Itinerary by Richard Holinger
Bears would come eat haybales stacked to the ceiling, one on top of the other. Barn had no doors.
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Sow came loping out of the woods one winter, two cubs tripping behind her, batting each other, knocking each other sideways, knocking each other down, each time springing back up and going in again for the playful kill.
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When the evening slid into night. Black bears.
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The itinerary was nearly finished when I looked out the dining room window and saw a sow and her cubs strolling toward the barn, no doors, open as the marriage Shawna and I agreed to, then broke.
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Black bears are fearful, but feisty if roused. Not aggressive as the grizzly, but a female will do what it takes. Hardly monogamous.
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At night I dreamed about writing an itinerary. Next morning, I sat down and wrote one out, listed several imaginary or wishful places. When bears appeared in my peripheral vision, I looked up and god damn if those sons of bitches didn’t know hay from blackberries.
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The night before the three bears slunk out of the white and red pine trees, Shawna and I had it out good and for all. Didn’t matter what either one said, it meant to hurt like a blade in the kidneys, like a marshmallow stick in the eye. There was no going back after that, just going.
*
Before bed that night, I asked her how many men she’d had because she asked me how many women I’d had and I said no matter what they didn’t matter because she was all I wanted which she took as a lie and left the room stumbled downstairs opened the door and started the car. I yelled after her, Careful of the bears.
*
I woke next day, made coffee, poached some eggs, buttered a piece of toast, and sat at the kitchen table with a yellow legal pad and blue Bic. I copied the itinerary dreamed the night before. 1. Paris; 2. Rome; 3. London; 4. Beijing; 5. San Francisco; 6. Home (wherever she is).
*
That night, I believe the sow has come to feast on the hay when the bear rears up and it’s the male, showing off his manhood. I take the 30-30 Winchester, loaded, safety on, and open the door as he heads for the barn. Shawna says she doesn’t care if the sow and her cubs eat at will what takes a year of plowing, planting, fertilizing, and harvesting. Maybe that’s the difference between her and me, I don’t know. I do know it involves what we think we and others can get away with.
I cross the porch’s long unpainted slat boards, my boot soles quiet as falling snowflakes.
Richard Holinger’s work has appeared in Witness, Chicago Quarterly Review, Hobart, Iowa Review, Orca, and garnered four Pushcart Prize nominations. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry, Kelsay Books) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays, Dreaming Big Press). He holds a doctorate in creative writing from UIC and lives northwest of Chicago far enough to see fox, deer, possums, woodchucks, and turkeys cross his lawn.
