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/