There had never been a time in his life that he was so scared. Running so many years on the open road had left him hard and indifferent towards others. Now this came along - a girl he had met at a bar two months before in Albequerque was pregnant with what she claimed was his child. Always being able to take care of his own immediate want was easy. The anger mixed with fear of what felt like an entirely unfair expectation was slowly boiling within him. Drifters learned to be hard and tough, to show no honest feelings. He had no idea why he was shaking, but as Tracy said goodbye the first thing that came to his mind was what he had always done - run. After all, how can he trust this woman? What if she is just trying to pawn off her need for extra support onto him? He assumed that there had to be other possible candidates for the father of the child. She had insisted, though, that he had been the only man she was in intimate contact with in over a year. Still, until there was proof she had no grounds to put the responsibility on him, he justified in his mind.
Being a traveling man, he could get as far away as possible and find a quiet place to rest his weary soul until that town had had enough of him. He remembered stories about his father, who had done the same thing that he was now doing - run from everything that was plaguing him. How he wished he would randomly meet him, he would give him an earful - and perhaps a fist-full too. His mother's passing right before he took to drifting only made his hatred that much more toxic. Whatever happened, he did not want to be reminded of his abandonment, and he did not want to accept that he was doing the same thing now that his father had done. He would go through cycles of depression and deadness, constantly hearing voices in his head, saying things like 'The apple never falls far from the tree', or 'Everybody's left because they don't want you', or 'You're alone in this world, so you've gotta stiffen up and scrap for what you can get'. Always, the angered simmered down inside from some deep void, and he didn't know how to get rid of it except by alchohol and loose women. The only thing about that was he would wake up in the morning dizzy and still in a bowl of sullenness. This is why he didn't understand his emotional reaction to the news. With all the fights and scrapes he had taken, he thought that his days of being weak and never feeling again were over. As he pulled into a Motel 6 in Cheyenne, he tried to settle himself before going to the front desk. The key he received was to room number 77, so he got his things out of the old Ford that his mother had left him and went into his room exhausted. As he lay down that night, the front desk called him to tell him that somebody from Albequerque had called, but it was not a woman. He returned the call five minutes later. The man on the other line sounded strangely familiar, but Michael wouldn't believe it could be him. The man was the young woman's boss, and he called him to say that it was wrong of him to not face up to the consequences of his actions. After 10 minutes of arguing back and forth, the man on the phone finally tried to settle the issue by saying that he personally knew the boy and his mother when he was younger and would not think that his mother would be proud of a son who followed in his father's footsteps. The young man dropped the phone on the ground, screaming 'Why can't somebody just give me a break?!'. After kicking the TV off of the counter, he picked the phone back up to hear the man on the other line sobbing. He asked why he was so concerned about his own problem. The man, hesitating to get the words out, finally blurted 'Because, I am your father!'
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