In the brisk desert winter of 2007, two massive, five-hundred-foot-tall pillars of whitewashed brick and soot were felled near the unincorporated mining community of San Manuel by controlled detonation. A hollow dynamite burst opened the horizon to blue skies and mare’s tails. Silhouettes that proudly stood for forty-four years were casually undone, like removing felt from flanogram. The enormous cylinders that echoed prosperity and a strangely anti-environmental stance Magma Copper took teetered briefly, then tumbled into a heap of rubble. The slow-motion sway and subsequent collapse of the long cigarette-shaped icons reflected the times. The mine was a victim of the economy. Copper prices plummeted regardless of the livelihoods they affected. The residents, who knit the pseudo-town together, unceremoniously disbanded. The town lost half its population within years. Lingering empty school buildings, overgrown weeds in crowded easements, and plywood-boarded store windows were remnants of happier times. When the smokestacks vanished, the hope clinging to a safe, stable small town in rural Arizona also disappeared.
I found my teenage self rutted outside my childhood home in San Manuel a handful of times, in the moonlit, deary shadow of those same smokestacks. Long before the stack’s demise jostled for space in the local newspapers, my Dad and I sometimes sat in his 1972 Ford F-150 for hours. There was no swiftness when convincing my father to come inside at three in the morning, after one of his drunken nights. We sat in the dark truck while cool, sleepy morning air crept in through the vents and Mexican music blared ballads from Los Tigres Del Norte or Antonio Aguilar. It was not so long, however, that the parallel between how sparse landscape replaced the most identifiable feature of the town, and how memories of Dad slowly dissipated as time passed, was lost on me. Often, I feel like I’m disappearing too as I lose Dad a little more every day after his death. I’m left with shadowy bultos and ghosts, just like those remaining in San Manuel live among ghosts of past vigor. Those times with Dad seemed so inconsequential, so bothersome. Now, I cling to them desperately, despite their melancholy ephemeral qualities.
“Vamanos, Dad,” I urged plenty of times, careful not to push boundaries and make him angry. “It’s late,” I said. I don’t exactly remember the words. I do, however, recall the sense of exasperation and the distinct embarrassment when I considered the neighbors might wake up with the ruckus. “Don’t you want to get some rest?”
It never worked.
There was a decisive trajectory to our father-and-son talks mornings in the Ford. Alcohol permeated Dad’s pores adding surreal sensory qualities to the sharp, tin-can acoustics of the rustic truck cab. Behind the smell of open Coors cans and Brut cologne and soon subsuming it, was the unmistakable odor of urine. The pungent mix was a reminder life wasn’t painted in the broad strokes of Americana TV programs like The Waltons, The Brady Bunch or Eight Is Enough made things out to be. Those television families were as foreign to me as the bear unicorn thing Captain Kirk fought on Star Trek during syndication. I didn’t go on fishing trips with Dad, or hunting or camping excursions. There were no discussions about birds and the bees or tucking me into bed with wise anecdotes. Life, at least for this Hispanic boy, was a liminal space between identity crafted from environmental scraps I’d find at school with friends and a losing battle to awkward but necessary family interactions.
“Mijo, I love you so much,” Dad said frequently. His Spanish accent was thick with native lands and sparse time in the states.
“No, I love you more.”
He laughed and took the inevitable next swig of beer. “When you grow up and have kids you’ll know. Parents always love kids more than the kid loves his parents.” He was, of course, right. It’s not all he was right about. Nor was it the only thing ever on his mind. I think he felt despite the circumstances, even in his inebriation, there was a chance to talk to his son, alone, without the pretext and responsibility of raising a family. We could be buds in the truck. We were men in the truck.
Once he told me he didn’t want to grow old. “It’s better to die than grow old.”
Then one step further. “Promise me, mijo. You won’t let me live if I start to get so old, not strong anymore. No quiero ser viejito.” He mimicked an elderly man by shaking his hand as he gripped an imaginary cane.
I laughed as I always did when Dad gave me uncomfortable advice. “Women are meant only to please men,” and “Never joke or another man won’t respect you when you are serious,” and “When you fight be ready to kill,” scared me. When I grew older I dismissed the advice as best I could— which was not always successful. I loved Dad in a strange, neglectful way. His peculiarities didn’t matter. It was coded, ingrained—scolded even—into me through family and religion that a man loves regardless of faults that might appear, no matter how distasteful those faults were. It was a ridiculous, crazy love.
During the 1930s, the United States deported over two million Mexican Americans after the Great Depression reduced their laborer value to almost nothing. So, when Dad crossed the river illegally in 1958, he swam in on a tide of uncertainty about whether America held any promise. He was stubborn, though, and had a special appreciation for the “American Dream.” He showed it by cobbling together American and old-world Mexican sensibilities. He embraced the challenge of making life in America as an adolescent and then a man. He even gained citizenship later in life, in 1987. And, while Dad never told me he cherished those specific moments together in the truck, I knew he did. He worked hard to get to them. But, according to my mother, he was at his proudest when I came across him at the mine—where he ended up working for twenty-six years—and showed him affection in front of all the other miners.
When shift horns blew during summers at Magma Copper, hundreds of mud-covered men exited large metal cages that clanged to a stop. The cages poked out slowly from the underground mineshafts in the dry, Arizona heat, like hesitant gophers. Filled with tired, hungry men, the three mine elevators reached the surface at the same time. Helmet lamps turned off, lunch pails in hand, and respirators dangling to the sides of their necks, workers made quick work of the showers adjacent to the locker rooms. They flung on fresh clothes and buckets of Polo cologne, then braved the warm evenings and hit the bars back in Tucson from where some of the more adventurous commuted.
I typically searched for Dad among the throngs at shift changes like these, and Dad waited to be sought. I stayed home during a couple of the university’s summer breaks and worked the mines via their program supporting college education. The real reason behind the program was likely new employee recruitment as opposed to simply being altruistic. The “juice”, as we students used to call it, was plentiful during the summers. Once money was deposited into a young man’s bank accounts it elevated his lifestyle. New trucks, better clothing, and more drinking depleted any summer saving plans. Luxury was at the fingertips of a summer college hire. It was hard to leave behind for many and the company plucked quite a few college kids from school.
Whenever I spotted Dad I walked up to him, among the scores of other men. I’d hug him and kiss him on his musty cheek. His face was scratchy and stubbly like many dad faces are. He beamed.
“Be careful down there. Always wear su respirador.”
“I will, Dad. I will,” I returned, bothered. Mostly it was to assuage his protectiveness.
I rarely kept the sweaty, rubbery respirator on too long in the dark, cramped man lines a mile below ground. The heat was unbearable, stifling, and uncomfortable. Taking off the mouth-hugging respirator meant breathing easier. It also meant silica (fine particles of dirt) could find its way into a worker’s lungs. Operational Mining Safety and Health Administration warned us in pre-employment safety training cartoons and manuals cancer could be a distant byproduct of silica. When I was young, everything in life was distant—time might as well have stopped, for all I cared.
I loved my father, despite all the dark, embarrassing reasons not to. He drank too much. He fought too much. He fucked too much. But Dad was the only picture of what fatherhood could be for me. He was hero and hedonist. He was a leader and amoral. He loved his version of a Catholic God, and did everything in reverence—walked two miles on his knees to a church in Plateros because the Virgin Mary cured my mother of cancer decades prior, visited Fresnillo every year when we traveled regularly to Mexico, and donated large sums of money. He even gave up drinking, or meat during Cuaresma during the season of Catholic “bright sadness.” Dad also cheated on Mom any chance he could.
He was attractive, charming, bold, and as relentless in his pursuit of sin as he was repulsed by it in others. Hey, lady at the bar, with your short shorts, low-cut top, and thick thighs. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little touching, a little fooling, a little roaming. It must have been a colossal struggle the day Dad felt stern rules of religion collide with fleshy women in a marvelous, resounding, clap. “I stay away from church now, mijo,” Dad said to me once in his older years. “Women only go to church to tempt me.”
We were a family of four but Dad and I orbited each other like a dual star, emotionally closer than I was with Mom and my sister. When my sister was old enough she wanted to move in with her boyfriend and was ostracized. Dad didn’t speak with her for years. When I moved in with my girlfriend at twenty the worst reprimand came as a joke. She smoked cigarettes and Dad asked, “Does she taste like an ashtray when you kiss her?”
For decades it seemed Dad was frozen in time at age forty-two. He looked the same to me when I was a child and young adult as when I first married my now ex-wife. Cowboy hat, vest, shiny, polished tips on his expensive boots. His pants were always pressed as was his collared shirt. “Mijo, ¿Por qué no te vistes bien como yo?” Dad was the opposite of me in how he dressed, his extreme levels of confidence, and in precise detail, how he considered himself a man through his firm, stoic, non-joking means. I was his only son, his pride and joy. In many ways, it felt like the differences between us were a signal of encouragement for me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew the less I was like dad the more I could be myself.
I’m glad Dad had his moments of pride when it came to his only son. Every father—every man—deserves those snapshots. Whether it was at the mine where he could later flaunt how much his son respected him or at dawn, where he was at his most vulnerable, our relationship wasn’t perfect, nor did it need to be. But our relationship probably needed moments of affirmation and affection to survive. Even with a bullheaded, macho man like my father, who on more than one occasion told me he didn’t need anyone else to be happy, I felt he needed me, my sister, and my mother to feel happy.
In the end, never were Dad’s vises so evident as when we spoke those nights outside our house, my mother inside doing who knows what until Dad was safely inside again. I quickly went to sleep after as school was a few hours later those mornings. His drinking was to get drunk, not to be socially accepted. His fighting default wasn’t a façade but a way for him to further reveal his masculinity. Even cheating turned out to be a significant part of who Dad was.
When I was a boy, Mom packed our bags in a rush many times before Dad’s midnight shift ended. “Where are we going, mom?” I asked. My little sister was in tow, my mother holding her tightly as she maneuvered to our blue Mustang.
“To your tia’s house. Just for a while.”
Mom hovered in panic, worry, complacency, and resignation. Suitcases, blankets for the road, snacks in Ziplock bags. Never tears. Mom and Dad would make up after a few weeks, maybe a few days. And we returned home as if nothing had happened. Dad’s other vices impacted Mom less but affected me more as I grew up. Dad’s behavior with drinking, women, aloofness, and fear of intimacy were frequent visitors in my own life as I grew up; like friends who knew me best.
The thing about the smokestacks was they were in serious jeopardy of toppling once prior, twelve years before they ultimately crumbled. In 1995 a company from Australia purchased rights to the ore deposits and all it entailed for 3.2 billion dollars from Magma, reinvigorating the dreams of magnificent growth. Folks had a collective sigh when the prospect of San Manuel’s twin towers survival came to light. There was a savior of the town’s well-being. BPH mining was going to turn San Manuel into a miniature booming community. This was on the heels of Magma first investing 149 million dollars into a new state-of-the-art flash furnace as part of the enticement. First of its kind. It was the lynchpin for a new JUCO agreement between the mine and labor unions.
All the wonderful things about the destined-to-be-incorporated mining bed were to remain intact with the new agreement—if it materialized as it should have. Homecoming with its parades through the lower and upper arcades and soap decoration contest on storefront windows, annual Santa Claus visits at the Elks Lodge where I got my first red nylon stocking filled with hard strawberry candies and plastic toys, the neighborly “how ya?” residents gave when I’d cut across the unfenced lawns would all stay the same with the new financial deal between labor unions and the new proprietor. Needless to say, it was all a lie.
When the town of San Manuel was created in 1954, just over five decades before the smokestacks were destroyed, the plan was to build a master community to thrive for eons. Company trucks and employees babied the unincorporated community. The stacks would pipe out smoke most days with vim. Twice a day the smoke would lower onto the town, like a puffy blanket made of sulfur and other meandering chemicals. All safe, the company literature said. Residents believed the company. Or at least, wanted to. The egg taste felt like the worst of it.
As safe as things were, the company still sent out regular notices. Make sure to close your windows and doors, avoid walking around, or making unnecessary visits to the store. Don’t visit friends’ homes while the smoke lowers. It only lasted about twenty minutes each time.
I asked my Dad once during a late-night talk in his truck, “Will we always have those smokestacks?”
“Absolutely, mijo. If we don’t have them, the town dies.” He spoke his words confidently as ever. I was comforted.
“Dad,” I asked. “Can we go in, please?”
“Si mijo,” Dad said. And we did, only a short hour later. While Dad’s desire for humor was truncated by his passion for respect, his capacity for irony was still significant.
One day, Dad and I sat obediently in a sparsely populated Catholic memorial service for a family member who passed away. The priest delivered a message punctuated with an anecdote about how the deceased donated his organ to another family member. It was a pristine example of their character. As we sat there, Dad leaned over, and quietly whispered: “I would never do that for you.”
“Me either,” I whispered back.
He snickered under his breath. It was one of a handful of times he told me a joke.
There is a myth that nails and hair continue to grow after someone dies. In reality, the skin withers and pulls back, so it only appears like nails and hair are growing when it’s simply due to the shrinkage of the skin. I wonder if I am growing after Dad’s death, or if the retreat of my memories only makes it seem like I am.
On certain days, now that Dad is gone, I get nostalgic about the conversations we had among the music, beer, and cold in his old pickup truck. We probably both thought those days would be around forever. Dad thought the mines and those glorious, tall odes to the smelter would last as well. Today, they are far-off, murky renderings. Other times I question why I’m not fatigued by his aura of neglect. Should I blame him? Am I a good enough father myself? Am I just a culmination of my Dad’s wrongdoing? What kind of man am I if not a reflection of my father? I know our times together can be seen as abusive, or through a particular lens, a matter of indecency. Those times can also be seen as a man’s fractured inability to be vulnerable, to allow himself to be afraid, to be less than heroic. Dad may have just built his world and brought the rest of our family along only when it suited him. I don’t know which I think is true. Perhaps, both. Perhaps, neither.
Martin Perez is a Mexican-American MFA student at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was a previous writing fellow at St. Mary’s College of California, focused on creative nonfiction. He has a BA in creative writing and English composition from the University of Arizona, and graduated summa cum laude. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he also teaches English and creative writing at a private high school.
