Raft of Stars Andrew Graff (free biff chip and kipper ebooks txt) 📖

And with that, Cal led both horses as Teddy swiped and slashed his way through the hedge of pine boughs. The mile was a slow one, and when they made the road, or what used to be the road, Ted took his map out again. He studied it, put it away, rubbed his eyes, and kept them closed.

“Where’s the road, Ted?” Cal asked. His mare whinnied. “I wasn’t talking to you, horse,” he said, and reached toward the horse’s face to wipe a blot of mosquitoes away from the corners of its eyes.

Ted lifted his arms. Eyes still closed, he tilted his head up to the rain.

“You’re standing in the road,” he said.

It was hard to discern, but once Cal took his bearings via the treetops, he could make out the cut clear as day. A few paces to his right and left, pines rose to their adult height. Between them, where the men stood, younger pines not quite as tall marked a thirty-foot swath where the cut had been. The road hadn’t been kept up. Cal knew from his interactions with game wardens that most state logging projects around here were plagued by budget shortfalls and politics. This one had been abandoned. But the forest paid no mind. When the trucks and saws left a path of sunlight behind, the woods wasted no time filling itself back in.

“We could go back,” said Cal.

Ted opened his eyes, gave a laugh without humor in it. “To think I drove a skidder right through here.” He looked around at the tangle of trunks. “Can’t say I thought of this.”

“Well, you didn’t, and that’s that, so let’s go,” said Cal, wiping rain and mosquitoes and thoughts of whiskey from his neck. The forest dripped in the humid quiet.

“We ain’t going back,” Teddy said, and spat.

Cal dropped the reins. This again. “We’re not going to chop our way to Ironsford. Let’s go back to the river and get on with it.”

“It’s too late for that. We’ve wasted too much time just getting here.”

“So let’s waste even more by staying? I didn’t come out here to prune trees, Teddy. I came out here to find those boys.”

Teddy glared at him. It was icy, but Cal challenged it and glared back. He was hot from walking. The mosquitoes had doubled their efforts since they stopped. His tailbone still ached. And they now stood in the middle of a pine forest so thick a person couldn’t see over his own shoulder. If they kept it up, they’d be the ones needing a search party. At least the boys had the presence of mind to stick to the river.

“I know where the forest opens up again,” said Ted. “If we keep going, we can push to the river without backtracking.”

“Opens up? Opens up! We’ve been headed for miles through one big bush!” Cal slapped a hand against the buzzing at his ear. He looked at it, the small blotch of blood on his palm, the crumpled smear of wing and leg. “And if I get bit by one more mosquito,” he yelled up at the trees, “I’m going to burn this bush down!”

Teddy exhaled through his nose. He stared at the ground and his face got red. He kept staring at the ground until the color left it a bit.

“Cal, we can go back if you want,” he said. “You’re the sheriff.”

“No, I am not,” Cal snarled.

“But we’re not going to make up any time. This road’s a bust, and it’s my fault, but I know where these pines turn to hardwood that reaches clear to the river, and we can use that as a road out.”

“How far?” Cal asked. He was aware that his tone wasn’t helping, but he wasn’t in the mood to reel it in.

“We didn’t cut it. We wanted to, but the foresters marked only the pine. The hardwood is five miles down this road, give or take.”

“Give or take.” Cal spat on the ground. Jacks whined and shook his ears. “May as well be fifty.”

To his credit, Teddy kept his cool. Cal knew it.

“Look, we can backtrack to the south,” Ted said, “and then head north.” He traced a wide loop in the air. “Or, we can cut through this road and keep going north through the hardwoods.” His finger cut a much tighter, straighter path.

Cal spat again. He’d rarely been so mad. These woods had pressed in on him. Cal no longer feared it as he did in the past. But it had found a way of making him terribly angry. These bugs. This damp. This heat in his coat. The prick and slap of pine branches. As a cop, he’d seen plenty of men lose their lids over less—some call about a guy out in his yard beating a lawn mower to death with the whole neighborhood watching, or the guy he once saw kicking in the quarter panel of his minivan because his spare was flat, with the wife and kids standing out by the highway, vacation just beginning. Cal felt it in himself more often than he’d want to confess, that awful draw to boil over.

“Give me that machete,” Cal said.

Ted held it out, and Cal snatched it from his hand.

“I’m mad at you, Ted!”

“I know you are.”

“I’m mad at all this pine, Ted!”

“I know.”

Cal took the lead, or what he thought was the lead. He looked to his left and right and gave a practice swipe at a sapling. In a spray of raindrops, he clipped it clean in two. That felt good. He looked back at Ted for direction. He widened his eyes at him.

“Well,” he said, “are you going to tell me which way to go, or are we going to sit around and scratch?”

Ted tried not to smile, and pointed into the trees, north, and Cal attacked the wall of pine, putting his whole back into his swings, cutting upward and downward, throwing sidearms from time to time.

“Careful,” said