If I Hadn't Been Born

A father discusses his shortcomings with his son, but a second story shows what might have been.

“If she tells you it’s ‘the season’ that’s making her depressed that’s bullshit, just so you know.” His lady was in a rut again. She was the spiritual type, blaming illness on “negative energy” and always saying that she could read people’s chakra. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I admired her sense of style and I thought she grounded my father in a way that no one else has ever been able to do.

 

My father, Marty, took a long drag off his cigar, leaned his head back and blew a plume of smoke out into the summer night sky. We could barely hear each other over the army of crickets that seemed to be closing in on us. He turned 45 in June 1988, and his life wasn’t what he had expected it to be.

 

“You know kid, it’s like, you spend your whole damn life trying to be perfect for someone else. You try to be better for your boss, your woman, you do everything, god forbid you try to be what your f*****g father wants you to be, you’ll die trying. I wish I would’ve tried harder to care about my damn self. I always wanted to own a bike you know? Maybe ride along the countryside and camp and catch stares from highway moms and all that. I thought of myself as a biker in my 20’s, had the leather jacket & everything, but by the time I saved up for a bike, you were on your way so that all went to s**t.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Ahh s**t kid.” He looked out across the field, he didn’t mean it like that and I knew it.

 

“Truth is if you hadn’t come along I’d be dead. I don’t blame ya for a thing. You were what I wanted to be perfect for. F**k the damn bike. You were way better than some bike I’d probably kill myself on.” He slapped my back and gripped my shoulder tight, pulling me in close.

“I’m serious though, if you hadn’t showed up when you did I wouldn’t be sitting here today I’m sure of it.” He patted my back a few more times to ensure the sentiment was felt.

“You’re welcome.” I said, he smiled.

 

“Point is you oughta live your life for yourself. Remember that.”

 

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In 1972 Marty and his wife rushed to the Southdale Hospital in Miles, Alabama to have their first and only child. She was breathing like hell and his hands were so slippery from sweat and her water breaking that he could barely hold on to the steering wheel. They were in the delivery room for 14 hours when the doctor told him that his baby didn’t make it, he left his wife that same day. Just walked out of the hospital and never looked back.

 

In 1983 Marty got the Harley for which he’d been saving money for over a decade. Thirteen thousand dollars. It was no small fee. It took late nights at the factory cutting square metal sheets into plated covers that wrapped around most name-brand oil filters. Stacking away one paycheck at a time, he could feel the smooth chrome handlebars with each piece of metal he fed into the cutter. He had a little piece of shrapnel pulled out of his pinky nail one night and he thought it was the most painful damn thing a man could endure. After three years they let him go, from there he spent a few years of back-breaking work on a farm outside of the city. Long hours bent over in the sun, sucking up dust and pulling up fence posts just to extend them 30 or 40 feet so the ranchers could graze more cattle each year. His hands would get so raw at the end of the day that he would fill his pair of gloves with Vaseline and wear them to bed. He could feel the soft leather seat already, the humming of the engine and the wind blowing through what little hair he had left.

 

There was one rainy afternoon in the summer when the ranchers daughter took out the big John Deer to give her baby his first tractor ride, she took it along a hillside and it toppled over on them. He ran over as soon as he heard the yelp but it was too late. He came up over the hillside and the baby was just sitting there upright crying and the mother had been trapped under the blade. A man could never forget a thing like that. He came back to work the next day like it never happened and a few months after that he had the money for the bike.

 

He quit the farm the day he bought it. Woke up early and rode out to tell the rancher he wouldn’t be back and drove west through the heartland until he’d reached central Kentucky.  It was only a few weeks until he hit a median going about 70 miles an hour. He spent a few months in rehab but he never managed to walk after that. The day he left the hospital was a Tuesday and he took the Harrisburg Rehabilitation shuttle to the center of town where they unloaded him on the street corner in his wheelchair. Then he wheeled himself over to the Frontiersmen Sporting Goods store where he bought a .38 with the last remaining money he had, rolled himself out into the intersection and ate a bullet for the whole town to see. He wanted to be remembered for more than just the man that spent his life trying to buy a motorcycle.

Author's Note

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[Swapnashree Pani]

"He wanted to be remembered for more."

It was a very nice read ! Thank you for sharing this.