Read the passage

“stuff that works”

one of the windows on the old pickup canted off its track if you tried rolling it down without guiding it at the corner. the inside panel of the passenger door was so sun-beaten and dry-rotted that scratching it with your nails was like doodling in coarse, parched sand. twisting the dial on the radio was useless. the radio was permanently tuned to some tinny am talk radio station. the pickup had somewhere over 400,000 miles on it. it was hard to tell exactly how many miles it had been driven because the odometer had long since rolled over. its several replaced mechanical parts—including a new motor and transmission—made daniel wonder whether the pickup was even the same truck it had been when his dad originally bought it.

daniel was driving with his father, juan, in his hometown of daytona beach, florida. six months before daniel had come home for a visit, his father had lost his job as an oil platform engineer in the gulf of mexico because he’d refused to keep quiet about some safety violations. directly after that, juan learned that the cancer he thought was in remission had returned; this time the surgeons wouldn’t be able to remove it.

the lone laurel oak cast a shadow over their shoulders as daniel pulled onto the property that juan had owned since before daniel was born. on it stood three buildings. the first was an old tv repair shop called b’s tvs—a shack, mostly, where the tenant sat inside smoking cigars, waiting for customers to trigger the front door’s buzzing optical alarm like flies in a bug zapper. the second building was a squat, mustard-colored bungalow occupied by a small marble-countertop company, whose workers cut and water blasted marble out back to the beat of reggaeton. third was a nondescript, old, redbrick, two-floor house. it was here that juan wanted to show daniel the restoration work he had been doing on days when he felt up to it.

the previous tenant, miguel, had run into trouble with the police twice for making lechón barbecue over cinder blocks in the yard. so juan asked miguel to move out. then he tore down a wall, took up some shabby old carpet, refinished the original wood flooring, replaced a window, installed some worn (but functional) appliances, and repainted the whole place. he also chopped down two overgrown sabal palms, both of which had crashed into the balcony of the house in a recent spate of hurricanes. daniel and his father had come out to the property to grub up the roots of the palms.

“if i could just get a few more years, i might tear everything down. i’d just clear it right off.” he whopped his thick, brown hands together with a meaty thud, and then his top hand scraped the bottom one to show how he would brush away all three buildings with one motion. “i know you’re just getting started in your job, hijito, but this could be a side project for you and diego if you boys ever wanted to move back here one day. there’s nothing wrong with having something that makes a little money on the side. i’d put up one large building with two garages for two businesses at the bottom: one for restoring old cars, the other one for detailing new cars. then on top i’d make really nice apartments and rent them out. they’d be brand new, with pretty landscaping. people would snatch them right up.”

juan loved this part of daytona. every franchiser and member of the city council had long forsaken it. they all wanted to move farther inland and build strip malls. here the homes were tangled in cypress, low-hanging moss, tires, blocked-up cars, and rusty swing sets: the debris of people’s lives. the faces of these people were a jumble of endurance, disappointment, and worry. but juan could still see some secluded beauty here. and on this particular day, daniel could see it, too.

“you know, i couldn’t have married a better woman than your mother. she’s the best mother any kid could have. we’ve built a good life together, and she takes better care of me now than i deserve. but some people can live with big risks, and some can’t. i think i would have taken a few more risks, but mamá wouldn’t let me. she’s allergic to debt.”

“mamá has worked hard her whole life,” daniel replied, happy to have a slight change of topic. “she just wanted to keep us safe. you still have a chance to start a business, papá. you can do it now.”

“i've just got to get over this thing.”

“you'll do it.”

juan wrapped his massive hand around daniel’s head and, bringing their cool, sweaty temples together, ground them into each other. then they got out their shovels and set about digging up the palm roots. they were huge, unwieldy, and decked with pulpy soil. the chainsaw they used to chop up the roots shot the sand and palmetto bug eggs into their faces. the mucus they spat out when they finished was lined with dirt-like veins of coal. their forearms and elbows were covered in blisters and cuts. they refused to give up, and that was their form of grace.