Comprehension

Genre
Realistic Fiction is a
made-up story that could
have happened in real life.

Make Inferences
and Analyze
Character, Setting, Plot
As you read, fill in your
Setting Flow Chart.

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Read to Find Out

What was it that turned
Nicky’s summer around?

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 Main Selection

RAFT
THE

BY J Im L A M ArCHE

“T here’s nobody to
play with,” I complained.
“She doesn’t even have a TV.”
Dad grinned. “Well, she’s not
your normal kind of grandma,
I guess,” he said. “Calls herself
a river rat.” He chuckled. “But
I promise, she’ll find plenty for
you to do. And you know I can’t
take you with me this summer,
Nicky. There’ll be no kids there,
and I’ll be spending all my time
at the plant.”
I felt tears starting again,
but I blinked hard and looked
out the window.

113
 That afternoon, I stood in Grandma’s yard
and watched my dad drive away. Dust rose up
behind our car as it disappeared into the pines.
“Well, we can’t stand here all summer,” said
Grandma. “C’mon, Nicky, it’s time for supper.”
“Honey or maple syrup on your cornbread?”
Grandma asked.
“I don’t like cornbread,” I mumbled, poking
my finger into the syrup pitcher when she
wasn’t looking.
“If you’re going to do that, you’d better wash
up first,” she said. She had eyes in the back of her
head. “Bathroom’s through there.”

Character, Setting
How do you think Nicky feels
about spending the summer
with his grandmother?

114
115
 I pushed the doorway curtain aside
and walked into what would have been
a living room in anyone else’s house.
Books were scattered everywhere—on
the tables, on the chairs, even on the
floor. Three of the walls were cluttered
with sketches and stuffed fish and charts
of the river. Several fishing poles hung
from the fourth with a tackle box,
a snorkel, and a mask on the
floor beneath them. It looked
like a river rat’s workroom, all
right, except that in the middle
of everything was a half-finished
carving of a bear.
“Been carving that old
fellow for years,” Grandma
called from the kitchen.
“The real one hangs out
at the dump. Now come
get your supper, before I
feed it to him.”

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 Dad was right—Grandma found plenty for
me to do. In the morning, I stacked firewood, then
helped her clean out the rain gutters and change
the spark plugs on her truck. The afternoon was
almost over when she handed me a cane pole,
a bobber, and some red worms.
“Fish fry tonight!” she said, showing me
how to bait the hook. “That river’s full of fat
bluegills. Drop your line near the lily pads and
you’ll find ’em.”
Down at the dock, I looked things over. The
lily pads were too close to shore. There couldn’t
be fish there. I walked to the end of the dock and
threw my line out as far as I could. Then I sat
down to wait. And wait. And wait. My bobber
never moved.
“There’s no fish in this stupid river,” I said out
loud, disgusted.
We had hamburgers for supper.
“Give it another try,” said Grandma the next
evening. “I’ll bet you catch something.”
Don’t count on it, I thought, as I headed
back to the dock. I threw my line in the water.
Then I stretched out on the dock to wait. I must
have fallen asleep, because I was awakened by
loud chirping and chattering. I sat up and looked
around. A flock of birds was moving toward me
along the river, hovering over something floating
on the water. It drifted downstream, closer and
closer, until finally it bumped up against the dock.

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119
120
 Though it was covered with leaves and
branches, now I could tell that it was a raft. What
was it doing floating down the river all by itself,
I wondered. I reached down and pushed some of
the leaves aside. Beneath them was a drawing of a
rabbit. It looked like those ancient cave paintings
I’d seen in books—just outlines, but wild and fast
and free.
I cleaned away more leaves and it was like
finding presents under the Christmas tree. A bear,
a fox, a raccoon—all with the wild look of the
rabbit. Who had drawn them, I wondered. Where
had the raft come from?
I ran up to the cottage. Grandma was on the
porch, reading.
“Do you have some rope I can use?” I asked.
“In the shed, hon,” she said. “Help yourself.”
She didn’t ask me what I needed it for, and I
decided not to tell her yet.
I pushed the raft into the reeds along the river’s
edge, then tied it to the dock so it wouldn’t drift
away. All the while, birds flew over my head, every
now and then swooping down to the raft as if it
were a friend. A crane waded through the reeds to
it. A turtle swam up from the bottom of the river.
The moon had risen yellow over the river by
the time I went up to the cottage to go to bed.

121
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 I was already down at the dock the next
morning when Grandma appeared with a life
jacket and a long pole. She didn’t seem surprised
by the raft at all, or by the animal pictures all
over it.
“How did you know . . . ?” I started.
“Let’s go,” Grandma interrupted, tossing me
the life jacket and stepping onto the raft. She
pushed the pole hard into the river bottom and we
moved smoothly into the current.
“Your turn,” she said after a few minutes. She
showed me how to hold the pole and push, and I
poled us to the middle of the river. Even there, the
water wasn’t over my head.
We poled the raft up the river, then let it slowly
drift back down. The birds kept us company the
whole time, soaring, swooping, singing. Some even
landed on the raft and rode with us for a while.
Hitchhikers, Grandma called them.
After that, I had little time for anything but
the raft. I raced through whatever chores there
were, then ran down to the dock, wondering what
animals I’d see that day.
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 It wasn’t just birds that the raft
attracted. One morning three raccoons
followed me along the shore. Another
time a turtle climbed on board and spent
the morning sunning itself. And one
afternoon I saw a family of foxes slip
through the trees along the river.
When the weather turned too hot
and sticky to sleep indoors, Grandma
helped me put up a small tent on
the raft. I lay on top of the cool
sheets and read comic books by
flashlight until I fell asleep.
One night, a noise woke me
up. There in the moonlight
stood a huge buck. He
looked right at me, then
lowered his head to
drink, as if I wasn’t
there at all.

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 I found Grandma the next
morning working on her bear carving.
“Do you have some extra paper
I could draw on?” I asked her.
She brought out a big sketchpad and
a pouch filled with thick pencils and
crayons. “I’ve been saving these just for
you,” she said. “Better take these, too.”
She held out the snorkel and mask.
“Never know when they might come in
handy on a raft.”
The sun was hot that afternoon, so I
poled into the shade of a willow, then waited
to see what animals the raft would bring.
It wasn’t long before a great blue heron
whooshed down with a crayfish in its bill.
I grabbed a pencil and began to sketch.
I felt invisible as the bird calmly ate its lunch
right in front of me. Then it preened its
feathers, looked back up the river, and
flew off.
That night I showed my drawing
to Grandma.
“Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all!”
And she tacked it on the wall on top of one
of her own sketches.

Character, Setting
Describe the ways in which Nicky
is beginning to enjoy the place
where his grandmother lives.

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 One day I poled upriver farther than I’d ever
been. Near a clump of tall cattails, I startled an
otter family. They dove underwater, but, as with
the other animals, the raft seemed to calm them
down. Soon they were playing all around me.
Grandma had been right about the mask
and snorkel coming in handy. I slipped them on,
then hung my head over the raft and watched
the otters play—chasing fish, chasing each other,
sometimes just chasing their own tails. I kept very
still, but they didn’t seem to mind me watching.
They played keep away with a small stone, then
tug-of-war with a piece of rope. It was like they
were showing off for me. They even let me feed
them right out of my hand.

129
 Some mornings, Grandma would make
a bagful of sandwiches and a thermos of icy
lemonade. Then we’d put on our bathing suits,
grab some towels, a lawn chair, and an inner
tube, and pole upriver to her favorite swimming
spot. “I’ve come swimming here since I was a
girl,” she told me as we tied the raft to an old
dock. “The Marshalls used to live here—all ten
of them. What a herd of wild animals we were!”
While Grandma watched from the inner
tube, I practiced my flying cannonballs. Then
we’d eat our lunch, and she’d tell me stories about
growing up on the river. My favorite was of the
time she’d found a small black pearl inside a
river clam. “I still have it,” she said.
Somehow, on the river, it seemed like
summer would never end. But of course it did.

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 On my last day, I got up extra early and
crept down to the dock. The air was cool and a
low pearly fog hung over the river. I untied the
raft and quietly drifted downstream.
Ahead of me, through the fog, I saw two
deer moving across the river, a doe and her
fawn. When they reached the shore, the doe
leaped easily up the steep bank, then turned to
wait for her baby. But the fawn was in trouble.
It kept slipping down the muddy bank. The
doe returned to the water to help, but the more
the fawn struggled, the deeper it got stuck in
the mud.
I pushed off the river bottom and drove
the raft hard onto the muddy bank, startling
the doe. Then I dropped into the water. I was
ankle-deep in mud.
“You’re okay,” I whispered to the fawn,
praying that the raft would calm it. “I won’t
hurt you.”
Gradually the fawn stopped struggling, as if
it understood that I was there to help. I put my
arms around it and pulled. It barely moved.
I pulled again, then again. Slowly the fawn
eased out of the mud, and finally it was free.
Carefully I carried the fawn up the bank to
its mother.

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 Then, quietly, I returned to the raft. From there, I watched
the doe nuzzle and clean her baby, and I knew what I had to do.
I pulled the stub of a crayon from my pocket, and drew the fawn,
in all its wildness, onto the old gray boards of the raft. When I had
finished, I knew it was just right.
After supper, I showed Grandma my drawing of the fawn and
told her my story.
“It’s perfect,” she said, “but we need to do one more thing.” She
hurried up to the cottage. When she came back, she had tubes of
oil paint and two brushes.
Grandma helped me trace my drawing with the oil paint,
which soaked deep into the wood. “That’ll keep it,” she said. “Now
you’ll always be part of the river.”
“Just like you, Grandma,” I told her. “A river rat.”
Grandma laughed. “Just like me,” she agreed.

135
 A SKETCH OF
JIM LAMARCHE
JIM LAMARCHE is a lot like the boy in this story. Jim
spent his summers rafting on a river when he was a child. He grew up
near the Milwaukee River in Wisconsin. All year round, the river was
a special place to play. Jim also liked drawing and crafting things.
Once he made a whole zoo out of clay that he dug up from a field.
Even though Jim liked art, he didn’t think about becoming an artist
when he grew up. Back then, he really wanted to be a magician. Today
Jim thinks that creating a book from just a blank piece of paper is not
so different from being a magician.

Other books illustrated by Jim LaMarche

Find out more about

Jim LaMarche at
www.macmillanmh.com

Author’s Purpose
How might Jim LaMarche’s
own childhood experiences
have influenced his purpose for
writing The Raft? What clues in
the story help you to know?

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 Comprehension Check

Summarize ASbbW\U

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Think and Compare

1. How does the story’s setting change Nicky? What could Nicky
have done for the summer if the setting had been his own
home? Make Inferences and Analyze: Character, Setting, Plot

2. Reread page 113 of The Raft. What does Nicky expect his
vacation with his grandmother to be like? Use story details
in your answer. Analyze

3. What would it be like if you were able to make use of a raft

for the summer? Apply

4. What information would you use to support the view that the
raft was a gift from Nicky’s grandmother? Evaluate

5. Read “Rafting—Ready or Not” on pages 110-111. How is the

narrator’s experience on a raft similar to Nicky’s? What do
the characters discover? Use details from both stories in your
answer. Reading/Writing Across Texts

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