Yesterday's Gone: Season One

tell, but he never let us know how much the job was busting his ass. I was too stupid to appreciate how hard he worked at the time. I was more concerned with having fun, buying shit we didn’t need, and stuff. We were in the suburbs, and I’d been hanging out with the preppy crowd.”
    “No shit, you?” Luis said, laughing.  
    “Yeah. I had these grand schemes that I’d be this famous writer; I’d make my first million by the time I was 22. I wasn’t gonna bust my ass for some job that would dry up when the company shipped all the jobs overseas. I wasn’t willing to be anyone’s schmuck. I’d make my own living, thank you very much.”
    “So how did your dad feel about your career plans?”
    “Actually, he didn’t want me to follow in his footsteps. He had a hard job because that’s all he could get at the time. He wanted me to have the opportunities he didn’t have. He wanted me to go to college and make something of myself. But when I was in high school, college was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to goof off and have fun, you know. In my junior year, I was on the verge of being held back. Then one day, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school. I was hanging out in the front of the school with these girls who were way out of my league. I was doing my best to impress them, and being pretty damned charming, if I do say so myself. Anyway, here I am, about to win over this girl I’d been lusting after for two years, when all of a sudden, my dad shows up.”
    “So?” Luis asked, “That a bad thing?”
    “Oh yeah. You see, my mom had the ‘good car.’ While my dad had this beater car, biggest piece of shit to ever roll off a factory floor. I was mortified. I couldn’t let these girls know I was poor and that my old man drove the Shitmobile 3000. And God forbid he got out of the car looking all dirty and shit. I would have died right there on the spot. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen me, because we were standing in this alcove near one of the doorways. The minute I saw him, I told the girls I had to go to the bathroom, then ran to the other end of the school, out the side doors, and started walking home on the road where I knew he would pass me.”
    “Oh shit,” Luis said.
    “Yeah, so I was walking for about 10 minutes when my dad pulled up beside me, and opened the door. I got in and he asked me why I was walking. I told him some lie about how I didn’t think anyone was gonna pick me up because it had been late, so I figured I’d walk. He told me that my mom’s car was broken down and that he had to take time off work to come get me, which meant he’d have to make up the hours on the weekend. He wasn’t complaining, or anything, just telling it like it was. He seemed more concerned that I’d had to walk. He reminded me it was dangerous to be walking alone on the road. Man, I felt like such a shit heel. How the hell could I be embarrassed by my own dad like that? So, as we were driving home, I found myself watching him, seeing him for the first time like the real man he was — a guy who took care of his family and always did the right thing. And I started to see how insignificant I was, and how lazy, and I vowed right there not to waste any more time and to work as hard as I could to get ahead.”
    “Wow,” Luis said. “That’s some heavy shit. So, was he proud of you when you got your first job?”
    “Yeah. I got a job at this small paper in our hometown. A shit paper with 20,000 readers, maybe, and I was writing obits and cats-in-tree stories for the first year, but whenever I saw him, he’d comment on whatever story I wrote no matter how insignificant. He was connecting with me through stories I was writing about other people. It was weird and completely cool at the same time.”
    “That’s awesome,” Luis said. “What did he think when you had a kid?”
    “He died of lung cancer, even though he never touched a cigarette, a month before Ben was born,” Brent said, starting to tear up. “I know he was looking forward to having a grandchild more than anything , though. He kept going to the store, even when he was sick, and buying stuff for Ben. He bought him this, actually,” Brent said as he pulled the blue train out of his pocket and held it up so the moonlight captured the train’s big smile. “Stanley Train, Ben’s favorite toy ever.”
    “What about your mom?” Luis asked.
    “My mom got to see Ben. She loved him and doted on him like a good grandma