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They said that Jose was born with a ring of dirt around his neck, with grime under his fingernails, and skin calloused from the grainy twist of a shovel. They said his palms were already rough by the time he was three, and soon after he learned his primary colors, his squint was the squint of an aged laborer. They said he was a born worker. By seven he was drinking coffee slowly, his mouth pursed the way his mother sipped. He wore jeans, a shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows. His eye could measure a length of board, and his knees genuflected over flower beds and leafy gutters.

They said lots of things about Jose, but almost nothing of his parents. His mother stitched at a machine all day, and his father, with a steady job at the telephone company, climbed splintered, sun-sucked poles, fixed wires and looked around the city at tree level.

“What do you see up there?” Jose once asked his father.

“Work,” he answered. “I see years of work, mi’jo.”

Jose took this as a truth, and though he did well in school, he felt destined to labor. His arms would pump, his legs would bend, his arms would carry a world of earth. He believed in hard work, believed that his strength was as ancient as a rock’s.

“Life is hard,” his father repeated from the time Jose could first make out the meaning of words until he was stroking his fingers against the grain of his sandpaper beard.

His mother was an example to Jose. She would raise her hands, showing her fingers pierced from the sewing machines. She bled on her machine, bled because there was money to make, a child to raise, and a roof to stay under.

One day when Jose returned home from junior high, his cousin Arnie was sitting on the lawn sucking on a stalk of grass. Jose knew that grass didn’t come from his lawn. His was cut and pampered, clean.

“Jose!” Arnie shouted as he took off the earphones of his CD Walkman.

“Hi, Arnie,” Jose said without much enthusiasm. He didn’t like his cousin. He thought he was lazy and, worse, spoiled by the trappings of being middle class. His parents had good jobs in offices and showered him with clothes, shoes, CDs, vacations, almost anything he wanted. Arnie’s family had never climbed a telephone pole to size up the future.

Arnie rose to his feet, and Jose saw that his cousin was wearing a new pair of high-tops. He didn’t say anything. “Got an idea,” Arnie said cheerfully. “Something that’ll make us money.”

Jose looked at his cousin, not a muscle of curiosity twitching in his face.

Still, Arnie explained that since he himself was so clever with words, and his best cousin in the whole world was good at working with his hands, that maybe they might start a company.

“What would you do?” Jose asked.

“Me?” he said brightly. “Shoot, I’ll round up all kinds of jobs for you. You won’t have to do anything.” He stopped, then started again. “Except—you know—do the work.”

“Get out of here,” Jose said.

“Don’t be that way,” Arnie begged. “Let me tell you how it works.”

The boys went inside the house, and while Jose stripped off his school clothes and put on his jeans and a T-shirt, Arnie told him that they could be rich.

“You ever hear of this guy named Bechtel?” Arnie asked.

Jose shook his head.

“Man, he started just like us,” Arnie said. “He started digging ditches and stuff, and the next thing you knew, he was sitting by his own swimming pool. You want to sit by your own pool, don’t you?” Arnie smiled, waiting for Jose to speak up.

“Never heard of this guy Bechtel,” Jose said after he rolled on two huge socks, worn at the heels. He opened up his chest of drawers and brought out a packet of Kleenex.

Arnie looked at the Kleenex.

“How come you don’t use your sleeve?” Arnie joked.

Jose thought for a moment and said, “I’m not like you.” He smiled at his retort.

“Listen, I’ll find the work, and then we can split it fifty-fifty.”

Jose knew fifty-fifty was a bad deal.

“How about sixty-forty?” Arnie suggested when he could see that Jose wasn’t going for it. “I know a lot of people from my dad’s job. They’re waiting for us.”

Jose sat on the edge of his bed and started to lace up his boots. He knew that there were agencies that would find you work, agencies that took a portion of your pay. They’re cheats, he thought, people who sit in air-conditioned offices while others work.

“You really know a lot of people?” Jose asked.

“Boatloads,” Arnie said. “My dad works with this millionaire—honest—who cooks a steak for his dog every day.

He’s a liar, Jose thought. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t picture a dog grubbing on steak. The world was too poor for that kind of silliness.

“Listen, I’ll go eighty-twenty,” Jose said.

“Aw, man,” Arnie whined. “That ain’t fair.”

Jose laughed.

“I mean, half the work is finding the jobs,” Arnie explained, his palms up as he begged Jose to be reasonable.

Jose knew this was true. He had had to go door-to-door, and he disliked asking for work. He assumed that it should automatically be his since he was a good worker, honest, and always on time.

“Where did you get this idea, anyhow?” Jose asked.

“I got a business mind,” Arnie said proudly.

“Just like that Bechtel guy,” Jose retorted.

“That’s right.”

Jose agreed to a seventy-thirty split, with the condition that Arnie had to help out. Arnie hollered, arguing that some people were meant to work and others to come up with brilliant ideas. He was one of the latter. Still, he agreed after Jose said it was that or nothing.

In the next two weeks, Arnie found an array of jobs. Jose peeled off shingles from a rickety garage roof, carried rocks down a path to where a pond would go, and spray-painted lawn furniture. And while Arnie accompanied him, most of the time he did nothing. He did help occasionally. He did shake the cans of spray paint and kick aside debris so that Jose didn’t trip while going down the path carrying the rocks. He did stack the piles of shingles, but almost cried when a nail bit his thumb. But mostly he told Jose what he had missed or where the work could be improved. Jose was bothered because he and his work had never been criticized before.

But soon Jose learned to ignore his cousin, ignore his comments about his spray painting, or about the way he lugged rocks, two in each arm. He didn’t say anything, either, when they got paid and Arnie rubbed his hands like a fly, muttering, “It’s payday.”

Then Arnie found a job scrubbing a drained swimming pool. The two boys met early at Jose’s house. Arnie brought his bike. Jose’s own bike had a flat that grinned like a clown’s face.

“I’ll pedal,” Jose suggested when Arnie said that he didn’t have much leg strength.

With Arnie on the handlebars, Jose tore off, his pedaling so strong that tears of fear formed in Arnie’s eyes.

“Slow down!” Arnie cried.

Jose ignored him and within minutes they were riding the bike up a gravel driveway. Arnie hopped off at first chance.

“You’re scary,” Arnie said, picking a gnat from his eye. Jose chuckled.

When Arnie knocked on the door, an old man still in pajamas appeared in the window. He motioned for the boys to come around to the back.

“Let me do the talking,” Arnie suggested to his cousin. “He knows my dad real good. They’re like this.” He pressed two fingers together.

Jose didn’t bother to say OK. He walked the bike into the backyard, which was lush with plants—roses in their last bloom, geraniums, hydrangeas, pansies with their skirts of bright colors. Jose could make out the splash of a fountain. Then he heard the hysterical yapping of a poodle. From all his noise, a person might have thought the dog was on fire.

“Hi, Mr. Clemens,” Arnie said, extending his hand. “I’m Arnie Sanchez. It’s nice to see you again.”

Jose had never seen a kid actually greet someone like this. Mr. Clemens said, hiking up his pajama bottoms, “I only wanted one kid to work.”

“Oh,” Arnie stuttered. “Actually, my cousin Jose really does the work and I kind of, you know, supervise.”

Mr. Clemens pinched up his wrinkled face. He seemed not to understand. He took out a pea-sized hearing aid, fiddled with its tiny dial, and fit it into his ear, which was surrounded with wiry gray hair.

“I’m only paying for one boy,” Mr. Clemens shouted. His poodle click-clicked and stood behind his legs. The dog bared its small crooked teeth.

“That’s right,” Arnie said, smiling a strained smile. “We know that you’re going to compensate only one of us.”

Mr. Clemens muttered under his breath. He combed his hair with his fingers. He showed Jose the pool, which was shaped as round as an elephant. It was filthy with grime. Near the bottom some grayish water shimmered and leaves floated as limp as cornflakes.

“It’s got to be real clean,” Mr. Clemens said, “or it’s not worth it.”

“Oh, Jose’s a great worker,” Arnie said. He patted his cousin’s shoulders and said that he could lift a mule.

Mr. Clemens sized up Jose and squeezed his shoulders, too.

“How do I know you, anyhow?” Mr. Clemens asked Arnie, who was aiming a smile at the poodle.

“You know my dad,” Arnie answered, raising his smile to the old man. “He works at Interstate Insurance. You and he had some business deals.”

Mr. Clemens thought for a moment, a hand on his mouth, head shaking. He could have been thinking about the meaning of life, his face was so dark.

“Mexican fella?” he inquired.

“That’s him,” Arnie said happily.

Jose felt like hitting his cousin for his cheerful attitude. Instead, he walked over and picked up the white plastic bottle of bleach. Next to it were a wire brush, a pumice stone, and some rags. He set down the bottle and, like a surgeon, put on a pair of rubber gloves.

“You know what you’re doing, boy?” Mr. Clemens asked.

Jose nodded as he walked into the pool. If it had been filled with water, his chest would have been wet. The new hair on his chest would have been floating like the legs of a jellyfish.

“Oh, yeah,” Arnie chimed, speaking for his cousin. “Jose was born to work.”

Jose would have drowned his cousin if there had been more water. Instead, he poured a bleach solution into a rag and swirled it over an area. He took the wire brush and scrubbed. The black algae came up like a foamy monster.

“We’re a team,” Arnie said to Mr. Clemens.

Arnie descended into the pool and took the bleach bottle from Jose. He held it for Jose and smiled up at Mr. Clemens, who, hands on hips, watched for a while, the poodle at his side. He cupped his ear, as if to pick up the sounds of Jose’s scrubbing.

“Nice day, huh?” Arnie sang.

“What?” Mr. Clemens said.

“Nice day,” Arnie repeated, this time louder. “So which ear can’t you hear in?” Grinning, Arnie wiggled his ear to make sure that Mr. Clemens knew what he was asking.

Mr. Clemens ignored Arnie. He watched Jose, whose arms worked back and forth like he was sawing logs.

“We’re not only a team,” Arnie shouted, “but we’re also cousins.”

Mr. Clemens shook his head at Arnie. When he left, the poodle leading the way, Arnie immediately climbed out of the pool and sat on the edge, legs dangling.

“It’s going to be blazing,” Arnie complained. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked east, where the sun was rising over a sycamore, its leaves hanging like bats.

Jose scrubbed. He worked the wire brush over the black and green stains, the grime dripping like tears. He finished a large area. He hopped out of the pool and returned hauling a garden hose with an attached nozzle. He gave the cleaned area a blast. When the spray got too close, his cousin screamed, got up, and, searching for something to do, picked a loquat from a tree.

“What’s your favorite fruit?” Arnie asked.

Jose ignored him.

Arnie stuffed a bunch of loquats into his mouth, then cursed himself for splattering juice on his new high-tops. He returned to the pool, his cheeks fat with the seeds, and once again sat at the edge. He started to tell Jose how he had first learned to swim. “We were on vacation in Mazatlan. You been there, ain’t you?”

Jose shook his head. He dabbed the bleach solution onto the sides of the pool with a rag and scrubbed a new area.

“Anyhow, my dad was on the beach and saw this drowned dead guy,” Arnie continued. “And right there, my dad got scared and realized I couldn’t swim.”

Arnie rattled on about how his father had taught him in the hotel pool and later showed him where the drowned man’s body had been.

“Be quiet,” Jose said.

“What?”

“I can’t concentrate,” Jose said, stepping back to look at the cleaned area.

Arnie shut his mouth but opened it to lick loquat juice from his fingers. He kicked his legs against the swimming pool, bored. He looked around the backyard and spotted a lounge chair. He got up, dusting off the back of his pants, and threw himself into the cushions. He raised and lowered the back of the lounge. Sighing, he snuggled in. He stayed quiet for three minutes, during which time Jose scrubbed. His arms hurt but he kept working with long strokes. Jose knew that in an hour the sun would drench the pool with light. He hurried to get the job done.

Arnie then asked, “You ever peel before?”

Jose looked at his cousin. His nose burned from the bleach. He scrunched up his face.

“You know, like when you get sunburned.”

“I’m too dark to peel,” Jose said, his words echoing because he had advanced to the deep end. “Why don’t you be quiet and let me work?”

Arnie babbled on that he had peeled when on vacation in Hawaii. He explained that he was really more French than Mexican, and that’s why his skin was sensitive. He said that when he lived in France, people thought that he could be Portuguese or maybe Armenian, never Mexican.

Jose felt like soaking his rag with bleach and pressing it over Arnie’s mouth to make him be quiet.

Then Mr. Clemens appeared. He was dressed in white pants and a flowery shirt. His thin hair was combed so that his scalp, as pink as a crab, showed.

“I’m just taking a little rest,” Arnie said.

Arnie leaped back into the pool. He took the bleach bottle and held it. He smiled at Mr. Clemens, who came to inspect their progress.

“Jose’s doing a good job,” Arnie said, then whistled a song.

Mr. Clemens peered into the pool, hands on knees, admiring the progress.

“Pretty good, huh?” Arnie asked.

Mr. Clemens nodded. Then his hearing aid fell out, and Jose turned in time to see it roll like a bottle cap toward the bottom of the pool. It leaped into the stagnant water with a plop. A single bubble went up, and it was gone.

“Dang,” Mr. Clemens swore. He took shuffling steps toward the deep end. He steadied his gaze on where the hearing aid had sunk. He leaned over and suddenly, arms waving, one leg kicking out, he tumbled into the pool. He landed standing up, then his legs buckled, and he crumbled, his head striking against the bottom. He rolled once, and half of his body settled in the water.

“Did you see that!” Arnie shouted, big-eyed.

Jose had already dropped his brushes on the side of the pool and hurried to the old man, who moaned, eyes closed, his false teeth jutting from his mouth. A ribbon of blood immediately began to flow from his scalp.

“We better get out of here!” Arnie suggested. “They’re going to blame us!”

Jose knelt on both knees at the old man’s side. He took the man’s teeth from his mouth and placed them in his shirt pocket. The old man groaned and opened his eyes, which were shiny wet. He appeared startled, like a newborn.

“Sir, you’ll be all right,” Jose cooed, then snapped at his cousin. “Arnie, get over here and help me!”

“I’m going home,” Arnie whined.

“You punk!” Jose yelled. “Go inside and call 911.”

Arnie said that they should leave him there.

“Why should we get involved?” he cried as he started for his bike. “It’s his own fault.”

Jose laid the man’s head down and with giant steps leaped out of the pool, shoving his cousin as he passed. He went into the kitchen and punched in 911 on a telephone. He explained to the operator what had happened. When asked the address, Jose dropped the phone and went onto the front porch to look for it.

“It’s 940 East Brown,” Jose breathed. He hung up and looked wildly about the kitchen. He opened up the refrigerator and brought out a plastic tray of ice, which he twisted so that a few of the cubes popped out and slid across the floor. He wrapped some cubes in a dish towel. When he raced outside, Arnie was gone, the yapping poodle was doing laps around the edge of the pool, and Mr. Clemens was trying to stand up.

“No, sir,” Jose said as he jumped into the pool, his own knees almost buckling. “Please, sit down.”

Mr. Clemens staggered and collapsed. Jose caught him before he hit his head again. The towel of ice cubes dropped from his hands. With his legs spread to absorb the weight, Jose raised the man up in his arms, this fragile man. He picked him up and carefully stepped toward the shallow end, one slow elephant step at a time.

“You’ll be all right,” Jose said, more to himself than to Mr. Clemens, who moaned and struggled to be let free.

The sirens wailed in the distance. The poodle yapped, which started a dog barking in the neighbor’s yard.

“You’ll be OK,” Jose repeated, and in the shallow end of the pool, he edged up the steps. He lay the old man in the lounge chair and raced back inside for more ice and another towel. He returned outside and placed the bundle of cubes on the man’s head, where the blood flowed. Mr. Clemens was awake, looking about. When the old man felt his mouth, Jose reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his false teeth. He fit the teeth into Mr. Clemens’s mouth and a smile appeared, something bright at a difficult time.

“I hit my head,” Mr. Clemens said after smacking his teeth so that the fit was right.

Jose looked up and his gaze floated to a telephone pole, one his father might have climbed. If he had been there, his father would have seen that Jose was more than just a good worker. He would have seen a good man. He held the towel to the old man’s head. The poodle, now quiet, joined them on the lounge chair.

A fire truck pulled into the driveway and soon they were surrounded by firemen, one of whom brought out a first-aid kit. A fireman led Jose away and asked what had happened. He was starting to explain when his cousin reappeared, yapping like a poodle.

“I was scrubbing the pool,” Arnie shouted, “and I said, ‘Mr. Clemens, you shouldn’t stand so close to the edge.’ But did he listen? No, he leaned over and . . . Well, you can just imagine my horror.”

Jose walked away from Arnie’s jabbering. He walked away, and realized that there were people like his cousin, the liar, and people like himself, someone he was getting to know. He walked away and in the midmorning heat boosted himself up a telephone pole. He climbed up and saw for himself what his father saw—miles and miles of trees and houses, and a future lost in the layers of yellowish haze.