Daily Flash Fict. Challenge Entry

         The woodsmoke crackled in the hazy darkness. Two men and a boy huddled around it, wishing their wishes alone could make the fire hotter. It was a chilly night on the outskirts of Vancouver, B.C., just across the border from Washington State. There was good bear hunting up there. But it sure as heckfire got cold in the fall up there, too. One of the men, a husky man in his late thirties, said so.
         "Gee willikers, it sure as heckfire gets cold in the fall up here, aint it?" he shivered as he spoke.
         "Darn tootin'. Let's get some shuteye, them black bears are nothing to sneeze at."
         As they drifted off to sleep, and the embers died, they dreamed cold dreams. The boy dreamed of a bear killing and eating a deer whole. His father, the thinner man, snored loud enough to wake the wildlife. But the wildlife must have been sleeping too, for nothing disturbed the hallowed circle of sleeping bags. The husky man grunted every now and again, his legs twitching like an old dog's. He must have been chasing something. His eyelids twitched too-- wonder if he caught it?
         The morning came like a slap in the face, and they stumbled around camp in a daze. Today the boy was to kill him a bar. A real bar. If things went well, he'd get a trophy, that Ma would fashion into a cloak, and the head could go on the wall. The meat could go to the wild dogs. No one really eats bear meat.
         The boy wasn't as enthused as the men, though.
         "You know, I'm having second thoughts about this whole thing," he said to his father.
         "Son," his father retorted, "You ain't a man til you've killed. Now let's have breakfast."