It began, as these things often do, with a name—Steve—which struck me, even then, as appallingly flat. A name like an unbuttered toast, slightly burnt. But my daughter—Cartagena!—so flamboyantly herself, a burnished mosaic of Colombian dusk and Yankee drive, with that formidable Queens cadence in her voice and Caribbean languor in her limbs, adored him. And so, for reasons that even now I find hard to articulate, I accepted him. He was broad-shouldered, physically competent, like he was grown for lifting drywall and breaking backs. But he possessed a solemn kindness that I recognized in myself. In short, he was—at least initially—a safe bet.

His name was Steve Wakalski, and he possessed almost nothing except for fifty acres of stubborn, unkempt Pennsylvania timberland, snagged long ago when the Susquehannock were displaced westward—a detail he recited to me without irony, over a cup of Bustelo on my porch in Scranton. The land itself was neither commercially promising nor ecologically remarkable: woods, streams, deer. The sort of terrain that, absent ambition, reverts to an unproductive silence.

When he mentioned he might sit on the property until a buyer surfaced—perhaps in ten years, perhaps never—I told him it was “absolutely unacceptable.” I used those words not to scold but to provoke: a challenge offered, man to man, intended to activate some dormant gene of enterprise I assumed lived in his American bloodline. That may have been my greatest error.

Sometime later, on one of their casual neighborhood walks, Steve and Cartagena stumbled upon a yard sale. There, for a few dollars, Steve acquired a rusted, antique-looking tool. It turned out to be a tree-stamping implement, the kind once used to mark pressure-treated lumber. The moment I told him this, I saw a flicker pass through his eyes. What followed was a predictable evolution: a man with nothing but trees envisioning profit.

With minimal capital and a library of YouTube tutorials, Steve constructed a crude drying kiln in his backyard. At first, his lumber was amateurish. Then it became acceptable. And then—critically—it was misrepresented. He began passing it off as certified, pressure-treated wood. His startup—WoodWorks Inc.—offered prices below market rates. Business boomed. The operation expanded. And Steve, emboldened, ceased to pay taxes altogether.

This was, of course, a federal offense. But by then he and Cartagena were expecting a child, and I—though fully aware of his legal transgressions—remained silent. Perhaps I wanted to protect the story they were writing. Perhaps I didn’t want to admit my role in scripting its premise.

Eventually, they purchased a modest home. Steve remodeled it with his own hands, transforming it from a dim husk into something charming, even elegant. I remember thinking that, despite its origins in fraud, this too was a form of American success.

And then came the party in the Poconos. Fifteen people fell from a newly built deck. No fatalities, but multiple injuries. The deck’s construction was faulty—its carpenter negligent—but once the insurance adjusters arrived, the inquiry widened. Steve’s lumber, though structurally sound, became the focal point of a legal dragnet. Federal investigators arrived. They documented his operation in exhaustive detail. And though months passed with no further action, the indictment eventually landed.

Steve went to prison. It hurt me to see him go. Cartagena, remarkably pragmatic, left him. “Steve was deadbeat from the beginning,” she said, sipping coffee on the same porch where I’d once encouraged his ambition. “Now he’s just a felon too,” she added. Her voice floated up like steam. She was not cruel, only realist. The American kind. She needed traction, not tragedy.

And just like that, Steve was replaced. As though love—real or imagined—could evaporate as cleanly and unceremoniously as steam from a kettle spout. Enter Johnny: a broad-shouldered, self-admiring white guy with a fondness for gangster rap and motorcycles, both of which he seemed to misunderstand. He was the kind of guy who wore arrogance like aftershave—cheap, loud, and guaranteed to linger long after he left the room. You didn’t so much meet him as get exposed to him. Where Steve had approached our family with an anxious sort of tact, Johnny loitered on the periphery, visibly bored by our rituals, clearly unfamiliar with the notion of discretion.

I disliked him immediately, a feeling that hardened after our one and only proper outing. I took him to a paintball park, thinking we might, in the chaos of a game, stumble into something resembling rapport. But the man was silent—eerily so. He didn’t say a single word the whole damn time—just lurked around like a brooding houseplant with muscles—until I shot him square in the back. Then he came alive, all right. Started cursing like a sailor in a porno. It was the most human thing he did all day.

Later, over beers that tasted like old socks and regret, he got a little wobbly. I asked him what his life philosophy was. You know—what makes a man tick.

“I’m all about the money, the chicks, and lifting heavy stuff,” he said.

That was the moment I knew, conclusively, that I wanted nothing to do with him. But Cartagena—God help her—was smitten.

I fought with her constantly about the motorcycle. I begged her not to ride it. She ignored me. She distanced herself from the family. I blamed him. Then one day, she returned home. Bruised. Her lip torn. Her cheek swollen. She did not cry. She didn’t have to. That was the end of my restraint.

I had my own motorcycle by then. I rode to his neighborhood, intercepted his route, and rigged a simple trap. When he hit it, he flew. On the rocky roadside I descended into a fury I cannot quite account for. I beat his face until it was mush. I left him there—alive, barely.

When I returned home, my hands bloodied, Jacky—my wife—cried out, “Steve!” She meant me. Steve Martinez. Immigrant.  Father. Second Generation. Once-believer in the American myth.

That evening I sat on the porch, sipping café as if it were the last sane indulgence left to me—a small, bitter ceremony performed under the indifference of the stars. Another letter from Steve had arrived. Jacky, knowing the rhythms of our strange correspondence, had placed it neatly on the arm of my favorite chair. Cartagena, for her part, wouldn’t touch them anymore. She said they gave her headaches, or bad dreams. I didn’t press her.

Over time, I’d become Steve’s most faithful correspondent. In that inverted world of his, I suppose I represented a kind of continuity. The tone of his letters had softened. There was philosophy now. And regret. A little comedy, too.

That night, in the fading light, I drafted a line meant to reassure him: I will be seeing you in prison soon. But then I paused, reached for the bottle of wine and white-out, and with careful strokes reordered the sentiment: Soon I will be joining you in prison, my friend. The difference, of course, was crucial.

I knew what awaited me. What I did not anticipate was what followed. The story of the beating was picked up nationally. Trump got wind of it. He wanted me out of the country. I became a symbol. Not a father defending his daughter, but an immigrant monster assaulting a white citizen. My years of legal residence, my spotless record, my small business—none of it mattered. I was, overnight, the villain of a cautionary tale. The system didn’t pause to ask what happened. I was paperworked, fingerprinted, and vanished.

And so, on a sterile Thursday morning, I was deported. No trial, no hearing. A cargo plane. Destination: Cartagena. A man returned to origin. Alone. No family, no possessions. Nothing. Nada.