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

“We’re weighing it. You write it down.”

He asked for the money, and I hesitated. My cold fingers had a hard time taking the wad of bills from the front pocket of my jeans. He counted it and put it in his jacket.

The men began loading a small plastic crate. The weights on the scale were set at a hundred, and each time the bar balanced, they dumped the crate into a garbage bag and carried it to the battered, iced-over freezers in the woods. I stood by the scale, making a tick on the paper for each bag. The short man told me which number it was, and I confirmed it.

The truck’s shocks creaked, and my fingers ached as I tried to keep my records legible. The moon melted to a pale splotch low in the clouds. Flurries fell, pushed by the wind.

When I’d insisted on using the scale, I must have sounded like a boy, repeating my father’s orders. But there was no threat in their responses, simply firmness, as if they were commanding a child. Though I resented this, they spoke to me kindly, telling me what to do, asking me to hand them another garbage bag.

The last of the fish had been weighed out. The short man patted me on the arm and thanked me. The gesture seemed deliberate, meant to reassure. They climbed into their trucks and drove to the road, slowing at the edge of the asphalt before accelerating.

More flurries tumbled down. The ferry’s red and yellow lights moved above the water, slowing, the clang of metal reaching me from the far shore.

THE CROSSING

I woke early, pulled on my shoes, and walked out to the road. Five cars waited, windows pale with condensation. The ferry landing reached into the current like a broken bridge. The far shore appeared in glimpses beneath the mist.

Dead grass and weeds grew from the house’s gutters and shingles. I tried to recall the night of my father’s fight years ago. It was late when he came inside, his shirt torn and his hands bleeding, the skin around his eyes gouged. I wondered if my mother, witnessing his violence, had felt trapped or protected.

The steady acceleration of the engine reached me before I saw his truck. He braked and turned, his tires digging into the frozen gravel, and he drove back into the forest. He was already standing at one of the rust-pitted freezers, the top lifted, when I got there.

“Help me load this,” he said. “Then we’ll get something to eat.”

Afterward, at a restaurant on a busy street in Fort Langley, he told me I’d done a good job. “You did what I asked you to, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He nodded, silent, as he scrutinized me.

“Listen, I want you to stay at the ferry for a while.”

“Why? How long?”

“For the holidays. I’m too busy right now, and Jasmine needs help. She’s lonely. You can stick around until after Christmas.”

“What about school?”

He smiled unconvincingly. “Why do you need it? I didn’t.”

I’d been friends with dropouts over the years, but I’d never seen myself that way, even when I hated school. Besides, if I stopped going, my mother might do something crazy.

“I have to go back to school,” I said.

“Listen, a year off wouldn’t hurt. We’d have time to get to know each other. You might not even need to go back.”

I looked away to hide my anger. Cars flashed past on the street. An old man shuffled along in a raincoat, and two girls ran woodenly in high heels to the bus stop.

“Besides,” he told me, “it will feel good for you to be a man. Make some money and get out in the world.”

He sounded wise and honest, concerned with my best interest without mentioning his own goals. I realized how easy it would be to like what he said, but I didn’t want his life.

“You know,” he said, “after I pulled the big job, I thought I’d never have to work again. I never thought I’d be here …”

I didn’t speak, knowing he’d tell stories now, giving me what I’d wanted.

“It was a year after the burglary in Hollywood …” He furrowed his brow. “I was in a bar in Miami, talking to a girl, and a man came up and slapped her. I didn’t even think about it. I broke his nose with a punch. There was blood everywhere, all over his shirt. The girl started swearing at me, and someone told me she was a whore getting it from her pimp.”

He shook his head, as if he’d liked her.

“I left, and as I was starting my car, the pimp ran out. He had a bruiser with him carrying a metal bar. I fired up the engine just as the bruiser put the bar through the ragtop.”

He motioned to the back of his head, behind his ear. “It passed right there and almost hit me. I kicked the door open as he was pulling it out, and the edge of the door hit him. Then I kneed him in the face. I threw him down and kicked him in the neck. The pimp had a knife, and I took the bar from the ragtop and hit him across the knees. That’s when the police arrived.

“The three of us, me and the pimp and the bruiser, we were taken to the station. The cops had come for the pimp, not for me. They asked me to give a statement saying I’d fought in self-defense. They were pretty happy about getting him. This one cop joked with me about boxing and asked how I’d taken down the bruiser.

“I just had to give that statement. I was almost out of there. Me and that cop, we were walking out, talking about the fight, when another cop called from inside. He asked if my green card had been checked. The guy who was with me didn’t seem too worried, but the cop who’d asked said I had an accent.