Bread wiggled the antlers to make sure they’d hold, then dangled his legs and dropped to the floor of the raft. He stomped his foot against the deck for good measure.
“Pretty sturdy,” he said.
Fish couldn’t feign indifference any longer. “It’s perfect!” he exclaimed, and Bread beamed.
The boys planned to spend the night on the raft on dry land, to try it out before setting sail. They figured they could make beds from green cedar branches stacked a few inches thick. They could make one bed on either side of the river rock and kettle, under the tarp in the galley. The railings would keep them from snoring off into the river, and they’d keep coals in the kettle at night for warmth.
Bread exhaled through pursed lips. He looked at his hands and winced as he picked at a blister. “Let’s eat some supper,” he said. “I am about to keel over I’m so hungry.”
Fish got the can of beans from the galley while Bread waded into the river and washed the spoons and mess tins. They decided to eat them cold. The two boys sat on the edge of their raft and watched the sun set on the river, ate beans in the quiet. A grasshopper clicked and fell in the river. Currents carried it downstream. A fish rose and snatched it under. The whole world was hungry, and the whole world was fed. Fish’s back ached from the work. The hand that held his spoon had a blister on it the size of a nickel. Rough work was rough, but it was good. Fish used to love putting in fence posts with his grandpa. He loved most how that sort of work ended, letting his sweat dry and his muscles stiffen up while he ate a meal, drank water from a jug. It was the most serene thing to look out across several acres of land with fresh fence stakes pounded into the dirt, the swallows picking off bugs in the field. The summer after his father died in the desert, Fish’s grandpa decided it was time to fence in an additional forty acres. Another fence didn’t seem necessary to Fish, but he remembered how, as work progressed and days passed, the world became more stable and ordered again. It’s what man was meant to do, his grandpa told him when he commented on how he enjoyed the work. Build something. Then look at it. It makes food taste better.
Viewed from where Fish sat, the river ran straight and then disappeared around a bend about a quarter mile distant. Poachers Island was the final island in the group, and the river converged once more downstream of it, creating a void filled with confused eddy water, which lapped at stones near the raft. The sky above the eddy had turned a vivid red, and the water caught and played with the light in its peaks and troughs. Soon Bread and Fish would leave the eddy. They’d point downstream and go.
Fish thought of his grandfather, who was out in this forest someplace, looking for him, looking at the same sky perhaps. He wished he could send his grandpa a message. Let him know he was okay. Fish felt more in command of things now that they had built the raft. Maybe that’s why adults sought busyness. Busyness solved fear and silence and hurt. Maybe that’s why his grandpa always waved his hands in the air and got back to work.
Your mom wants you to learn Jesus was all his grandfather said when Fish asked why they needed to start going to church. So they put on clean clothes and Grandpa shaved his silver neck and they drove to sit quietly through the morning in wooden pews. Fish got the sense that all of the adults there didn’t know what to do with him. They knew his grandfather from when his grandmother was still alive. Fish had only fragments of memories of the woman on Sundays—an apron with flowers on it, a hand with blue veins, a jar of pickles spooned out on a rose-colored dish, a black Bible with writing in the margins. This was Fish’s first time visiting her old church. The adults folded their hands in the foyer and smiled at him, curiosity in their eyes. They’d say things like, Oh, and that’s a good young man you got there, Teddy, and they’d continue to glance at Fish and his grandfather while they pretended to talk to each other about the weather or farming. It went on this way for several Sundays. The pastor had a sheepdog who sat on the porch during services, and Fish usually looked around for the dog when the adults talked afterward, raked his fingers through the matted white hair. Once, when he was near enough to hear the conversation, a woman used the phrase that poor fatherless thing, and something rose up in Fish that made him leave the dog and turn toward the road so that no one would see him crying. Then he heard his grandpa take the Lord’s name in vain, call the woman a fool, and then felt his grandfather’s hand firmly clasp his shoulder and guide him to the truck.
Fischer, his grandpa said, gripping the wheel when he got inside and shut the door. He stared through the windshield. Fish couldn’t be sure if his grandpa’s eyes were angry or just very tired. That woman back there, he said, gripping the wheel harder. Fischer, your dad loved you more than you could know. And if he’d have heard what that old bat—he clenched his jaw and struck the steering wheel, hard, with the butt of his hand. Fish began to cry again. He was unsure what had happened between the adults, or what this all meant for his grandpa, but he understood that some important line had been crossed and that what was said
