The Milkman's Son

by Randy Lindsay

“You’re not being any help,” I say.

  “Why? Because I’m not upset about this?”

  “No,” I grumble. “Because you’re not supposed to think he looks like me.”

  Roger laughs again. “Don’t worry, Pop. I’m here for you.”

  I feel better hearing that I have someone who loves me and is willing to support me as I flounder through this experience. At least that hasn’t changed. Roger claps me on the shoulder and then heads out to the kitchen to nuke whatever leftovers are in the fridge.

  In a desperate attempt to avoid the truth, I call a friend who lives in the neighborhood. “Alan, can you come over . . . like now? I have something I want to show you.”

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “You sort of have to see it. I’m sure you’ll find it amusing.”

  “In that case, I’ll be right over.”

  He ends the call. Fifteen minutes—that feel like an hour—pass before he knocks on the door. I open the door and invite him inside. Alan is in his usual outfit: slacks, a button-up shirt, and a newsboy cap. The hat fits with his neatly trimmed circle beard. “Remember the DNA test I sent in?”

  “Yeah, the one they messed up?”

  “That’s the one. Someone sent me a picture, and I want you to take a look at it.” I pull up the high school photo of Mr. Petrauschke.

  Alan cuts loose with a gale of laughter. “That’s funny.”

  “What’s so funny about it?” I ask for the second time today.

  “Oh yeah. That definitely looks like you. It must be your dad.”

  “I’m failing to see the humor in that.”

  “You’ve been running around complaining about a mistake with the DNA test. Then someone sends you this picture and—BOOM! Goodbye mistake. Hello, Daddy.”

  “I can tell you what’s not funny,” I say. “You’re not funny. Go home.”

  “All right, see you Saturday for game night.” Alan walks out of the house with a grin on his face. My anger fades as he drives off. I suppose it isn’t his fault I look like my biological father.

  I close my eyes and release the last remaining dregs of denial. The desperate motes of hope drift across the room and out the door. I have to accept the truth and face whatever problems are attached to the situation. Immediately, one springs to the forefront of my thoughts.

  How am I going to tell my dad that he isn’t my dad? I can’t just walk up to him and say, “I came across a funny fact during my family history search—we’re not actually related.” Dad finds humor in a lot of situations that fail to amuse me, but I’m not sure he’ll find this particular bit of news all that funny.

  Do I even want to tell him?

  Chapter 5

  Forget the Duke; Meet My Dad

  I don’t know who I am anymore. Flailing about in an emotional free fall, I throw my arms around and cling to memories of the person who has influenced every aspect of who I am. If I focus my thoughts on Dad, maybe that will lead to an epiphany where my life makes sense once again.

  A picture of John Wayne hangs in my office because it reminds me of Dad. Mr. Wayne portrayed some of the most memorable cowboys and marines in cinematic history. He and my dad even look vaguely similar. The difference is John Wayne shuffled off to his trailer between takes. He didn’t live the experiences that audiences cherish on the screen. The “Duke” didn’t actually have to cope with the obstacles and troubles his movie characters faced.

  Dad, on the other hand, rode horses and herded cattle for a living. He went to high school during the day and ran mule trains in the evenings and summers to help support his siblings. He boxed in the marines, served as an MP (military police), and achieved the rank of sergeant. John Wayne movies rule, but Dad is the real deal.

  He is a figure who stands solid and rock steady in my life. Suddenly, the strength and comfort I draw from Dad’s gutsy, stalwart personality remind me of what I am not.

  I spin around in my office chair, putting the picture of John Wayne behind me. But no matter where I look in my office, there are reminders of my dad. The boxed set of small blue reference books he gave me for Christmas the year he found out I wanted to be a writer. A poster for my first published book. The yellow cowboy-boot cup I saved from childhood. The sight of these items sends me back on the life trail Dad and I have shared.

  My oldest memory involves Dad and a train. I must have been about three years old at the time and was fascinated with the rail line that ran across the back of our property. My memory doesn’t retain the exact words Dad said but includes a struggle to obey his warning to stay away from the tracks. I was still twenty feet away from the tracks when I heard a mechanical clacking noise to my right.

  A train rumbled toward me. The ground vibrated beneath my feet. The thundering blast of the train’s horn sent me running to Dad.

  My feet pounded against the ground, keeping rhythm with my heart as it slammed against my chest. There might as well have been a T. rex chasing me across that field. Fear and adrenaline flooded my tiny body.

  Tall, stiff weeds grabbed at my feet as I ran. I fell and started crying. The train was going to get me. Again and again I stood, I ran, and I fell. Another roar from the train’s horn sounded from right behind me. My cries turned to screams.

  Then Dad picked me up. I was safe. Nothing could harm me with Dad as my protector. . . . The memory fades.

  My world stabilizes—ever so slightly—at the thought of Dad’s continued guardianship over me. He kept the monsters at bay when I was a child and has offered a protective wall of advice and support for me as an adult. But I don’t know if he will remain a haven of fatherly comfort once he finds out I’m not his son.

  My mother tells another story about me at the age of three. Our family would attend local roping events on the weekends. Dad would rope, Mom would watch him, and I would play in the dirt, piling rocks together to form miniature forts. If I hadn’t seen Dad for a while, I would stand up and wander around the outer edge of the corral, yelling, “Honey. Where are you, Honey?”

  Since that’s what my mother called him, it seemed natural for me to do the same. Dad wasn’t a big fan of his son addressing him as Honey in front of all his rugged cowboy friends. He’d usually duck his head, pull his Stetson down to cover as much of his face as possible, and then ride off in the opposite direction. (As a side note: Dad has recently taken to calling me Honey—a strange development for a man who was once so bothered by the name.)

  The cowboy lifestyle shaped a good portion of my early years. I went with Dad whenever he had a horseshoeing job. The trips were usually to the fringes of civilization. While Dad shoed the horse and then drank a couple of beers with the owner, I would scour the desert for adventure.

  I’d trek through grayish-green and yellow scrubs on a safari to capture anything that moved. Lizards, snakes, scorpions, and centipedes all made fine trophies to pay tribute to my hunting prowess. I avoided rattlesnakes, even though I was confident in my ability to catch them without being bitten. Neither Mom nor Dad were thrilled about the bountiful number of poisonous insects I bagged on my hunts, so bringing home a rattler would have put them over the edge.

  Dad signed me up for junior rodeo when I turned twelve. He made sure I had all the gear I needed for calf riding. Sturdy jeans, cowboy hat, chaps, gloves, and a bull rope—complete with a cow bell. He stood taller and talked louder as we marched across a dirt field to register me for my first rodeo.

  I was barely able to keep up with him. My trembling knees threatened to give way with every step. A large, dry lump had lodged itself in my throat. I didn’t want to ride calves. I had never loved riding Dad’s horse, who didn’t have any sinister intentions of bucking me off and stomping me into the dust like the calves would, but I wanted Dad to be proud of me, so I kept quiet.

  My stomach churned as I waited for my turn to ride. The announcer called my name,
and I fought against the urge to run in the other direction. Dread over disappointing Dad forced my feet to march toward the calf pens. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry.

  Several cowboys had already corralled a calf in the chute and were waiting for me. I climbed the rusted iron bars of the fence and looked down. The gate was pushed in against the calf to prevent it from thrashing about and hurting either me or itself.

  Dad helped lower me onto the calf’s back. The calf slammed its head against the gate in an effort to escape. The bars of the gate rattled, and the calf bawled, sounding as frightened as I felt.

  One of the gate attendants fitted the thick, rough bull rope around the calf. I gripped the nearest iron bar with my left hand as the cowboy wrapped the rope around my right. I could feel the coarseness of the rope through the glove I wore. I sat and listened to the instructions both Dad and the gate attendant gave me about riding the calf.

  It sounded easy enough. Watch the calf’s head; wherever the head goes, that’s the direction the calf’s going. Then lean that way to keep my balance.

  As soon as I signaled the cowboy, he would open the gate. The smell of dust and manure filled the air. Even though it wasn’t particularly hot, sweat trickled down the side of my face. My heart pounded against my chest like a tribal war drum.

  I looked at the gate attendant and gave a nod.

  Then the world blurred. The calf bolted out of the chute. I clung to the bull rope with one hand and held the other high above my head. My legs squeezed against the calf’s body as hard as I could manage, but it wasn’t enough. I slid down the side of the calf in slow-motion.

  I didn’t watch the calf’s head. I didn’t try to adjust my balance. My mind froze, not able to focus on anything other than clinging to the beast with my legs. If it weren’t for my grip on the rope, the calf would’ve tossed me with his initial leap.

  It took a couple of seconds to realize the ride was over. In my mind, I was still sliding down the side of the calf, but in reality, I was sprawled out on the dusty arena floor. Someone helped me stand and then handed me my hat.

  I limped over to the fence. My leg hurt. I wasn’t sure whether I’d hit the ground hard or the calf had stepped on me. Then, suddenly, I forgot all about the pain. There was Dad! He stood waiting for me, his shoulders back, his chin high, and a huge grin on his face.

  He placed a hand on my shoulder and walked me over to the snack truck. In small arenas like the one hosting junior rodeo events, the snack truck was a pickup with a camper shell and a couple of beverage coolers inside. If we were lucky, the concessions person also stocked a few boxes of beef sticks, candy bars, and hot pickles.

  I ordered a root beer. Victory had never tasted better.

  The routine repeated itself through the fall and the first half of the next year. Fear would mount in anticipation of the next event. Each time I straddled a calf in the chute, my mind would go blank. The chutes would open, the calf would buck, and I’d desperately cling to my bull rope, ultimately sliding off the beast.

  Dad built a low-tech mechanical bull in our backyard to help me improve my calf-riding skills. He sank four six-by-eight posts into the ground, then attached a green fifty-gallon barrel to the posts with thick rope. A bull rope went around the barrel just like it went around the calves at the rodeo. I sat on the barrel, Dad strapped me in with the bull rope, and then he pulled on the ropes.

  Somehow I always performed better on the fake cow, even though Dad tossed me higher in the air than the calves ever did and it hurt more to land on the grassy lawn in our backyard than on the soft dirt of the arena. Despite the greater difficulty in riding Dad’s rodeo Frankenstein, I wasn’t afraid of the mechanical bull.

  My friends enjoyed riding the bull more than I did. I preferred to pull the ropes, doing my best to buck them off the barrel. As word got out about our backyard attraction, more and more of the neighbor kids came over after school to give it a try. Dad wasn’t big on playing catch with me, but he spent plenty of time bouncing me around with his homemade mechanical bull.

  When summer vacation arrived, my favorite cousin came to stay for a few weeks. We planned to spend the next three months cruising the neighborhood on our bikes, without any concerns about homework. The first two or three days went according to plan, but then I started having problems walking when I’d get up in the morning. My right leg hurt. I’d hobble around the house until the pain subsided, then take off with my cousin for some outdoor fun.

  This worked for a while, but then it began to take longer to warm-up the leg before I could easily put full pressure on it and join my cousin outside. Soon I couldn’t put any pressure on it and had to get around by hopping on one foot. Mom made a doctor’s appointment. By the time the appointment came around, I had resorted to crawling on my hands and one leg.

  The doctor examined me and found an infection that had most likely been caused by a calf stepping on me after one of my falls at the rodeo. I hadn’t noticed any signs of a rip or tear in my blue jeans, but apparently that didn’t mean a raucous calf couldn’t leave its mark on my calf.

  Two small incisions released the built-up pus in my leg. The doctor filled the cavity with what looked like a thin strip of ticker tape, bandaged the wound, and sent me home. With instructions to stay off my feet for two entire weeks. It nearly killed me.

  In my mind, the injury had ruined what should have been an amazing summer. My cousin and I could still have some good times building models, watching television, and talking about whatever twelve-year-old boys talked about, but I was more than just a little upset. I decided to tell Dad I didn’t want to ride calves anymore.

  I waited for Dad to come home from work. Even though I was resolved to tell him I wanted to quit, I would have rather been in a chute, sitting on a calf, ready to ride. At least the calf wouldn’t stare at me with a steely glare of disappointment.

  Dad walked into the house and then grabbed a snack from the fridge. A glass of milk, stuffed full of bread. I didn’t understand the appeal of soggy bread, but he liked it. Milk dripped from his mustache as he asked me how my leg was doing.

  “I’m fine,” I said as I followed him into the living room. “The injury has made me think about the whole rodeo thing. I want to stop riding calves.”

  “You can’t let a minor injury stop you from doing something you love,” Dad said.

  My legs trembled, and a sick feeling festered in the bottom of my stomach. I took a deep breath and worked up the courage to tell him. “I don’t love calf riding. In fact, it scares me.”

  Despite the summer heat, a chill encased my limbs as I stood before him. Dad studied me for a moment, a trace of disappointment on his face. “Then why have you been riding all this time?”

  “Because I thought you wanted me to,” I told him. “I wanted to make you happy.”

  “It takes a lot of guts to keep doing something that scares you.” Dad nodded his head. “I’m proud of you for having the courage to face your fear every time you rode a calf. I respect you for telling me that you don’t want to ride anymore.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” The tension flowed out of me like water. I’d expected him to be mad at me.

  “Everyone marches to the beat of a different drummer,” Dad told me. “You don’t have to cowboy to make me happy. What I want is for you to follow your own path. Do whatever it is that makes you happy. If you do that, then I’ll be happy too.”

  Dad frequently used the different-drummer speech on all of us kids. That day, for the first time in my life, it sank in that he really meant it. And not in that abstract way where you toss out the phrase to explain the strange behavior of people you see in the news. He understood that each of us is different and those diverse qualities are what makes the world function the way it should.

  He also taught me to think for myself—not blindly follow everyone else. Dad said, “Don’t listen to what people
say, watch what they do.” That in turn led me to spend a lot of time watching what people did and then wondering why they did it.

  After high school, I worked construction with my dad’s brothers. They started me out as a laborer and, because I represented the Lindsay family, I was expected to work harder and faster than anyone else on the jobsite. It wasn’t enough for me to carry lumber from one spot to another, I was expected to run with it. If there were any other laborers on the job, I was expected to run faster with three sheets of plywood on my shoulder than they did with two.

  My status as the owners’ nephew marked me as the favorite target for jokes. Because I liked science-fiction movies, whenever I passed by the full-fledged carpenters, they shouted, “Pew. Pew-pew.” All anyone needed to do to find me on the construction site was to follow the sounds of mock laser fire. It felt like running the trench at the end of the original Star Wars movie.

  Dad worked construction as well, but not for his younger brothers. On days when I felt less than enthused about hauling lumber in the scorching 115-degree heat, he counseled me, “You start a day, you finish the day.” Dad expected me to give everything my best effort. Without him saying a word, I knew his advice applied to all aspects of my life. You start a job, you finish the job. You start a marriage, you finish the marriage.

  After about a year, I graduated from laborer to carpenter-in-training. I was given the jobs that required knowing only how to swing a hammer. And I excelled at that skill. I reached a point where the other carpenters had me compete with the new hires on their first day. Two of us would race to hammer a line of sixpenny nails into the roof. I would set each nail with my upward swing and then sink it with a single blow. Tap-pow. Tap-pow. Tap-pow. The only thing that slowed me down was having to pull more nails from my nail bag. If the new guys couldn’t beat me, they were harassed mercilessly about losing to a trainee.

  Even though I eventually gained the respect of my coworkers, the teasing never stopped. The men I worked with every day were more than happy to point out—and laugh at—how my interests in science fiction and video games made me different from them.