Silence came from that darkness now. And silence came from the sky overhead. Fish’s fingers tingled. He made a fist a few times. He looked at Bread, and Bread’s eyes looked like that cow’s eyes had—all starlit and startled. Fish knew he looked the same.
“So we got everything, then?” asked Fish. The darkness seemed to swallow his words.
“Yeah,” said Bread.
“Okay, then,” said Fish.
“Okay,” said Bread.
Four
“CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE ARMY AGAIN?” ASKED BREAD IN a hushed voice. The boys pushed their bikes along a ridge trail overlooking a moonlit river. The trail was soft with pine needles where it wasn’t riddled with rocks. The air smelled green, like ferns and cedar. About forty feet below, to the boys’ left, the river sparkled blackly as it coursed and spilled through its beds and eddies. Last spring, when the water was high and powerful, Fish heard the river moving rocks. He remembered it sounding like marbles teased together. He thought about the rocks tearing loose, tumbling in that frigid current.
Bread tried again. “Tell me about your dad. Will he let us drive the tanks?”
Fish pushed his bike up and over a downed tree blocking the path. They needed to gain distance from Claypot tonight, and their progress had been slower than he would have liked. The darkness and footing forced them to shuffle amid the trees and stones. Every so often a branch would snap off in the darkness, or an animal would bolt through the underbrush, and the boys would either freeze or start walking faster. As difficult as it was, Fish was thankful for the distraction offered by the slow deliberateness of walking the trail.
“Maybe we should stay quiet a little longer,” said Fish. “Until we get where we’re going for the night.”
Bread pushed his bike up and over the same downed tree. Its chain clanked. “Where are we going to stop for the night?” he asked.
“Shh,” whispered Fish. “Lantern Rock, I figure.”
Fish waited for a response, but when none came he took the silence for consent. Lantern Rock was a place the boys named themselves. It was six miles into the forest, where the trail crossed the river at a series of islands and shallow rapids. A split boulder of granite jutted out from a rise near shore. The rock had a good lookout, a flat spot on its top about fifteen feet high. The split itself was three feet wide with a cedar growing out of it. It made a good fort, what with the lookout and hideout and access to skipping stones and crayfish.
The rock got its name when the boys once saw a lantern out on one of the nearby islands. They had played too long and let dusk catch them, and as darkness fell a light snapped on and hovered in the darkness in the trees across the channel. It looked to them like a spirit. The boys bolted. They sprinted the rocky trails and crashed through hedges of ferns to make it out of the forest before moonlight. Probably just a coon hunter, Fish’s grandpa had said when they arrived breathlessly back at the farm. But it wasn’t a coon hunter. Coon hunters were noisy. They had dogs. This lantern, this light, it just sparked to life, swayed in the quiet.
It bothered Fish, the way his grandpa seemed unable to get caught up in the excitement of things. It was his constant reluctance. Fish learned early on how his grandpa liked rhythms in life. Daily, the man woke without an alarm, drank his coffee standing in the kitchen, placed his milk pail on the same wooden block in the barn, said the same things to the same cows. How’s Rocket this morning, attagirl, and Pipe, out you go, all done. Fish’s mom said he’d been like that for as long as she’d known him, but Fish’s grandma said he’d been like that only since he came back from the war. Before he left—she’d laugh as she said it—he was pure gasoline. When he returned, he demanded peace. He wouldn’t stand an argument, or emotions in general, would walk away from it all. Spontaneity made him uncomfortable. He didn’t like a mess. He hated loose ends, and bills, so he mailed payments the day they arrived, handed them directly to the postmaster on his way to the feed mill. The man oiled his work boots every Friday, watching the alfalfa field from the porch while rubbing his thumbs into the leather. But he’s better than most, Fish’s grandma said. He’d overheard her saying such things enough times to learn that providing an explanation for her husband was a refrain in her life. Some of ’em came back mean. Some of ’em angry. Teddy came back quiet. Fish’s memories of his grandma always had her with something in her lap—some knitting if she was indoors, a bowl of peas if she was on the porch. He never did expand the farm, she said of her once-ambitious husband returned from war. She spoke such things when Fish was old enough to understand, but still young enough that adults felt they could speak freely around him. He’s like
