The Isleño

I gotta tell you, man it sucks that I had to quit school, you know. It's not like it's 1920 where kids gotta work to help make ends meet, and shit. It's 1989. A kid my age should be in school. But whatever.

I mean, it's not like school was giving me a problem, you know. My black Dominican ass was getting along fine with everyone. Me and the brothers were cool. White girls liked my café con leche skin. Sisters dug me, too. A lil bit of, oye, mami, tú si ta buena, always worked just fine for me. That was all I needed to get me some attention from the hotties. Fuck it, right? I guess nothing good lasts. Sooner or later, the world smacks you into reality. That’s what Mami always tells me.

So instead of getting ready for school this morning, making my way through what’s left of my senior year and graduating, I’m waking my ass up at four in the morning to go to a job. Ain’t that some shit? Bruh, if my boys could see this. They wouldn’t believe it. I could see them now, messing with me, “damn bruh, your ass getting up before your mom’s rooster!”

Screw it, right? No use crying about it. Mami needed my help. That’s it. When she hurt her leg, there was no one she could ask. She couldn’t work, so what choice did I have? Besides, if Mami asks, then I gotta. There ain’t no, if, or but, about it, you know, even if I don't like it, right? I, mean, so what if I wanted to get a better education than my people? I'm sure papi had to make these kind of choices all his life. Besides, I can still get that G.E.D and then get into the technical college. Mami and Papi never even made it out of high school, so that's progress, right? Whatever, it's how I was taught, I guess. Gotta do what I'm required to do, you know.

Man, they going to miss me at school, especially my boys. I'm probably gonna have to avoid them for a bit. None of them will get this. They get to say no, you know. But not me. Oh no. It don’t work that way in our house. I may as well hang myself before I say no. Besides, with me being the oldest and Papi being gone, it's not like I can afford to ignore helping. It’s what I gotta do. But I gotta tell you, this waking up before the sun comes out crap ain't gonna cut it for me. Hell no.

Pequeño should be here soon. Shit, it really is strange to be up when everyone else is sleeping. Even Mami went back to bed. She shocked the hell out of me when I found her in the kitchen boiling a shot of coffee for me. That Nenito can sleep like a log. I thought for sure I would wake him with all the noise I made. Before long, I guess this all going to be routine, like it was for Papi. Shit, me, the man of the house, going out the door before the crack of dawn to make some bread for the three of us. I ain’t going lie, I sure wish Papi was still alive.

You would think that after drinking two cups of that espresso that I’d be wide awake, getting all my questions out for Pequeño, who was Papi's pana. I got so many damn questions to ask him that I don't even know where to begin. But at the same time, I can't figure out how to start, and before I know it, I’m falling asleep almost soon as I get in Pequeño’s car.

He starts talking to me about what to expect at work and stuff, but I'm really not listening all that much, you know. I can’t focus, and my mind wanders off to the last time I saw Papi.

I’m like almost fully sleep, you know, as we drive down south, way past the end of New Domangue, past all the old dying neighborhoods, the rickety houses, til we get to cows and shit. That's when I start dreaming in pieces, you know, little flashes of crazy shit coming at me between visions of tree shadows zipping by my face.

I see a younger me, way too young, crying cause Papi is gone. I feel all confused in this dream, cause Papi died last year, just after my seventeenth birthday, not when I was a kid. Then I see Papi coming way up close to my face, telling me that he is trying his best, he really is, and would I forgive him in the future. I'm this tiny kid, and I'm just balling my ass off. Then, I’m like grown and shit, and right as I'm about to go pick up Papi from work in his truck, I get a phone call that I don't need to get him because he got a ride, and he was already on his way. But he's early, I think, and then everything disappears. It all feels so real, with emotions and sounds, and everything, that it stays with me when Pequeño wakes me up. For some reason, the first thing I think as soon as I'm fully awake is that it's all a lie.

“Despierta,” Pequeño says, gruffly ordering me to wake up.

All those crazy dreams are still floating in my head when I open my eyes. My insides still feeling all the emotions, too.

“Coño, Pequeño,” I say. “I was just dreaming about Papi.”

Pequeño looks at me like I just told him his wife was dead.

“Oh?” he answers, then looks ahead at the road. “Almost there,” he says, as he clenches his jaw and tightens both of his hands on the wheel.

As we drive on, the sun starts to come up somewhere. I can't see it, but I can tell it's sunrise somewhere. The shadows begin to take shape and I can start to see trees, and a canal on my side of the road.

Coño, shit look like the boonies out here. No lights. No houses. No stores. Nothing. Just trees, ditches, swamps, whatever. How in the hell Papi end up out here, living right next to a swamp like this? That's something I want to know.

“Where we at?” I ask.

“Tipo, el pantano de Luisiana,” he tells me, as if to say that I must be dumb to not know we in Louisiana swamps. But that don’t answer shit for me.

“I never been down here.”

“¿Cómo?” He looks at me as if it can’t be true.

“Not shitting you, Pequeño. Never been here.”

“Santana never tell you?” he begins to ask, but then he cuts himself off, like he forgot what he was about to say. I feel something inside me jump when he says Papi’s name.

You know, it's always bugged me how Pequeño never talks about Papi whenever he visits. I mean, never. I was thinking he might say something right now, but he didn’t. He just kind of faded off.

Man! I can’t tell you the times I’ve wanted to ask him about Papi in the last year. In those weeks right after, when he came just about every day, I used to hang near the adults just outside the kitchen to try and catch something, anything, that gave me some information. I would even send Nenito to spy, but we never got anything. It’s like they knew we were there, you know, trying hard to listen.

I don’t get it. Especially those first weeks after he died. I thought for sure someone would explain to me what happened. How it happened. Why it happened. But nothing. I had so many damned questions. Nobody said anything. I heard someone saying that the police had said he fell. But the way everyone behaved about it, seemed to me there was more to it than that. I was angry about it at first, but over time it just disappeared, you know. It took a back seat. Shit, life was full of stuff to be worried about. I was trying to make it in high school. We had just moved to this new spot. I was chasing some girl, you know, and on and on. It got to be that before long it was like Papi never existed by the time a full year came around.

But driving to where he used to work and having those strange dreams just now, you know, it kind of brings it all back. I remember now how Papi’s closest friends would always huddle in small groups at the vigil, always talking in whispers, and how they would pretend they were talking about something else whenever I came close, going from whispers to fake-ass laughs. Like I couldn’t see through that.

Looking at Pequeño, his knuckles all tight on the steering wheel and his face all tense, I want to say something, you know. I even feel like punching him in the face right now, but nah, I ain't gonna do that. I know better.

Maybe now that I'm working with him, as one of the men, I could bring it up after a while. Maybe whatever it is that he feels he can't tell me, well, maybe it's because he still sees me as a kid. But now that I'm going to be working right alongside him and some of the other men that worked with Papi, well, then maybe that will mean something different, and they won't have a problem telling me what men tell men.

“Mira Franky,” he says, as he nods towards the brightly lit refinery that is already beginning to reflect the morning sun, “llegamos.”

Next minute we’re in the parking entrance to the refinery, which looks like a small city in the middle of nowhere, its night lights still lit up.

I seen plenty of refineries before. Those things are all over New Domangue. But knowing that this was the refinery where Papi worked made this one stand out, you know.

Next thing I know, something comes over me and I start to breathe heavy. I could feel my eyes beginning to sting. I didn’t know that I was going to feel like this. Pequeño sees me and starts to say something, but then he stops.

“Vamos,” he said, as he turns from me and opens the door.

The first thing to hit me is the smell. Shit hits me strong, too. Soon as I step out of Pequeño’s car, I can smell that same metallic chemically smell I used to smell on Papi. Looking up at the smoke stacks, with that blue-yellow flame going on forever, the first thing I think about is if Papi fell from one of those. Stupid shit, right? So I immediately remind myself that it would be better if don't think about that kind of crap, you know.

“No worry, Franky,” Pequeño tells me in his hard accented English. “Is okay.” He pats me on my back and walks ahead towards the security gate.

After about four hours holed up in a trailer learning about safety and shit, Pequeño comes to get me and takes me over to this shed where some guys are sitting. Some are Dominicans I recognize right away. It’s lunchtime. Pequeño tells me that this is the crew I’m going to work with. Three of them, including Pequeño, are Dominican. They all knew Papi. They ask how Mami’s doing. There are three other black guys there that aren't speaking Spanish. They introduce themselves, all of them from New Domangue, and all of them old enough that I could be their son. The last guy I make out is this real old looking white man. He looks like he been sitting in that shed for a hundred years, you know.

“Viejo,” Pequeño calls out to the old man. “Venga, conozca a Franky. Él le ayudará.”

I ain’t going lie. I never in a million years would think this old man knows Spanish, you know. It catches me off guard, especially being down here in the boonies. I ain’t never seen no one like him before. At the same time, for some reason I feel like he's a local, like someone who's been around here a long time. But then I'm thinking, there ain’t a single local I ever met in New Domangue who can speak Spanish, not even the ones named Rodriguez, Nunez or Perez. They got Spanish names, but none of them got anything to do with Spanish culture, far as I know. They as gringo as they come, is what I learned. So when I see this old man understanding Pequeño in Spanish, you know, it kind of throws me off.

So I’m going to be the old man’s helper, Pequeño says. I wonder what that will be like. As I’m thinking this, the old man gets up real fast, man, faster than a man his age should be moving, you know, and he comes over to me and stands in front of me. I throw out my hand for a handshake. The old man grabs it and squeezes it as tight as he can. It kind of bugs me, the way he tests me like that.

I remember Papi used to squeeze it real hard whenever my grip was too soft. “Coño, Franky,” he would say, “tírale más guevos.” That used to always embarrass me when he said that.

I’m lucky it doesn't build up to nothing emotional in me. I just pretend it’s cool and smile at the old man while he squeezes my hand even tighter. He stares at me hard, making me feel all uncomfortable and shit. Eventually, I stop smiling at him. The whole thing feels like it's taking forever, and I'm wondering if anyone else notices that my hand has been in his hand for a real long time now. He squints his eyes at me, gets closer to my face, and softens his grip, but doesn't let go.

“Tienes las mejillas de tu papá,” he says. My eyes get all large and I can feel my mouth falling down to the ground when he tells me this.

Oh shit, of course he knew him. He must have worked with him. I want to say ten thousand things that race up to the front of my mind, you know, but before I could get one word out, Pequeño grabs my shoulder and pulls me back.

“Franky, ven aquí. I have to show you some things for your job.”

I spend the next thirty minutes basically inhaling my lunch in big gulps while Pequeño demonstrates how I’m to do my job. The whole time I’m trying to focus on what he’s saying while at the same time fighting my own brain going all crazy on me wanting to know what that old man knows about Papi. How long did they know each other? What does he know about the fall? What did Papi tell him about us?

I can still see it all like it was just minutes ago. I’m outside on the street, throwing the ball with Nenito, not a care in the world other than whether or not I was gonna get to see my girl that weekend. What I especially remember is that right before Pequeño comes rolling into view I hear Mami yell through the kitchen window telling me to tell her when Pequeño’s car turns the corner. Soon as she finishes, there he is, only he’s driving fast, much faster than usual, and something else isn’t right. I watch, kind of confused, while he bullets into the driveway. He almost hits us, and the house, too. It takes me a second to realize that Papi isn’t in the car. Pequeño doesn’t even look at us. He runs into the house, not even bothering to knock on the door, the way he’s supposed to, and then I hear Mami.

“No, !Dios mío, no!”

My insides get all crazy in a flash. Something cold and sharp runs up my spine while the rest of me feels like I got punched in the stomach. Mami comes rushing out and locks the door.

“Franky! Nenito! Entren al carro, rápido!” she orders. Me and my brother jump into the car, both of us scared without even knowing what’s going on. I try to ask Mami while Pequeño drives us away, but all she says is that we gotta go to the hospital. The rest is like a foggy mess of crying, a bunch of familiar and strange people, a crowded emergency waiting room, more crying, and the smell of dried blood and peroxide.

Man, everything about Papi’s death since that moment’s been a mystery. All they ever say is he fell. Santana fell. He fell and died. That’s it, Franky, they always tell me. That’s all there is. So why does it feel like they’re lying? Like there’s more? And I’m supposed to be the man of the house now? How can I be the man of the house if everyone is keeping something from me? Like I’m some little kid that can’t take it, you know? What sucks even more than having to do all this is having to do it and still being treated like I’m some nine-year-old.

So as soon as Pequeño is finished with me he gives me a bucket filled with tools and walks me over to the old man.

“Viejo, ya está listo. Se lo puede llevar.”

“Bien,” the old man says and signals for me to follow him.

So now I start to follow the old man and, bruh, I’m telling you my mind just starts racing, wondering what the old man knows about Papi. I want to start to ask, but can’t bring myself to do it. He takes me through the middle of a bunch of pipes. Soon we all inside the pipes. Pipes above me. Pipes next to me. Hissing pipes. Frozen pipes. All kind of pipes running in all directions. There are so many pipes that I can’t even tell it’s daylight outside. The old man keeps walking through them until we come out on the other side. He walks towards a bunch of tanks directly in front of us, big tanks, like the ones seen off the highway coming here, you know, and then behind the tanks looks like there’s a small lake or something. The old man makes his way to the last tank and starts to climb up the stairs hugging the side. He signals for me to follow. We go around the tank while we make our way to the top. While we climb, I realize, bruh, it’s tall. It’s like three, maybe four stories. Now that I’m climbing up here, my mind starts to think about everything. It looks high enough to kill someone who falls, but it don't like it's the kind of spot where people are falling all the time. I mean, it's wide, and mostly, with plenty of room away from the edges. Just by looking at it, from a first glance, someone would have to be drunk, or dumb, or be pushed off on purpose to fall from up here. So now my mind is really all over the place. If he was on top of one of these, how did he fall?

If he did fall off these large tanks, it could have happened off any one of the tanks I'm looking at, maybe the one I’m climbing on now. You know, all this time I thought he might have fallen from one of those long stacks. But now that I'm in the refinery, I can see that they ain't insulated.

As an insulator, Papi would only be dealing with the pipes that need insulation. That's what I'm supposed to be working on, insulation. My job is to help the insulator. Papi was an insulator.

These tanks are plenty tall for someone to fall to death, but how did he fall? It doesn't even look dangerous up there. But then I realize I'm wrong when we get to the top. The top of this tank is dome-shaped, you know, and at the edges it’s kinda steep. It’s so steep that I lose sight of the old man as he walks up to the top and over. So maybe it’s easier to fall off than I thought.

The old man keeps going while I kind of get stuck in my own head. I end up walking much slower up here. I don’t want to fall off this thing.

As I get close to the center, I can see the old man begin to disappear again as he goes down at the other end. Just before his head disappears below, he stops and whistles for me to walk to him, signalling for me to stay away from the edge. Unlike the railing at the edge by the stairs, there aren’t any rails nowhere else up here. As I walk to him all I want to do is ask him about Papi. I'm sure he knows something.

What was explained to me was that we are supposed to spray insulation to the dome roof. When I reach the old man, I find him sitting on the edge of the dome area where he plans to spray. It looks like it’s so easy to fall, so now I'm thinking differently about this tank. It looks like there ain't no way to insulate the top edges of the domed tanks without someone being close to falling.

I look across the way to the other tanks around me. Most of them are flat, so they don't seem to have the same kind of problem. But still, what if Papi was working the edge of a domed tank? Maybe he was, and he fell? A simple accident, right? But then I think that if that's true, then why all the damned secrecy?

“Franky,” the old man calls. “Agarra aquí.” He tells me to hold on to a large portable tank with a pump and a hose attached to it. “Mira,” he orders. “Cuando muevo, tu mueves. ¿Entiendes?” he asks.

I nod that I understand him about how to move with him, but, bruh, I really don’t give a shit. I want to know what he knows about Papi. This crap can wait.

“HEY!” the old man yells at me. I look at him like he’s out of his damned mind. He comes up to me and puts his old, wrinkled up ass face in mine. “You want to dream? Go home! It’s time to work. You come to work? Pay attention. Dream? Go home! ¿Entiendes?”

Damn, the old man ain’t fucking around. I get it. I get it. Shit, I ain’t about to lose this job, you know. Good jobs are hard to get in New Domangue. Even worse for a spicola like me with no diploma.

Man, the old man jumping on me like that kind of reminds me of Papi, the way he used to get on me and Nenito when we weren’t paying attention.

Just like all those times he had us stand ready with a tool whenever he got under the car. We would get bored, start to fight or something, and next thing we know Papi’s yelling at us. I ain’t interested in getting off to no bad start, so I start to do my job, working hard to push all other thoughts out my head. Still, man, I can’t stop wondering about all the stuff that I wanna talk to the old man about, you know, so I just keep it in the back of my mind.

We spend the next four hours on top of that tank, burning up in the sun, slowly putting on new insulation. The whole time I’m half daydreaming, half paying attention. Some of the times when I kind of space out, I find the old man just looking at me, always with this look like there’s something wrong with me. Each time I find him looking at me I feel like I just got caught with my pants down or something. Still, I end up doing it again, and just like that I’m wondering if I’ll ever get a chance to ask him anything when ye yells at me again.

“¡Pon atención! Can’t you see that the line is kinked?” he shouts. He puts down the hose part and stands up straight. “What is it? Hmm?” he asks.

I look at him like I don’t know what he’s talking about and just shrug my shoulders, but then, just as he's about to turn around and get back to the job, I can't help but blurt out what's been eating me up the whole time.

“You knew my father, didn’t you? Did you come from Puerto Rico with him? Did you know him a long time? How did he die?”

It all just gushes out like a flood, you know. I can’t stop myself. It just falls out. My heart does jumping jacks and shit on my chest the second it all comes out. For a split second my brain goes empty and then I’m thinking about when in the world we going to get down off this damned tank. Next I’m thinking about going home, taking a shower, getting this chemical smell off me and sitting down to some of Mami’s cooking. Next I’m thinking that maybe I could see my boys, after all. Maybe I don't need to stay away from them. No need to hide. Maybe we can hang out for a minute before I gotta get my ass to bed so I can get back up at four in the morning. It feels like forever in my head, following all these crazy ass thoughts just zooming by, but I know it’s only been a second. The old man puts down the pump and walks to me and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“When a man goes into the world to do work, he is prepared to leave many childhood dreams behind. I do not know what you want, but if you are here, then I believe you are here to work. You cannot do this if you continue to daydream. I can help you learn this work. Nada más. Understand? That is all I can do for you right now.”

He said this all calm, you know. No anger, no heat. Nothing. The whole time his face is all up close to mine, almost like he’s looking for something, and as soon as he finishes talking, he walks towards the stairs and signals for me to pick everything up.

I stay behind feeling like the biggest dumb ass on the whole planet. It feels like those times when Papi would catch me and Nenito about to do some dumb shit I can’t even remember, you know, the kind of crap a seven year old thinks about doing that can end up hurting you, like taking a big giant knife out of the kitchen and into the back yard to chop worms stretched out between my kid brother's fingers. Yeah, dumb shit like that. And Papi would catch us and yell at us, and after yelling at us he would sit us down and make us feel like the worst crap in the world. I could hear him now.

“And what if you cut Nenito’s finger right off, Franky? What then? How could you fix that? You can’t put his finger together after it is cut off. Your brother would have no finger and he won’t be able to get work, and maybe even not be able to get a wife and he would end up sad and alone all because you weren’t thinking. Is that the kind of big brother you want to be, Franky? Is that the kind of life you want, Nenito?”

Papi sure had a way of getting us to understand. This old man got that same kind of way. So I think about that as I pack up the equipment and put it on the landing at the top of the stairs so I can bring it down. When I have it all positioned to bring down, the old man is nowhere in sight. He’s probably already at the bottom, I figure, which annoys me cause I can’t carry all the equipment down alone.

¡Coño, Cabrón! I think to myself, but not in no mean way towards the old man, you know. I mean, it’s probably my job anyway, but finding out like this sure does suck. Serves me right, I guess. Daydreaming and shit. That won’t get me far. Not in this job. I know Pequeño probably had to call all the favors in the world to get me this job. The last thing I want is to disrespect that. Shit, the last thing I want is to disrespect anybody here. So what if I gotta climb twice just to haul this crap down a giant ass tank?

As I start my way down I start thinking about school and how different this is from what I was doing last week. Good thing I'm starting on Monday. At least I had the weekend to get ready for this. Not that I had any kind of way of doing that, but at least it wasn’t a crazy jump from one day to the next. That would’ve been messed up. Can you imagine? Wake up one morning, I’m walking the halls with my boys, saying hello to the hotties. Wake up the next morning, I’m walking down a large ass chemical tank smelling like crap and sweating like a pig.

I wonder about what Papi would have thought, me working in the place he used to work, not finishing school, having to take his place until Mami can get better. He used to tell me that he wanted me to dream big. Dream whatever I wanted to dream, he used to say, and if I work hard at it, I could make it happen. I don’t know that I was dreaming big or anything, with only three months til the end of school, but at least I was set to graduate. But whatever, I can get my GED and still get somewhere, I figure. But at the same time, I guess I’m wondering if he would be happy with me doing this. I wonder what he would think of me, you know.

By the time I finish hauling down the equipment my legs feel like they going to give out, so I sit down to rest a minute. Sitting on the bottom step of the tank, I can’t see the old man and wonder if he went back to the tool shed. Am I supposed to carry this stuff back there? Cause if I gotta do that, I’m really going to be pissed. Fuck it, right? If that’s what I gotta do, then that’s what I gotta do. Like the old man said, either I’m here to work, or not. I guess I’m here to work, so ain’t no use complaining.

Just as I’m thinking this, I see a man come around one of the nearby tanks. I stop him and ask him if he knows what I need to do with the equipment. He tells me there’s a shed to the right. Now, why couldn’t the old man tell me that, you know? Stupid old man probably forgot. Maldito cabrón. I curse his old ass this time. Then I remember that I was so wrapped up in my own head that he might have told me and I didn't hear it.

On my way back to the area where we started after lunch, I end up getting all turned around in the part of the refinery that’s full of pipes and shit. It’s like a damned jungle in here. I can’t figure out which way to go. After a couple of turns, my ass stays good and confused. I pass up a couple of guys who don’t even bother to look up at me. For some reason I don’t ask them for directions, so I just keep walking, all lost and shit. This damned place is huge. No matter which way I turn, I can’t figure out if I’m going the right way. I know I’m going to get out of here, but it starts to really piss me off that the old man didn’t wait for me. I want to curse him again, and just as I’m thinking about him, he comes around the corner and signals for me.

“Hey,” he shouts so I can hear him above the hissing and clicking noise of the pipes, “que pasó?” he asks as if I did something wrong.

I’m thinking that I’m going to let him have it when he grabs my shoulder and moves his face close to mine.

“Did you not hear me when I told you what to do?” He steps back and shakes his head. “Maybe you were dreaming when I gave you instructions. Come on. Follow me.”

Shit, man. If I would’ve said something stupid, that probably would be the end of me. I just keep messing up over and over again.

“I see that you got some of what I said,” he tells me, as I walk next to him.

I don’t know what he’s talking about, and I guess my face shows it.

“The equipment,” says, “You put it away? You didn’t leave it outside did you?”

“No,” I answer, “I put it in the shed by the tanks.”

“Así es. Good work.”

The moment he tells me this I feel kind of good all of a sudden, and then I start wondering about him and realize I don’t know his name yet. And something else, too, that’s been kind of bugging me. I thought he might be Cajun at first, but Cajuns are French. I don't think the old man is French. He knows his Spanish, though. At first I thought maybe he just knows a few words, you know, shit he picked up from hanging with Pequeño, or maybe with Papi. But I don’t think so anymore. When he speaks in Spanish, it sounds like he knows it real well, like he's been knowing how to speak it his whole life. I wonder where he’s from and start to imagine all kind of stuff about him and Papi. While I’m thinking this we walk into the work shed and to my surprise, ain’t no one in there.

“Where’s everybody at?” I ask the old man.

“Not to worry,” the old man says. “Pequeño is still here. No one left you.”

Man, those were my thoughts exactly. Good thing, too, cause I was about to go nuts if I had no ride home. I doubt the bus gets out here. Place in the middle of nowhere. Ain’t nothing around it but trees and swamps and alligators and shit.

“So where are they?”

“We do this every evening when we have sunlight after work, except on Friday.”

Do what? I wonder. What’s he talking about? The old man doesn’t finish telling me, and instead walks behind a metal storage cabinet and comes out with two fishing poles. He walks up to me, looks at one of the poles like he’s making sure about something, and hands it out to me with a big smile.

“We fish,” he says.

I grab the pole, but really I’m barely paying attention. It don’t make sense to me. Fish? Huh? What? Then I remember the last time I went fishing. It was me, Papi and Nenito. We drove a road like the one coming to this refinery. Shit, maybe even the same road. We didn’t catch a thing that day except some ugly catfish that look like little sharks. I think we threw them back.

I look at the fishing pole in my hand and all of a sudden I remember something about this pole. Wait a minute! My heart starts to beat real hard. Out of nowhere, my palms sweat. It comes back to me. I remember this pole. I turn the handle, looking for the spot Papi had me and Nenito sign for good luck. There it is. My name written in silver. Papi’s fishing pole, the one the Isleño gave him. I look up at him. He still has a big smile on his face.

“You gave Papi this pole. I remember signing it.”

“Yes,” he says. “You were ten years old when you signed it. Tu papá estaba muy orgulloso. I remember he came back with your signatures on it and he showed it to everyone here. He said he would always catch something with that pole from that moment, even if it was only hard head catfish, he would never have an empty line he said, very proudly.”

I have to hide my face from him, man, cause I feel my whole body starting to shake and my eyes watering up. It’s like all of a sudden I got a little piece of Papi back, just for that second, you know. It hurts and it feels good at the same time. The old man puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Vamos,” he says. “I can tell you some stories while we fish. But before we go, I will tell you what I do know about everything. It is not much.” He leans his fishing pole against the wall and brings out a tackle box. As he opens it and rummages through the contents, he starts talking, not directly to me, but more like he's talking to no one in particular, you know.

“Your father was a very good man. He loved his family, and he especially loved his boys. He believed in you, in your ability to figure something out that he felt he couldn't. What that something is, I can't tell you,” he says, as he starts to prepare my fishing rod.

“I can tell you that your father was troubled by many things. He confided in me, in the weeks before he died, that he was struggling with life, with making things work, but more importantly, with finding a way for his family to not have to struggle. He was looking for a way forward when he died. I don't know how far he got, but I do know that the only thing that mattered to him was finding a way to make sure that you and your family would be okay.”

“Since his death I think a lot about what happened to him. Some say it was something to do with a seizure, others say it was something to do with a fight, and others think he just couldn't deal anymore. I don't know what is true. The adults around here have the worst imagination, so they believe the worst. But the truth is that no one knows. What I do know is that no matter what or why, the one thing that your father wanted most was for you to not have to struggle as he did. That is why he came to this country, which I understand very well as an Isleño. There may never be an answer ever, and I don't believe that there is one that will ever satisfy all the questions that you, or your mother, or anyone may have,” he pauses here and looks at me for a second, then turns back to the fishing rod and continues threading something small and metallic onto my rod. “This is a bullet sinker,” he said, somehow recognizing that I had no idea what he was doing. “It helps keep the lure just above the mud, where the fish can see it.”

“So,” he keeps going, “all I have said comes down to this—what I know and believe is that Santana died before he was ready. That is my belief. I have no more information than this, and I only hope that it can bring you some peace as you go forward.”

After this speech the old man becomes awkwardly quiet while he finishes tying what looks to me like a wiggly fish with a hook beneath it. I don't know what to think or what to do, so I just stare at my feet, you know, while I wonder about what I just heard come out this old man's mouth.

Over and over again I can hear me telling myself that the old man is right. I may never get the answers I want. And if I don't, then what? What choice I got? Go crazy wanting to know something that only Papi can answer? Or figure out a way to move forward? I don't know what the right answers are about anything, but I do know that it will be a long time before someone tells me the kind of truth the Isleño just told me. So I make up my mind right there and then to stop complaining about what was and what might not be, you know.

“Let’s go before there is no more sun left,” I say to the old man. “We won't catch any fish standing round in this shed.”

The old man smiles at me and pats me on the back. “Vámonos,” he says.

I grab my fishing rod and walk next to the old man towards the back of the refinery, towards the water. It hits me as I get closer to the other men that Papi wouldn't care what I was doing, so long as I was doing it because it would help me move forward. If I have to quit school to help Mami so we could move forward, then Papi would be fine with that, so long as I do it without bitching, so long as I do it, like he used to say, como un hombre. I guess that's all I got now. So maybe it won't be getting me to no fancy type of finish line, you know, but maybe it's all I need right now. Figure it out, like he would say.