The Day The Sun Melted My Boyish Image Of My Father
That summer he paid me $5 a week to help him on his route. I couldn’t have been more than 11 years old.
It wasn’t my idea, nor do I think it was his. It was more like we were both tricked into spending that summer together, lumbering along the dusty streets of Laredo in an old Borden’s milk truck.
He left for work when it was still dark and I reluctantly went along.
He had a habit of pumping the gas pedal before he turned the ignition – four pumps to bring the gas into the carburetor. He drove deliberately as if it were the street that was moving under the wheels and he merely guided an directed our progress. He drove that way until he could drive no longer.
There was a certain permanence about him. He had massive biceps like the trunk of an old oak – at least they seemed massive to an 11-year-old. The muscles bulged under his shirtsleeves, which he rolled in narrow folds halfway to his shoulders.
That day we ate breakfast at Ram-Rods, a little taco shack where the morning regulars all knew each other by name. They were hearty men just like him, honest and rugged. They shared a few minutes in the peace of the dark morning and then they left, each to his own route – one to a bread truck, another to his mail truck, some to deliver sodas, others beer. Our task was to deliver milk to people’s doorsteps.
You could hardly hear him in the morning silence as he stepped away from his truck, up to the front door of his houses. He’d leave the milk by the front door, ring the doorbell and step back to the truck. As we drove off a hand would appear from behind the screen and the milk would disappear. Over and over the scene repeated itself, two or three customers per block.
Soon the sun coaxed people out of their houses and the streets bustled with activity. It seemed everyone knew him. At every turn and every stop there was someone to greet, someone to wave and whistle to – a signature hello.
I sat behind him and over to his right in the truck, just out of sight. All day I watched his steel-toe shoes working the pedals and his dark weathered hands constantly shifting gears.
As the day wore on the sun pounded the unpaved streets and the heat became unbearable. Inside the truck it was an oven. The only cool place was in the refrigerated box with the eggs, butter and juice. By late afternoon the ice would begin to melt and drip over the crates of milk and fruit punch.
The heat made the street seem as if it were liquid and made me wish I were somewhere else. He always looked unaffected, except that one day.
Maybe it was because my 11 year-old eyes had opened enough to notice, or maybe it was because for an instant he let his guard down.
That day he stopped.
Under the unforgiving sun he pulled the truck into the shade of a large tree, took a bottle of water from the freezer and drank deeply. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and without a word handed me the bottle.
As I leaned my head back to drink, from the corner of my eye I saw my father hold his head, close his eyes and sigh a very profound and exhausted sigh.
There’s a moment in a boy’s life when time stands still and he sees his father with a crystalline clarity, when the invincible man becomes human. It’s a sacred moment that finds a place in a boy’s soul and never dies. For an instant on that brutally hot summer afternoon, I knew.
In that timeless moment he turned to look at me. I held the weight of his tired gaze and handed him the water. He drank again and put the bottle away.
He pumped the gas pedal, started the motor of his old milk truck and slowly we drove out of the shade.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Photos courtesy Victor Landa]
