The First

 
The Brothers are old, and there are four of them now instead of five. This makes it easier to deal a round of pusoy dos, which is one way they find comfort in their loss. When they sit down at their table and start to shuffle the cards, one will light a Marlboro Gold in their Kuya Ben’s honor, and leave it burning in a black ashtray they filched in 1978 from the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas.
 
Those were the days.
 
They do not need to move from their seats because others bring them plates piled high with their favorite foods, others crack open their beers, others note what is missing—a napkin, ice water, a dish of toothpicks—and set it down. After their plates have been cleared, a platter of sliced mangoes will appear. The Brothers will say thank you. They remember the names of even the youngest kids and the newest in-laws. They alone recall the nuances of the family genealogies, the construction of the web that holds them all together.
 
There are, of course, other sets—many sets—of brothers in this sizable clan. But they are not the same as The Brothers, who were the first to arrive.
 

*

 
The five of them boarded a passenger ship in Manila with their parents sixty years ago and sailed through Hong Kong, Yokohama, and Honolulu to arrive some twenty-two days later in San Francisco, where they settled in a small, fog-shrouded house not far from the city. This was good. The boys were city kids after all, and they already knew some things: the strength of family, the importance of education, the power of the dollar.
 
And they knew James Dean. When the young actor died on a California highway in a grotesque confluence of steel and fire, they mourned together and grew uneasy about the future. The death lent an urgency to their immigration, particularly for eighteen-year-old Ben, who believed wholeheartedly in the wonder of Hollywood’s golden age. He worried that Dean had taken all of America’s magic with him; he worried there would be none to bless their family as they disembarked from the SS President Cleveland to begin their new lives.
 

*

 
It was Ben who first greased his hair à la James. His brothers followed suit. They popped the collars on their red Harrington jackets, they cuffed their jeans. They smoked, of course, and delicately picked tobacco off their tongues with their pinky and thumbnails as they squinted into the California sky. The two youngest wanted to wear cowboy boots like the ones Dean wore in The Giant, but Ben nixed this idea and outfitted them all in the shiny black penny loafers more appropriate for their classrooms at Cathedral High and City College.
 

*

 
It was Ben who woke one morning to find that he could, at will, erase all traces of his Filipino accent. This did little, though, to prevent the beatings randomly delivered by American boys. Ben had stepped to the front and absorbed the worst of the blows for his grateful brothers. These incidents left them bewildered. The American soldiers they remembered from wartime had been the friendly sort, quick to offer sticks of gum to the kids who clamored around them. “I guess it’s because we’re the new ones here,” Ben reasoned. “Kuha mo?” he said. “You know, like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was the best he could do. He chucked each of his brothers under the chin. “Walang big deal,” he added, more to himself than to them. They nodded and echoed his pronouncement: “It’s no big deal.”
 

*

 
It was Ben who refused to let the shadow of Japanese atrocities follow them from Manila to this new country. To prove it, he ignored his parents’ misgivings and took work offered to him by a Japanese American man who was quietly fighting his own war demons. Mr. Yamada needed help to keep his corner store tidy, and this kid, with his pristine white shirts and gracious manners, seemed like a good fit. A year later, Ben would move on to a mailroom job downtown in the Bank of America building, and so Yamada-san hired the next brother, and the next, on and on until eventually he had employed them all.
 
Ben handed his wages directly to their mother, who combined them with her earnings as a seamstress. She, in turn, put them in an envelope for her husband, who worked as a white-gloved doorman at The Fairmont. Together, the three of them kept the kitchen and closets full and the younger boys comfortable at their Catholic school.
 

*

 
News-filled letters sent between their mother and her many siblings crisscrossed the Pacific in alarming volume. It was Ben whose name appeared most frequently, but soon enough, all of The Brothers became mention-worthy. Their mother reported on graduations, the financing of cars, and the pretty American-born Filipinas her sons were dating. “Make your plans,” their mother wrote. “When you get here,” she said, “the boys will help you.”
 
The Brothers would work their way into office jobs—airlines and Big Eight accounting firms, advertising, city planning—ones where they wore ties and cordovan leather oxfords, but where their presence was met with blank stares. For a long while, their pleasant morning greetings were not returned, and they were not invited to join their co-workers for lunch. While they waited for this to pass, they repeated to themselves what Ben had said years before: walang big deal.
 
The Brothers kept the promises made by their mother in her letters. As wave after wave of their extended family landed on this side of the ocean, The Brothers put into action all they had learned. Their homes became the place to live until the daze wore off and their cousins and aunts and uncles were ready to face the future. They co-signed loans, doled out pocket money, roleplayed job interviews. You need a refrigerator? A navy blue suit? An ear, a shoulder? Here, here, and here. When you are like The Brothers, when you are first to arrive, these are the things you do.
 

*

 
And now, it’s getting late. Everyone is ladling leftovers into aluminum containers to bring home and eat tomorrow. The television is off, and the children are dozing in the arms of their older cousins. From the kitchen come sounds of running water, dishes being nested one inside the other, laughter, and sighs from the best cooks in the family.
 
The Brothers have wives who will cajole them, claiming exhaustion and citing the next day’s full schedule, beginning with 8:30 a.m. Mass, but The Brothers are not ready to go. “Sandali lang,” they say. Soon. Then they deal another round and another.
 

*

 
The Brothers will not go home with their wives this night. Instead, they will take turns at the wheel and complete, at last, the four-hour road trip that Kuya Ben had always wanted to make. It’s dark, and the highway is nearly empty, and they are alone but not lonely. To the right, they can make out the Santa Cruz Mountains, and beyond those, they know, is the ocean. Eventually, they turn left towards the valley.
 
When they arrive, they see that it’s just a tree, really. It’s partially wrapped in a stainless steel bar with raised letters and numbers that spell out J A M E S D E A N and the dates of his birth and death. The actual crash site is a thousand yards away. The Brothers glance in that direction, but stay where they are.
 
It is Ben who would have treasured this the most. He could have articulated what the hell they were doing here at dawn, staring at a tree in the middle of nowhere. As it is, they bumble through without him, shivering in their windbreakers as the sun begins to rise. They light fresh Marlboro Golds, one for each of them and one for Kuya Ben. They smoke in comfortable silence. When they’re finished, they crush the cigarettes into their Stardust Casino ashtray and set it at the base of the tree. For many years, it will sit there surrounded by the scattered coins and little gold trinkets that all the other dreamers have left behind.