to other things—the emptiness in their stomachs, an eagle overhead, Ninja Turtles, a distant bank of dark clouds to the north. They let the fire die out and the smell of woodsmoke filled the air. Hunger smells like woodsmoke, thought Fish, turning to lie fl
at on his belly and twirling Michelangelo’s nunchucks in the river water.
Then one of the rods twitched, and Bread scrambled to it, and Fish knelt at the edge of the raft and told him, “Easy, easy.”
The line became taut and lifted from the water. Bread set the hook. “We got one!” he cried. “Here it comes!”
Fish put his arms through the sleeves of his flannel and held the tails of it in his fists. He reached his net down into the tea-colored water. He saw something flash that looked like the belly of a fish, something orange or yellow or white. And then he saw the fish’s dark back as it rolled into the cradle. He sprung his trap and grasped the fish as tightly as he could. He felt something alive in the flannel, something kicking and bony, and he clutched it against his shoulder and rolled onto the deck.
He and Bread crouched near the balled shirt, instinctively corralling their catch so it wouldn’t flop back into the river. Both boys grinned. Fish, panting, untangled himself from the line that had wrapped around his back.
“Got him.” He smiled. The wilderness was blessing their exile. First the sow bear. And now a fish.
Bread lifted the corner of the flannel. Fish watched expectantly, wiped his hands on his jeans.
“What is it, a pike?” Fish asked, and then saw Bread’s face contort into a frown. He lowered his expectations. “A carp?” he asked. Bread lifted the flannel completely away, and Fish frowned too. The thing lay on its back, its belly sunward—hard-shelled and glistening—four webbed feet pawing furiously at the air.
“It’s a turtle,” said Bread, and picked it up by its shell. Fish noticed the bright markings on its legs. It was large enough that Bread had to use both hands to grasp the girth of its shell.
“It’s a painter,” Bread said, worry in his voice, holding it up at eye level.
Fish had caught painter turtles in the past when fishing—they liked worms too—and he always felt awful when he caught one. Pike and carp didn’t seem to have feelings like turtles. Turtles had hearts. Some had angry hearts. Some were cheerful. Painters were the cheerful ones, the friend turtles.
Bread grasped the hook in his fingers. The turtle recoiled and pulled its head in, but it hadn’t been hooked deeply at all, so Bread was able to wiggle the hook free of the turtle’s beak. Bread apologized to the turtle while he did it, and put it down on the flannel again, on its back. It pawed the air, trying to swim down into the mud and away from this new and awful predicament.
“So what do we do with it?” Bread asked.
Fish shrugged. The smell of woodsmoke lifted from the ashes and hit his stomach. The water in the kettle was probably still pretty hot. It wouldn’t take much to bring it to a boil again. He knew people ate snapping turtles sometimes, although he’d never done it, or seen it done.
“I suppose we eat it,” said Fish. “Don’t we have to?”
Bread shrugged, grave doubt in his eyes. He lifted his hand to his face and rubbed his mouth, as if there were stubble there to think about. He looked at Fish. “I guess so,” he said.
Fish removed the barlow knife from his jeans and unfolded the blade. He rubbed his thumb across the edge to test the sharpness, frowned at the turtle.
“How do you cut into these things?” Fish asked, and Bread just shook his head, tight-lipped.
Fish couldn’t fight away the thought of the bear cub, the way it bayed and bayed, the way those coyotes snapped at it. This world was all wrong, the way everything had to eat each other. He looked at Bread, who seemed a bit ashen-faced. The world was not pure blessing. There was a sense of betrayal in it all too. Fish looked up at the sky, downriver. The dark clouds seemed much closer now. There was menace in them, rising up in front of that blue sky. The knot in Fish’s stomach turned to hunger again. Fish looked back at the turtle. If it was a snapper instead of a painter, this would be easier.
Fish reached forward with the knife, pinned the turtle on its back, and placed the well-honed blade against the turtle’s belly shell. He gave it an exploratory tap. The shell felt leathery beneath the hardness of the steel, and Fish knew it would be easy enough to plunge the knife in. Bread shifted where he sat. Woodsmoke filled the air with emptiness. Fish tightened his grip on the knife, took in a deep breath—and then folded it closed and put it in his pocket.
“I ain’t doing it,” he said.
Bread coughed. “Yeah, me neither,” he said, more quickly than he probably intended. There was relief on his face.
Fish flipped the turtle onto its belly and sat back in the sunshine. He’d rather stay hungry, he decided. The turtle sat with its legs drawn inside itself, unsure if the ordeal was over.
“Go on, turtle,” said Fish, disappointment in his voice. “We ain’t gonna eat you. We ain’t gonna eat nothing.”
Fish saw disappointment in Bread’s eyes, too. Bread reached back onto the deck of the raft, fetched his Ninja Turtle. He held Donatello by the legs and poked his face down near the painter’s.
“Hey turtle turtle, you got a name?” He knocked gently on the turtle’s shell with Donatello’s plastic bō staff. The painter didn’t respond. “My name’s Donatello. You hungry too?”
Fish felt confused. He was ashamed of himself for not being able to kill the turtle and eat it, but he was proud for bearing the hunger rather than giving in to it. They’d find another way to eat.
“You want to eat some worms, turtle turtle?” asked Donatello.
Bread looked at Fish, and Fish looked at Bread. Fish knew what he was thinking. Both boys looked at the empty bean tin that still held half a dozen night crawlers. The worms were all over six inches long, real whoppers, as Bread called them.
Fish sighed. Beaver life was hard.
“Well, I ain’t eating them raw,” said Fish, and Bread agreed to stoke the fire.
Ten minutes later, the boys sat over the boiling kettle of water in the galley. The worms had died instantly, and now roiled around in the bubbles like pale white noodles.
“Wish we had some salt,” said Bread, apprehension in his eyes.
Fish’s stomach growled angrily at the sight of the boiling worms.
“I’m just worried about the flavor is all,” said Bread. “I mean, I’m gonna eat ’em, but I just don’t know about the flavor.” Bread went on and on as the worms continued to stew.
The soup wasn’t promising. The river water was tannin-stained, and the worms were bloated. The whole brew smelled like pee and river bottom. It needed something. Bread turned to rummage through his pack, drew out a white and green pouch twisted up in his fist. He unfurled it. The pouch had bright red letters—Red Man. America’s Best Chew.
“What do you think if we add some of this?” Bread asked, teasing open the pouch with his thumbs. Fish looked on uncertainly. He’d forgotten about the tobacco. The wad he’d placed in the chest pocket of his flannel had grown sticky and lint-covered. He’d dropped it in the river.
“Your grandpa eats this stuff,” Bread proclaimed, and then frowned as he lifted a pinch of it out of the bag with his fingers. “It must taste all right.” Bread dropped the shreds of black tobacco back into the pouch. He lifted the bag to his nose and smelled it. He tasted the tips of his fingers. His face brightened.
“Smells like raisins,” he said.
He passed the pouch to Fish, who smelled it. It did smell like raisins. He lifted a small piece of the tobacco to his lips, touched it with his tongue. It was sweet and then spicy in a way he couldn’t describe. He looked back at the soup they had made. A waft of steam rose from the pot and hit him in the face.
“Dump it in,” said Fish, handing it back, and Bread complied.
The boys watched the pot for another minute, stirred it with a cattail cane. While the water continued to simmer, Bread checked on the painter turtle. It remained where they’d left it, out in the sunlight near Donatello. Bread had placed half a night crawler near the opening of its shell to try to coax it out.
Satisfied that the tobacco had stewed enough, Fish removed the
kettle from the coals and brought it out onto the deck of the raft. The water had turned from yellow to dark brown. The worms, too, had soaked in the darker color and looked much more wholesome for doing so. The raisin smell of tobacco came up from the steam, which was promising. Fish got two spoons from a poacher’s mess kit. The boys settled themselves on their knees near the pot. The turtle stayed in its shell.
“Well,” Fish said, “dig in.”
Fish took the first taste, slurping a spoonful of broth into his mouth. The heat of it was enough to make his stomach turn over, but not in an altogether bad way. The first thing Fish tasted was sugar, from the tobacco, no doubt, followed by a deep earthiness, not unlike the earthiness in a garden carrot or a pickled beet. After the sweetness and earthiness came the odd, spicy sensation. It filled Fish’s mouth and throat. He could feel it in his stomach. Its warmth was different from the heat of the broth.
Bread slurped in a spoonful too. The boys watched each other. Downstream, the bank of dark clouds covered the sun. Rain would come soon. But they could ignore that because they had food, and they didn’t kill a painter to get it. They were making it in the wild, on their own terms.
“Not bad!” Bread exclaimed, and dipped two more spoonfuls into his mouth. “Red Man stew!”
Fish joined him, spooning the broth greedily into his mouth. It felt so wonderful to have something in his stomach. He wiped juice from his chin and laughed. “Red worm stew!” he said proudly.
In a few minutes, the boys became bolder and started cutting into pieces of the worms and tobacco. The warmth radiated from Fish’s belly. He felt as if he were bursting with it. He felt the odd spiciness of the tobacco in his neck and face. He laughed as he spooned a worm into his mouth, slurping it noisily. His face felt numb. Why did his face feel numb? And his fingertips?
He looked at Bread, whose eyes seemed a bit glassy. The sensation of numbness reminded Fish of the time he and his grandfather varnished a gun cabinet in the corner of the basement. The fumes made them dizzy, and they had to step outside until the dizziness left.
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