This story happened on a hunting trip. My dad and brother and the Eberle family and I had all crammed into the cab of my dad’s truck, with dogs and guns and hunting vests in the bed. The hills we planned to hunt still lay dark and distant, passing like memories outside the truck windows. A twelve-hour day of hunting feels ominous that early in the morning, when my still-sleeping legs balk at the walk to the bathroom, and when it seems no quantity of eggs and sausages and English muffins could ever fortify me for a day of wandering cross-country, stomping through sagebrush, and clambering up ravines.

Dad had made sandwiches for all of us the night before, and because I don’t believe in the arbitrary, caste-like segregation of breakfast-foods and non-breakfast-foods, I turned to this sandwich for further caloric encouragement. I opened the ziplock bag. A sliver of lettuce poked out between two pieces of wheat bread. A slice of ham showed itself on the opposite side. I assumed cheese was in there somewhere, too, rounding out that bottom-shelf cocktail of the sandwich world. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I thought then that any sandwich prepared for me was a fine sandwich. And I was hungry. I was tired. The sandwich wanted to be eaten.

Josh deLacy