Daniel sat down at the table with a cup of coffee and glimpsed his father’s glass ashtray sitting on the counter. Earlier, while he was rummaging through the pantry, he was surprised to find it tucked behind jars of dried mango and shaved coconut flakes. His mother had always put the ashtray on the kitchen table when his father came home from a construction job, the thin gray film of ash on the bottom washed clean. It had disappeared for the first time not long after his father had left for O‵ahu, never to return. Daniel reached for it now, fingering its chipped edge as he set it on the table again. His memories of his father were scant. He was six when he left, too young to realize that those early years were all he’d ever have of the father who bought him gumballs and licorice, and took him to Wailuku River to swim every time he came home from a job.

What did Daniel remember about his father? He seemed well liked by everyone in Hilo town. When they walked down the street, they were always stopped by someone who knew him. He was Frank, Frankie, Franklin, all three rolled into one. He was always generous, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He left all the worrying to his mother. When his father first arrived home after finishing a job on another island, he was always happy, buying his mother flowers and taking them out to eat at the Lahaina Diner, only to become anxious and antsy after a few weeks. Even as a small boy, Daniel could feel the air thick with tension, his father roaming around the house like a trapped animal, drinking cups of coffee as he filled the ashtray with his cigarette butts.

There was the one rare afternoon his father stayed home to watch him while his mother went shopping; it was the first time Daniel had been alone with him. His father had hurt his back in a fall on a job and it was the longest period of time he’d ever stayed home with them. “Daddy can’t carry you,” his mother told him, “so you hold his hand if you go out, yeah.” Daniel was no older than three or four and had wanted to run after her as he watched her leave.

They’d sat on the couch, and his father read him a book about a rabbit and a snake who become friends when they have to escape a forest fire together. Afterward his father stood and stretched his back, grimacing with pain, and then said, “Let’s play a game.”