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

“Training?”

“Yeah, boxing or something. You’d be good at it.”

“That could be okay,” I said warily.

“You’re made to be a fighter. You’re like me that way. I could’ve taken on the best. That’s one of my regrets. I should’ve been professional. Instead, I fought in prison …”

He was watching me, clearly trying to evaluate my interest. I had the sense that he’d been waiting for me to get back so he could tell stories.

“I remember this one prison in California. The inmates were fucking tough. It was after Miami, and the police had driven me there. I had some bad fights, but I could handle those guys. I really tested myself. There were never enough beds or blankets, and each night we fought over them. Sometimes, inmates got food from the outside and hid it, and if the screws—the guards—found jam or honey, they smeared it on the beds. Rats crawled over the men at night and ate the mattresses and blankets.

“Those guards,” he said, “they were like a gang. They didn’t look much different from inmates, and they used to take prisoners into small rooms and beat them until they couldn’t stand. I’d insult them. ‘I’m federal,’ I said when they threatened me. ‘You fuckers can’t touch me. You’ll all lose your jobs if anything happens to me.’

“It was true. I was in for a federal crime, and the police knew I had other crimes under my belt. They wanted to find out what I could tell them. There was a lot they could learn by making me a deal.”

He explained how the prison had been near LA, on the San Andreas Fault. It resembled an old brick warehouse, and with each tremor, the walls rippled, bricks swimming in their weave, dust deepening the air. The inmates stared in terror at the ceiling. My father searched for words to describe the faces of men ruined by guards, the quakes that came too frequently, even the small ones moving the walls like a tapestry beneath a breeze.

“Damn it,” he said, his voice grating, “we were just waiting for that ceiling to fall.”

He was staring through me. I’d forgotten how alive he could appear. The anger he’d harbored on my last visit seemed gone, replaced by an emotion I tried to identify—his gaze at times sad, at others restless.

“But the worst fight I had was in the prison where they sent me afterward. A man threatened me. He said he’d put me in the infirmary. He said it at lunch, in front of everyone. If an inmate did that, you had to act. It was a question of honor. You didn’t have a choice. If someone tries to make you look bad, you have to take him down.

“After lunch, I followed him to his cell. He was a big man, but I’d been a fighter my whole life. I really could have been a boxer. I went in and slammed the cell door behind me. The doors were left open after lunch, but once you closed them, only the guards could open them again. I beat the shit out of him. I was punching and kicking him and got him down on the floor and kept kicking him and he crawled under the bed. Then I bent and took his foot and pulled his leg around the metal post of the bed frame and kicked it. I heard the bone snap. It must have broken in two or three places.”

He raised his eyebrows and sighed.

“I guess a lot of my fights were pretty bad. One time, this guy disappeared with the money from a job we did. He was supposed to hang on to the cash while it cooled off. When I caught up with him, he was coming out of a bar. It was at night, and no one was in the parking lot. I hit him with a baseball bat. I really let that fucker have it. I don’t know how many times. Then I went and changed my clothes …”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because bats cut the skin. I had blood all over me. I changed and then called the police. I watched while they took him away.”

“Why did you call?”

“Because the parking lot was out of the way. I didn’t want the son of a bitch to die.”

“Did he?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t check on him, but I don’t think I hurt him that bad. He probably just never danced again.”

He tried to smile.

“But he could have died later,” I said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you check?”

He shrugged. The story’s violence had infused his posture, and he sat hunched, his fists against the tabletop. I wondered why the attraction to danger held such sway and what made us need to push at everything—an impulse I felt even now.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” I asked.

He jerked his head back as if I’d taken a swing.

“No. No matter what I did, I had principles. I wouldn’t kill. And I always made sure the people I was working with understood that. One time, a guy wanted me to do a job. He told me I had to get rid of a night guard. I wouldn’t do it.”

“Why not?”

He lifted his shoulders, not so much a shrug this time as an annoyed jerk.

“I didn’t want to be the guy who took away someone’s father. But hurting people was hard to avoid. It happened. It had to. I never planned to, not unless I needed to keep someone from shitting on my reputation. I grew up with nothing, and my reputation was all I had. Most of the time I was just protecting myself, or someone showed up where he wasn’t supposed to be.”

The waitress took our plates and left, and he watched the tired to-and-fro of her hips.

“I keep that baseball bat in the truck,” he said, “under the seat. I have a glove and a ball too. In case the police ever check, it has