Cures for Hunger by Deni Béchard Page A

probably not a good idea. There are lots of snakes in Africa. Don’t you think it’s nice to go camping and not worry about getting bit?”
    As he spoke, he paused between each few words, as if to catch his breath. I pictured snakes coming through the windows of our motor home while we slept, but I was more afraid of him losing his temper.
    â€œI guess,” I said and shrugged, wondering if he was scared of snakes.
    He changed the subject to how hard it was to keep his seafood business going, and I made a mental note to check the display in his store and see if any prehistoric fish had accidentally been caught. My mother, he told me, didn’t care if the economy was bad or that the cocksuckers at the bank were making work hard. I pictured bankers throwing rocks, his employees ducking while trying to sell fish. But things couldn’t be going so badly. He’d bought a briefcase and explained how important it was for a successful businessman, showing me its cylinder lock and the tag that said Patent Leather. Besides, if he no longer had his stores, that would be better since we were going traveling.
    At his fish market, I didn’t see any lack of money or any cocksuckers.
Everyone was nice, and customers were shoving ten- and twenty-dollar bills over the counter.
    He checked that his employees were doing their jobs, and he took a wad of cash from the till and put it in his jacket. Then he sat me on a stool with a book, under the watch of the two men who worked there, and he disappeared for an hour with a young, very pretty Chinese woman who also worked for him and whose name I could never remember.
    I questioned his employees about whether they might have accidentally cut up any strange, very ancient-looking fish, but they said they hadn’t, so I looked for myself. Inside two bubbling tanks, crabs and lobsters clambered over each other, their pincers held shut with rubber bands. In the display were prawns, speckled trout, thick halibut steaks, silky salmon fillets, bags of fist-size clams, and red snappers with surprised-looking eyes. The creatures on the ice always made me realize how big the world was. Staring at them, I pictured the deep, ancient, glistening dark of the ocean. I began telling the employees how someday I planned to travel around Africa and find the lost descendants of dinosaurs.
    â€œWhat are you guys up to?” my father asked when he returned alone, the shoulders of his jacket flecked with rain.
    â€œWe’re talking about dinosaurs,” I said, then told the employees, “André and I are going to travel and do nothing but fish after my mother leaves and he goes bankrupt.”
    Both men blanched and glanced away, but my father’s face became so red it looked painful. In his truck, he grabbed my arm.
    â€œYou can’t say those things!” He tried to catch his breath. “You’re lucky. My father would have thrown you through this window.”
    I sat perfectly still, showing no emotion, because if I got upset when he was angry, he got even angrier. He let go of my arm and gripped the steering wheel as if to tear it off. Briefly, I pictured him lying in broken glass and wondered about his father.
    â€œIt’s okay,” he told me. “You didn’t mean to. You just need to stop talking so much.”
    As he began to drive us home, I considered his words. I talked constantly and had never thought this might bother him, that there were
things about me he didn’t like. Until now I’d been feeling pretty special since he was spending more time with me the way he used to.
    After a while, he said, “I hate those fuckers. I hate the bank.” He told me that he’d planned his revenge. He would rent a safe-deposit box and put a package of fish inside. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think they can legally take it out no matter how bad it smells.”
    Later, waiting at a red light, he pointed to a bank and an