Cures for Hunger (4 page)

As we were nearing home, I asked my mother why I had a purpose.

“So you can do something great for the world,” she said.

Maybe this was why I always felt unsatisfied or craved to see something amazing. Whenever I learned about anything new, I couldn't stop thinking about it—meditation or fishing, the police or my father's other family. My mother had once told me how society had become corrupt and might end, and I'd thought about this until it seemed as if the destruction should happen any minute now. It would be the greatest story ever. There would be no more school, and I'd live in the mountains and fish and meditate forever, unless this wasn't my purpose after all.

“But how can I know?” I practically yelled.

“What?”

“What my purpose is?”

“Just ask inside yourself,” she said. “All the answers you'll ever need are inside you.”

I sighed. Something had to happen right now, like in a novel. I wanted the sun to burn up the mountains, the sky to dissolve into the fields, the earth to melt into crystal blue water. But along the road, dead autumn grass resembled a dirty shag rug. Ten Speed appeared in the distance and zipped past, turning her head to take us in with her wide, empty eyes. And then the road before us was clear. A few naked trees leaned this way and that, hunched and bent and reaching, like old people.

“Do you have any invisible friends?” my mother asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Are there people you talk to?”

It seemed like a dumb question. I talked to everything—to stuffed animals and books, to my pillow and the trees. I walked across the fields talking.

But my brother was eager to explain. “Not real people,” he said.

“Spirit guides,” she interrupted. “Your brother and sister have one. How many do you have?”

I looked out the window. Ten Speed had made a U-turn and was trying to pass us, her chin to the handlebars. I watched her a moment, giving my mother's question some thought.

“Twelve,” I said.

Briefly, no one spoke.

“Well then,” she told me, “you should have no problem finding your purpose. Just ask. I'm sure at least
one
of them will tell you.”

 

 

Novembers were disappointing. My father was gone, running his seafood stores or selling Christmas trees. My birthday passed while he worked, and that Friday, at school, the kids sang “Bonne Fête à Toi,” though I wouldn't actually turn nine until Sunday. As they yammered, I mourned the few remaining weeks of salmon season and that my father was too busy to take me. The teacher told the class my age, and they all asked, as they did each November, why I was a year younger. I explained how my mother had thought kindergarten was a waste of time and made me go straight to first grade. They told me kindergarten was fun, and I said it was for slow learners, which she'd also said, though from what I'd heard, it did sound fun.

The next morning, when my father was saying good-bye to my mother in the kitchen, I got up and grabbed my book on salmon and ran downstairs.

“The salmon runs are going to end,” I whined and showed him the dates. “Can't we go for my birthday? It's tomorrow. You were going to forget it. You always do.”

He'd just finished putting on his rain gear by the door, and he sighed.

“We can't go fishing,” he said after a moment, “but how about I take you to work for your birthday? There's a spare bed. I'll bring you back tomorrow.”

I said, “Sure, okay,” as if I didn't care, though I planned to harass him about salmon fishing and make him feel bad about not doing something more special for my birthday. Even on our way into the city, as I tried to bide my time, we passed a shallow river where Native Americans stood in the current, spearing salmon that splashed between the rocks. My father had long ago explained why they were allowed to fish this way and catch as much as they wanted, and I'd been jealous. I couldn't help but mutter, “I wish I was Indian” as we drove past.

My father sold Christmas trees near downtown Vancouver, on a parking lot rented from the Pacific National Exhibition, which had closed its rides for the winter. He'd put up fences and turned the space into a maze of pine, spruce, and fir, and he'd been sleeping in the mobile home that served as an office and a warm-up place for his employees, the young men who hauled trees and flirted with Helen, a pretty blond with fringed bangs who ran the till. She played Christmas music over the speakers until the last customer left, then put on the Eurythmics or Duran Duran, and everyone gathered in the cramped living room to drink and talk, the trailer floor creaking and grinding against its cinder-block supports.

Though his workers all had yellow rain jackets and pants, my father wore green, as if it were a general's color. Yellow was ugly, he told me, and he pointed out that you called cowards yellow. In green, he blended with the trees, so that sometimes I didn't notice him watching as I wandered and talked to myself. I'd look up suddenly, seeing the faint figure, his eyes still and dark as unlit windows.

Even though I was actually proud of going to work with him, I couldn't stop worrying about the salmon runs. Each time I reminded him, he sighed and said, “Okay. I'll think about it. Stop asking, will you?” Then he turned back to speaking with customers or giving commands.

By that night, I was starving. On the couch, I huddled in my jacket,
trying to read
Mystery of the Fat Cat,
wishing I had enough friends to form a gang or that I lived someplace with interesting creatures like rats and cockroaches. My stomach clenched and gurgled, and I pictured myself sinking my teeth into Helen's arm as if I were a famished rat. What had changed? I never used to worry about food. Was it something my father had done, or my mother's dreams? I was feeling sad and frustrated, as if I might cry, and this only made me angrier. I hated myself when I wanted to cry. I threw down the book and went outside.

Misting rain drifted over the lot, gauzy halos around the hanging colored bulbs. No one stood near the trailer, the music turned low, Perry Como crooning softly as if from far away. Pine needles covered the asphalt, and I walked into a dark row of trees, hundreds tied in twine and leaned against two-by-four supports. Voices reached me, rising and falling, like the ocean from a distance. The corridor of trees became so dark that I froze, trying to see ahead, my senses overpowered by the smell of pine sap.

“André . . . ,” I called, but my voice broke, and I swallowed and tried to make my throat work. “André!” I shouted. Footsteps scuffed past beyond the trees and stopped.

“Hey, André!” a man barked, his voice nasal and angry. “Your kid's looking for you.”

The footsteps scuffed off, and I pictured big rubber boots on indifferent feet, dragging through pine needles.

“Where?” my father called.

“Just over here,” the man barked again. “Over there.”

My father called my name, sounding tired. His silhouette appeared at the end of the corridor, his sou'wester gleaming faintly. He didn't drag his feet but stepped quietly until he stood before me. His beard seemed black, his eyes lost beneath the rubber brim.

“What is it?”

“I'm hungry,” I said, trying to keep my voice under control, though it sounded too loud and whiny and on the verge of tears.

“It's late. You should've told me before.” He spoke slowly, as if to
hold back his anger, and I forced myself to swallow and answer as calmly as I could.

“I didn't know,” I said. “I just realized.”

He sighed as if relieved that I hadn't started crying, and the tension seemed to release from around him. Hazing rain gathered on my face as I tried to read his expression. I'd always felt that he liked having me along. We used to laugh together, and he'd tell stories whenever I wanted, but that almost never happened anymore.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll order you a pizza.”

I followed him back between the trees, and in the space before the trailer, with the colored lights and chrome coffeemaker, the music and the blue tarpaulin tied up above the door, he shouted to Helen and told her to order me a pizza.

“What kind does he want?” she called through the slit in the sliding window.

“Whatever. He'll eat anything.”

He looked down and tried to smile, lines around his eyes. He hesitated, then said, “Why don't we get your room set up?”

We went inside, down the narrow hall of fake-wood paneling, to a flimsy door. A mattress lay on the floor, an upside-down plastic milk crate next to it, a lamp on top. He flicked the space heater on, and its front began to glow red. The air smelled of burned dust.

“Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You can read in here. Helen will bring your pizza. Then you can sleep.”

“Okay,” I told him, concentrating on keeping my voice steady and unbothered.

He stared down, not looking into my eyes, just seeing, as if I were something he'd found on the roadside and he didn't know what to do. Then he forced a big smile.

“Goddamn it!” he said with the exaggerated enthusiasm he used when he flashed money or bought employees beer. “We should decorate your room, shouldn't we?”

He looked around, and in the closet, on a shelf, found a battered magazine. He opened it, and a long piece of paper, with a picture of a woman, folded out from the middle.

“Why is that page so long?” I asked, and took an easy breath, feeling that he might be normal again, that we were about to do something fun, and that if I were patient, there'd be another chance to ask about going salmon fishing.

“It's called the centerfold,” he said and pulled the page free, the paper popping off the staples. There was a nail in the wall, and he pressed it through the top of the centerfold and stepped back.

A dark-haired woman wore a long blue shirt. It was open in the front, and her nipples stared out from the white skin where she wore her bathing suit. There were shelves behind her with old, serious-looking books.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Is she in a library?”

He leaned close, furrowing his brow. “I guess so.”

“It's strange that she's in a library, isn't it?”

“Well, I never thought about it . . .”

“What books do you think she's reading?”

One lay on the floor, next to a blue sandal that had fallen off her foot.

“I don't know. Anyway, she can keep you company tonight.”

“Can I take her home and put her up in my room?”

“Ah . . .” He lifted a hand and scratched his beard. “I don't know if that's a good idea.”

I understood. My mother wouldn't like it. This would definitely have to be a secret, too. So I hesitated, then asked, “Do you think we can go salmon fishing for my birthday?”

He stared down. “You don't give up, do you?”

“It's because I really wanna go. It's important.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. We'll go salmon fishing.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah, I promise. Look, I have to get back to work. Helen will bring your pizza.”

After he'd left, I stared at the centerfold, wishing I had a library like the naked woman's. The books appeared expensive, with covers as thick as those on encyclopedias, but when I tried to make out the names on the spines, I couldn't read a single one.

 

 

The night before our fishing trip, I could hardly sleep. Then, as soon as I did, my father was waking me. It was still dark out. My brother and I huddled into our clothes in the cold room. We followed him to the truck.

He drove slowly, yawning, drinking from a thermos, looking straight ahead, hushed music on the radio. I liked the dim glow of its dial, the yellow headlights tunneling through the valley dark, the way steam washed through his beard as he drank, the fragrance of coffee.

Normally, he drove like a maniac, yelling at slow drivers and telling us to watch for lazy pigs who sat in patrol cars doing nothing. He had gory stories about boys who stuck their heads out the window, as I did, catching the wind in my mouth and feeling it whip through my hair. My mother used similar techniques for seat belts, describing me soaring through the windshield and skittering over asphalt. “No more skin,” she'd say. “You'd look like raw meat and have broken bones and a concussion, and you'd never think right again.” Though my father's seat belts didn't work, his stories were better than hers, my favorite that of the man who liked to drive with his head out the window. A passing truck knocked it off, and, lacking eyes to find it by the roadside, he had to drive home without it.

Now, though, there were no stories. My father yawned, rubbing his face, or he drank from his thermos. My brother was asleep. I turned in my seat.

Behind us, in the center of the lane, rode Ten Speed, kinky hair hidden by a dark hood, her face lit red from our taillights, her wide-set eyes unmistakable. I couldn't believe it. She took the mountain turns faster than we did, her legs pumping like the bars on my mother's sewing machine. She neared and lagged and neared again, keeping up because we weren't going fast. I thought to tell my father, but he looked irritated and sleepy, and it was fun to watch her. I figured we'd lose her
on the highway, and we did, though she kept up much longer than I expected.

After two hours, we followed a narrow asphalt road into the mountains, then gravel paths, and finally parked. As soon as we opened the door, the stench was unbearable.

“Goddamn it,” he said. Dawn lit the treetops as we followed him through the forest to the river. Water rushed past boulders and gravel bars. Everywhere, all around us, large, brilliantly colored salmon with hooked jaws rotted. I'd studied them in books—had in fact stolen the best one and scissored out the pages that showed it belonged to the school library—and I knew that as salmon spawned, their jaws became curved, their teeth canine, their backs humped, and their coloring no longer silvery blue but a bruised red.