Cures for Hunger (23 page)

I had no idea when I should expect the delivery. From the couch, I watched the line build up and load. A cop parked next to the restrooms, to sleep or lie in wait for those who sped along the lonely straightaway that extinguished itself at the river.

 

 

The police car was gone by midnight, when a green truck approached the streetlamp, body filler at the wheel wells and door edges. As it turned, its headlights plunged through the front window, into my eyes. It drove past the house, into the woods above the river. A moment later, a small blue pickup followed.

My heart was speeding. With a notepad and pen, I followed the tracks over the brittle ice.

The rain had stopped, and with the cold, the mist had almost lifted.
The moon, emerging from scattered clouds, hung over the river. Everything seemed amplified, vivid, washed in adrenaline—the late ferry run, the sound of the heavy engine across the water, the vessel's square bulk folding back the current, the river dragging its stiff belly against the night.

Four barrel-chested men stood behind the truck, the lid of a wooden crate against its side, a scale on the tailgate. They wore baseball caps, dark hair to their shoulders. Without introducing myself, I told them about the scale near the house, surprised to find myself breathless.

“We have our own. It's better,” one of them said. He was shorter and burlier than the others, his face lost beneath his visor.

“I'm supposed to use my father's scale,” I repeated.

They had begun setting up, and as one, they paused and turned and looked at me, four faceless men bulked against the dark.

“We're using our scale,” the shortest one repeated.

“Okay,” I conceded, then reconsidered. “But he wants me to weigh it.”

“We're weighing it. You write it down.”

He asked for the money, and I hesitated. My cold fingers had a hard time taking the wad of bills from the front pocket of my jeans. He counted it and put it in his jacket.

The men began loading a small plastic crate. The weights on the scale were set at a hundred, and each time the bar balanced, they dumped the crate into a garbage bag and carried it to the battered, iced-over freezers in the woods. I stood by the scale, making a tick on the paper for each bag. The short man told me which number it was, and I confirmed it.

The truck's shocks creaked, and my fingers ached as I tried to keep my records legible. The moon melted to a pale splotch low in the clouds, occasional flurries pushed by the wind. When I'd insisted on using the scale, I must have sounded like a boy, repeating my father's orders. But there was no threat in their responses, simply firmness, as if they were commanding a child. Though I resented this, they spoke to me kindly, telling me what to do, asking me to hand them another garbage bag.

The last of the fish had been weighed out. The short man patted me on the arm and thanked me. The gesture seemed deliberate, as if to
reassure. They climbed into their trucks and drove to the road, slowing at the edge of the asphalt before accelerating.

Flurries tumbled down. The ferry's red and yellow lights moved above the water, slowing at the far shore, the clang of metal reaching me as if from a great distance.

THE CROSSING

I woke early, the skin of my face hot from the night in the cold air. I pulled on my shoes and walked out to the road. Five cars waited, windows pale with condensation. The ferry landing reached into the current like a broken bridge, the far shore appearing briefly beneath mist.

Dead grass and weeds grew from the house's gutters and shingles. I tried to recall that night years ago. It was late when he came inside, his shirt torn, hands bleeding, the skin around his eyes gouged. The fight was later ruled self-defense, all charges dropped. Had my mother, witnessing his violence, his ability to leave two people unconscious in a matter of seconds, felt trapped or protected?

I heard the steady acceleration of the truck's engine before I saw him. He braked and turned, his tires digging into the frozen gravel, and drove back into the forest. He was already standing at one of the rust-pitted freezers, the top lifted, when I got there.

“Help me load this,” he said without looking at me. “Then we'll get something to eat.”

Afterward, at a restaurant on a busy street in Fort Langley, he told me I'd done a good job. “You did what I asked you to, right?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He nodded, silent, as he scrutinized my face.

“Listen, I want you to stay at the ferry for a while.”

“Why? How long?”

“For the holidays. I'm too busy right now, and Jasmine needs help. She's lonely. You can stick around until after Christmas.”

“What about school?”

He shrugged and smiled unconvincingly. “Why do you need it? I didn't.”

I'd been friends with dropouts over the years, but I'd never seen myself that way, even when I hated school. Besides, if I stopped going, my mother might do something crazy.

“I have to go back to school,” I said.

He dropped his gaze and sighed. “Listen, a year off wouldn't hurt. We'd have time to get to know each other. You might not even need to go back. I never had an education.”

I looked away to hide my anger. Cars flashed past on the street. An old man shuffled along in a raincoat, and two girls ran woodenly in high heels to the bus stop.

“Besides,” he told me, “it will feel good for you to be a man. Make some money and get out in the world.”

I still didn't say anything. He sounded wise and honest, concerned with my best interest without mentioning his own goals. I realized how easy it would be to like what he said, but I didn't want his life. Though I'd resented having to go to school, it now seemed the only escape. He indulged his fidget, moving the paper place mat back and forth with his fingertips.

“You know,” he said, “after I pulled the big job, I thought I'd never have to work again. I never thought I'd be here . . .”

I looked at him but didn't speak, knowing he'd tell stories now, trying to charm me.

“It was a year after the burglary in Hollywood . . .” He furrowed his brow as if remembering. “I was in a bar in Miami, talking to a girl, and a man came up and slapped her. I didn't even think about it. I broke his nose with a punch. There was blood everywhere, all over his shirt. The girl started swearing at me, and someone told me she was a whore getting it from her pimp.”

He shook his head, appearing disappointed, as if he might have liked her.

“I left, and as I was starting my car, the pimp ran out. He had a bruiser
with him carrying a metal bar. I fired up the engine just as the bruiser put the bar through the ragtop.”

He motioned to the back of his head, behind his ear. “It passed right there and almost hit me. I kicked the door open as he was pulling it out, and the edge of the door hit him. Then I kneed him in the face, threw him down, and kicked him in the neck. The pimp had a knife, and I took the bar from the ragtop and hit him across the knees. That's when the police arrived.

“The three of us, me and the pimp and the bruiser, we were taken to the station. The cops had come for the pimp, not for me. They asked me to give a statement saying I'd fought in self-defense. They were pretty happy about getting him. This one cop joked with me about boxing and asked how I'd taken down the bruiser.

“I just had to give that statement. I was almost out of there. Me and that cop, we were walking out, talking about the fight, when another cop called from inside. He asked if my green card had been checked. The guy who was with me didn't seem too worried, but the cop who'd asked said I had an accent. 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.”

He sighed, maybe seeing this from the perspective of all that followed. He didn't sound sad, just contemplative, as if this were no longer about him. The other cop wanted to check his fingerprints. The fingerprints found a match, and 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 as if embarrassed himself, as if he'd meant to tell me something amazing that would make me forget about school. I had the impression he was only now discovering his past, trying to see where it fit in his life, as if the stories were surprising him, too, changing him, his eyes different, a hint of rage in them.

“But after the arrest,” he said and forced 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, repeating the line, and he let himself look at me, smiling. “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 remained caught in mist, like a dull, fat fly in a web.

“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, customers braving 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.

I stared off along the line. The rain fell harder, rushing from the overhang onto the shoulders of the man reaching for the sugar. An old couple turned back to their camper.

I couldn't imagine my life after Christmas. Was this being a man? He was using me, but I didn't know what for. If I didn't return to school, I'd have to repeat the year. With a rage that surprised me, I hated him.

“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. She appeared too still. 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, 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. Who had he been before I'd come back? How much had he changed for me? She glanced between us, and not wanting to seem like a boy, I gazed at him evenly, without interest or emotion.

His hand rested on the table, half curled into a fist, and he rubbed the muscle on the back of his forearm absently. Slowly, he flattened his hand 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 brow was furrowed, her bottom lip slightly loose, as if in a pout. She traced the leg seam of her jeans with a fingertip.