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

I saw his joy when I raced through traffic, or his rage when someone confronted me.

My life was building to a crescendo, I told myself. With each curve of the highway, I felt that I was arriving, only to be disappointed when nothing changed.

✴

ONE AFTERNOON, I was driving down a hill on a country road that ended at a T where another beaten strip of gravel followed the wooded shore of a small, rocky river, when my brake pedal went soft. I slammed my foot two, three times, but there was only a hollow chopping sound, like a hatchet striking dry wood. I threw the gearshift into first and popped the clutch, and the car jerked, the gear whining as I slowed. I spun the steering wheel before I reached the T, and came onto the road sliding sideways. Then I hit the gas, gravel rattling against the undercarriage. The right tires bumped the raised grassy shoulder before their treads caught and shot me forward.

I eased up on the accelerator and switched the ignition off, letting the car putter and jerk to a stop. I got out and caught my breath. Crickets whirred in the tall grass, and somewhere, behind the few faint sunlit clouds, a jet rumbled.

I went to the front of the car and knelt. Brake fluid dripped from the burst caliper. The dust that I’d stirred up at the T was catching up like a slow shadow, drifting over the car, speckling the paint.

I didn’t have enough money to repair this, and between work and school and the houses of friends where I commandeered the empty bedrooms of older siblings who’d left for college, I had to drive constantly. I found it hard to swallow or breathe. I told myself I was fine. I could handle this, enjoy it, even. I’d driven a bike without brakes in BC, and my father had traveled from Calgary to Tijuana in a truck without brakes.

I walked along the road to clear my head and then turned. The paint along the front edge of the Honda’s hood and roof had long ago worn away, as if from a sandstorm. No one could see that it lacked brakes. The emergency didn’t work either, but I could stop by downshifting hard or cutting the engine.

I got back in, started it, and practiced accelerating and then stopping, seeing how long it took after I switched off the ignition. Putting the car in first gear also worked. So long as I didn’t tailgate or come up fast on a stop sign or a red light, I should be fine.

By the end of the day, I felt exultant. I understood what my father must have experienced crossing the United States this way, testing himself.

Just before sunset, I pulled into the driveway of a girl who was a senior at school. In the carefree energy of the last week of classes—the sun a growing presence in the blue, humid sky—she’d invited me over for dinner.

“Do you want to sleep here tonight?” she asked as we ate canned ravioli, only the two of us at the table. Her long brown hair lay against one shoulder, and she wore a blue summery dress with tiny white flowers on it.

“What about your parents?”

“Don’t worry about them.”

As she explained the plan, a state trooper pulled into the driveway, and I jumped out of my seat.

“That’s my stepfather,” she said. “He doesn’t care about anything. He won’t even notice you.”

He came through the front door in uniform and didn’t say hello as he prepared a sandwich in the kitchen with brisk, silent motions. His gray face had a metallic tinge, his chin protruding more than his small nose, as if designed to hold the strap of his round state trooper’s hat.

I said good-bye to her and drove to a nearby church, where I parked as she’d instructed. When it was fully dark, I crept back through the woods, pausing just beyond her yard to survey the windows. Then I moved quickly to the basement door and let myself inside.

That night, after our muted passions, she snored softly as I stared at the ceiling, planning, thinking through the next steps. She tried to draw close in her sleep, but I pulled away. I’d had a few flings over the past year, but survival overshadowed romance, and if someone held on even a little tightly, I panicked and fled.

Now I had to decide what to do once school let out. I was running out of avenues, nearly penniless, my car without brakes, its engine knocking, the muffler coughing black smoke. I hadn’t called my father since I left, but he might understand. I’d never managed to hold all the different versions of him in my head: the reckless, entertaining man; the bank robber; or the fishmonger, racketeer and thug.

Maybe I could go back for a few months, for a breather. Then I could escape again, stay moving. He’d realize that I was living as he had. His stories of travel still inspired me, and I saw myself in them just as I’d once imagined bank robberies—the raised pistol as motionless as a planetary body, or the sudden dusk of shot-out lights.

When I woke, dawn hung like sea scum in the glass. I dressed and crept into the empty basement, the house silent but for the gnawing of carpenter bees in a beam above the door. I eased it open. This part scared me, the thought of her stepfather dressed for work, gun on his hip as he had his coffee and looked out the upstairs window. My exposed back tingled as I high-stepped across the yard, into the woods.

By the time I arrived at the church, my pant legs were wet with dew. I swung the car door open and sat inside and started my homework. Sunlight spilled over the forested horizon, making the nerves behind my eyes pulse, and a family of five large, ragged stray cats returned from a night of