in response to Monday—Sunday by Colin Winnette

Friday was Saturday before we knew it, and Sunday meant a big breakfast, which we ate as we always ate. Chocolate chip and blackberry smattered pancakes, thin maple syrup dripping on the leaf-patterned tablecloth. Father never at the head of the table, always between us, elbows to our elbows, hulking forward. Watches on both wrists told different times. I usually trusted the one on the right.

My grandfather was a Methodist minister. He wore a periwinkle tie tucked into his belt: buckle was a bison bounding over a worm fence. Claimed it cost him an arm; said if I ever lost the belt it would cost me a leg. I didn’t believe him, but I did believe my father, who said that we were not taking trout that morning. He stopped his sentence, downed a throat-widening swig of cider, and said he’d met a bear guide at the bar the night before. Grandpa nodded. Said bears were a natural evolution for us. Bears ate trout, bears ate men. We ate trout. It was simple math, really.

We took the Chevy down the fire-service trail, bouncing and rocking along the uneven slope. I nearly puked but my brother told me to keep it down. Once I threw up during one of Grandpa’s sermons. He kept talking about Elisha while he patted my puke on the carpet. We never went back after that. We were Grandpa’s greatest project: the heathens under his own roof. Better to keep the devil closer, he always said.

The guide’s nose was fucked up, like it was made of rubber. He promised to pay back my father for that Wild Turkey. Father said they’d be even after a day’s hunt. Guide looked at me, then at my brother, and asked which of us would just be watching. I knew it was me. I’d never even held a gun. My brother always palmed the Winchester in the basement, popped his lips while he held the barrel under my chin.

The guide said his trips had a 76 percent success rate. Now that was for a five day hunt, not a five hour romp. Said he once caught a 70 pound sturgeon after a 50 minute fight but bears were different. They could kill the fuck out of you. No fish has ever killed a man.

I doubted that but my father has taught me not to voice such a reaction.

The guide said bears eat morel mushrooms and strawberries. He said he’s never lost a man during a trip. Lost as in killed. But he couldn’t be responsible for idiots. He said that one man in three is an idiot.

I looked at all of us in that semi-circle. At least one of us fit the bill.

The guide said bears had to be contained. One tipped over a barrel in the bed of a truck at a mulch dump. No food there but bark. Another jumped a National Guardsman, who raised his rifle but shot himself in the thigh. For some reason the bear ran away. The guide said overcast, wet days are good for bear hunts. Black bear. Grizzlies were another beast: they’d killed two girls last July. One during a midnight hike, the other pulled from her tent.

He promised us that the worst thing to do during a bear attack was scream. Someone else had told me differently.

The guide said the local conservation officer told him bears had been trampling around the Kelly apple orchard. Said he had a good feeling about this afternoon. He’d imitated a fawn bleat and a black bear rushed out of a waterhole the day before. He was guiding a physical therapist from Manhattan who downed the bear with two shots. One to the gut, the other to the head.

Fucking luck, he said, was better than skill.

I wondered about that as my father handed a rifle to my brother. On our last trip downriver his waders filled with water and he dropped his rod in the current. He whispered to me over the heavy run. He didn’t want father to hear. My brother didn’t know shit about bears. I knew you could follow their route from broken limbs and branches. Always approach an injured bear from the rear. If death breathed on your face hit the fucker on the nose and pray.

My brother took long strides ahead of me. He was tall but I could see his bones. He ate often but couldn’t keep it down. Hours on the toilet. I was wider and shorter. I knew I could kill a bear and I didn’t need a guide. All I needed was a minute of my father kneeling next to me, showing me. I was ready but I wasn’t given a chance. I had to walk in the back, hands at my side, eyes all around. The guide said I had to find the bear and let them know. Then he winked at my brother.

Grandpa took me seriously. Said I was a sure shot, would be a sure shot if I ever did shoot. Kept me at the table after meals, after my brother washed the dishes in the slop sink, after my father spread on the couch and belched into the thick pillow. Grandpa said I was ready for whatever the devil would throw at me.

Father later told me those words were only meant to get me back in the pew. Youngest goes, he said, in hopes the oldest will soon follow. Sometimes I don’t trust my father. I should show him. I should swipe that rifle from my brother and sprint forward and flush out a sow. Shoot her gone. Drag her back to the Chevy. Skin her. Mount the pelt. Show Grandpa.

I bumped into the guide. My head nearly up his fat ass. He swung around, the rifle pointed high. That rubber nose white with sweat. Said I should be more careful. Man with a gun a thousand times more dangerous than a bear.

My father nodded.

My brother kept walking.

God Almighty, I held my breakfast down. Just barely, though. The taste remained.