He can’t remember what he’d done with the photo of the three of them in Manila. Can’t piece together the topography of Papa’s visage. Can’t be sure whether it’d been a dream or a ghost that had relayed a question from Mom, a favor, let alone if he has ever fulfilled it. The boy has never asked about Henry’s parents, and why would he? It’s Henry’s responsibility to tell Junior about the boy’s grandma and lolo. It’s up to him to provide more than food and shelter, but also moments worth remembering, memories to preserve, retrace, and one day share.

“Go,” Jorge says.

Henry stirs. Traffic has crept ahead, exposing a band of freeway the length of a basketball court between them and the trailer’s tailgate. Jorge tries humming along to the next song, but Henry doesn’t join him this time. He’s thinking about the iron. He could ditch it in the dump truck.

They park along the curb of a house as huge and pristine as all the others in this development of flawless lawns and wide curving streets, free of pedestrians and other debris. Henry and Jorge go to unload and mount the two steel ramps for the skid loader. The ramp is a five-foot ladder of solid steel. It yanks down his arms and out of his grasp, thundering against the pavement as he hops backward to save his shins. Either it’s heavier than normal, or he’s flimsy with hunger. Either way, he’s embarrassed. Jorge has already locked his ramp’s clasp onto the lip of the trailer and is piling shovels, a pick-axe, and a sledgehammer into a wheelbarrow by the time Henry shakily deadlifts the second ramp off the ground and into place. Only a minute’s labor, but sweat is already pricking at his back.

Up the slope, the garage door opens and ejects a squeaky-clean BMW. It pulls up beside the dump truck, and the homeowner steps out. He’s got hair groomed tidier than his lawn and a young, cleanshaven face that only addresses the fat man. As they chat, the homeowner fists his hips, mirroring the fat man’s posture, speaking in that nervous, almost apologetic way that white guys take when getting chummy with the help. Likely to start dropping ain’t and hocking loogies if he hangs around much longer. Henry rests the handle of a twelve-pound sledgehammer across his shoulders, making like a rolling pin over the tense meat of him. When the homeowner eventually registers him and Jorge, he sees brown and so forgoes English. Instead gives them a two-finger salute like a pilot.