Cures for Hunger Deni Béchard (easy books to read .TXT) 📖

The other guy told me there was no problem. They just needed to see my papers. He was smiling with all his talk about knockouts. I told him my wallet had been stolen.”

My father appeared contemplative, as if this were no longer about him. The other cop wanted to run his fingerprints and found a match. My father fit the description given by the man with the burned eyes.

“The cop who’d talked with me about boxing couldn’t look at me,” he said. “He was embarrassed to have spoken to a criminal the way you talk to a normal man.”

He cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed himself. I had the impression he was discovering his past, trying to see where it fit in his life.

“But after the arrest,” he said, forcing a smile, “after that—that was funny. The police wanted me to fly to California. My trial was going to be there, but you can’t force a convict to fly. It’s not legal.

“They offered me a big meal, wine even, if I’d take the plane. I said I would, and I stuffed myself. It was a great meal. Steak, lobster, wine. But when I got to the airport the next day, I said I wouldn’t fly. I shook my head and told them, ‘I’m not getting on. I just remembered I’m afraid of planes.’” He laughed and repeated the line. “After that big meal they bribed me with, they were furious. They had to drive me across the country, from Florida to California. I didn’t like the drive either, but I figured I stood a better chance of jumping out of a moving car than out of a plane.”

Seeing his face, I knew that I was right, that this was new for him. He smiled like someone hearing a story for the first time, losing himself in it.

“During that trip, I spent every night in a different jail. Whenever I got to a new one, a local cop had to fill out a form with my personal information. Each time, when he asked my occupation, I said, ‘Unemployed bank robber.’ Most of those guys laughed, but there were some real hard-asses who asked over and over. I guess they finally just wrote down unemployed, because I didn’t change what I was saying.”

✴

OUTSIDE THE SNACK bar window, the fog broke beneath occasional rain, but the sun never appeared.

“How long will you be staying?” Jasmine asked.

“I don’t know,” I said and sank deeper into my jacket, breathing against its collar to warm my throat. I closed my dog-eared novel. “How long have you been living here?”

“A few months, I guess.”

“Where do you know André from?”

“He was friends with my parents. He offered me a job.” She explained that her stepfather was a drunk and my father had helped her leave home. I couldn’t see the appeal in living at a ferry landing on a lonely stretch of river. She didn’t even have a car.

I told her my own stories, about life in Virginia, stealing the motorcycle, but she didn’t smile. She squinched up her face. “That’s stupid.”

Drivers had shut off their engines, and a few customers braved the rain, hurrying toward us.

“What? I—”

“It’s dumb. Does your father know?”

She got up, went to the orange counter, and took an order for coffee.

The rain fell harder, rushing from the overhang onto the shoulders of the man reaching for the sugar.

I couldn’t imagine my life after Christmas. If I didn’t return to school, I’d have to repeat the year. With a rage that surprised me, I hated my father.

“I’m going inside,” I told Jasmine and ran through the rain and sat on the couch.

From the window, I could see the orange counter and, just inside, in the angle of unmoving light, the curve of her breasts beneath her sweater. Shadows hid her face. At the docks, the green light lit up, and the traffic crept forward.

After dark, as rain fell past the strand of colored bulbs, the red and gray GMC pulled into the driveway. I hid my book. Jasmine had just closed the snack bar, and my father came inside with a grease-stained bag of Chinese food. But once we were at the table together, we hardly spoke. He asked a few questions about sales and then looked at the cassettes next to the radio.

“One time,” he said, “when I was traveling in the States, I pulled into a gas station right after Elvis had been there. I even saw his Cadillac leaving, and the attendant told me it was Elvis. It’s too bad I didn’t get there earlier. I’d have liked to see the King.”

I considered this other brand of story, innocuous, innocent, a groupie’s celebrity sighting. He couldn’t tell his real stories with Jasmine there.

She glanced between us, and not wanting to seem like a boy, I looked at him evenly.

His hand rested on the table, half curled into a fist. Slowly, he flattened it against the wood and studied it. He put it in his lap, rolled his shoulders, and swallowed. He met my gaze and stared.

“I can’t believe I have to stay here,” I told Jasmine after he’d left.

“Why? What’s wrong with being here?”

“He wants to start a new family. That’s why he’s making me live here.” I repeated some of what he’d told me and explained his interest in Sara. She listened intently.

“Is she his girlfriend?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. He just likes her, but she’s too young.”

She pulled her knee to her chest and wrapped her arms around it. Her bottom lip was slightly loose, as if in a pout. She traced the leg seam of her jeans with a fingertip.

After a moment, she got up and went into the bathroom. I could hear her brushing her teeth. Then the door clicked shut, and there was only the sound of water whining in the cold pipes. I sat at the table and opened the notebook in which I’d started a fantasy novel.

When she returned, she was wearing her