told Lincoln Riley
couldn't have him shitting the bed to end the chise
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No Father's Son
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
we're almost home now
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Not Even Once
“I fucked up, Mano.”
48-hours ago, I’d been on cloud nine. On the field at State Farm Stadium, celebrating my third consecutive National Championship. Jessica by my side, Tara Lydia close at hand, and AJ plastered to my hip. They went everywhere with me that day: on the stage, interviews after. They took it all in.
I told everyone who would listen, this was about the family. Without their support, patience, and understanding, I would never have been able to lock in and accomplish this.
And yet now, family felt like the one thing that could threaten to tear it all down.
“I really fucked up,” Raul repeated, still drunkenly lopsided in the recliner, but now dangerously close to toppling over onto the floor. I made no effort to right him. If he hit the floor, then he deserved it.
We returned from Glendale on Tuesday afternoon, but before the plane even touched down I was beginning to worry. Raul had texted me congratulations on Monday night after the Crimson and Cream confetti fell from the rafters of State Farm Stadium, but I hadn’t heard a peep from him since.
Jessica, ever the voice of reason, told me to give him space. He was a grown man. If I hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday, check in with Sophie, then head over if I was still worried.
Sophie did nothing to dissuade my fears.
She answered on the first ring Wednesday morning and simply asked: “Have you talked to Raul yet?”
“No,” I replied, but before I could expand on the answer, her voice cut through.
“You probably should.”
And with that, the line went dead.
That’s how I found myself standing in the wreckage that was once Raul’s living room, watching Raul fight a losing battle with gravity as the nearly-empty bottle of Mezcal mocked him from the table next to him.
More out of pity than anything, I finally leaned over and shoved Raul upright again. He looked nothing like the man I’d left four days ago when we all departed for Glendale. That man had the look of someone who’d fought his way out of the snake pit and held his head a little higher because of it.
The man in a drunken stupor in front of me looked like he was poisoned by the snakes before he could escape.
“What the fuck happened, Raul,”I finally snapped. My voice seemed to snap him out of the semi-daze he’d been in. Whether it was just the liquor, or if he was in shock, I would never be quite sure; he’d been repeating the same line since I walked in the door ten minutes prior.
“They found me,” he sputtered on the verge of falling over in his chair again.
“Who, Raul?” When I never got an answer more than a babble, I’d finally had enough. I reached back and slapped Raul across the face harder than I’d ever hit someone in my life outside of the football field.
His head rocked to the side and slowly lulled back, looking dangerously close to being knocked out cold. I grabbed him by the collar of his faded gray T-shirt, ready to uncork another slap, when his voice weakly protested.
“You don’t need to hit me again, Mano. I’m here.”
“Who found you, Raul?”
“The guero’s.”
“The what-?”
“The white boys, Armando. The ones I’d been working for.”
I stared at him bewildered. “You promised you were going to leave that behind when you came here, Raul. You promised Jessica.”
“You promised me,” I added, voice rising in anger.
My inner voice sang up to me, the one that hides in the darkness and knows just what to say when the anger is starting to build.
‘Everyone told you he was just like Arturo,’ it whispered mockingly.
“I tried, Armando. I left.”
“But they found me,” he added, defeated.
I stood there towering over him, defiantly angry. ‘How could he do this to me, after everything I did for him,’ my inner critic raged.
But as I added fuel to the fire of my anger mentally, Raul sat there distraught. It was this, more than anything, that finally began to temper the raging flames swelling in my chest.
Raul wasn’t pleading, explaining, or even groveling. He accepted he’d fucked up, as if it was inevitable.
I had done a lot for Raul since we first connected, yet here I was, not giving him the benefit of the doubt. And he felt like he didn’t even deserve that small courtesy.
I took a deep breath. Then another. I made a conscious effort to unclench my fist, feeling the grooves my fingernails left in their wake.
I grabbed a stool from the breakfast bar that connected the living room to the kitchen and planted it firmly in front of Raul.
Noticing I hadn’t left, his eyes finally rose from the beige carpet at his feet to meet mine, still slightly elevated from his point-of-view.
“You said you tried,” I sighed, trying with all my might to restrain the disdain that threatened to seep through. “You deserve the opportunity to explain.”
The gratitude in his face was enough to quell the final embers of anger that still sat in my chest.
“Gracias, mano. Gracias,” he whispered, running both of his hands through his hair—which was normally perfectly slicked back, but now was distorted and matted where the gel had dried and never been washed out.
“Before I left—before we reconnected, I got involved with this group of car jackers from Houston. Henry was the leader’s name. They needed someone local to help take some cars from one of the cities and stash them, then sell them to their connect.”
“It was easy work, they did everything but the crime,” he said with a grin and half of a laugh that died in his throat when he looked up and realized I was not in on the joke.
Raul choked on the laugh, cleared his throat, and returned his gaze to the beige carpet as he continued.
“I had one more car to unload before their quota was met. A Chrysler 300 SRT. I was going to disappear after that, no one the wiser. But the contact was delayed and before I got word, I had to leave for Norman to meet with Sophie. It was either bring a stolen car with me to Norman or leave it behind.”
“So, I left it, tarped and concealed behind my building.”
He finally looked up from the spot in the carpet he had been boring a hole through, meeting my eyes.
“It was gone when I came back.”
“I assumed someone else stole it. As you may have remembered, I didn’t exactly live in the foothills. Instead of telling Henry what happened, I just left.”
The moment the final words left his mouth, he turned and reached for the bottle of mezcal. Instead of finding the cool and inviting glass bottle, however, his hand found nothing but air where the bottle had been moments before. In his drunken stupor he didn’t even process the loud ‘crack’ from the bottle smashing into the drywall until seconds later, jumping and screaming as his hand quickly withdrew to safety.
“Whatdidyoudothatfor!?” Raul screeched, more out of surprise than anything, as I rubbed the back of my hand, a blossom of red forming where the skin had met the bottle before it was sent propelling at the wall.
“Alcohol isn’t going to save you now. You want to drink yourself into oblivion? Fine. But you’re going to explain everything that happened first.”
“You owe me that much,” I finished with a scowl.
He looked up at me pleadingly, hoping I would let him off the hook. When he realized his silent plea was hopeless, he leaned back in the recliner again and continued.
“The car wasn’t stolen. La policia took it,” he rubbed his hand over his face again in exasperation.
“Henry thought I turned fed. Had hung them out to dry. The police had a warrant out for me for questioning, since the car was found at my residence.”
“When I registered to vote, it pinged at the Sheriff’s office in Navasota. Unfortunately, Henry had paid off a guy at the station, waiting for me to slip up. When the sheriff’s were notified, so was he.”
“Apparently criminal extradition works faster than the government. They showed up Monday night, while you were celebrating the win.”
“They stormed in the house as I was watching the post-game broadcast. They roughed me up a bit, then started questioning me.”
“It didn’t take them long to put two-and-two together that we were related. Originally they were vetting me to see if I turned fed. When they were satisfied that I hadn’t, they wanted me to pay back what they would have made from the car, with interest.”
Raul paused, once again lifting his face to meet mine before finishing his recounting of the story.
“However, once they figured out who you were? Let’s just say things got entirely more complicated.”
There was no mistaking the look on his face, or the tone.
“They want more now that they know who your brother is, right?”
Raul just nodded solemnly. We both sat in silence; Raul intently staring at me, hoping for an answer, while I stared at the wall where the bottle had made contact, trying to once again control my anger.
Finally, with a gulp, Raul continued.
“Whatever you pay them, I’ll pay you back. With interest.”
“100% interest if that’s what it takes,” he mumbled at the end, his voice losing an octave by the end.
When Raul’s eyes found mine again, I was still staring, trying my hardest to control my anger.
Instead of staring a hole in the drywall however, I was staring straight at Raul. And I was losing the battle with my anger.
Two minutes later, eyebrows drawn together, lips pressed in a fine line, I finally trusted myself to speak without losing control.
“I’m not paying them a dime, Raul.”
Raul shot out of his seat, stumbling as the blood rushed to his head and he struggled to stay upright. I made no move to help him this time, content to see him collapse to the ground. Instead, Raul steadied himself against the recliner, composing himself before addressing me.
“What do you mean, mano!? We’re going to fight them?”
“There’s no ‘we,’ Raul,” I sighed, suddenly feeling ten years older. The joy that had overtaken me less than forty-eight hours earlier after winning the National Championship seemed like a long-distant memory.
“This is your mess. I can’t save you from this.”
“Sure you can, Armando. You have-“
I cut through the air with my left hand, signaling Raul to stop pleading. Raul stopped mid-sentence, then opened his mouth as if he would press on anyways. Then, he saw the frustration etched into my face and thought better of it.
“I could, Raul. You’re right. I have the resources and the means.”
“But I won’t,” I added with enough finality that Raul braced himself against the invisible force of the words.
Quieter now, with less conviction, I added: “I can’t go into that world for you, Raul.”
“You know as well as I do, once you go in, there’s no escape. I can’t do that, Raul. Not even once.”
“But…but, they’ll kill me,” Raul stammered, clearly not expecting his half-brother to deny his request for help. “You don’t know these people!”
When I merely shrugged at his short plea, Raul changed his approach. Looking back, his desperation reminded me of a rat stuck in a cage, desperately searching for a way out he knows doesn’t exist.
He strode to the counter, snatched his car keys off the counter, and quickly made for the door, only stopping when I yelled after him:
“That’s your plan? To run like our spineless father?”
“I guess the saying is true: like father, like son.”
The words hit the intended nerve. Raul whirled on his heels, coiled and ready to strike.
“You think this is what I want!? If you won’t help me, I have no other option!”
“THEY. WILL. KILL. ME.” He added desperately, as if the other times he’d said it hadn’t yet registered in my brain.
I quickly closed the distance between Raul and myself, bringing myself face-to-face with my brother.
“That’s your choice,” I exhaled. “But I can tell you this. If you let this spiral into something where my family is in danger?”
I pointed my finger accusingly into his face, inches from the spot where his eyebrows would meet.
“You’re going to wish they killed you. I may not be our father, but put my family in danger and you’ll find out how much like him I can become.”
Raul was the first to break, looking down at his shoes after several uncomfortable minutes where we shot death stares at each other, neither wanting to be the first to back down.
He took one step backwards, then two. Then three. He finally looked up again before he walked through the door.
“You’re right, Armando. This isn’t your problem. You made your expectations clear before I got here, and here I am already breaking them.”
“I’ll handle this. If you don’t hear from me again, don’t come looking.”
And with that, he turned and walked through the front door with his head held high.
“I fucked up, Mano.”
48-hours ago, I’d been on cloud nine. On the field at State Farm Stadium, celebrating my third consecutive National Championship. Jessica by my side, Tara Lydia close at hand, and AJ plastered to my hip. They went everywhere with me that day: on the stage, interviews after. They took it all in.
I told everyone who would listen, this was about the family. Without their support, patience, and understanding, I would never have been able to lock in and accomplish this.
And yet now, family felt like the one thing that could threaten to tear it all down.
“I really fucked up,” Raul repeated, still drunkenly lopsided in the recliner, but now dangerously close to toppling over onto the floor. I made no effort to right him. If he hit the floor, then he deserved it.
We returned from Glendale on Tuesday afternoon, but before the plane even touched down I was beginning to worry. Raul had texted me congratulations on Monday night after the Crimson and Cream confetti fell from the rafters of State Farm Stadium, but I hadn’t heard a peep from him since.
Jessica, ever the voice of reason, told me to give him space. He was a grown man. If I hadn’t heard anything by Wednesday, check in with Sophie, then head over if I was still worried.
Sophie did nothing to dissuade my fears.
She answered on the first ring Wednesday morning and simply asked: “Have you talked to Raul yet?”
“No,” I replied, but before I could expand on the answer, her voice cut through.
“You probably should.”
And with that, the line went dead.
That’s how I found myself standing in the wreckage that was once Raul’s living room, watching Raul fight a losing battle with gravity as the nearly-empty bottle of Mezcal mocked him from the table next to him.
More out of pity than anything, I finally leaned over and shoved Raul upright again. He looked nothing like the man I’d left four days ago when we all departed for Glendale. That man had the look of someone who’d fought his way out of the snake pit and held his head a little higher because of it.
The man in a drunken stupor in front of me looked like he was poisoned by the snakes before he could escape.
“What the fuck happened, Raul,”I finally snapped. My voice seemed to snap him out of the semi-daze he’d been in. Whether it was just the liquor, or if he was in shock, I would never be quite sure; he’d been repeating the same line since I walked in the door ten minutes prior.
“They found me,” he sputtered on the verge of falling over in his chair again.
“Who, Raul?” When I never got an answer more than a babble, I’d finally had enough. I reached back and slapped Raul across the face harder than I’d ever hit someone in my life outside of the football field.
His head rocked to the side and slowly lulled back, looking dangerously close to being knocked out cold. I grabbed him by the collar of his faded gray T-shirt, ready to uncork another slap, when his voice weakly protested.
“You don’t need to hit me again, Mano. I’m here.”
“Who found you, Raul?”
“The guero’s.”
“The what-?”
“The white boys, Armando. The ones I’d been working for.”
I stared at him bewildered. “You promised you were going to leave that behind when you came here, Raul. You promised Jessica.”
“You promised me,” I added, voice rising in anger.
My inner voice sang up to me, the one that hides in the darkness and knows just what to say when the anger is starting to build.
‘Everyone told you he was just like Arturo,’ it whispered mockingly.
“I tried, Armando. I left.”
“But they found me,” he added, defeated.
I stood there towering over him, defiantly angry. ‘How could he do this to me, after everything I did for him,’ my inner critic raged.
But as I added fuel to the fire of my anger mentally, Raul sat there distraught. It was this, more than anything, that finally began to temper the raging flames swelling in my chest.
Raul wasn’t pleading, explaining, or even groveling. He accepted he’d fucked up, as if it was inevitable.
I had done a lot for Raul since we first connected, yet here I was, not giving him the benefit of the doubt. And he felt like he didn’t even deserve that small courtesy.
I took a deep breath. Then another. I made a conscious effort to unclench my fist, feeling the grooves my fingernails left in their wake.
I grabbed a stool from the breakfast bar that connected the living room to the kitchen and planted it firmly in front of Raul.
Noticing I hadn’t left, his eyes finally rose from the beige carpet at his feet to meet mine, still slightly elevated from his point-of-view.
“You said you tried,” I sighed, trying with all my might to restrain the disdain that threatened to seep through. “You deserve the opportunity to explain.”
The gratitude in his face was enough to quell the final embers of anger that still sat in my chest.
“Gracias, mano. Gracias,” he whispered, running both of his hands through his hair—which was normally perfectly slicked back, but now was distorted and matted where the gel had dried and never been washed out.
“Before I left—before we reconnected, I got involved with this group of car jackers from Houston. Henry was the leader’s name. They needed someone local to help take some cars from one of the cities and stash them, then sell them to their connect.”
“It was easy work, they did everything but the crime,” he said with a grin and half of a laugh that died in his throat when he looked up and realized I was not in on the joke.
Raul choked on the laugh, cleared his throat, and returned his gaze to the beige carpet as he continued.
“I had one more car to unload before their quota was met. A Chrysler 300 SRT. I was going to disappear after that, no one the wiser. But the contact was delayed and before I got word, I had to leave for Norman to meet with Sophie. It was either bring a stolen car with me to Norman or leave it behind.”
“So, I left it, tarped and concealed behind my building.”
He finally looked up from the spot in the carpet he had been boring a hole through, meeting my eyes.
“It was gone when I came back.”
“I assumed someone else stole it. As you may have remembered, I didn’t exactly live in the foothills. Instead of telling Henry what happened, I just left.”
The moment the final words left his mouth, he turned and reached for the bottle of mezcal. Instead of finding the cool and inviting glass bottle, however, his hand found nothing but air where the bottle had been moments before. In his drunken stupor he didn’t even process the loud ‘crack’ from the bottle smashing into the drywall until seconds later, jumping and screaming as his hand quickly withdrew to safety.
“Whatdidyoudothatfor!?” Raul screeched, more out of surprise than anything, as I rubbed the back of my hand, a blossom of red forming where the skin had met the bottle before it was sent propelling at the wall.
“Alcohol isn’t going to save you now. You want to drink yourself into oblivion? Fine. But you’re going to explain everything that happened first.”
“You owe me that much,” I finished with a scowl.
He looked up at me pleadingly, hoping I would let him off the hook. When he realized his silent plea was hopeless, he leaned back in the recliner again and continued.
“The car wasn’t stolen. La policia took it,” he rubbed his hand over his face again in exasperation.
“Henry thought I turned fed. Had hung them out to dry. The police had a warrant out for me for questioning, since the car was found at my residence.”
“When I registered to vote, it pinged at the Sheriff’s office in Navasota. Unfortunately, Henry had paid off a guy at the station, waiting for me to slip up. When the sheriff’s were notified, so was he.”
“Apparently criminal extradition works faster than the government. They showed up Monday night, while you were celebrating the win.”
“They stormed in the house as I was watching the post-game broadcast. They roughed me up a bit, then started questioning me.”
“It didn’t take them long to put two-and-two together that we were related. Originally they were vetting me to see if I turned fed. When they were satisfied that I hadn’t, they wanted me to pay back what they would have made from the car, with interest.”
Raul paused, once again lifting his face to meet mine before finishing his recounting of the story.
“However, once they figured out who you were? Let’s just say things got entirely more complicated.”
There was no mistaking the look on his face, or the tone.
“They want more now that they know who your brother is, right?”
Raul just nodded solemnly. We both sat in silence; Raul intently staring at me, hoping for an answer, while I stared at the wall where the bottle had made contact, trying to once again control my anger.
Finally, with a gulp, Raul continued.
“Whatever you pay them, I’ll pay you back. With interest.”
“100% interest if that’s what it takes,” he mumbled at the end, his voice losing an octave by the end.
When Raul’s eyes found mine again, I was still staring, trying my hardest to control my anger.
Instead of staring a hole in the drywall however, I was staring straight at Raul. And I was losing the battle with my anger.
Two minutes later, eyebrows drawn together, lips pressed in a fine line, I finally trusted myself to speak without losing control.
“I’m not paying them a dime, Raul.”
Raul shot out of his seat, stumbling as the blood rushed to his head and he struggled to stay upright. I made no move to help him this time, content to see him collapse to the ground. Instead, Raul steadied himself against the recliner, composing himself before addressing me.
“What do you mean, mano!? We’re going to fight them?”
“There’s no ‘we,’ Raul,” I sighed, suddenly feeling ten years older. The joy that had overtaken me less than forty-eight hours earlier after winning the National Championship seemed like a long-distant memory.
“This is your mess. I can’t save you from this.”
“Sure you can, Armando. You have-“
I cut through the air with my left hand, signaling Raul to stop pleading. Raul stopped mid-sentence, then opened his mouth as if he would press on anyways. Then, he saw the frustration etched into my face and thought better of it.
“I could, Raul. You’re right. I have the resources and the means.”
“But I won’t,” I added with enough finality that Raul braced himself against the invisible force of the words.
Quieter now, with less conviction, I added: “I can’t go into that world for you, Raul.”
“You know as well as I do, once you go in, there’s no escape. I can’t do that, Raul. Not even once.”
“But…but, they’ll kill me,” Raul stammered, clearly not expecting his half-brother to deny his request for help. “You don’t know these people!”
When I merely shrugged at his short plea, Raul changed his approach. Looking back, his desperation reminded me of a rat stuck in a cage, desperately searching for a way out he knows doesn’t exist.
He strode to the counter, snatched his car keys off the counter, and quickly made for the door, only stopping when I yelled after him:
“That’s your plan? To run like our spineless father?”
“I guess the saying is true: like father, like son.”
The words hit the intended nerve. Raul whirled on his heels, coiled and ready to strike.
“You think this is what I want!? If you won’t help me, I have no other option!”
“THEY. WILL. KILL. ME.” He added desperately, as if the other times he’d said it hadn’t yet registered in my brain.
I quickly closed the distance between Raul and myself, bringing myself face-to-face with my brother.
“That’s your choice,” I exhaled. “But I can tell you this. If you let this spiral into something where my family is in danger?”
I pointed my finger accusingly into his face, inches from the spot where his eyebrows would meet.
“You’re going to wish they killed you. I may not be our father, but put my family in danger and you’ll find out how much like him I can become.”
Raul was the first to break, looking down at his shoes after several uncomfortable minutes where we shot death stares at each other, neither wanting to be the first to back down.
He took one step backwards, then two. Then three. He finally looked up again before he walked through the door.
“You’re right, Armando. This isn’t your problem. You made your expectations clear before I got here, and here I am already breaking them.”
“I’ll handle this. If you don’t hear from me again, don’t come looking.”
And with that, he turned and walked through the front door with his head held high.
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djp73
- Posts: 13093
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
No Father's Son
will be interesting to see how this all unravels if you keep it going
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Soapy
- Posts: 16317
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 18:42
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes
“I don’t have much time, mano. I’m on the run. I told Henry you refused to help. Convinced him I had some money at my condo, that it’d be a step towards paying what I owed. When they took me to the condo, I jumped out the back window and ran.”
“I’m not running forever. I refuse to live my life looking over my shoulder. Just long enough to make them believe the truth. That you won’t save me. Just long enough to make sure you’re clear of the collateral.”
“I’m sorry, Armando. I know you tried. But a tiger can’t change his stripes. This is what I am. My karma just caught up to me.”
“Good-bye, brother.”
The voice message ended with the sound of the receiver clicking into place on Raul’s end. The silence that followed in my home office was deafening. Just me, Jessica, and Raul’s words lingering in the silence.
Finally, voice barely louder than a whisper as if she didn’t want to disturb the silence anymore than necessary, Jessica spoke.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
The suspicions that Raul was lying, that this was all part of an elaborate ruse had never crossed my mind.
“He sounded scared. He didn’t even sound that scared when he was pleading for my help,” I said tonelessly.
“Yeah, he’s telling the truth,” I added solemnly.
The sound of Jessica swallowing was answer enough. I didn’t dare look at her, not right now. The guilt was too intense. But even without looking, I knew there were tears in her eyes.
I had fixed my gaze on the empty space next to the previous two National Championship trophy replicas in my display case. Of course, the empty space was a placeholder for this year’s trophy.
A trophy I thought I would be celebrating with my brother.
Another pang of misery, and guilt, stabbed at my heart.
We’d welcomed Raul into our family with open arms, hoping that just a little bit of family love, encouragement, and belief would be enough to break an entire lifetime of desperation and despair. We were wrong. As hard as we, and Raul, for all intents and purposes, tried, the result was the same.
The life of crime caught up with him. Just like our father.
What made the guilt worse was the belief that it was my involvement that escalated his timeline. Without the pressure to move to Norman, he wouldn’t have stupidly stashed the car in a poverty-stricken area where it would stick out like a sore thumb. Hell, he might still be doing the same job. Stealing cars and selling them, living the modest life he had grown accustomed to.
Or maybe I was just searching for a soft landing to place my guilt. It was always easier to lay blame at the foot of something, or someone else, than sit with it and let it slowly consume you.
There was no one trying to save Arturo, and yet his life of dishonor caught up to him all the same.
Jessica finally lost the battle with the tears that were welling in her eyes, dabbing at them while she mumbled an excuse about checking on the kids as she left the room.
‘How does this keep happening?’ I absentmindedly asked myself.
Despite the hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and ultimately, success—I was still hounded by the mistakes of my father.
First it was Leslie, then confronting his ghosts in an interview broadcast to the nation, and now, my own brother.
When did my father finally stop taking from me and just die, once and for all.
It felt like for as long as I could remember, there was always a part of him chasing me. A part of him I was trying to outrun. A point I was trying to prove that despite the blood that coursed in my veins, I was not my father’s son.
Sometime while I was lost in my internal monologue, Jessica had returned. When I finally noticed her, she was leaning against the doorjamb, hands hanging awkwardly at her sides, as if she was waiting for permission to enter somewhere that was dangerous in a way she couldn’t explain.
Still deep in thought, I simply extended my hand towards her and waited as she gracefully crossed the short distance, collapsing into my lap.
“What do we tell the kids?” She whispered into my shoulder. She wasn’t crying, but the waver in her voice told me tears were on the horizon once again.
“The truth,” I finally sighed. Jessica burst into tears again, droplets falling onto my shoulder and wetting the fabric of my T-shirt. Jessica knew what my answer would be, but couldn’t bring herself to picture it as a reality until they were spoken into existence.
“They’re old enough, they’ll suspect something even if we feed them a fairytale,” I continued tonelessly, talking more to myself than Jessica who was still sobbing into my shoulder.
When the steady river of tears finally slowed to a weak drizzle, Jessica addressed the elephant in the room.
“What are you going to do?”
“What else can I do, Jessica? Keep going Fearlessly Forward.”
Fearlessly Forward. The Maryland Terrapins' slogan I'd carried with me since College Park.
“But,” she began before cutting the words short. She opened her mouth again, then quickly pressed her lips into a flat line, struggling to find the correct tone.
“What if that’s the problem,” she finally exhaled. Her face said it wasn’t the words she wanted, but the only ones she could find in the moment.
“We keep pushing forward, barreling through problem after problem while staying the course. No matter what we’ve done, the sins of your father haven’t gone away.”
“Whether we hide them, or from them. Addressed them, or dismissed them. More keep finding their way into our lives.”
“Maybe the problem is how we’re moving forward, not what lies in the past.”
Jessica had lost all of the momentum she’d started her short monologue with, simply shrugging in an “I don’t know, just an idea,” manner before laying her head back on my shoulder.
The problem was: she was right. I knew that. Every time my father reared his head from the past to haunt me, I addressed it differently. But no matter how I tried, the result was the same.
“Nothing changes, if nothing changes,” I murmured into Jessica’s hair as I pressed my lips to the crown of her head.
Jessica nodded slightly, a movement so small that it would have passed unnoticed if my lips weren’t pressed against her head at that moment.
Then, quietly, a memory surfaced.
There was a time when my father’s shadow didn’t envelop my life in despair.
And it started in the summer of 2007. When my mother and I finally settled into Havre.
That isn’t to say things in Havre were perfect, far from it. But for the first time since we’d left Las Cruces, it felt like we could breathe again. I could see it in the way my mother carried herself, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Not completely, she always carried the weight of her choices, but enough that she could stand tall again and face the sun.
I searched my memory trying to pinpoint the exact moment when my father’s influence reappeared in my life. It didn’t take long to remember.
Fall, 2013. Sitting in an office at Harmon Hall with Brigadier General Gregory Lengyel as I saw my father’s full name for the first time.
That had led to a long spiral of self pity and alcoholism.
Yet, where did I go to cast away the shadow that haunted me?
Back to Havre. To a life that was simpler.
Yet once again, I left the warmth and comfort of Havre in pursuit of proving to myself, more than anyone, how unalike my father and I were—this time through coaching.
“I think I know what needs to change,” I declared confidently.
Jessica slowly lifted her head of my shoulder, her face inches from mine. And for the first time since we returned from Glendale, there was hope sparkling behind her eyes.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough to drive me to action. An action that I hoped would shine bright enough to finally cast away the shadow of my father that had lingered over my life for far, far too long.
“I don’t have much time, mano. I’m on the run. I told Henry you refused to help. Convinced him I had some money at my condo, that it’d be a step towards paying what I owed. When they took me to the condo, I jumped out the back window and ran.”
“I’m not running forever. I refuse to live my life looking over my shoulder. Just long enough to make them believe the truth. That you won’t save me. Just long enough to make sure you’re clear of the collateral.”
“I’m sorry, Armando. I know you tried. But a tiger can’t change his stripes. This is what I am. My karma just caught up to me.”
“Good-bye, brother.”
The voice message ended with the sound of the receiver clicking into place on Raul’s end. The silence that followed in my home office was deafening. Just me, Jessica, and Raul’s words lingering in the silence.
Finally, voice barely louder than a whisper as if she didn’t want to disturb the silence anymore than necessary, Jessica spoke.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?”
The suspicions that Raul was lying, that this was all part of an elaborate ruse had never crossed my mind.
“He sounded scared. He didn’t even sound that scared when he was pleading for my help,” I said tonelessly.
“Yeah, he’s telling the truth,” I added solemnly.
The sound of Jessica swallowing was answer enough. I didn’t dare look at her, not right now. The guilt was too intense. But even without looking, I knew there were tears in her eyes.
I had fixed my gaze on the empty space next to the previous two National Championship trophy replicas in my display case. Of course, the empty space was a placeholder for this year’s trophy.
A trophy I thought I would be celebrating with my brother.
Another pang of misery, and guilt, stabbed at my heart.
We’d welcomed Raul into our family with open arms, hoping that just a little bit of family love, encouragement, and belief would be enough to break an entire lifetime of desperation and despair. We were wrong. As hard as we, and Raul, for all intents and purposes, tried, the result was the same.
The life of crime caught up with him. Just like our father.
What made the guilt worse was the belief that it was my involvement that escalated his timeline. Without the pressure to move to Norman, he wouldn’t have stupidly stashed the car in a poverty-stricken area where it would stick out like a sore thumb. Hell, he might still be doing the same job. Stealing cars and selling them, living the modest life he had grown accustomed to.
Or maybe I was just searching for a soft landing to place my guilt. It was always easier to lay blame at the foot of something, or someone else, than sit with it and let it slowly consume you.
There was no one trying to save Arturo, and yet his life of dishonor caught up to him all the same.
Jessica finally lost the battle with the tears that were welling in her eyes, dabbing at them while she mumbled an excuse about checking on the kids as she left the room.
‘How does this keep happening?’ I absentmindedly asked myself.
Despite the hard work, dedication, sacrifice, and ultimately, success—I was still hounded by the mistakes of my father.
First it was Leslie, then confronting his ghosts in an interview broadcast to the nation, and now, my own brother.
When did my father finally stop taking from me and just die, once and for all.
It felt like for as long as I could remember, there was always a part of him chasing me. A part of him I was trying to outrun. A point I was trying to prove that despite the blood that coursed in my veins, I was not my father’s son.
Sometime while I was lost in my internal monologue, Jessica had returned. When I finally noticed her, she was leaning against the doorjamb, hands hanging awkwardly at her sides, as if she was waiting for permission to enter somewhere that was dangerous in a way she couldn’t explain.
Still deep in thought, I simply extended my hand towards her and waited as she gracefully crossed the short distance, collapsing into my lap.
“What do we tell the kids?” She whispered into my shoulder. She wasn’t crying, but the waver in her voice told me tears were on the horizon once again.
“The truth,” I finally sighed. Jessica burst into tears again, droplets falling onto my shoulder and wetting the fabric of my T-shirt. Jessica knew what my answer would be, but couldn’t bring herself to picture it as a reality until they were spoken into existence.
“They’re old enough, they’ll suspect something even if we feed them a fairytale,” I continued tonelessly, talking more to myself than Jessica who was still sobbing into my shoulder.
When the steady river of tears finally slowed to a weak drizzle, Jessica addressed the elephant in the room.
“What are you going to do?”
“What else can I do, Jessica? Keep going Fearlessly Forward.”
Fearlessly Forward. The Maryland Terrapins' slogan I'd carried with me since College Park.
“But,” she began before cutting the words short. She opened her mouth again, then quickly pressed her lips into a flat line, struggling to find the correct tone.
“What if that’s the problem,” she finally exhaled. Her face said it wasn’t the words she wanted, but the only ones she could find in the moment.
“We keep pushing forward, barreling through problem after problem while staying the course. No matter what we’ve done, the sins of your father haven’t gone away.”
“Whether we hide them, or from them. Addressed them, or dismissed them. More keep finding their way into our lives.”
“Maybe the problem is how we’re moving forward, not what lies in the past.”
Jessica had lost all of the momentum she’d started her short monologue with, simply shrugging in an “I don’t know, just an idea,” manner before laying her head back on my shoulder.
The problem was: she was right. I knew that. Every time my father reared his head from the past to haunt me, I addressed it differently. But no matter how I tried, the result was the same.
“Nothing changes, if nothing changes,” I murmured into Jessica’s hair as I pressed my lips to the crown of her head.
Jessica nodded slightly, a movement so small that it would have passed unnoticed if my lips weren’t pressed against her head at that moment.
Then, quietly, a memory surfaced.
There was a time when my father’s shadow didn’t envelop my life in despair.
And it started in the summer of 2007. When my mother and I finally settled into Havre.
That isn’t to say things in Havre were perfect, far from it. But for the first time since we’d left Las Cruces, it felt like we could breathe again. I could see it in the way my mother carried herself, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Not completely, she always carried the weight of her choices, but enough that she could stand tall again and face the sun.
I searched my memory trying to pinpoint the exact moment when my father’s influence reappeared in my life. It didn’t take long to remember.
Fall, 2013. Sitting in an office at Harmon Hall with Brigadier General Gregory Lengyel as I saw my father’s full name for the first time.
That had led to a long spiral of self pity and alcoholism.
Yet, where did I go to cast away the shadow that haunted me?
Back to Havre. To a life that was simpler.
Yet once again, I left the warmth and comfort of Havre in pursuit of proving to myself, more than anyone, how unalike my father and I were—this time through coaching.
“I think I know what needs to change,” I declared confidently.
Jessica slowly lifted her head of my shoulder, her face inches from mine. And for the first time since we returned from Glendale, there was hope sparkling behind her eyes.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough to drive me to action. An action that I hoped would shine bright enough to finally cast away the shadow of my father that had lingered over my life for far, far too long.
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djp73
- Posts: 13093
- Joined: 27 Nov 2018, 13:42
No Father's Son
I’m going going back back to Havre Havre.
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
bump city
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redsox907
Topic author - Posts: 6037
- Joined: 01 Jun 2025, 12:40
No Father's Son
population: me
Last edited by redsox907 on 09 Jul 2026, 18:38, edited 1 time in total.