Free Time Bandit by Andy Hillstrand Page B

danger to ourselves. For that, we had to wait until Dad took us mud duck hunting. Each time we returned to the skiff he ordered us to unload and hand off our guns for safety’s sake. I handed up my gun to Andy and boom ! It went off next to his head. He started to laugh. It was a psychotic laugh, like he was amazed to be alive. I did not have the same reaction when he shot me. I was standing in front of him when mud ducks flew toward us, and I said to myself, “He wouldn’t shoot at them, would he?” He shot. The blast knocked me over. I picked myself up and picked pellets out of my rain gear right up my body to my face.
    Oddly enough, Grandma Jo first taught us to shoot. We were eight or nine at the time, and she knew how the bears and moose frightened us when we visited the outhouse. She wanted to show us that she could protect us. Our grandfather Ernie had died by then and was buried in a grove near her homestead log house. He had killed two black bears from his front door with a .44 magnum pistol that he bequeathed Jo. While we watched, she drew the gun close to her face to aim and pulled the trigger. The recoil bucked the hammer into her head and gave her a mild concussion and powder burns.
    Dad felt that killing a moose would somehow improve our character. One time I had just returned from a fishing trip and was tired. I had no desire to go hunting with my brothers and with Dad; to be honest, I had looked forward to a hotel with room service and a lady. But I went moose hunting. We flew to Emerald Lake and camped on the shore. The first day, Dad shot a moose, and I thought, Hey, this is great. We can leave now. The airplane came to pick us up. I was packed and ready. But then, the plane took off again without us. I could not believe my eyes. I said to Dad, “I thought we were leaving.”
    He said, “Not until everyone shoots a moose.”
    At that moment I saw a moose on a hill. I started running after it with my rifle, firing as I ran. I chased that damned animal until I could not stand up; at one point I nearly ran off a cliff. I was yelling at it I was so angry, and the more I yelled the faster it ran. The moose got away, and on that trip I never did bag a moose. Dad finally let us go home.
    He organized these hunts down to the last pretzel. One time he brought along the sons of a friend. He planned out the stores, enough for each boy. There were seven oranges and seven apples and seven steaks, and so on. He put on the menu things I did not like, like liverwurst. I would rather eat moss and leaves. My brothers and I went for a hike with Dad, and while we were tromping around the mountains his friend’s sons, whom we called the Cabelas Brothers (after the well-known outdoor outfitter) because of their spanky hunting outfits, ate all the oranges. The old man was beside himself. I thought, there goes the hat. He was so pissed off he kicked them out of camp.
    We also hunted for the famous brown bears in Kodiak. One time, as we neared the island on Bandit, a bear was swimming the Shelikof Strait twenty miles at sea from the direction of Ninagiak Island off Katmai National Monument toward Kodiak. The big animal looked beat; it tried to climb into our boat, and we went out of our way to avoid it. On that bear hunt, Andy got separated from us. We had no idea where to find him. He spent the night in a tree with brown bears prowling around under him. One time, when we were younger, Andy was sixty feet up in a tree with his gun waiting for a bear to walk by. We chopped down the tree, and Andy tried to fly again. He stuck out his tongue. And when he hit the ground, he nearly bit it off. Blood was everywhere.
    My brothers and I started working on fishing boats when we were eight, and it could not have been too soon. I used to sit on the beach while Dad let me watch him sail out. I was mad about that. I wanted to work because I wanted to fish. Fishing is my oldest memory. I must have been two, and my brothers and I were aboard