Algoma Read Online Free PDF Page B

a jar of Cheez Whiz, a package of cretons, three apples, a pot of leftover cabbage soup, one roasted chicken, two chunks of venison sausage, a bag of carrots, a brick of marble cheese, a tin of cookies, and a bowl of strawberries. The only evidence of the missing food was the boys’ uncomfortably distended bellies.
    The potatoes had been sliced into silver dollars and fried, batch after batch, until the saltshaker had run dry. The chicken had been eaten down to the gummy bones and then the boys, like animals, had cracked the bones open for what marrow they could find. At least they had been considerate enough to set the wishbone out to dry on the counter as a gift to their mother. Stringy bits of meat hardening as the hours passed.
    When Gaetan arrived home, Leo grinned in a feeble attempt to disarm him.
    “Hi Dad,” he said. His eyebrows were raised high and his eyes wide as he tried to gauge the severity of their offense.
    Ferd elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up.”
    Gaetan stood silently at the door for what seemed, to the boys, like hours. He stared at them until they began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Leo nervously picked at a small gouge in the table. A curl of Gaetan’s shiny black hair slipped free of its heavily gelled design and fell onto his forehead. The loose curl defied the sternness of his deep-set brown eyes. Gaetan knew his face from every angle, that all he wanted to say could be said with a look, and he was blessed with the sharp features to deliver it.
    In his arms, Gaetan held offerings from the bar to help get his family through the rest of the week, until his next cheque: two jars of pickled onions, a tin of peanuts, a large bag of barbecue chips, a package of beef jerky, and a jar of green olives. He dumped the goods onto the table, the tin of peanuts almost rolling away.
    “I’ll give you some money for eggs,” he said to Algoma. She could do a lot with eggs.
    Algoma was now standing in the kitchen. She wiped the black smudges of mascara from beneath her eyes and wiped her hands on her sleeves.
    “They ate everything,” she said. She stared blankly at the wallpaper’s beige and green floral print, traced the smooth flat petals with her finger. The wallpaper that had been there when she and Gaetan had moved in, before the boys were born. She tried to remember a time before them, the empty space they now occupied.
    Gaetan looked at his wife and then turned to his sons. He leaned down low, menacingly, and put his hands flat on the table.
    “You took food from our table. Now, you put it back.”
    Ferd punched his brother in the shoulder. “Hold the goddamned thing straight up,” he said, “not sideways. I don’t want a hole in my stomach.”
    “You must have a hole in your stomach,” Leo said, rubbing his shoulder, “you ate most of the potatoes.”
    “Whatever. You ate the chocolates and those were important.”
    “It was all important according to Dad.”
    “You should get that removed.”
    “What removed?”
    “That,” Ferd said, pointing at his brother’s birthmark, the sprawling deep red port wine stain on his neck. The birthmark covered the right side of his neck and reached as high as his right earlobe and as low as his collarbone. It was the only visible difference between the two boys and Ferd resented it, the separation it created between them.
    Leo touched his birthmark. It was smooth like the skin around it.
    “I like it.”
    “If you were an animal, the other animals would kill you because of it. Because it’s different.”
    Both boys went quiet when they spotted a partridge pecking at small stones on the side of the gravel road. Leo raised the barrel of his .22 in one smooth motion and pulled the cool metal tongue of the trigger. The bird slumped forward.
    “I wanted to see what it looked like,” he’d said to his mother after he’d shot a mourning dove in their backyard several months earlier. Algoma had turned the limp bird over and over again in