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

He put the photo away. “Not really.”

“What happened?”

“It just wasn’t working.”

“And what about Sara?”

Looking confused, he confessed that he’d asked her to move in with him and start a family but she’d run away with the car he was lending her. Eventually the police brought it back, though he didn’t press charges.

“It’s strange,” he said, “how people can disappear in the same town.”

The thought occurred to me that for a criminal he relied on the police a little too much.

When I asked about Jasmine, he said only that she hadn’t wanted to do her job. He’d driven her to the countryside where her mother lived and dropped her off. Telling me this, he became haggard. In the emptiness of his life, I saw a threat. I didn’t want to be the person to fill it.

But complete freedom, I knew, would come only when I had wheels of my own. This seemed a biological truth: without a license and a car, nothing was possible.

After we’d finished eating, when one waitress was vacuuming and the other putting chairs upside down on tables, he looked around as if to leave, but just took the toothpick from his mouth.

“You know, I get it,” he said. “I remember when I didn’t want to listen to anyone. But I was a good kid. I logged or worked in the mines, and I sent money to my family. Then, when I was eighteen, I guess, I realized what bullshit it was. I decided I’d had enough, and I left and hitchhiked across Canada, all the way to Vancouver. You wouldn’t really understand, but the world was changing back then. When I was a kid, I didn’t have many opportunities. Then I was a young man, and everything seemed possible. The music was different. People were dressing different. Quebec was changing, but I didn’t have an education or any skills other than manual labor. I was angry at my family. I’d given them everything, and my younger brothers and sisters had gone to school, but my parents had done nothing for me.

“Anyway, I started hitchhiking. This was before crime. I just wanted to get away from everyone. I was in Ontario, and I’d been dropped off and was walking, looking for my next ride. There was a river next to the road, and I saw a man on a boulder right in the middle of the rapids. It must have been springtime because the water was high. My English wasn’t very good back then, but I waved down a truck and stayed until some men with ropes and life vests got there.”

He’d been holding the toothpick in his fingers, rolling it back and forth, and now he put it down and stared off.

“When we finally pulled the guy out, we saw that he was from a reservation. He had a long black braid, and he didn’t say anything. We took him to a diner and gave him some dry clothes and a cup of coffee. That’s when he told us his friend had been taken by the river. That’s how he said it. ‘The river took my friend.’ The men who rescued him were pretty angry he’d waited so long to tell them. A police officer kept saying, ‘It’s just like one of them.’

“I joined the search party, and we spent all day walking the river, looking for the missing friend. I was just trying to be helpful, but I understood the Indian. When you know someone’s dead, what’s the point? I just cared about myself, about what I was going to do with my life, and I didn’t want to waste my time on a dead guy. But I helped even if it was pointless, because that’s what you’re supposed to do. When we got back to the diner, the Indian was gone. He didn’t even help us look. I thought a lot about that, and it made sense to me. I’d been worrying about making money for my family when I had nothing for myself. I was living just to work shit jobs. It really got me thinking about what I wanted. We’re not alive for that long, and you might as well go for it and make yourself happy.”

We were the only diners left, sitting in a forest of upturned chair legs, and I wasn’t sure why he’d told the story, what had caused him to remember or try to make peace. But I was in total agreement. I didn’t have sympathy for anyone. The only person who mattered was me, and I would do whatever was necessary to make my life the way I wanted it.

✴

SLEET AND CONSTANT drizzle gave way to sunny, mild days. But while other students relished the sunlight, I brooded, thinking of how I could avoid working for my father. For three months, he’d helped pay the rent. I’d done everything I could to be a good student. I wrote for the yearbook and school newspaper, and worked out every day after classes in hopes of returning home as late as possible. I refused drugs with a conviction that startled me, and I didn’t drink but for the occasional beer with my father.

Students were crowding into the cafeteria, laughing and pushing into line. I stopped at the bulletin board. I knew every post for contests and clubs, but there was a new one, a green photocopy: a Mandarin summer camp on Vancouver Island had fifteen places for BC students. I pulled the sheet down and hurried to my English classroom, but it was empty. My history teacher, a lean Trinidadian man, sat at his desk next door, eating rice from Tupperware. I asked if we could talk. He had me pull up a chair, and ate as I explained. His eyes bulged when I described my father’s crimes. I knew I wasn’t being fair, but I was desperate.

By that afternoon, my teachers had met with the principal, who then