Read How to Escape From a Leper Colony for Free Online

towel with Minnie Mouse from their trip to Orlando back when money was good—gone. Only the Mickey Mouse one hanging alone.
    Salli was in the bedroom. The linen bedspread that he parents had give them arrange neat over the bed. She lying on top of it. Fully clothed. Heels and stockings. Calf length skirt. White blouse. A nice purse at she side. Clothes he ain never seen before. That’s a woman for you. She turn her head just so when he enter and watch him in the face.
    “I goin with Mr. Kenny. I can’t live off a fisher man’s salary no more.”
    “And Pete?” Tony look at he wife, too pretty and lying out on their bed. He wanted to walk to her and unbutton her shirt slow. But he smell of fish. He know she hate that. She watch him hard.
    “Pete’s a grown man. Going to college in the States soon. He’ll stay with you or us. No matter.”
    Tony leave the room before she did. If I were he I woulda swallow some cold Heineken. But Tony just walk out to the dining room where dinner for he and Pete sitting in plates covered in aluminum foil. He sit down at the tail of the table and begin to eat. He hear her heels clink behind him on she way out.
    Pete didn’t come home that night. The next day was school but he turn up at eight in the morning to he father’s house. He find Tony in bed, wrap up in the linen bedspread, bloat up and sick from all the food he eat. Not just the dinner Salli leave but enough food for at least three days. Pete stand over his old man.
    “Ma say you not my real father, Dad.”
    Tony roll around in his linen cocoon. See the man! Flinging heself onto the floor, onto the tile he had lay he ownself. The tile she had picked out. He fighting now, tearing the linen and old lace until he get free. He son watching from the doorway.
    “Dad. Let me know what’s true.”
    Tony reach a hand to he son and together they get Tony onto the bed. Pete sit down beside him. Tony look into he son eyes.
    “Your mother is the devil.”
    “Don’t say that, man.”
    “She a lying devil.”
    “Chill, Pops. Chill out.”
    Tony thought they should go fishing. At times like these that is what a proper Frenchy father and son should do. But Tony can’t take Pete to Frenchtown—it already crowded down there. So they decide to wait until July 3. So long aways. And Pete leaving two days after that. He get into a nice-up school in the States but they require him to do some summer classes cause he ain so good at maths.
    So the father and son wait all that time. And at four in the morning of July 3 they roll up their pants. They have their spear gun and dagger just in case, but really they only want to do some leisure fishing. Maybe bring something home for dinner so they don’t have to eat the cooking Salli keep bringing in plastic tins. They push out their boat, and the bridge there gleaming. They see it stretching out across the ocean. They have nets and poles and flashlight and a bag of small live bait.
    At the docks there weren’t no other men. The other Northside Frenchies thinking to wait, thinking that the fish wouldn’t come back so soon. Thought maybe the fish would never come back. Some had already moved from Northside permanently. You seeing them in town. Haunting the place looking for sea jobs, land jobs—anything. But those don’t have a son going away. They don’t have a wife who leave them for a better man.
    The boat engine make a soft noise and though they just heading out to sea it seem like they heading toward the bridge. They wasn’t. Not really. It only seem so cause the bridge feel like it everywhere. Like it a haunted rainbow, hunting you round the city. I have felt the feeling. The moon was out and shape funny, like a smile almost. They even see one or two people on the bridge.
    “Yeah, Dad. I think we goin catch something, man. I think the fish must be curious to see a boat like ours after all this time.”
    “We counting on it.” But the father didn’t really think so. Not really at all.