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

“It’s for school.”

“But it’s a job. I’m paying you well.” Anger came into his eyes and then gave way to exasperation. “I’m just saying you could help a little more. I barely see you.”

I kept busy with my pasta, unable to feel sympathy for him. We often laughed and drank and ate until late, but then, suddenly, I wanted to get as far away from him as possible. We’d survived almost six months together, but I felt calm only when I was driving aimlessly, sometimes not returning until three or four in the morning. Tonight, he would want to tell stories, but I was supposed to pick up a girl from school at ten, when she got off work.

“Maybe you could help me for an hour or two in the mornings,” he said.

“Before school? Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Filleting fish and readying some orders.”

“I can’t. I’ll be tired for class and … and I’ll smell bad.” Though I knew from the novels I’d read that generations of young men had worked like this, I also knew that generations of young men had defied their fathers.

“Goddamn it,” he said, though I had the sense that he was muting his anger, afraid I’d leave. “What about your truck? You’re barely making enough to pay for it. You could use a bit more work.”

“No way I’m working mornings,” I told him. “I’ll give the truck back. I don’t care.”

“Okay. If it’s such a big fucking deal, then okay, let’s just drop it.” He jabbed at the chicken on his plate, took his beer, and sat back in his chair, rolling his shoulders and trying to adjust his demeanor. He smiled.

“You’re really getting in shape, aren’t you? At least you’re training hard.”

“That’s why I’m tired in the mornings,” I said.

He nodded tersely. “I bet you’ll be really good. The men in my family were tough. My brothers were fighters, and my father was goddamn tough. His hands were so big we used to pass his wedding ring around and it was too big for my thumb.” He held up his fist. “People said that no one north or south of the Saint Lawrence could beat him in a fight.

“The only time he didn’t win was because he was too drunk. There were a couple guys trying to beat him up, and they kept hitting him, but he didn’t even swing back. He just lifted his finger like this and said, ‘I’m too drunk. I’ll get you all later.’ It was like he didn’t even notice he was being punched.”

I laughed, trying to imagine this man I’d never met, whose name I didn’t even know. My father was laughing too.

“You have that in you,” he told me, and it occurred to me that the story might have been planned for this reason alone—to encourage me to hold steady to the path he thought best. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “You’re going to make a hell of a boxer.”

I checked my watch. I had to leave soon if I wanted to meet the girl on time.

“I wish I’d used my energy better,” he said. “You know, when you’re young, you have all that anger, and you have to do something with it. I had no guidance. I was so angry I’d drive like crazy, and if someone honked, I’d try to run him off the road. I’d stop my car, and if he got out, I’d beat him up. Fuck. I don’t even know what the point of that was. Beating up strangers on the side of the road when it was my fault to begin with. I really should have been boxing or playing hockey. I wasted all of that energy on nothing. But you shouldn’t do that. You could take a year off from school and go professional. You’ll never be young again.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. His own words seemed to have embittered him, and I could see that he wanted to tell other stories.

He started in on a favorite, about traveling through Alberta and a party in Calgary. A woman started hitting on him, and her boyfriend came to beat him up. The guy was enormous, very Germanic, and he and my father fought for a long time, throwing each other into walls, breaking everything in the house.

“I’d been hanging out with the people at the party. It was always pretty easy for me to make friends, and when I started winning, they began cheering for me.”

He hesitated, giving this some thought.

“They started shouting, ‘Go Frenchy,’” he said, and shook his head.

“Listen, I have to go,” I told him.

“Already?”

“I have a date.”

“Tonight? Sunday night?” He glanced around the room, as if she might be there, watching us eat. “Well, you should bring her by the house sometime.”

“What?”

“What do you mean what?”

“It’s just a date.”

“Okay, fine, go on your date.”

He sat back and held his beer and stared off, and I said goodbye. He waved halfheartedly, refusing even to look my way.

✴

THE DATE HAD come about because I’d told this girl that I drove through the mountains all night or stopped and lay beneath the stars. When I described how I’d gone to the island in the Fraser River where I was born and parked near the water and slept there, she’d wanted to go too. That night, I picked her up from the convenience store where she worked, and we drove to the mountains, parked, put down the backseat and undressed. Eventually, we fell asleep, the heater on, the engine idling. Suddenly, dawn was lighting the windows. I threw on my clothes and raced to her house, speeding along the highways into the suburbs.

Then I went home to get the schoolbooks I should have kept with me.

“Where were you?” my father asked, opening the door to my room. He had on his jeans, the veins and tendons in his throat lifted. “You come home making all this fucking noise and wake me up. I needed some extra