Henry should not have yelled at him. Can’t remember the last time he had before this morning. Whenever he gets frustrated with the boy, he feels himself wadding up and shrinking down into Papa. He wants none of that old-world, Filipino-father’s-word-is-law horse-shit to come between him and Junior. The boy shouldn’t have to wait until he comes of age, like Henry had, before understanding the scope of his own papa’s terrifying, stupid-making love for his son. He much prefers Mom’s laissez-faire approach, wants to implement it, too, though with perhaps a pinch of regulation if Junior grows up to start making some of the same choices Henry had after Mom’s death. But parental sanctions don’t have to be delivered via yelling fits or head smacks, like Papa had done before the softening. At least Papa had never struck the mother of his son, let alone raised a finger to her. If not a better father, he’d been a better man than Henry. Whenever Papa got frustrated with Mom, he always caught himself, corralling any runaway lashes of anger and rerouting them toward Henry, rebranded as discipline. But discipline is more than bellows and denigration. The boy is too sensitive for what Henry’d endured as a child and unleashed on Junior this morning. The little softie hadn’t inherited a pebble of Henry’s grit nor an ounce of Michelle’s acid, and Henry adores that about his son. He wants to shield the boy’s tenderness, keep him callus-free. At only eight, the boy is already more thoughtful and perceptive than both his parents combined. So attuned to Henry’s expectations that—even racked with fever—Junior obeyed and soldiered into school, because he’d known what today holds for his pa. But does the boy understand what today holds for him, too?

Henry wheezes, heaves, then slams the hammerhead into the earth. Easing himself upright, he resolves to do something special for Junior tonight. And he will apologize. He takes off his T-shirt, mops the sweat from his brow. His chest is full of embers. Other than one trickle streaking from Jorge’s hairline into his empty eye socket, like some physics-defying tear, the man appears dry, unscathed, as he hefts a slab of asphalt the size of a refrigerator door into the skid loader’s bucket.

Now that they’ve cleared the first strip of asphalt abutting the street curb, the machine’s bucket can pry and crush the rest of the driveway, leaving Henry the task of hammering oversized wedges into more manageable chunks, while Jorge works to clear the edges by hand. The work is moving along faster than Henry expected, and the possibility of wrapping up before noon relieves him, at least a little. Hunger still has him lightheaded and dog-tired. Each strike feels like he’s depositing some waning and unrecoverable portion of himself into the crushed rock.