Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard (fun books to read for adults .txt) 📗

then mixed and matched, taking away the Model T’s brakes or having my father bite his enemy’s nose. Speaking, I felt that weightlessness, the way words made everything possible. Brad and Travis saw my eyes get feverish and laughed. We got into pushing contests with our puffed-out chests, heads cocked back, about six inches between our eyes as we reeled back and forth like roosters.

Weekends, we roamed the county, drinking what we could shoplift and getting into fights. We went to carnivals where the scene was so country that the babies crying sounded like part of the music. Hayseeds stumbled past with the swagger and eye-bulge squint of cartoon hound dogs as we drank ourselves sober from the spigot near the refreshment booth, splashing our faces. We stood in the shadows comparing knives.

Walking home late, I let the wind off passing trucks buffet me. When a solitary rig drew close, I timed its approach and stepped into the highway, just far enough that I was inches from it as the shaking, rushing metal blurred past. A thin acrid sweat broke on my skin and dried just as quickly in the night air.

I’d been thinking of my father more and more—how he hitchhiked or drove cross-country, took dangerous jobs in the wilderness or fought strangers to protect himself. No one else I’d met had a life like that. If he were me, he’d just stick out his thumb and catch the first ride out of here.

Eventually, even the highway quieted but for the occasional car, its headlights dwindling filaments against the empty dark.

On my way home, I crossed through the unlit field, having forgotten it had been bulldozed. Deep trenches were cut into the earth for the cement footers of the shopping center, and I had to move cautiously, as if infiltrating a war zone.

✴

DAILY, DICKIE WATCHED me when he thought I wasn’t looking. I could see him contemplating the potential excesses of my badass behavior.

“This guy started a fight,” I told him and described some pushing and how I’d held the kid’s arms until he backed off.

“I’ve been there before,” he said, clearly undecided.

He’d told me about getting in trouble at school. Detention. Drinking and fights. Soon, my exploits would match his, and he’d see me as a badass in my own right. Maybe then he’d tell me what my mother wouldn’t about the custody battle. It was unfair that he of all people knew more about my father than I did.

Walking the halls of the junior high, I held my shoulders stiffly, an electric tension in my spine. I felt I was going to go crazy, swinging and kicking.

So that I’d be late to class, I waited in the hall, hoping the intentional tardiness might draw the girls. But everyone saw me as a bookworm acting out. The rednecks shook their heads. There was a rural caste, and I confounded them. Still, I was diligent.

I slouched in my chair, wearing two-dollar shoplifted sunglasses with the tag still on the reflective lens. I took out a mechanical pencil and leaned over to the girl next to me.

“I need my fix,” I whispered.

I clicked the shaft of lead out until it looked like a syringe. Then I slapped the inside of my arm. I had an audience now. While holding down the button, I pressed the tip against a fat vein. The lead slid back into the canister, appearing to stab my flesh. I rolled my eyes and kicked my legs and whispered, “Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah,” before I died in a blissful OD.

“Guess what?” I told Dickie that evening, leaning against his tool shelf.

He stood at his workbench, spraying WD-40 into the receiver of the telephone. It had been staticky, and he thought this might help. “Yeah?”

“I got detention. I got paddled in school.”

“What?” He turned toward me.

I explained how the vice-principal had hit me three times across the backs of the thighs with a large wooden paddle drilled with holes for aerodynamics. School rumor had it he’d been in the big leagues.

I was about to describe my indifference after the punishment, how I’d said, “Whatever,” and slouched out, but Dickie’s lips drew back from nicotine-stained teeth.

He shoved me, and my head hit the wall. He lunged and gripped my throat, pinning me there. My face pulsed, the room dimming and his furious grin expanding into a bubble. He squeezed, digging his fingers, his palm crushing down on my windpipe. I was afraid my eyes would pop.

“You little shit,” he said. “You need to learn a thing or two. If you ever act out again, I’ll kick your ass.”

The skin of my face felt as if it would split.

“And I know you’re taking my cigarettes. If I ever catch you, I’ll beat you senseless.”

But he still wasn’t done. I was sputtering, my tongue between my teeth.

“Not so tough, huh? When you’re ready, you come get me. We’ll see who wins.”

The instant he let go, I ran upstairs. I was coughing, holding my throat. I slammed my door behind me and stood, panting.

My father sent cards often, and in each he wrote his number, probably afraid we hadn’t received the previous, or maybe because it frequently changed. I found one in the mess on my floor.

I opened the window and let myself down, and then ducked across the yard and ran to the 7-Eleven.

But as soon as I’d called collect, I realized that I couldn’t ask him for help, because he was crazy—though how much worse than everyone else, I didn’t know.

“Hey, Deni,” he said, sounding confused and sleepy.

“Hey,” I said. He asked how I was doing, and I said, “Okay. Everything’s going pretty good. I don’t like school, but things are okay.”

If I told him what Dickie had done, he’d come here and kill him. I knew that with certainty. Instead, I said that I’d pierced my ear.

“Yeah, that’s popular now, isn’t it?”

The truth was that a month before, I’d been at the 7-Eleven with Dickie, and the