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Fiction Excerpt

"A Great Hunger"

by Tony Soltis

"And they tempted God in their heart by demanding the food they craved."
Psalm 78.

Scanning groceries at Lane Six, I was already reaching for a soda-sixer when the pack of hotdogs’ price lit up: $15.99.

"Wait, wait, wait. How much?" The customer reacted, her eyes bugging. She held out her hands, stopping me, asking if that price could possibly be right.

I gave a short-lipped smile and said all the meat prices had gone overheated again this morning. I braced myself because of all the flack I’d been getting. Around us, women were pushing carts, gathering, sweeping up jars and cans and bottles and boxes. Usually when things got crazy in the market, I enjoyed it. Like at holidays or even just packed Saturday afternoons, but this was different. This had gone on two weeks straight, all night and day. Fourteen days of this pace was getting scary, and a lot of customers were losing tempers. Last night where I had my hair done, those ladies were pumping me for what times the delivery trucks were coming in so they could be there.

"It’s crazy, I know," I assured the bug-eyed woman. "If you don’t want them, I can take them off."

"Do they think we’ll just pay anything?"

I tried to be gentle and asked again if she still wanted them. My young bagger Kim was running between registers. I could see her tired knees were aching her.

"How can anyone charge so much for a hotdog?"

Suddenly the woman behind her yelled out she’d take them if bug-eyed woman didn’t want them. Then she grabbed the hotdogs and threw them on her side of the divided conveyor belt.

At the end of my shift, I turned in my heavy register drawer, then inched my way through crowded aisles of jammed carts to the back, past the sad empty green-watered lobster tank to the break room and time clock. I needed to get my butt home by three. Normally, this was a simple fifteen-minute ride, no problem. But my car was busted, the brakes again, and I had to catch the bus, which came in about five minutes. I exhaled and knew I didn’t have much chance of making it, and if I had to wait until the two-forty bus, I wouldn’t get home in time for Tabia’s graduation.

Wetting my lips and adjusting my bra, I stepped off the curb, faced the oncoming traffic and stuck out my thumb. I’d kill Tabia or the boys if I ever caught them hitchhiking, but it was different for me. I was forty and I had no other choice. And I have always been fortified by my intuitive feeling of not having any other choice.

The first few cars slowed down, probably curious at seeing an adult woman asking for a free ride. But I didn’t care if they thought I was drunk or a whore or just an idiot. I had to get home. Besides what was eating at me wasn’t so much the passersby, but a bad nervous feeling about the last two weeks, all the crazed buying at the supermarket. Meat prices were shooting up faster than I could ever remember, and something was wrong despite what the girls at the salon said, that this was just temporary, like a gas shortage, and pretty soon prices would start falling. But e coli, mad cow, hoof and mouth disease... these things were all over the newspaper. So much so you stopped paying attention. Now you could feel there was something different going on, and what if prices didn’t fall again? I was the sole support for my family, for Tabia, Brandon and Cody. Ma got her Social Security, but so much of that went for her prescriptions.

A silver Ford sedan pulled over. I saw the driver was a solitary male. What else? I took a breath and got in the car.

The driver had a white toothy smile. Great teeth. "Peter," he said, putting forward a soft hand. I shook it briefly and told him my name, pretty much summing him up as kind of effeminate.

"Got a stick a’gum, Paula. Wanna split it?" he asked me.

I did, but shook my head no.

"You hitchhike often?"

I told him today was an emergency, then before he could ask what kind, I quickly spilled out about this being my daughter’s graduation.

He grinned and said there was no way a woman my age could have a daughter old enough to graduate high school.

Okay, what does he want, I asked myself, noticing the suit he had on was blue, his shirt white, and his tie bright yellow. Salesman clothes. I could’ve opened up a bit more and told him about Tabia, that she was technically my niece, but my daughter all the same. But this salesman didn’t need to know any of that.

"I hope you don’t mind talking some," he chirped. "I drive by myself and miss talking to folks. I guess there’s nothing I’d rather do more than just gab, find out about someone, hear their stories. Bet you got some, some stories?"

I smiled and thought of giving a sarcastic answer, but I was really trying to give up sarcasm.

"How long you been at Tilden Brothers?"

I glanced down, saw my name-tag sticking out from my sweater. I told him almost eight years. He asked if I liked it. I sighed, realized how all rides do have a price, and said the work was all right, boring sometimes, but I was in the union. A few years back I’d needed an operation, and if it hadn’t been for my health plan...

The driver nodded. Damn, he was good, and that kind of pissed me off, so I got silent. Concentrated on getting home, having a talk with Tabia about graduating, how she had to try not to be confused or scared. And I started thinking about my own graduation, more than... Oh, God... twenty-plus years ago. I’d boldly announced I was going to Europe, going to travel by train and see the world. And I did just that. Might turn out to be the highlight of my life. Came back excited about everything, about getting an education. I told everyone I was going to community college and then to the state university. But Jani, my sister, was pretty screwed up, she was sick and out of it. You couldn’t leave your purse around without knowing she was going to finger it for cash. When Jani said she was pregnant, no one was particularly surprised. But I had believed her when she promised she was going to change. I thought a baby really could amend things. But the drugs won out. Taking Tabia was the right thing to do, no regrets. The only mistake was marrying Kip. Should’ve suspected he could hurt Tabia, but never would’ve suspected something so bad. Here it was a few years later already and the poor girl still had no confidence. Graduating high school, and she couldn’t even muster enough courage to dream for herself.

"Crazy food prices, huh?" the driver asked gently. I shook off my scared thoughts about Tabia and babbled, "People will pay anything. Hard to live without your daily bread."

"You know what the Bible says, don’t ya’?"

"About what?"

"Says Jesus Christ is the bread of life. Have you heard the good news? He is risen."

I glanced down at the clean ashtray. "Yeah, I’ve heard that." At least now I knew what he wanted. I wondered if he had one of those fish on the back bumper.

At home, my ma, Lucy, was sitting on the floor with both boys, playing a board game. They looked up at me and gave enthusiastic yells, "Mom, Mom!" But they continued wrestling for the game dice.

"Go give her a kiss," Lucy scolded them, grabbing the dice from Brandon’s hand. "She comes home from work, she deserves a kiss."

After Brandon and Cody did so, Ma looked at the time and asked suspiciously: "How’d you get home? Don’t tell me you were hitchhiking!"

"I won’t," I said and gave Ma a peck on the forehead then realized I’d just been sarcastic again. I asked her to get the boys ready, and went upstairs and knocked on Tabia’s door.

In her old-fashioned white slip, Tabia sat slumped in front of a mirror, thin, pretty, tugging at her long brown hair.

"I should’ve cut it. I should’ve listened to you, Mom. It looks horrible."

I was stunned. Did I just hear her say she should’ve listened to me? Jesus, that was a first.

"No, your hair looks fine," I finally answered, taking the brush from her hand. "It’s beautiful."

Tabia assured me we could catch a ride to school with the Powells. That was a relief. My hand gently tugged on the girl’s long tresses and it seemed such a short time ago that she was just a bald little baby, folks wondering when she’d get her hair. Now it was so curly and thick... I told her I was proud of her.

"Graduating high school’s no big deal," Tabia countered.

"Well, it forces you to make some decisions. Like what you’re going to do next."

I caught the girl’s eye in the mirror. Tabia blushed and said, "I think I just wanna stay at the animal shelter. Until I figure things out."

I took her by the shoulders. She waited, tense like she was about to get a lecture about being brave, having bold dreams, college, travel, the world, mental limits...

So I sighed and said: "That’s fine. The animal shelter is a good place. Too bad it doesn’t pay more, but it’s a nice thing to do."

"I just don’t know-- "

"Look, sweetie, it’s not like there’s some kinda family tradition you gotta uphold. Anything you do will be a step up. Just take some time and get past... the things you gotta get past."

She stirred, looking down and away.

I stayed at the mirror and told her how I was glad she was going to be sticking around home right now, about my strange feelings about these food prices. I said if this kept up, we were going to need to be there for each other.

Tabia announced she wasn’t worried.

"You’re not?"

"You can get through anything."

That took me back a bit, and I laughed softly. "Maybe I’m just lucky. Maybe I don’t have any other choice."

Tabia smiled, but probably really didn’t know what I meant. Her congeniality was part of the new distance we gave each other these days before falling into screaming battles. It had been a hard year. Almost two years. Early in her junior year, Tabia started hanging out with a corn-row-haired boy named Jarvis. Jarvis talked about photography and was always taking pictures and, I was sure, smoking weed. I’d been there myself, not to mention watching my sister go through a banquet of chemicals. I talked to Tabia, told her I didn’t want her out getting high. Whether it was at a party or in a car or at someone’s house, it all could lead to trouble. And still, didn’t the damn phone call come anyhow, the one that rings so loud at night and means nothing but the beginning of something bad. She and Jarvis were busted getting high in his car. Even worse, the officers found three dozen paper hits of LSD in the glove compartment.

Jarvis, two years older, was in adult trouble and he quickly pleaded his way down to a possession charge. Tabia, however, a juvenile, went to a different court. The judge there, I was shocked to discover, wanted to punish Tabia for "intent to distribute." She said my little girl was a drug dealer. Tabia stood there in front of this woman, and my girl’s got tears falling and no kleenex. I got up and went to her hand her one. The bailiff gave me a look, then motioned with his head to go on. The judge, she saw me do this too of course, but she just shook her head solemnly. I went back to my seat in those hard wooden pews, unable to get a fix on where this had all started. Had I failed as a mother, was this genetic, some sort of addiction gene from Jani,? Was this all from being abused by Kip?

Tabia was released into my custody and had to wear an ankle bracelet alarm. She lost her driving license and had to go to drug counseling. Feeling frosted as a troubled girl at school, Tabia ended up spending a lonely senior year, watching far too much television by herself. It had only been a month ago that Ma finally persuaded her to go after the animal shelter job.

And now Tabia Washington was graduating high school. Damn difficult to figure if Tabia was young for her age or too experienced. I teased myself with imagining how she was going to react later when we gave her the graduation card with the thousand dollars in it. It wasn’t the world, but it was a ticket to it.

Tony Soltis is working on a novel "A Great Hunger,"which tells the story of food disappearing in America as a result of genetic seed farming, depleted fisheries, salination of ground water, and cattle diseases. Panicked buying creates soaring prices and hoarding. During the crisis, two families, one wealthy, one working class, both struggle, as their own needs wrestle against their values of wrong and right, justice and compassion, love and hate, pity, revenge and forgiveness.