Charlie Mad Dog Madson Post #1 - "The Train Tracks"

Those damn train tracks.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I cross them now – twice a day, five days a week – I hear the sound of my own stupid voice haunting me with, “Hey, Pete, wait up.”

The thing is, I didn’t actually say it to Pete the day he died. And that’s exactly the problem.

Because if I had said . . . Jesus . . . just four simple words, my best friend’s 9-year-old little brother would not be dead.

“Hey, Pete, wait up.” That’s all it would have taken. I mean the kid was flying on his piece of shit hand-me-down faded yellow bike, but he would have heard me and he would have listened to me because it was just the two of us that day.

And everything would be different. Pete would be alive, I’d still have a best friend, and no one would care that I’m not really white.

Whenever he rode bikes with John and me, Pete always tried to stay ahead of us. It drove him nuts to be behind. So, for sure, on that day as he rode out in front of me, if I’d just yelled, “Hey, Pete, wait up,” he would have jammed his foot on the pedal braking and skidding the bike just to see how long he could make the black tire mark.

And then he would have turned around, looked at me through those shaggy, dirty blond bangs that always fell in his eyes, and he would have said, “What the F, Mad Dog? Can’tcha keep up with me?” Grinning that no-lip-all-teeth grin of his.

Pete wouldn’t have used the F word. He was a wannabe cusser. So, he would have just said the F and hoped it was cool enough.

John McMurtrey is or, I should say, was my best friend. And Pete is, nope – was his little brother. The McMurtrey family is big and Catholic and normal, except for losing Pete, in so many ways that my family is not. John has two real parents, eight siblings, two sets of grandparents, who knows how many aunts and uncles from both sides, and a shit ton of cousins, all who live here in this little Indiana college town.

I, on the other hand, have no brothers or sisters, just a mom, and not even a real dad. I’ve never met my real dad and never will because Mom says he didn’t want to be a father. She says it was his choice. And she’s not mad or bitter or anything because she knew she wanted to be a mom no matter what.

So, we don’t talk about him and I’m not mad or bitter or anything either. I’m not one of those kids who’s obsessed with finding out who my dad is. I don’t see guys on the street and think, is that him? It’s just never been a big deal to me and not because I have this amazing step-dad because I don’t. Currently, I have a wannabe step-dad.

Unlike John, I don’t have any cousins or aunts and uncles because my mom is an only child. I’ve only seen my grandparents once that I can remember because they live in California. Apparently when Mom graduated from high school, she chose Purdue University because she wanted a “normal college experience” (her words). Then, before she finished at Purdue, she got pregnant and had me and decided to stay in Lafayette because she wanted to raise her son in “normal place” (also her words). I don’t know why she thinks California isn’t normal.

She’s big on normal, which is ironic because she doesn’t seem that normal to me, and I sure don’t feel normal. See, I’m a light-skinned brown, curly-haired kid with dark brown eyes with a mom who has fair skin (so fair she has to wear sunscreen even in the winter), blond hair, and blue-eyes. She swears I’m not adopted and that she has the stretch marks to prove it. On this I take her word because even though I’m not sure what stretch marks are or where they might be on a woman who’s had a kid, I don’t really want to try and guess. I also know enough to know that stretch marks are not something a kid wants to see on his mother.

So, I was left with the undeniable fact that my real dad is black. Something my mom confirmed last year when I was doing a family history assignment for school. I’d actually pretty much figured it out back when I was 9 and started noticing how dark I get in the summer compared to my mom. She never technically lied to me about it, but she also never told me straight up that my dad is black until the family history project.

And maybe because I always keep my hair buzzed short or maybe because my best friend was John McMurtrey, up until this year, I think the kids at school either just assumed I’m white or didn’t want to question it.