Raft of Stars

by Andrew J. Graff

  The sunshine flooded his vision with yellow light, warmth. He could make out trees and rocks and sprays of water, and then he noticed two trees growing up right in front of him, from the rock itself. The trees wore one boot each. They were a soldier’s boots, high and laced and polished. Camouflage fatigues were bloused neatly above the leather uppers. Odd trees, Fish thought, still unable to wake. And then he heard voices, men’s voices, and all of this seemed to muddle in the memory of rain and lightning and rafts and waterfalls. Fish closed his eyes, reopened them. The boots were still there. They were attached to a tall silhouette of a man surrounded by a halo of light.

  Fish lifted his head. His body was terribly sore. He looked at the boots again, the light again.

  “Dad?” he asked. The boots pivoted on the rock.

  “Lieutenant,” said the man. “Lieutenant—Reach Two.”

  Fish sat upright. His eyes began to adjust to the enormity of the sunshine, and he shaded his eyes with his hand. The man standing before him was definitely a soldier, but he wasn’t his father. Fish wasn’t dreaming and he wasn’t dead. The soldier was a man about the sheriff’s age, with a helmet pulled low over his eyes. He spoke into the radio in his hand. Farther down the island, Fish watched another soldier making his way across the dome of rock, holding a yellow drybox in his hand.

  “Reach, go ahead.”

  “We found him, sir. He’s on island three. He’s conscious. I’ll have Grady assess and we’ll prepare to evac.”

  “Copy that.”

  The soldier looked at his wristwatch and secured the radio to his vest. Fish noticed that the man was wearing webbing and harnesses that looked like some sort of rock-climbing gear. He had a coil of rope over his shoulder, a black sidearm fastened in a hip holster. Fish looked around. On the ground between him and the soldier, the revolver still lay on the rock. He remembered where he was now, and how he got here, and the great weight and enormity of the previous evening rushed upon his consciousness like a river. He remembered firing one shot, or maybe it was two. The details swam, but he saw again a wild and pleading eye, an upturned boot, a man’s body slithering into water. But something critical seemed missing. The pieces fell into place slowly, murkily, but lacked a cornerstone. Fish’s stomach churned. He felt weak, like he’d throw up if he tried to stand.

  The soldier with the radio squatted low on the toes of his boots. He had a friendly face. He didn’t say anything right away, but just smiled at the boy, and Fish felt strangely comforted by the man. He knew, down to his empty stomach, that this man meant help. The other soldier, the one carrying the yellow case, placed it on the ground next to Fish, knelt before it, unlatched its top. They looked at the boy.

  The soldier with the radio spoke first. “I’m Sergeant Blake,” he said. “This is Specialist Grady. He’s going to ask you a few questions and then we’ll all get off this island. Sound good?”

  Fish nodded.

  The medic knelt closer and placed his left hand on Fish’s back. With his right, he gently squeezed Fish’s wrist between his thumb and fingers. The man looked at his watch. “When’s the last time you ate or drank anything, buddy?” he asked.

  Fish stared at him. “Who are you?” he said.

  The two men glanced at each other.

  The medic looked at Fish, then back at his watch. “Can you tell me your name?” he asked.

  “Fish.”

  “Good. Can you tell me your birthday?”

  “September tenth.”

  Grady let go of Fish’s wrist and felt along the boy’s neck and shoulders, asked him if he had any pain. He shone a light in his eyes, made him wiggle his toes and fingers. Fish did what the man asked him to do, told him where it hurt. Grady asked him again when he last ate or drank, while carefully placing a small gauze pad against Fish’s right temple. He secured it in place with white tape he snipped with crooked scissors. Fish couldn’t answer him. His mind was still too foggy. He still had too many questions of his own.

  “Where’s the bear?” Fish asked.

  The men looked at each other again. Sergeant Blake tilted his head in question.

  “The bear,” said Fish. “The big bear that was here all night. Where did the bear go?”

  The two men hesitated.

  “There’s no bear out here, bud,” said Blake, who then looked around at the island, at the enormity of the whitewater surrounding it. “Bears can’t get past the whitewater. You just had a dream.”

  Fish shook his head. “There was a bear here. He kept my hands warm.”

  Sergeant Blake opened his mouth to speak, but the medic shook his head, so Blake dropped the conversation.

  “All right, big guy,” said the medic, shaking a crinkled metallic blanket out of his pack and wrapping it gently around Fish’s shoulders, “you rest right here and we’ll get you home real soon.” He rummaged deftly in his kit. “I have some crackers for you to eat, and water. You rest up and try to eat and drink and let us take care of things.”

  “Where’s the bear!” demanded Fish.

  The medic smiled. “We’ll take care of things. You eat.”

  The soldiers smiled, the medic patted his knee, and they stood and began uncoiling ropes and repacking kits and looking up at the bluffs onshore.

  The strangers’ kindness, the bruin bear, and the thought of home brought tears to Fish’s eyes. Home again. Grandpa’s farm. His mom’s kitchen. What would his mom say to him? What would his grandpa say to him? It all swirled in his mind, but there was only one comfort, one thing that Fish knew for certain in all that fog: he was done running. And he didn’t have to run. Fish looked down at the opened package of oyster crackers in his lap, and his stomach growled in ways he didn’t know it could. He took a sip of the clean water, bit the corner from a cracker. The salt dissolved in waves. He ate the whole bag, drank the whole bottle.

  The soldier’s radio crackled to life, and a jovial and fuzzy sort of voice came over the airwaves.

  “Okay there now, you soldiers down on them rocks. Soldiers down on them rocks, come in. This here is—say what? Oh.”

  The soldier unclipped his radio and frowned at it, then looked up at the lip of the falls. Specialist Grady stopped packing up his kit.

  The voice came again. “Lieutenant here says I gotta say Reach Two. Reach Two, come in down there. Calling Reach Two.”

  Sergeant Blake grinned at Specialist Grady as he lifted the radio to his mouth.

  “This is Reach, go ahead.”

  “So, there he is. This is Constable Bobby. You say you got that young man down there on them rocks?”

  “That’s affirmative,” Blake answered.

  A chuckle came through the radio. “Well then, soldier, put that young man on the horn! We got his mama up here wants to talk to him. Here you go, missus.”

  Fish’s throat caught. His eyes blurred.

  “Lieutenant?” Blake queried into his radio.

  There was a pause, then, “Reach, Lieutenant. It’s fine if the boy is able.”

  There was a pause, and then a quavering female voice. “Fischer, are you there? Fischer?”

  Blake offered the radio to Fish, and Fish nodded and swallowed, and then the soldier showed him the button to push to speak and went back to his work. Fish held the radio in his lap, his mom’s voice coming through it. Her voice was so beautiful to hear, even through the static of that tiny speaker. It was a voice that made the world okay, the voice that calmed him in the night. She said his name three or four more times before Fish was able to answer.

  “Mom,” he said.

  There was a long pause. “Talk again, Fischer. Tell me it’s you.”

  “It’s me,” he said, tears completely stealing his vision.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  IN LESS THAN AN HOUR, FISH WAS IN HER ARMS. SHE WOULDN’T LET him go. She wouldn’t let anyone come near them. She scooped him up in that crinkly b
lanket and carried him into the trees on the island, pacing back and forth in the cedars, weeping on him and rocking him as if he were younger than he was. Fish didn’t resist. He just lay with his head on her shoulder, smelling her neck. From time to time Miranda would stop walking, and they’d pull their heads apart to look at each other, and then Fish would bury his face again and Miranda would rock and sway with her eyes closed tight, whispering praise and prayers.

  Scattered around the base of the island remained a handful of guardsmen in uniform, and Cal and Tiffany, and Bread, and Teddy, and Constable Bobby. Cal stood by the shoreline and conversed with the deputy and one of the guardsmen. Tiffany sat on a rock. Bread leaned back against her and she wrapped him in her arms, a blanket around them both. She liked the way the boy’s dirty hair smelled, liked the warmth of his bony back against her stomach. Teddy lay on his back beneath a pine tree, his legs splayed flat, sleeping with his green cap pulled over his eyes.

  Constable Bobby’s voice rose up from the small group of men. Tiffany watched as he hiked his belt up on his waist.

  “Like I says, when Jack bust out and hitched his duckboat, I knew he was headed downriver, and I knew them women was headed downriver, and I knew downriver don’t go farther than here, so I figured I’d get us a spot of help.” Bobby finished the sentence with a proud grin and gave the lieutenant too hearty a clap on the shoulder. “Yes sir,” he said, “got me some Army on the horn and all is nice and calm again. So.”

  Tiffany grinned and shook her head, and then watched Miranda and her boy in the trees. The mother and son sat cliffside now, looking off at the river. Miranda turned to talk to him, and Fish turned and smiled, and the two would look out to the river again, Fischer melting into his mom.

  Tiffany noticed Bread watching too. He sat very still, so she squeezed his shoulders a little, and he looked up at her. He seemed on the edge of tears, and that was to be expected given all that had happened. He didn’t have a parent to meet him. Tiffany felt her throat get tight, but decided to swallow it back and straighten herself up a bit.

  “What’s your favorite kind of food?” she asked him.

  Bread thought for a moment. “I like spaghetti,” he said.

  “Me too,” she said. “And what about dessert?”

  “I like pie.”

  “What kind of pie?”

  “Apple.”

  Tiffany nodded knowingly, as if apple was a very wise choice.

  “What do you say, when we get back to town, I take you to the Sunrise Café and you and I absolutely stuff ourselves with spaghetti and apple pie.”

  Bread smiled at the thought. “They have malts there too,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  Tiffany wiped the embarrassment and a tear right off his face. Smoothed his hair in her hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said. “Malts are a given.”

  Bread beamed, and his eye caught Teddy, sleeping under the tree. Bread felt for something in his pocket.

  “Tiffany, would you excuse me?”

  She released him, surprised by his formality, and nodded accordingly.

  She watched Bread walk over to where Teddy dozed. Bread spoke and Teddy lifted his cap and smiled tiredly at the boy. He leaned up on his elbow and patted the ground by his side. He stifled a yawn and wiped his eyes while Bread shifted in place. The boy held out something small and metallic in his hands.

  Tiffany watched this as Cal sat down at her side.

  “We’ll get moving upriver in a few minutes,” he said. “More boats are on the way. It will be easier than the hike down to Ironsford.”

  “Good,” said Tiff distractedly, and then nodded toward Teddy and the boy. Teddy had sat upright and accepted the offering. He turned the barlow knife in his hands and then unfolded it. He wiped the blade a few times between his fingers. Held the edge up to the sunlight, tested its sharpness with his thumb. He stared at it for a moment, nodded, folded the blade, and handed it back to Bread. Teddy said a few words, and Bread’s face brightened, and Teddy patted the boy on the hip. Bread turned and bounded back toward Tiffany. Teddy fell back on the pine needles, hat back over his eyes and a grin on his face. She was amazed at the way the youth seemed capable of rallying so fast. And she was humbled by it too. For a boy to be so good-hearted after surviving so awful a father was a testament to his strength and spirit. Bread’s smile brought tears to her eyes. Made her sit up straighter.

  “Are you going to take me shooting now?” Tiffany asked.

  Cal smirked. “I lost my gun,” he said, and shook his head, but then he took a deep breath, looked at the sky. “I’m thinking of farming, Tiffany. I am thinking of buying a farm.”

  “Farming,” Tiffany said, with a bit more surprise than she intended.

  Cal winced, looked at his boot.

  Tiffany put a hand on his arm. She imagined him strolling up some gravel drive with a rake or a bucket in his hand, a rag in his pocket, suntanned, dusty.

  “Cal, it’s good,” she said. “I can really see it, and it’s good.”

  He looked at her and smiled.

  “Can I come over to your farm?” she asked.

  “That’s all I want,” he said very quickly, which made Tiffany stare right into his eyes, and her face colored. She was still looking at him when Constable Bobby strode up to them, hiked his pant leg, and put one foot up on the rock.

  “Well, Sheriff, not much to do but get back and start the paperwork.” Bobby sighed heavily at the thought. “Gonna be plenty of that. And that Breadwin boy.” Bobby clicked his tongue. “Gonna have some extra work there getting some fosters lined up. Oh well, plenty of good fosters in the county, a mama and a papa and maybe a dog too.”

  “Bobby,” said Cal.

  “But then, of course, you got to do the state’s paper—”

  “Bobby,” said Cal, more curtly this time. Bread was approaching the group, still wearing a smile. He rubbed the barlow knife with his thumbs.

  “We’ll sort that out later,” Cal said.

  Tiffany looked at Cal’s eyes. The thought of Bread going to live with strangers set an unbearable pang in her chest. She envisioned him walking through the slush in his sneakers, same as before, saw his face with all that shame and pride in it. She felt all of her own lonely years pile up inside her. Never again, she thought, and knew it like she knew she had bones. She was not going to let that happen to this boy. She gripped Cal’s hand and stared at him until he recognized the fire in her eyes. She would not, under any circumstances, let that boy be taken away. She’d pitch a tent outside the courthouse and live in it all summer if she had to. She’d work double shifts, buy a house, plant a garden, fill her cupboards to overflowing, to prove she was worthy of him. Tiffany was adopting a little brother, and there was no height or depth or power that could stop her. He was now part of her tribe.

  Cal seemed to see it in her, and he put his hand on her hand and held it tight, gave her a nod. He felt it too.

  Bobby turned and pulled up his belt when Bread arrived. “Say, this young man has got himself a real fine pocketknife.”

  Bread sat between Tiffany’s legs, lifted his trophy up to her. She smiled at it.

  “He said I took good care of it and I can hold it for him until we get back. And then he said he’s gonna take me and Fish to Briar’s and buy us our own barlows, might even get ’em engraved!”

  Bobby blew air through his lips. “Well!” he said. “Your own barlow is a special thing. Yes indeed. I remember when my papa got me my first barlow. Had a spring-steel sheepfoot blade, nickel bolsters en handle scales made out of a rhino’s horn. Of course, you can’t get rhino horn these days. At least that’s what they say on the TV. Not a bad thing, mind you, letting rhinos alone, but a body’s gotta wonder if you lay off ’em too long they don’t become as much a menace as ’em packs of coyotes we got around here. Imagine that, young man! Packs of rhinos!”

  Bread looked at Tiffany and saw in her eyes that he should just listen politely, so he did. And B
obby went on about how he heard a good many of them bushranger fellers still made good livings letting rich folk shoot crocodiles on safari, but Bobby couldn’t see why anyone wanted to shoot a crocodile in the first place. They didn’t have no horns to speak of for making good barlows, and they had to smell something awful muddy. At least with turtles a person can rustle some soup, maybe make a pair of earrings for a girl from the bits of shell. Oh well.

  Epilogue

  THREE FLAT-BOTTOMED BOATS SMOKED AND HUMMED THEIR WAY upriver through the black water. The breeze felt cool and good on Fish’s forehead. He sat on the rumbling aluminum floor, leaned back against his mom, who leaned back against the bench. Cattails and marsh grass scrolled past. The river bent west into the sunset, and Fish let the trees and sky and light wash over him.

  Up ahead, Fish could see the silhouette of his grandfather in the first boat, kneeling in the prow and shielding his eyes from the sun, pointing out channels. Constable Bobby sat behind him, huddled in a blanket, while two of the soldiers looked at maps and steered and spoke into radios. As the boats banked, Fish turned for a moment to look back. In the last boat sat Bread, between Tiffany and Cal, all three wrapped up. Bread’s face was angled up into the orange light, his hair ruffled in the wind, his eyes closed, still and calm. Jacks stood in front of them all, with his paws up on the gunwale, his fur ruffled too, his tongue wagging.

  Fish had already finished telling his mom how the river spit him up, how Bread’s dad came at them, how the bruin bear came. He told her everything—about how they ran and swam, about how cold the rain was. He told her about his grandfather astride a horse, peering out over a river. He told her about Bread facing down the sheriff, and the man with antlers, and the belly of the turtle he didn’t eat. He told her what it felt like to go over the falls, tumble through all that darkness and thunder. He told her what the trees sounded like in that storm. He told her about their raft. And then he said something that made her weep and smile and hug him to her chest.