The Government Bears

This story has a lede just like "Wild Horses", but it is more jagged around the edges as you delve into it and start reading. I didn't like it as well. Something about the harshness and the random jumps of thought that the narrator had jarred me as I was reading. It was similar to trying to read in a car that's driving down a bumpy old dirt road. You know you're reading but you keep getting thrown off track so much you just eventually get tired of the story.

The tone is very much that of a rambling, senile, old man who is bitter and callous about life. This changes slightly when he's in a scene with his grandaughter Alice, but for the most part you're struck by how old-fashioned and pig-headed the narrator is.

There's one thing in particular that makes you question if he's altogether there or not. He starts out by saying, "My family's snake bit. Since I got struck by the pick wrench and blew up the rig in anger, this state's never given me any trouble directly but it's sure taken it out on my kin."

This is a puzzling statement and it's not until later on that you learn the state he speaks of is Mississippi.

The unusual part is that he goes on later to say that, "Some foods have not taste. Other taste like rotting, garlicky flesh." So in a way he discredits his previous statement because he says that he can't enjoy food anymore as a result of things going on in the state.
The reoccuring theme seems to be that he hate Mississippi and the people in it. He gives several examples of what they do and why he doesn't want his grandchildren to end up like them or his son. But in the end the story goes no where and you're left wondering what the whole point was.