Estevan

We sit on rubble with our masks pulled up, drinking Dr. Peppers and enjoying our 15-minute break. We are renovating the Old Soldiers and Sailors Pool Hall on 6th St in Austin into a club, smashing the plaster from the rock walls with ten-pound sledgehammers. Estevan shovels up the plaster and puts it into a dumpster, he is an illegal alien and our friend for two weeks until the off-site boss calls la migra to pick him up. That way Estevan never gets the half of his pay withheld until he works past two weeks. It is a pattern and we tell him.
Estevan looks at us, smiles and relates that when he was a boy in Monterrey, Mexico there was a retarded boy on the playground who was teased by the bullies who held up an American nickel and dime and asked him which do you want? Then laugh when he took the larger nickel. Estevan told the boy two nickels equal one dime and the retarded boy replied, “If I ever took the dime would they ever offer me another nickel?”
Estevan looks at my friend and me, we laugh and have a vast new respect for Estevan who disappears a few minutes before la migra shows up.