We lived in one of the poorest areas of one of the ugliest cities in the country: the Santa Julia neighborhood in Talcahuano. A port town that no one liked: gloomy skies, factory soot that turned everything gray, and air that famously stank of fish. But it didn’t bother us to live in a place people considered ugly; I, at least, felt strangely proud of it. We all—Pancho, Camilo, and Marquito Carrasco, and I—felt strong and satisfied. We enjoyed those days, sitting on the Carrasco brothers’ front stoop and looking out at the shacks that spilled down the hillside toward the sea, making plans and eating watermelon. That was how we spent the whole summer of 1997. We ate watermelon every day. Pancho and Marquito got a bunch of them from a trucker they’d hitched a ride from in Concepción. The trucker said it had been a long time since he’d laughed so hard, and he let them keep as many watermelons as they wanted. That afternoon, between the four of us, we carried fourteen of them to the Carrascos’ house. And when we finished, we sat at the foot of the steps putting half moons of rind over our faces to flash brazen grins at the ruinous place we called home.

I can see us clearly, our happiness on display in our pulpy watermelon smiles. Laughing in the faces of our neighbors, so tired and distraught. Especially that year, when the fishing industry was in crisis and no one had jobs, and unemployed people would wander the streets with servile and defeated expressions, as if they belonged to a vanquished battalion of soldiers.

But my father was the only real military man among them. After fifteen years at the marina, they’d laid him off. But even though it happened at the worst possible moment, it wasn’t the crisis that kept him from finding another job. In a way, it was his own decision. He didn’t want to start over.