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

to look as if I actually use them to play baseball. If something happened, it’s the only way they’d believe it was self-defense.”

I recalled the day he’d put the bat in my hands and told me to get the money—and the pregnant girl at the door. He was fifty-two now, still stuck in that old way of being.

He looked me hard in the eyes and smiled.

“Come on. What the fuck were we saying?”

“What?”

“That you should train! How much do you think it would cost?”

He took his wallet from his jacket and threw five twenties on the table.

“Find a gym,” he said. “Just tell me if you need more cash.”

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts fell back through conflicting, coexisting memories: the valley and its fields, fishing or the day he and I walked together through rows of trees and he urged me to step forward, to face the dead bears. When our family fell apart and we left the valley, I began to hate him. Then I saw freedom in him, a way of being that was bigger, more alive, and I returned, dreaming—the two of us lifting immense pistols, our fists muscular, the silence a crescendo, the scene around us soon to rain down like shattered glass.

JACK KEROUAC DREAMS ELIZABETH BENNET

We’d packed an order of salmon fillets in Styrofoam boxes and were standing in the fenced-in yard behind the store, my father, myself, and Karl, a man who did odd jobs. Short and gruff, Karl had a blond Fu Manchu, a prominent forehead, and a squint that made his eye sockets appear rectangular. His gaze wandered as he described a murder he’d heard about. A bunch of thugs had been hired to knock off a one-legged Vietnam vet.

“This guy was lively. He split wood every day. He didn’t give up because he’d had his leg shot off. You could see him out there hopping around, but his wife was a lazy bitch and wanted his money, so she hired some guys to kill him. But they went too far. They could have just done the job and kept it simple, but they acted like they were in a movie or something. One of them even bought a laser sight for his gun. That was taking it too far.”

His boxed-in eyes were glazed, clearly disturbed, and my father and I glanced at each other. It sounded as if Karl had been at the scene.

“Anyway,” he sputtered, his eyes roving and looping. “They shot that poor guy to pieces. It just wasn’t necessary.”

After Karl had said good night and driven off, my father and I locked up.

A truck from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans pulled in as we were leaving, and an officer got out, a man so lean that not even his uniform gave him substance.

“Mr. Béchard?” he asked in the tired voice of a telemarketer.

“Yeah, that’s me,” my father said with total nonchalance.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to take a look around the property.”

“It’s all closed up for the night.”

“Would it be possible to open it?”

My father shrugged and undid the padlock on the gate. Behind it, two large German shepherds began to bark and jump against the chain link.

The officer jolted. “Hey, can you put those dogs away?”

“Put them away?” my father repeated, lifting his eyebrows. “My dogs? There’s no place to put them.”

“But how can I go in?”

“Oh, they’re not mean. Just open the gate and go on in.”

My father stepped aside, motioning with his hand as if ushering a royal visitor. The dogs had their forepaws in the links. They snarled, black lips pulled back from their teeth.

“Just go on in,” he repeated, sweeping his hand again.

The officer contemplated the two beasts. Propped on their narrow hind legs, they stood almost as tall as he did, like werewolves.

“I’ll come back later,” the man said. He got in his truck and left.

“Jesus, can’t you get in trouble for that?” I asked.

My father frowned and turned his palms up.

“You don’t think I deal with this all the time? I’ve bought from the Indians for years, and I’ve never been caught. Don’t be so nervous. Those guys don’t have the balls to catch me. How are they going to get me when they’re afraid of dogs?”

✴

I SURVIVED THE summer by training, my father’s suggestion turning out to be my salvation. Though I cut fish and packed boxes and ran deliveries, I used kickboxing as an excuse to do this as infrequently as possible. He respected martial arts enough not to mind that I spent nearly four hours a day at the gym, hammering the bags, lifting weights, jumping rope, or running alongside the railroad track out back. When I came home wrung out, he looked up from the paper that he held at half-mast before the hockey game, in case a good fight started or someone scored. He nodded, satisfied that I was doing something serious.

But as soon as my senior year began, the old tensions flared up. A few times, offhandedly, he asked if it was really worth going to school, reminding me that I hadn’t liked it when I was younger. But I just told him I’d placed into advanced classes. Training consumed my evenings, and often, instead of returning home after the gym, I drove, exploring the countryside around the city, following roads along rivers and into the mountains. As I steered, emotions flooded in—the past and my hopes for the future, the stories I would live and write, as if being in motion allowed me to feel the breadth of my life.

I knew I wasn’t being fair to my father. I worked only weekends, and when he asked for help on other days, I found excuses. I exercised and wrote and read and drove, but by December, as his business became more demanding, his mood soured.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said over dinner. “Do you hate working for me that much?”

“I worked today, didn’t I?”

“Come on. You read the entire