The shuddering impact of the Makita power hammer resonated throughout Juan’s entire body. He pressed his weight into the mini-jackhammer and drove the steel bit down into the rock-hard Arizona soil in his front yard.
He stood and stretched his aching back. It was nearly six pm, but the ferocious heat of the August afternoon sun was scarcely touched by the slow arrival of evening. Juan was covered in sweat, but he was used to this weather. He’d worked beneath the sun his entire life.
“When I was boy, all we had were shovels and picks,” a heavy, gravelly voice called merrily from behind him. “Do you really need that contraption just to plant your chili peppers?”
Juan wheeled around, ready with a good-natured retort, when he recognized the personage of his uncle Pablo. “Uh…” he stuttered, allowing the joke he’d prepared to wither and die before it was uttered. Regaining his composure, he politely said, "Good afternoon, sir."
Juan’s uncle Pablo was an enormous, obese man with thinning hair and a large, bushy mustache beneath a bulbous nose streaked with innumerable tiny veins. He perpetually smoked cigars, and the acrid cloud from the one clamped between his teeth wafted over Juan now. “Good afternoon, nephew. How are you?”
Tio Pablo might have been able to speak English, but he never did. Neither did he allow those he spoke with to address him in anything less than proper Spanish, preferably in the more formal tense, as befitted his status in the community. “I’m doing very well, thank you, uncle.” Juan’s hands were still fixed to the handles of his jackhammer, so he motioned with his chin towards the project he was working on. “I’m just putting up some election signs.”
Pablo looked over the brightly colored red, white, and blue 'Trump 2024' yard signs lying nearby. He gave a mischievous grin that displayed rows of uneven teeth and then took a long drag from his cigar, “Donald Trump, huh?” As he spoke, a cloud of smoke issued forth, hanging suspended in the still, sweltering air between them. Then his gaze returned to the jackhammer Juan held, “Can't you just push those signs into the ground?”
“My yard has a lot of caliche,” Juan explained. Caliche is the dense, calcium-filled soil common throughout the American Southwest that is extremely difficult to dig through. “It kept bending the posts.”
Pablo nodded approvingly at the jackhammer, “I wish they had those when I was a young man. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.” He took another drag from his cigar, “Do you think he’s going to make it?”
The change of subject from jackhammers back to Presidential politics briefly unbalanced Juan. Donald Trump was always controversial, and he wasn’t sure where Pablo stood politically. His uncle was a man he never wanted to offend, so he responded tactfully, “Well, maybe. He hasn’t even won the primary yet. The Republican convention is in a couple of weeks. We’ll see.”
“He’s had a lot of trouble,” Pablo noted. “You think that little sign is going to help him?”
Juan thought about this for a moment. He was an American citizen now, and even if he didn’t get all the subtleties of American-style politics, he recognized his responsibility to participate in the process. “I guess I’m just trying to do my part,” he announced confidently, straightening his posture as he said it.
Removing a handkerchief from his vest pocket to mop his moist brow, Pablo considered Juan, looking carefully at him up and down. “Hmm…”
Juan fidgeted under his uncle’s scrutiny, waiting for his next words.
“You just got your citizenship?” Pablo asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, good,” Pablo nodded, exhaling another long stream of gray haze. “I’ve been watching you, Juan,’ he said. “You’re good with people, but you don’t know yet how things really work in America.”
“I don’t understand.” Juan meant that he didn’t understand what Pablo was talking about, but Pablo seemed to interpret his statement as an admission of his ignorance of politics.
“No, you don’t understand,” Pablo cast a haughty look over the neighborhood. “None of these sheep see what’s going on. But you’re smart, Juan. Not like these others. Do you really want to help Trump? Would you like to know what’s really at stake in this election?”
Juan must listen to his uncle. Which will he choose?
Choose Option 1: Help Donald Trump
Choose Option 2: Learn What’s at Stake