BEAR HUNTING

"How long until our dad gets home?" Jon Jon lifted the top lip of his uncle's sleeping black lab.

"About a week or so," Uncle Albin said.

The boy, sitting under the dull light from the window trying, in vain, to explain to Adunya why the stacked checkers piece is called a king, peered out toward the setting sun. "Are bears dangerous?" he asked.

"Can be," Uncle Albin said. "But if you shoot straight, you got nothing to worry about. And your pa, he's steady as a post. he could shoot the whiskers off a cat."

I do not know this bear," Adunya said. "It is like a hippo?"

Jon Jon laughed. "Na, it's much worse than a hippo. It's huge, bigger than old man Hill's German shepherd. It's got long, sharp teeth like a shark and razor claws that could spill your guts on the floor with one swipe."

Adunya thought on that for a moment. "No, it does not sound like hippo. It is more like lion, I think. But hippo much more dangerous than lion."

"They are?" Jon Jon looked at his uncle. "Is that true?"

"Hippos kill far more people than lions do." Uncle Albin did not even try to hide his smirk.

"Wow. I can hardly believe that." Jon Jon shifted in his seat and straightened his back. "You think pa will get a bear? I'd sure like to see those claws."

"He's way up north, where there's more bears than people. I'd say he's got a fair chance."

"My father's brother, he was killed by a lion. It took him during the night. When they find him the next morning, vultures pick at what is left of him. He was a strong warrior--he had killed many animals, even lions. But the lion took him so easy." Adunya had this glazed over look as if he were staring past the others, staring past the cabin even, to a time, a place, a life beyond recovery.

"Hey Uncle Albin?" The boy said without pulling his gaze from the graying day outside the window.

"Yeah, Steven."

"Are bears like lions?"

Painting: North Country by John Banovich http://johnbanovich.com/

WHEN THE RAIN COMES

A turkey vulture rode the air current leading the storm. Dark clouds crept toward them like a slow warning.

The boy had seen storms like this. They came in fast and heavy and blew by as if they had never existed. He paid it little attention. It was too far to run to the cabin anyhow. The boy and Adunya walked to the pond in relative silence. Neither asked any of the the questions picking at their thoughts.

Finally, the boy repeated something he had heard his father and uncle say on numerous occasions. "Storm's coming."

Adunya stopped. He did not utter a word.

The boy turned back. For the first time since he met Adunya, the boy saw something other than indifference. He saw fear.

"Ain't nothing but a storm. A little rain, maybe some wind and thunder."

"Where I come from, the storm bring bad things."

"Bad things?"

"The storm bring death."

Until that moment, the boy thought of Adunya as a strange kid from a strange land--he thought of him as an intruder. Under a sudden rush of pity came a dose of curiosity. He had to know more. He started to ask, but noticed Adunya's wide eyes fixed on the churning clouds, his feet like stones, his forehead shining with perspiration.

"Come on. There's a cut in the embankment where we can stay dry." The boy reached for Adunya's arm.

Adunya sprung back and raised his fishing spear as if the boy were a rattlesnake trying to strike.

The boy eased away, wondering if this was the point Adunya, the boy from Ethiopia, turned savage. But it was almost as if Adunya did not even see the boy, as if he saw through him, to a place nobody could know or understand.

"It's okay," the boy said. "If you want to get outta the storm, you need to come with me." The boy started to run, not knowing for sure if Adunya even understood him. When he glanced back, his companion was following close behind, that basket of razor points at the end of his spear pumping toward the boy's back with each stride.

The boys ran like pronghorn chased by wolves. And the storm, like a barbarian horde, rumbled forward--unstoppable, unmerciful. The rain began just before they ducked under a seven-foot-high embankment with a grass-covered, drooping overhang. The boy had used it many times. From underneath, they could see roots dangling from its ceiling. It always looked to the boy as if the dry earth would break loose and crush him. He only hesitated to use it when his younger brother, Jon Jon, was along.

Both boys pulled their knees to their chests. Thunder and lightning, like war-time explosions, filled the sky and giant raindrops whipped in sideways like waves of kamikazes. The pond almost appeared to boil.

"Look at that." The boy had to yell just to hear himself. "That is so cool." When he turned to Adunya, his smile faded.

Tears stained the young Ethiopian boy's cheeks. His limbs trembled and his eyelids would not close.

When the rain stopped and the silence waited for water to finish dripping from leaves and branches and grass, the boy peeked his head into the open to scan the sky. "It's over now," he said.

"They came for my father during storm."

The boy held his gaze to the sky.

"I did nothing. I am coward."

They hiked back to the cabin while rays of sun began poking holes through what remained of the clouds. Their fishing gear remained unused--their thoughts unspoken.