The Tortilla Curtain, page 18
The house rose up before her, its windows solid with light, commanding the hilltop like a fortress looking out on the coast of Brittany instead of the deep blue pit of the Pacific. She pulled up in front of the big wooden doors of the garage and killed the engine. For a long moment she just sat there, windows down, breathing in the air and listening. Then she got out of the car and walked round the house twice, checking each door and window at ground level. At the same time she scanned the upper windows, looking for signs of entry or vandalism, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Finally, with a glance over her shoulder, she went inside.
The interior was cool and quiet and it smelled faintly of almonds. That was a good smell for a house to have, a clean patrician smell, and Kyra realized it must have come from the furniture polish the maid used. Or could it have been an air freshener? She stood for a moment by the alarm panel, which she'd shut down this morning so Claudia Insty from Red House could show the place, and now she punched in the code to see if any of the twenty-three zones had been tampered with. They hadn't. The place was secure. She made a quick tour of the rooms, out of habit, all the while trying to imagine possible scenarios to explain away the shopping cart: the gardener had been using it and left it behind by mistake, teenagers had stolen it as a prank and flung it from their car, yes, sure, that had to be it. And yet how had it gotten inside the gate? Why would they go to the effort of lifting it to that height--why would anyone? Unless, of course, they'd gone round the gate through the scrub and valley oaks--but that didn't answer the why part of the question.
She'd locked up and was standing at the door of the car, the air alive with birds and insects, when it hit her: transients used those carts. Bums. The homeless and displaced. Crazies. Mexicans. Winos. But no, that was a city problem, the sort of thing she'd expect to find out back of the 7-Eleven, in Canoga Park, Hollywood, downtown L.A. This was just too remote. Wasn't it?
She'd swung open the door of the car, and now she shut it again. If someone was camping here, squatting, living out in the bushes... Delaney had told her they were camping in the canyon, miles from anything. If they could camp there, why not here? Suddenly the image of a village she'd seen on a tour of the Yucatán ruins came back to her in all its immediacy: naked children, pigs, cookfires, wattle huts--she couldn't have that. Not here. Not on the Da Ros property. How could you explain something like that to a prospective buyer?
But maybe she was jumping to conclusions--all she'd seen was a shopping cart, and a new one at that, empty and innocuous. Still, she thought, she'd better take a tour of the grounds, just in case, and though she wanted to get home early she left the car where it stood and struck off to the south, in heels and stockings, to trace the perimeter of the property. It was a mistake. The lawn gave out less than a hundred feet from the back of the garage and a ten-foot-tall hedge of red oleander camouflaged the fact that the property sloped down into the scrub from there. She ruined a good pair of stockings pushing through the oleanders and hadn't gone five steps beyond that before she twisted her ankle in a gopher hole and damned near snapped the heel off her shoe. She saw the fence line in the distance, chain link buried in scrub so thick it was almost invisible, a meandering border that roughly followed what must have been a dry streambed and then plunged precipitously over the cliff the house commanded. Kyra leaned into a tree to remove her shoes, then turned to wade back through the oleanders to the lawn.
That was when she noticed something moving at the base of the main lawn, sunk down out of sight of the front of the house. Buff-colored. A deer, she thought. A coyote. But the movement didn't halt or hesitate in the way of an animal, and in the next instant she watched the head and shoulders of a man appear over the rim of the slope, followed by his torso, hips and striding legs, and then a second man, close at his heels. They were Mexicans, she was sure of it, even at this distance, and the origin of the shopping cart suddenly became clear to her. She didn't think to be afraid. In her suit, the sweat beading her makeup, stockings torn and heels in her hand, she stalked across the lawn to confront them.
When she came round the corner of the garage, they were no more than thirty feet away, arrested by the sight of the car. The taller one--he wore a baseball cap reversed on his head and had a bedroll thrust over one shoulder--had stopped short, hunched inside himself, and he'd turned to say something to the other. The second man spotted her first and she could see him flinch in recognition and mouth a warning to his companion as she turned the corner and came toward them. “What do you think you're doing here?” she cried, her voice shrill with authority. “This is private property.”
The tall man turned his head to look at her then and she stopped where she was. There was something in his look that warned her off--this was no confrontation over a dog in a restaurant parking lot. His eyes flashed at her and she saw the hate and contempt in them, the potential for cruelty, the knowledge and certainty of it. He was chewing something. He turned his head to spit casually in the grass. She was ten feet from them and ten feet at least from the car. “I'm sorry,” she said, and her voice quavered, she could hear it herself, gone lame and flat, “but you can't be here. You're, you're trespassing.”
She saw the look the two exchanged, flickering, electric, a look of instant and absolute accord. The nearest house was a quarter mile down the ridge, out of sight, out of hearing. She was afraid suddenly, struck deep in the root of her with the primitive intimate shock of it.
“You own these place, lady?” the tall one said, fixing her with his steady unblinking gaze.
She looked at him, then at the other man. He was darker, shorter, with hair to his shoulders and a silky peltlike streak of hair on his chin. “Yes,” she lied, addressing them both, trying to maintain eye contact, trying to sell them. “My husband and I do. And my brother.” She gestured toward the house. “They're in there now, making drinks for dinner.”
The tall one looked dubiously toward the house, the great broad artifact of stone, lumber and glass that cut across the horizon like a monument to the ruling tribe, and then said something in Spanish to his companion, a quick sudden spurt of language. She wanted to break for the car, fling open the door and hit the automatic locks before they could get to her; then she could start it up with a roar and swing round in a vicious circle, jam the wheel, hit the accelerator-- “We are sorry too much,” the tall one said, and he ducked his head, false and obsequious at the same time, then came back to her with a smile. She saw false teeth, yellowed gums. His eyes bored right through her. “Me and my friend? We don't know these place, you know? We hike, that's all. Just hike.”
She had nothing to say to this, but she forced herself to stand firm, watching for sudden movement.
The man turned his head, spat out something to his companion, and for the first time she noticed the strange high breathy quality of his voice. “Sorry,” he repeated, coming back to her eyes. “A mistake, that's all. No problem, huh?”
The blood pounded in her temples. She could hardly breathe. “No problem,” she heard herself say.
“Okay,” the man said, and his voice boomed out as he tugged at his bedroll and turned to leave, the decision made, the moment expended, “okay, no problem.” She watched them head back the way they came, and she'd begun, almost involuntarily, to drift toward the car, when the tall one suddenly stopped short, as if he'd forgotten something, and turned back to level his smile on her. “You have a nice day, huh?” he said, “--you and your husband. And your brother too.”
2
CáNDIDO HAD BEEN LUCKY. DESPITE HIS FACE AND his limp and the fact that it was half an hour after the labor exchange closed down for the day and everyone had gone home, he got work, good work, setting fence posts for five dollars an hour, and then later painting the inside of a house till past dark. The boss was a Mexican-American who could speak English like a _gringo__ but still had command of his native tongue. Cándido had been sitting there in the dirt by the closed-down labor exchange, feeling hopeless and angry, feeling sorry for himself--his wife had got work, a seventeen-year-old village girl who didn't know the first thing about anything, and he hadn't, though he could do any job you asked him, from finish carpentry to machine work to roofing--when Al Lopez pulled into the lot. He had an Indian from Chiapas in the back of the truck and the Indian called out to him, _“¿Quieres trabajar?”__ And then Al Lopez had stuck his head out the window and said, _“Cinco dólares__,” because his regular man, another Indian, had got sick on the job, too sick to work.
It was nearly one o'clock by the time they got to the place, a big house in a development of big houses locked away behind a brand-new set of gates. Cándido knew what those gates were for and who they were meant to keep out, but that didn't bother him. He wasn't resentful. He wasn't envious. He didn't need a million dollars--he wasn't born for that, and if he was he would have won the lottery. No, all he needed was work, steady work, and this was a beginning. He mixed concrete, dug holes, hustled as best he could with the hollow metal posts and the plastic strips, all the while amazed at the houses that had sprouted up here, proud and substantial, big _gringo__ houses, where before there'd been nothing. Six years ago, the first time Cándido had laid eyes on this canyon, there had been nothing here but hills of golden grass, humped like the back of some immemorial animal, and the dusty green canopies of the canyon oaks.
He'd been working up in Idaho, in the potatoes, sending all his money home to Resurrección, and when the potatoes ran out he made his way south to Los Angeles because his friend Hilario had a cousin in Canoga Park and there was plenty of work there. It was October and he'd wanted to go home to his wife and his aunt Lupe, who'd practically raised him after his mother died and his father remarried, and the timing was right too because most of the men in the village were just then leaving to work in the citrus and he'd be cock of the walk till spring. But Hilario convinced hihadther othm: You're here already, he'd argued, so why run the risk of another crossing, and besides, you'll make more in two months in Los Angeles than you did in the past four in Idaho, believe me. And Cándido had asked: What kind of work? Gardening, Hilario told him. Gardening? He was dubious. You know, Hilario said, for the rich people with their big lawns and their flowerbeds and the trees full of fruit they never eat.
And so they pooled their money with four other men and bought a rusted-out 1971 Buick Electra with a balky transmission and four bald-as-an-egg tires for three hundred and seventy-five dollars, and started south in the middle of the season's first snowstorm. None of them except Cándido had ever seen snow before, let alone experienced or even contemplated the peculiar problems of driving in it. With its bald tires on the slick surface, the Buick fishtailed all over the road while huge howling semitrailers roared past them like Death flapping its wings over the deepest pit. Cándido had driven before--but not much, having learned on an old Peugeot in a citrus grove outside of Bakersfield on his first trip North--and he was elected to do the bulk of the driving, especially in an emergency, like this one. For sixteen hours he gripped the wheel with paralyzed hands, helpless to keep the car from skittering like a hockey puck every time he turned the wheel or hit the brakes. Finally the snow gave out, but so did the transmission, and they'd only made it as far as Wagontire, Oregon, where six _indocumentados__ piling out of the smoking wreck of a rust-eaten 1971 Buick Electra were something less than inconspicuous.
They hadn't had the hood up ten minutes, with Hilario leaning into the engine compartment in a vain attempt to fathom what had gone wrong with a machine that had already drunk up half a case of transmission oil, when the state police cruiser nosed in behind them on the shoulder of the road. The effect was to send everybody scrambling up the bank and into the woods in full flight, except for Hilario, who was still bent over the motor the last time Cándido laid eyes on him. The police officers--pale, big-shouldered men in sunglasses and wide-brimmed hats--shouted incomprehensible threats and fired off a warning shot, but Cándido and two of the other men kept on running. Cándido ran till his lungs were on fire, a mile at least, and then he collapsed in a gully outside of a farmhouse. His friends were nowhere in sight. He was terrified and he was lost. It began to rain.
He couldn't have been more at a loss if he'd been dropped down on another planet. He had money--nearly four hundred dollars sewed into the cuff of his trousers--and the first thing he thought of was the bus. But where was the bus? Where was the station and how could he hope to find it? There was no one in the entire state of Oregon who spoke Spanish. And worse: he wasn't even sure, in terms of geography, where exactly Oregon was and what relation it bore to California, Baja and the rest of Mexico. He crouched down in the ditch, looking wistfully across the field to the farmhouse, as the day closed into night and the rain turned to sleet. He had a strip of jerky in his pocket to chew on, and as he tore into the leathery flavorless meat with quivering jaws and aching teeth, he remembered a bit of advice his father had once given him. In times of extremity, his father said, when you're lost or hungry or in danger, _ponte pared,__ make like a wall. That is, you present a solid unbreachable surface, you show nothing, neither fear nor despair, and you protect the inner fortress of yourself from all comers. That night, cold, wet, hungry and afraid, Cándido followed his father's advice and made himself like a wall.
It did no good. He froze just the same, and his stomach shrank regardless. At daybreak, he heard dogs barking somewhere off in the distance, and at seven or so he s coán or so haw the farmer's wife emerge from the back door of the house with three pale little children, climb into one of the four cars that stood beside the barn, and make her way down a long winding drive toward the main road. The ground was covered with a pebbly gray snow, an inch deep. He watched the car--it was red, a Ford--crawl through that Arctic vista like the pointer on the bland white field of a game of chance at a village _fiesta.__ Awhile later he watched a girl of twenty or so emerge from the house, climb into one of the other cars and wind her way down the drive to the distant road. Finally, and it was only minutes later, the farmer himself appeared, a _güero__ in his forties, preternaturally tall, with the loping, patient, overworked gait of farmers everywhere. He slammed the kitchen door with an audible crack, crossed the yard and vanished through the door to the barn.
Cándido was a wall, but the wall was crumbling. He wasn't used to the North, had seen snow only twice before in his life, both times with the potatoes in Idaho, and he hated it. His jacket was thin. He was freezing to death. And so, he became a moving wall, lurching up out of the ditch, crossing under a barbed-wire fence and making his way in _huaraches__ and wet socks across the field to the barn, where he stopped, his heart turning over in his chest, and knocked at the broad plane of painted wood that formed one-half of the door through which the farmer had disappeared. He was shivering, his arms wrapped round his shoulders. He didn't care whether they deported him or not, didn't care whether they put him in prison or stretched him on the rack, just so long as he got warm.
And then the farmer was standing there, towering over him, a man of huge hocks and beefy arms with a head the size of a prize calabash and great sinewy thick-fingered hands, a man who could easily have earned his living touring Mexico as the thyroid giant in a traveling circus. The man--the giant--looked stunned, shocked, as surprised as if this actually were another planet and Cándido a strange new species of being. “Pleese,” Cándido said through jackhammering teeth, and realizing that he'd already used up the full range of his English, he merely repeated himself: “Pleese.”
The next thing he knew he was wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a big gleaming American kitchen, appliances humming, a steaming cup of coffee clutched in his hands. The farmer moved about the kitchen on feet the size of snowshoes. All the broad geometry of his back was in motion as he fussed over his appliances, six slices of toast in the shining silver toaster, eggs and a slab of ham in the little black oven that congealed the yolks and set the meat sizzling in two minutes flat, and then he was standing there, offering the plate and trying to work his face into a smile. Cándido took the plate from the huge callused hands with a dip of his head and a murmur of _“Muchísimas gracias__,” and the big man lumbered across the kitchen to a white telephone hanging on the wall and began to dial. The eggs went cold in Cándido's mouth: this was it, this was the end. The farmer was turning him in. Cándido crouched over the plate and made like a wall.
There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness. The farmer motioned him to the phone, and on the other end of the line there was an angelic voice, the sweet lilting gently lisping voice of Graciela Herrera, a _chicana__ from a town five miles away, talking to him in the language of their ancestors. Graciela picked him up in her bright yellow Volkswagen and dropped him off at the bus station, where she translated for the ticket agent so he could purchase his ticket. Cándido wanted to raise a shrine to her. He kissed her ricá kissed hfingertips and gave her the only thing he had to give: the laminated picture card of the Virgin of Guadalupe he carried for luck.
In Canoga Park, Cándido was able to find Hilario's cousin with no problem--the town was like a Mexican village writ large--and he got work right away, with an English-speaking boss who managed half a dozen gardening crews of three men each. The cousin's name was Arturo and he showed Cándido what to do--it was nothing: pull the cord on the mower, walk behind the airblast of the blower, cultivate the flowerbeds and trim the shrubs--while they both awaited news of Hilario. Weeks went by. Cándido shared a place off Shoup in Woodland Hills with six other men and the close quarters and the dirt and the foul smells reminded him of his first stay in Los Angeles, in the filth of Echo Park. He sent money home and wired Resurrecci6n that he'd be home by Christmas. News came finally that Hilario was back in Guerrero, deported from Oregon and stripped of everything he owned by the Federal Judicial Police the minute he reentered Mexico.
