“Would you just knock it off?” said Fish.
Bread looked up from his work. He stood knee-deep in the eddy of a small ledge, atop which Fish perched on his heels. Lightning illuminated the sky, and the barlow knife in Bread’s hand flashed as white as the gun in his belt. The rainwater plastered his shirt to his chest and stomach. Thunder filled the air with noise. Now that he knew to listen for it, Fish could more easily discern the low thrum of the rapids beneath the pops of thunder.
Bread challenged him. “Why don’t you knock off doing nothing? I’m trying to get us moving.”
“Bread, we can’t get through that!” Fish had pulled his shirttail up over his head. It didn’t matter that the rain ran down his back and into his shoes. At least the hood kept it out of his eyes.
“Yes we can. I cut through about an inch of it already. This rope is like wood. But it cuts.”
“Rope? You think I’m talking about rope! Bread, did you see the same rapids I saw? We’re done. Don’t you get it?”
“I’m not done,” said Bread, and he turned back to his work, sawing and sawing the massive braid with the small knife.
This was suicide. Fish jumped from the rock and splashed in the water. The rocks under his feet were round and smooth, the size of melons. Even here, the river ran fast enough to polish the stones, suck the silt off the river bottom. It was unthinkable, the power of the river past those falls. Fish waded forward and grabbed Bread’s shoulder.
Bread whipped around, anger in his eyes, and shook his shoulder free. Fish couldn’t tell if Bread meant to brandish the knife when he spoke, but it was in his hand when he waved it.
“Don’t you try to stop me, Fish. You hear me? Don’t you try to stop me!”
“Bread, you can’t run these rapids. You’ll die!”
“All you’ve wanted to do from the beginning of this is give up. Don’t lie, Fish. You’ve been running scared this whole time. And now you want to run away again.”
Fish fumed. “The way I see it, I’m only out here because of you!”
Bread stopped sawing, clenched his fists. “You killed him, Fish! And we’re out here because of you!”
Rain fell between them, shot the river full of holes.
Fish felt spite rise up in the shame. It ran thick from his tongue. “I saved your life.”
Bread shot back, “You ruined my life!” His chest heaved. As wet as he was, tears were in his eyes. “He’s dead! And there’s nowhere else for me to go, Fish!” Bread’s eyes flared. He clenched his jaw and looked out at the water. When he spoke again it was filled with a malice nearly too dark to hear in the storm. “But what would you know about it, your perfect life with your mom and your dad. You never been alone for a day.”
“You’re running scared too, Bread.”
Bread shook his head in disgust, looked downriver at the falls.
“That’s the difference between us, Fish. You run away. I’m running forward. And you, and this rope, and those rapids, none of it’s going to stop me. I’m going, Fish.”
“Toward what? Look at the river. There is no forward.” Fish watched Bread’s puffed-up chest, his tiny knife, and hated the strength he saw there, the tenacity. If Fish knew what to say to wound him, he would. Out here in this miserable forest, knee-deep in river water, hungry and wet and cold as he’d ever been, Fish wanted to ruin him and silence him.
“I’m sticking with the plan, Fish. I’m making it to the armory. I’m finding your dad.”
Raindrops fell in sheets. Lightning lit them like sparks. Astonishment dawned in Fish’s mind. Bread didn’t know. He really didn’t know. And this was Fish’s opportunity to crush the life out of Bread, to stop this whole game. Once spoken, there would be nothing left to do, for both of them, but lie down and die. Fish’s teeth clenched. Rainwater dripped from his eyes and nose. The words rose up in him like bile, bitter, and sweet to be free of.
Fish looked Bread right in his eyes.
“My dad is dead,” he said.
The pounding of the falls coursed through the river bottom, the rocks and pebbles, the bones and silence beneath it all. Thunder crackled through a cloud.
“What did you say?” asked Bread.
Fish laughed through his nose, felt fire in his throat. “You didn’t know, did you?” He felt powerful and awful. He felt as if he were watching himself say the words, twist them up and wring them out, pour them on Bread. This was too much power, and Fish hated himself for possessing it, for freeing it. “My dad’s been dead for as long as you’ve known me, and you didn’t know it. You’re too stupid to know.”
“Are you telling the truth?” Bread trembled.
Fish trembled too. The river trembled.
“There’s nothing out here, Bread. There never was. There is nowhere to run.”
Bread swayed in the rain. He tucked his chin in toward his neck and closed his eyes. He clenched the barlow in his fist. Fish didn’t know if he was going to fight, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was over. They’d reached the end, standing in a river above a falls in a storm, alone.
“Go away from me, Fischer.”
Rain fell and filled the river. Fish imagined the water rising, the dark current filling his legs and arms. It filled his eyes and mouth and ears with silence, his stomach like handfuls of lead shot. He felt the way he did the night he learned his dad had died, the chasm opening underfoot.
“Bread,” he whispered.
Bread’s eyes stayed closed.
“Bread.”
“Go away from me, Fischer. Or I will kill you.”
Fish felt dizzy in the current, and he wished at that moment that Bread would kill him, just take it out of him and let the husk of his body breach the falls, whatever it was Bread needed to take to make himself whole again. But Bread just stood in the rain, breathing it in, swaying there in the lapping waves, the trees and cliffs pasted to the sky.
Fish left him.
He stumbled alone, uphill, into the interior of the island. He looked back at the river only once before entering the tree line, and saw Bread unmoved in the water, staring up into the rain, the knife in his hand, the gun in his belt, frozen in so much shimmering ice. Fish was too tired to cry. He didn’t even know if he wanted to cry—his body, his cold hands, everything was numb. He walked beneath cedars and over carpets of needles. He crawled up and over moss-covered rocks. He emerged and sat in the rain at the edge of the rock cliff above the rapids, crossed his legs, and let the rain soak him. He put his hands on the lip of the rock, felt the grit on his palms. He stared out at the horrible, watery divide that cut the earth, all of that aimless moaning and hissing. He wondered what it would be like to be in it, to just lean out a little farther, a little more. The thought made him reel and allowed his body to weep.
He wept over the lies he’d told. He wept over his killing hands. He wept over the tangles in it all, how the lies he’d told allowed him to live, allowed his father to live. What choice did he have? Fish leaned nearer to the edge. He let a small stone fall over, watched it swallowed by violence. Gone. Fish, in the space of a breath, had crushed all pretense by speaking into the air the ugly truth. And he didn’t wave his hands and wash it away like his grandpa did. He spoke it over them and let it stay. Your dad is dead. And so is mine. And no one is coming to save us.
Fish imagined his father watching him across the chasm of water. The eyes hovered, sad and ashamed, and then they turned away. Fish looked up into the rain and thunder at the mottled, lamplit clouds. He didn’t know if he was praying, but it felt like prayer. He didn’t know what to ask for, even as he pleaded, wordlessly, without meaning or direction. His heart simply moaned like the river, murmured like the sky. A single word eventually escaped his mouth. Help, he asked, sitting with his hands planted on that humming rock, eyes filling with black and white rain. Help.
An answer came from the water. It sounded like the thump of a car door, a dropped pail. Fish heard it again. It sounded less metallic this time,
more plastic or wooden. It sounded hollow. He looked down into the river, but all he saw was white. He heard it again, this time to his right, and looked toward the main race of the falls. Something dark and round fled with the water, on top of the water. The object fell toward that churning hole, encountered a rock. Thunk. Lightning flashed. The river was white and the object red. Fish’s chest tightened. He looked to the top of the falls and saw a line of buoys floating free of their tether toward the gorge chasm.
Bread, thought Fish, and then he said it aloud.
Still tied to the mainland, the line of buoys spilled toward the falls in a giant sweeping arc. When it reached the precipice, the cable snagged at its middle on the rock outcropping. The line to the mainland snapped taut as the free end was claimed by the falls. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The torrent stripped the buoys from the line. One, two, three, four, five. The buoys rocketed downward, bounding, springing, then devoured.
Fish watched, frozen.
“Bread,” he said again, rising from his hands and knees at the cliff’s edge. Downriver, only two buoys reappeared, bounding toward islands.
“Bread!” Fish yelled. He ran back over rocks and through trees, wet branches tangling his arms and neck. “Bread, don’t do it! Bread! I’m coming with you if you go!”
FISH SPUN THROUGH A TANGLE OF PINE AND EMERGED BREATHLESS in the clearing lower down the island. He could make out the raft about twenty yards away, still tethered to the rock point. But where was Bread? Fish could still talk him out of it, or go with him, it didn’t matter which. There was still a thread of light in Fish’s heart. There was still something out here amid so much darkness, something worth running toward. There was still hope, and it astounded Fish. He would throw himself at Bread’s feet and beg forgiveness, and Bread would forgive him, and they would keep going as before, reconciled, together.
Crossing the clearing, lightning flashed, and Fish saw something dark and round out of the corner of his eye. He turned in the darkness and made out a silhouette near the edge of the island, where the land fell off into the river.
“Bread?” Fish took a slow step across the pine needles. His pulse rose. Between two cedars, something shook in the brush. It looked hunched over, like a bear’s back, and suddenly Fish got the uncanny feeling that he was in the presence of evil. Wet hair stood on his neck. His dream came back to him, the man with horns on his head, shaking and writhing. Fish didn’t know if he should speak, but he tried.
“Bread?” he said, more loudly this time.
The form stopped wrestling itself and stood up to a ghostly man-sized height. As it did, lightning flashed and lit the clearing.
Fish’s stomach balled in a knot. Air stopped in his lungs. The trees reeled and spun. A flood of river water rose through their branches. All was dark water.
The man wore thick, mud-smeared boots. His rain poncho lay open and waving. At his feet knelt Bread, eyes wide and terrified, a blackened claw of a hand holding Bread’s collar. Bread struggled against it, beat his arms and fists. The man held the revolver in his other hand and struggled to tuck it into his belt. But upon hearing Fish’s voice, his body froze. His face was half shaven, from jaw to scalp. A thick white bandage crossed his forehead and covered one eye. A bruise enveloped his nose and cheekbone and jaw.
Bread dropped free of the astonished man’s grasp.
“Fish, go!” he yelled.
Fish couldn’t move. The man’s stare bore through Fish’s middle, stole his breath, pinned him in place against the trunk of a pine. Fish felt more air leave him, as if he’d never taste it again. Before him, on this island in this wilderness, stood the man he’d killed. Muddied and wet, bandaged and startled, Bread’s father stood, grave-filthy. Fish watched confusion rise in the man’s face, in his eye. And then he saw the revolver twitch. A soiled thumb rested on the hammer. The man squared his stance, gained purchase on the revolver with both hands, and aimed it at Fish’s face. Fish gazed into the revolver’s bore, the honeycomb of the cylinder, the man’s dark eye plumb and still behind the sights.
Fish felt spit rise in his mouth.
“Both of youse,” spoke the man, nodding as he spoke, “are in trouble, and coming home right now.” It was the first time Fish heard the man speak rather than shout. His voice sounded like any man’s voice he ever heard, like it might be trusted, or might have been. Fish took a step forward, hesitated, felt a stone with his toe. Something inside him told him to pick it up. It was a small stone, the size of an orange. Fish stood with it in the rain, held it in his fist, which brought a dark change to the man’s face. He lowered the revolver a bit. Looked at Bread, then back at Fish, spoke to both of them.
“Neither one of youse is good for anything. No thanks in youse at all. No gratitude.” The man shifted his weight, nervous almost, confused. “You think you’re special, like someone owes you something special. And you’ve caused trouble you can’t fix. Well, I’m fixing it. I am! And I came all this way. I brought a boat, see? To bring you boys home.”
He paused, and nothing moved. Bread’s body shook. Fish held his rock. Heat rose in the man’s voice as he spoke. Heat and then severe quiet, in conflict with itself. Fish couldn’t tell if the man was there to save him or hurt him.
“Don’t you see there is no one else came to get you? Don’t you see I came! I’m the one out here with you.” He laughed through his nose, spit on the ground. “I am! No one is coming. Nothing ever comes. There’s only you and me.”
Something in those last lines made Fish lift his rock in the air. He lifted it against some darkness he couldn’t explain.
The man’s face went sour and tight.
“You son of—” The man didn’t finish. Three things happened all at once. Bread tried to scramble, his dad stooped to snatch his collar, and the revolver went off.
Fish ducked. Heard the bullet rip through the trees to his left. The shot surprised Bread’s dad enough that he missed his grab at his son. As Bread scurried into the shadows, his dad gritted his teeth and raised the revolver at Fish. He crushed it in his grip, put his finger on the trigger, but then spiked it into the dirt with an exasperated cry and came at Fish like fire. The man took three or four steps, and then reeled backward and howled in pain. Fish watched as Bread drove a dead branch into the backs of the man’s knees. The man’s hands went instinctively to the pain. He crouched and stumbled backward, toward the cliff. Bread swung again, caught him on the neck, and Bread’s father tumbled off the island.
Bread stared over the edge of the cliff. He lowered the branch, lifted it. There was panic and indecision in his movement, and then Bread dropped the branch and bolted upriver toward the raft.
“Dad!” he screamed. “Dad!”
Fish raced to the island’s edge. In the water leading to the falls, Bread’s dad slapped at the surface, his poncho over his eyes. Fish picked up the revolver at his feet and tucked it into his belt, looked upstream. Bread had made it to the raft and gathered in his arms the coil of rope from its deck. Turning downstream, he began to splash along the edge of the cliff face through knee-deep water. It was deeper where his father had fallen in, up to his waist, but Bread charged through it.
“Dad! Rope!” he yelled, holding the rope high overhead.
Bread’s dad struggled to keep afloat in his poncho and boots but had managed to uncover his face. He dipped and bobbed toward the lip of the falls, his bandaged head and hands flailing. He spotted his son.
“Dale!” his father yelled, dipping into the water and spitting it out. “Help me! Dale!”
Dale Breadwin launched the rope to his father. It uncoiled through the lightning flashes and landed like a fly line. Bread’s dad took three panicked strokes and clutched the rope against his chest. The rope lost slack and lifted from the water, a taut line between father and son.
Bread slipped and went under. The rope slackened. He came back up on new footing, and the rope tightened again. Bread’s dad dangled and spun. Bread leaned back and screamed from the effort.<
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“Dale!” His dad spat water from his mouth.
“Swim!” yelled Bread.
“Dale!” shouted his dad.
Bread was underwater again. And when he came up the rope stayed slack, and both Bread and his dad were in deep water now, drifting toward the falls. To their left rose the cliff. To their right, the outcropping of rock where the buoy rope snagged.
Fish was already running. He leapt into the water, untethered the raft, and pushed it into the current. He was no swimmer, but he might be able to reach them with the raft. He rolled aboard, grabbed a pole, and started pushing the rocky river bottom as hard as he could. Under power, he moved faster toward the falls than the swimmers.
“Bread!” Fish yelled. “Swim for the rock!”
Bread turned in the water, keeping himself untangled from the rope as best he could. His eyes grew wide when he saw Fish coming down with the raft. Bread backstroked against the current with one arm to slow their progress. Downstream, Bread’s dad sank and resurfaced, attached to the rope.
“Bread, the rock,” yelled Fish. “Swim for the rock!”
Bread lifted the rope in his hands. “My dad!”
Fish looked at the outcropping. He could make out the buoy rope much better now. It was wrapped tightly across the back of the boulder, held by the force of the falls. Bread could make it there if he let go. If he didn’t, they’d all die. Fish made a decision.
“I’ll get him!” he shouted, and Bread stared back from the water.
“I’ll get to him!” Fish repeated. “I promise! Now swim! Swim!”
A bolt of lightning shot directly overhead. It made the water crackle.
Bread released the rope that tied him to his father and swam hard for the outcropping. Head down, his flattened body glided smoothly across the troughs and peaks of rolling black swells. He swam as fast as Fish had ever seen him.
Raft of Stars Page 24