Read Not My Father's Son for Free Online

next few moments, I might leave the planet. I was used to rage, I was used to volatility and violence, but here was something that transcended all that I had encountered from him before. This was a man who had nothing to lose. The very elements were raging against him, and what was one puny little son’s worth in the grand scheme of things? I felt like I was my father’s sacrifice to the gods, a wide-eyed, bleating lamb that he was doing a favor in putting out of its misery.
    It was during my summer holidays from high school. I was old enough to be working for him full time by then, but not yet fully grown enough to be sent to aid the men with their tasks. So not only was I feeble and weak and inept, I also, in this current downpour, demanded more time and planning and attention due to my inadequacies. It was always like this with the rain. I longed for it as respite from the backbreaking labor, but as soon as it came, I knew I was doomed.
    We had been working outside in the nursery, separating the one- and two-year-old spruce saplings that were strong enough to be taken to the forests and planted from the runts of the litter. These, much like me, needed to be cast aside. The rain had necessitated that this work be postponed, and instead all the saplings were transported into the old tractor shed in the sawmill yard, where they could be graded and selected in a dry place. This, I was told, was to be my job. I was sent to the shed to await further instructions.
    There was a single bare lightbulb hanging above me. I stood beneath it, surrounded by mounds and mounds of spruce saplings, hearing my father’s voice come wafting through the gale as he ordered his men around.
    Finally the shed door opened and a gust of wind and a clap of thunder heralded his entrance. In the lightbulb’s dim hue, his lumbering frame cast a shadow over me and much of the piles of baby trees. I remember the smell of them, so sweet, fresh, and moist.
    “You go through these,” he said, picking up a handful of saplings, “and you throw away the ones like this . . .”
    He thrust out a hand to me, but it was full of saplings of various lengths and thicknesses. With his shadow looming over me I could barely discern the differences between any of them.
    “And you put the good ones into a pile over here.” He gestured to his right.
    I looked up at him, blinking and windswept.
    “How do I know if they’re good or not?” I asked.
    “Use your common fucking sense,” he said from the shadows. A second later a shaft of eerie gray-blue light filled the shed, thunder vibrated beneath my feet, and he was gone.
    For the next few hours I sifted through the trees like a mole, blinking and wincing in the semidarkness. After a while the saplings began to blur into a prickly procession, spilling through my fingers. I would check myself and go back through the discarded pile at my feet and wonder if I had been too harsh in my judgment. The pile of rejected saplings seemed to be bigger than the successful ones, and I questioned if my criteria was too harsh. Then pragmatism would win over and I’d tell myself I needed to be ruthless, that this pile had to be shifted and it never would be by prevaricating or becoming sentimental.
    Of course my father had not given me much to go on to make my choices. He was usually vague and generalized in his instructions, but incredibly specific when it came time to inspect my work. But today was different. Perhaps because he was so preoccupied with the challenges the weather had created for him and his workers, he had doled out fewer instructions than usual about how I was to proceed. For instance he gave no indication of what ratio of plants should be kept to those that should be rejected. He gave no clues as to the criteria I should use in filtering them, aside from that shadowy fist he had thrust in my face. I was standing in a freezing, damp, dark room surrounded by thousands of baby trees. I began to panic.
    I did what