Cures for Hunger Read Online Free

shepherds in pens outside, my first memories sunlit days and broken-down motors, the mountain just above us, no electricity or running water, and our drinks in wire milk crates set in the stream.
    From my mother’s stories, I knew she’d gone to art school in Virginia but had run away with a draft dodger. I pictured a guy really good at dodgeball, but, as if angry, she said he was dodging war, not balls. She met my father in Vancouver while working as a waitress, an encounter that—because he’d once described it to me as “She served me ham and eggs, and I left with her”—made me hungry whenever I thought
about it. After that, they’d traveled British Columbia, living out of a van and fishing, an existence I fantasized about—mornings waking up and going straight outside to the river, no bedroom to clean, no school to worry about. But they’d decided to settle down and have children, and my perfect life ended just before I was born.
    Whenever I asked her questions—about war or why it’s wrong—she answered carefully, explaining with so many details—Vietnam, corrupt government, the loss of individual freedom—that I didn’t understand much. She never talked to me like I was a child, but as if I were a very old and serious man, and so I sat and listened, trying to remember the big words she used. And then, to let off some steam, I asked her to retell The Little Engine That Could, and she did, though she seemed much less interested in this than in the world’s problems.
    As opposed to my mother, whenever I asked my father about his family, he barely answered. “Why don’t you like to speak French?” or “What did your parents do?” earned me few words: “There’s no point,” or “He fished. She took care of the kids.” And then he’d tell me how he’d traveled cross-country to Calgary and gone to a party and got in a terrible fight over a beautiful woman.
    â€œThis bruiser,” he said, “was two or three times as big as me. We were throwing each other across the room. We broke the table and chairs and knocked all the pictures off the walls. There wasn’t anything we didn’t break. That guy was really tough, but I just didn’t let myself get worried. You get worried in a fight, and you’ve had it. So I kept hitting him, and pretty soon everyone at the party started cheering me. They were originally his friends, but he was arrogant, and I was the better fighter. They could see that, so I guess they wanted to be on my side. Each time I got him down, I’d say, ‘Stay down,’ and everyone else would shout, ‘Stay down,’ but he’d get up, and then I’d hit him five or six times, and he’d fall on his ass again, and everyone would yell, ‘Stay down.’ I tried to be nice, but that guy was really big, and he kept shaking his head and trying to get back up and then I’d have to hit him again. It wasn’t easy, but I finally made him understand.”
    By this point I no longer remembered my original question, and I
asked him if he’d had worse fights, and he told one story after another. His confrontations with bruisers, this being one of his favorite words, often had strange endings.
    â€œThe bruiser was so strong I had to bite his nose to win. We were on the docks, by the fishing boats, and I got him down and bit his nose and just hung on until he started crying. Sometimes you have to do things like that to win a fight.”
    He told me about journeys, from Calgary to Tijuana in a truck without brakes, or driving an old Model T along Alaskan railways to get to towns not connected by roads. Whenever a train came, he swerved off the tracks, and afterward he and his friends hefted the Model T back on.
    My favorite was the time he and a friend were driving through Nevada and picked up a Mormon. He drove so fast that the Mormon prayed in the