Raft of Stars

a step toward them. He stumbled. He held his hip and rubbed it with his hands. As he rubbed his leg he was surprised to find the revolver still tucked in his belt. The sight of it startled him. Fish had forgotten about Bread’s dad. He frowned at the thought of that man’s eye, the way it stared into him as he dropped down the falls, the way it seemed to plead with him. Fish looked around the island. From what he could tell, he was alone. He looked up, beyond the island, and in the distance could see the sheet of the falls plummeting down. He could make out the black ribbon of the gap formed by the outcropping. Bread was up there somewhere. Fish could only attend to himself now. He took a few more hobbling steps toward the craggy face of the rock wall. The air smelled musty here, like river bottom. The hollows in the ledge seemed deeply cut, and Fish hoped they would be dry. But any sort of roof was welcome. It would be important to try to stay warm. Fish felt waves of exhaustion. He knew as soon as he hit the hollows of that ledge, he would curl up in a ball and sleep.

And then Fish stopped walking.

Something caught his eye, a sort of glistening amid the whitewater. He didn’t step toward it immediately. He didn’t even want to look directly at it. He knew in his gut what it was. Near the shore, an old pine was pinned against the ledge, its branches polished smooth by the water. Caught in the branches was a work boot, sole up, with a leg in it. The boot belonged to Bread’s dad. The rest of his body dangled beneath the whitewater.

Fish stumbled toward the edge and got down on his hands and knees. He reached out for the boot. His instinct was to save the man, but a deeper instinct told him it was already too late. The boot moved ever so slightly, like the rocking of a tied-up boat. The man was dead and Fish knew it.

“Why did you do this?” Fish whispered to the dead man. His voice didn’t sound like his own. It sounded younger, higher. He felt afraid. His body shivered in the cold. Whatever dark spirits lived in this wild had gathered here, in this one man, but now they were gone and there was only a shell. The man was gone, but Fish didn’t want to let him dangle like that. He reached out to the boot again. It was just beyond his reach. Fish tested the log with his foot, to see if he might shimmy out. His foot slipped and he clung to the rock. He shivered. Stared at the boot. He stared and he waited. He couldn’t leave his friend’s father like this, no matter how bad he was, but Fish knew he was too weak to get him. Minutes passed. Fish listened to the river whisper and hiss, to the rain fall on his back, until his body started to shiver less. He began to feel the cold a little less. Some part deep in his mind felt already home in his bed, his mom praying over him the way she prays. Another part of him, a more frantic part, knew he needed to get into the shelter of the island’s ledge if he was to survive the night. He remembered one of his grandfather’s lessons: If you’re cold enough to stop shivering, you’re in a bad way. The thoughts wrestled in his mind, in the river mist, his eyes opening and closing. A lightning bolt crawled very slowly across the sky, and Fish became certain he could sleep in the cold rain, if only for a few moments.

And then he felt a warmth that came from outside himself. He heard it, too, a warm breath exhaled on his back and neck. His eyes opened wide as a giant shadow stepped over the top of him. Fish’s heart pounded in his neck. He lay perfectly still. It was a bear. A bear stood over the top of him.

The bear blocked the rain, and Fish could feel the heat of the animal’s stomach, like a humid tent. This bear was much larger than the sow they’d seen save her cub. This was a male, a bruin. Fish watched the animal reach its muzzle out toward the log that trapped Bread’s dad. The bear sniffed, and then huffed, and then it bellowed.

The sound was like a giant drum. Fish’s body shook. The rock he lay on shook. And Fish took the opportunity to scramble out from under the bear. He rose to his feet and ran toward the ledge. His legs gave way and he fell.

The bruin took another breath and bellowed at the dead man again. It seemed ecstatic, as if a fire was loosed inside of it. The bruin’s hide shivered as it screamed. Its hair stood along its back in tall, wet spikes. Fish waited for the river to burst into flame, and felt like throwing up. The river basin echoed when it stopped. Rain fell against the rock. The bear looked out at the water. It popped its big jaws. Snap, snap. It lowered its muzzle to the man’s boot, nudged it sharply, and the body of Bread’s dad snaked into the current. Gone.

The bear watched the river. Fish watched the bear. It seemed made of the stone it stood on. The animal’s majesty was terrifying. Fish knew there was nothing in the wilderness this bear feared. There was nothing in the night that could touch it. Fish had heard of black bears getting old and big. His grandfather told him they could sometimes live for twenty years, the rarest of the rare reaching a quarter ton. This bear was the size of a steer, higher somehow, thicker, a mass of rump and shoulder and jaw.

Fish hadn’t waited to pull the revolver.