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

a few times and then breathed loudly, saying nothing as I talked randomly about the classes I’d enrolled in.

“Do you think you’d want to come back,” he interrupted, “just this once? You could take a few months off.”

“I can’t. I’m already enrolled.”

Absentmindedly, I turned the lamp off. The house was dark but for the porch light, the furniture faintly silhouetted.

“How’s the market doing?” I asked.

“Not good. There’s new management running the building.”

“Shouldn’t that help?”

“No, the manager’s a fucker. He raised the rent.” He drew a slow breath and described store owners leaving, just walking away, and how the manager used to work for “that dictator in the Philippines.” “Marcos,” he added uncertainly.

He swallowed a few times, sounding a bit like a person rearranging dentures. “I’m not intimidated. They’re overcharging and bullying people, but I can handle it.”

“You can keep the store going?”

He started to cough again. The receiver rasped against his shirt.

“Sorry about that,” he said. He sounded drunk, slurring his words.

“You were telling me about the new manager.”

“Yeah. He’s a big guy and people are afraid of him, but that doesn’t work with me. He tries to play games, and I put him in his place.” He hesitated, panting softly into the receiver. “I’m getting fed up with that damned store. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about success.”

“Success?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said—“I’ve been thinking I haven’t accomplished much. I don’t like failure.” He suppressed a cough and then talked about not being able to cross the border to do business, and how that affected him. “But it’s good to see you going in the right direction. I know you’ll get somewhere. We both like to accomplish things.”

His breath remained short and labored. Abruptly, he said, “I guess I’m thinking of letting the store go. I might have to declare bankruptcy again. I’m thinking of doing something else.”

“What would you do?” I asked, surprised by my own vague irritation and wariness—the possibility that his problems might affect me.

“I’m thinking about it,” he said.

“Traveling might help,” I suggested, searching for a solution. “You could hide some money for after the bankruptcy.”

“That would be dishonest,” he told me.

I didn’t reply, and after a few more breaths he said, “I’ve had my good years. Vancouver is my home … I could have gone back to Quebec twenty, even ten years ago, but there’s nothing there for me now.”

Neither of us spoke. I didn’t recognize this voice.

“Besides,” he said, “money’s not good to have when you die.”

“Are you dying?” I asked and felt relieved by the anger in his response.

“It’s just a way of saying things. I’m talking about when it happens. There’s no point trying to do anything else. It’s too late. I don’t have the experience.”

When I didn’t respond, he said that he should let me get to bed since it was three hours later on my coast.

“Do you think you could call me more often?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, but he changed the subject.

“I was driving by your school the other day. You know, the one in Abbotsford. I sell to some people down there, and I was thinking about when we used to go fishing. Then I started thinking about how you came back. Things were hard, I know, but you came back.”

I didn’t say a word. He coughed and continued.

“I should let you go so you can get rested for school. I just want you to know that what you’re doing is best. If I could have, I’d have had more education. I got a high school diploma once … when I was in prison. I guess I wanted one. But it was with the name I used when I was arrested, so it doesn’t really count.”

Again we were silent.

“It must be late,” he said. “You should call on the weekend so we can talk longer.”

I frowned and closed my eyes. “It is the weekend.”

Between breaths, he asked for my number in case he needed to call. I told him, and he repeated each digit, two correct before he had me repeat the next two.

“I’ll call you,” he said. “I’m planning on moving, so I’ll call you after I do.”

“When will you move?”

“I haven’t found a place yet, but something will turn up.”

“Why don’t you just stay where you are a bit longer?”

“It costs too much.”

I asked where he would keep his shepherds.

“They’re at a friend’s house. Anyway, I should let you go.”

I couldn’t imagine him without his dogs. I made myself speak to keep him there. “You know,” I said, “I want to write your stories. I’ve thought about that a lot.”

He cleared his throat again. “That would be all right. Listen, it’s good to hear from you. Don’t worry about me. Just give me a call if you want to talk, okay?”

“All right,” I said.

“It’s been good talking to you,” he told me, his voice superficial, as if we’d done business. He hung up before I could say good-bye—this a habit of his, to hang up first.

I held the receiver until it began to beep and then put it down and just sat. I got up, went outside, and stood beneath the cooling September trees.

✴

FOR ME, QUEBEC was no more than a list of facts: Jacques Cartier’s voyage to the Saint Lawrence in 1534, Samuel de Champlain’s trading post on the site of Quebec City in 1608, the declaration of New France as a royal colony in 1663. Gaspésie, the peninsula where my father grew up, was thought to be named for the Micmac word gespeg, “the end of the earth.”

He’d told occasional stories of his village: on election day, men in suits arrived and gave each fisherman five dollars to let them cast a ballot in his name; or, when he was a boy, his uncle and aunt in Montreal asked to raise and educate him since they couldn’t have children. He dreamed of playing hockey in Montreal, but his father refused: “T’es un homme, pis on a besoin de toé.” You’re a