The Tortilla Curtain, page 25
The man looked startled, looked guilty--caught in the act--and he just stood there on the lawn and let Delaney come up to him. And now the second surprise: Delaney knew him, he was sure he did. It took him a minute, something missing from the composite, but then, even without the baseball cap, Delaney recognized him: this was the hiker, the illegal camper, the man who'd soured the first half of one of the worst days of Delaney's life. And even then, even in that moment of recognition, the net widened suddenly: didn't Kyra say that the man who'd threatened her at the Da Ros place was wearing a Padres cap turned backwards? The man just stood there, guarding his satchel. He didn't look away from Delaney's gaze, and he didn't respond.
“I said, can I help you?”
“Help me?” he echoed, and his face broke into a grin. He winked an eye. “Sure,” he said, “sure, _hombre,__ you can help me.” And then: “What's happening, man?”
Delaney was hot. He was uncomfortable. He was aggravated. The man stood a good three or four inches taller than he did and he was letting Delaney know just how unimpressed he was--he was mocking him, bearding Delaney right there in his own community, right there on his own street. Camping in the state park was one thing, but this was something else altogether. And what was in the satchel and why had he been crossing the Cherrystones' lawn when the Cherrystones weren't at home?
“I want to know what you think you're doing here,” Delaney demanded, eyeing the satchel and imagining the Cherrystones' silverware in there, their VCR, Selda's jewelry. “This is private property. You don't belong here.”
The man looked right through him. He was bored. Delaney was nothing, a minor annoyance, a gnat buzzing round his face.
“I'm talking to you,” Delaney said, and before he could think, he had hold of the man's forearm, just above the wrist.
The tan eyes looked down at Delaney's hand, then up into his face. There was nothing in those eyes but contempt. With a sudden violent jerk, the man whipped his arm free, gathered himself up and spat scornfully between Delaney's feet. “I got these flies,” he said, and he was almost shouting it.
Delaney was riding the crest of the moment, trembling, angry, ready for anything. The man was a thief, a liar, the stinking occupant of a stinking sleeping bag in the state forest, a trespasser, a polluter, a Mexican. “Don't give me that shit!” Delaney roared. “I'm calling the police. I know what you're doing up here, I know who you are, you're not fooling anybody.” Delaney looked round him for support, for a car, a child on a bike, Todd Sweet, anyone, but the street was deserted.
The Mexican's expression had changed. The mocking grin was gone now, replaced by something harder, infinitely harder. He's got a knife, Delaney thought, a gun, and he went cold all over when the man reached into the satchel, so keyed up he was ready to spring at him, tackle him, fight to the death... but then he was staring into a flat white sheet of Xerox paper crawling with print. “Flies,” the man spat at him. “I deliver these flies.”
Delaney took a step back, so devastated he couldn't speak--what was happening to him, what was he becoming?--and the man shoved the flier into his hand and stalked away across the lawn. He watched, stupefied, as the Mexican headed up the street, carrying his shoulders with rage and indignation, watched as he strode up to Delaney's own house and inserted a flier in the slit between the screen door and the white wooden doorframe. Then, finally, Delaney looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand. A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE ARROYO BLANCO ESTATES PROPERTY OWNERS' ASSOCIATION, it read in block letters across the top. And then, beneath it: “I urge all of you to attend Wednesday's meeting on an issue vital to the security and well-being of us all...”
7
THE FIRST FIFTEEN MINUTES WERE NOTHING. AMéRICA never asked herself what she was doing sitting on that concrete wall out front of the post office building in Canoga Park, never gave it a thought. She was exhausted, her feet ached, she felt hot and sleepy and a little nauseous, and she just sat there in a kind of trance and let the rich stew of the city simmer around her. It was amazing, all this life. The sidewalks weren't crowded, not in the way she'd expected, not like in the market in Cuernavaca or even Tepoztlán, but there was a steady flow of people going about their business as if it were the most natural thing in the world to live here. People were walking dogs, riding bicycles, pushing babies in strollers, carrying groceries in big paper sacks cradled to their chests; they were smoking, chatting, laughing, tilting back their heads to drink from red-white-and-blue cans of Pepsi that said “Uh-huh!” on the label.
As tired as she was, as tentative and unsettled, she couldn't help being fascinated by the spectacle--and by the women especially. She watched them covertly, women her own age and maybe a little older, dressed like _gringas__ in high heels and stockings, watched to see what they were wearing and how they did their hair and makeup. There were older women too, in _rebozos__ and colorless dresses, _niños__ hurtling by on skateboards, workingmen ambling past in groups of three or four, their eyes fixed on some distant unattainable vision way out ahead of them in the haze of the endless boulevard. And the traffic--it wasn't like the traffic on the canyon road at all. Here it moved in a stately slow procession from light to light, every kind of car imaginable, from low-riders to Jaguars to battered old Fords and Chevies and VW buses and tiny silver cars that flashed by like fishes schooling in the sea. After all those weeks of deprivation, those weeks when she had nothing to look at but le stby lio Javes and more leaves, the city was like a movie playing before her eyes.
The second fifteen minutes were no problem either, though there was more of an edge to them, a hard hot little prick of anxiety that underscored the passing of each separate sixty-second interval. _Where is Cándido?__ was a thought that began to intrude on her consciousness, and its variant, _What's keeping him?__ Still, she was glad to be there sitting on that wall, glad to be out of that nightmare of leaves, and she was content, or nearly content. The people were amusing. The cars were brilliant. If she wasn't feeling nauseous and if her feet weren't blistered and if she knew where she was going to sleep tonight and if she had something to chew on--anything, a slice of bread, a cold _tortilla__--this waiting would be nothing, nothing at all.
There was a clock in the window of the appliance-repair shop across the way, and as the big illuminated pointer began to intrude on the third quarter of the hour, she realized that her nausea had begun to feature the brief powerful constrictions of hunger. She looked down at her feet and saw that they were swollen against the straps of her sandals (which she'd loosened twice already), and suddenly she felt so tired she wanted to lie back on the hard concrete wall and close her eyes, just for a minute. But she couldn't do that, of course--that's what bums did, street people, _vagos, mendigos.__ Still, the thought of it, of lying back for just a minute, made her see the bed then, the promissory bed at the _chicano's__ aunt's house, and that made her think of Cándido, and where was he?
During the final quarter hour a man in stained clothes appeared out of nowhere and sat beside her on the wall. He was old, with a goat's beard and eyes that jumped out at her from behind a pair of glasses held together with a piece of frayed black tape. She smelled him before she turned round and saw him there, not twelve inches from her. She'd been watching two girls in jeans and heels, with black lingerie tops and hair starched up high with spray, and suddenly the wind shifted and she thought she was back in the dump at Tijuana. The old man reeked of urine, vomit, his own shit, and his clothes--three or four shirts and a long coat and what looked to be at least two pairs of pants--were as saturated in natural oils as a plantain in a frying pan. He didn't look at her, didn't speak to her, though he was holding a conversation with someone only he could see, his voice falling. away to nothing and then cresting like a wave, his Spanish so twisted and his dialect so odd she could only pick up snatches of a phrase here and there. He seemed to be talking to his mother--to the memory of his mother, the ghost, the faint outline of her pressed into the eidetic plate of his brain--and there was a real urgency in the garbled message he had for her. His voice went on and on. América edged away. By the time the illuminated pointer touched the hour, he was gone.
Then it was the second hour and she was lost and abandoned. The sun was setting, the sky streaked with dying light, the storefronts trembling with a watery silver glow like puddles stood on end all up and down the street. There were fewer people on the sidewalks now, and America no longer found them amusing or even interesting. She wanted Cándido to come back, that was all, and what if he'd had an accident? What if he was hurt? What if _La Migra__ had snatched him? For the first time since she'd sat herself down on that wall, the reality of her situation hit her: she had no money, knew no one, couldn't even find her way back to that miserable pile of sticks in the canyon. What if Cándido never came back, what if he'd died of a heart attack or got hit by another car? What then?
After an hour and a half had gone by and there was still no sign of him, América pushed herself up from the wall and started down the street in the direction he'd taken with the _chicano,__ turning to look over her shoulder every few steps to see if by some miracle he might have come back to the wall from another direction. She passed antique stores, gloomy depthless places full of old gloomy furniture; a store that sold fish in every color swimming in water so pure it was like air; a closed and shuttered luncheonette; an auto-parts store that was a hub of activity. It was here, just past the auto-parts store, that she turned left, following Cándido's lead, and found herself on a side street, but a busy one, cars hurtling by against a yellow light, springs rattling, tires squealing. She saw groups of men in the lot out back of the auto-parts store, _gringos__ and _Latinos__ alike, the sprawl of their cars, hoods up, engines running, the music pounding from their stereos till the pavement shook with it. They hardly gave her a glance, and she was too timid, too afraid to ask them if they'd seen Cándido, her husband, her lost husband, and that other man. Then there was a bookstore, a few more storefronts, and the street turned residential.
It was getting dark. Streetlights blinked on. The windows of the houses had begun to glow softly against the shadowy shrubs, the flowers drained of color, the bougainvillea and wisteria gone gray in the fading light. She didn't see Cándido anywhere. Not a trace of him. The baby moved inside her and her stomach dipped and fluttered. All she wanted was to belong in one of those houses, any of them, even for a night. The people who lived in those houses had beds to stretch out on, they had toilets that flushed and hot and cold running water, and most important of all, they were home, in their own private space, safe from the world. And where was Cándido? Where was the room he'd promised her, the bed, the shower? This was shitty, really shitty. Worse than her father's house, a hundred times worse. She was a fool to have left, a fool to have listened to the stories, watched the movies, read the _novelas,__ and more of a fool to ever for a second have envied the married girls in Tepoztlán whose husbands gave them so much when they came home from the North. Clothes, jewelry, a new TV--that wasn't what you got. You got this. You got streets and bums and burning pee.
Finally, after she'd searched even the side streets off of the side street, she went back to the wall in front of the post office. She didn't know what had happened to Cándido--she was afraid even to think about it--but this was where he would look for her, and she would just have to sit here and be patient, that was all. But now it was fully dark, now it was night, and the foot traffic had begun to pick up again--teenagers in groups, men in their twenties and thirties, out on the prowl. There was no one to protect her, no one to care. All she could see was the image of those animals at the border, the half-a-_gringo__ and his evil eyes and filthy insinuating fingers, the fat white man with his fat white hands, and she withdrew into herself, dwelled there deep inside where nobody could touch her. “Hey, baby,” they called when they saw her there trying to melt into the darkness, “hey, _ruca,__ hey, sexy, _¿quieres joder conmigo?”__
It was nearly midnight and she'd nodded off--she couldn't help it, couldn't keep her eyes open a second longer--when she felt a touch at her shoulder. She woke with a start--nearly jumped out of her skin--and there he was, Cándido. Even in the bleak half-light of the streetlamps she could see the blood on his face, slick and black and without color. It could have been oil, molasses, could have been coal tar or makeup for some fright-house play in the theater, but it wasn't and she knew it the minute she saw him. “They hit me with something,” he said, his voice so pinched and hoarse she thought at first he'd been strangled. “A baseball bat, I think. Right here.” He lifted a hand to his hairline and touched the place where the blood was blackest. “They got everything. Every penny.”
And now she saw that his shirt was torn and the cuffs of his trousers hacked away till it looked as if some animal had been chewing its way up his legs. _They got everything.__ She looked into his eyes in the dim subterranean glow of the streetlamp and let the words sink in. There would be no bed, no shower, no dinner even. And in the future: no apartment, no shops, no restaurants, no toys and blankets and diapers for her baby. Her mind raced ahead and back again, and then she thought of the woods, of the canyon, of that shitpile of sticks, and she wanted to die.
His head ached, but that was nothing new. For a while there, his eyes had been playing tricks on him, everything doubled and doubled again, two walls, two windows, two streetlamps, then four and eight and sixteen, till he had to clamp his lids shut and start all over again. The world was back to a single image at least, and that was all right, but his shoulder throbbed where he must have fallen on it, and what next? It was like getting hit by that car all over again, except that this time he had no one to blame but himself. How could he have been so stupid? That _chingón__ had no aunt. He was as bad as any _vago__ at the labor exchange, worse. “This way,” he kept saying, “it's just up here, my aunt's house, you'll like it, man, you'll like it.” He didn't have any aunt. But there were two more just like him waiting in the alley, and how many _mojados__ had they clipped in their time? They knew just where to look--every dumb hick must have sewed his bankroll into his cuffs. Where else would it be? At the Bank of America? Under his pillow at the Ritz? It was his stinking bad luck, that was all, and now his head ached and he had nothing left in the world, not even a decent pair of pants, and America was looking at him as if he were the lowest form of life on the earth, no sympathy in her eyes, not a trace.
The first thing to do was find a gas station and have America ask to use the rest room so he could slip in and wash the blood off his face. It wasn't bad, a little headache, that was all--a headache and a whole lot of blood. He didn't give a damn for the blood, but if the police spotted him looking like this it would be the end of him. First the rest room, then something to eat. He hated to do this to her, to America, because this was just what he'd tried to protect her from, but they were going to have to go out back of one of the fast-food places--Kentucky Fried or Taco Bell or McDonald's--and go through the trash. After that they'd need a place to sleep, some business with shrubs around it and a little patch of lawn, someplace quiet where nobody would notice them, least of all the sons of bitches roaming the streets for blood, and now he had two of them to kill, _hijo__ de _la chingada__ and fuck the whole world.
“Okay,” he said, and America wouldn't look at him, “okay now, listen to me...”
And she listened. Scared, angry, defeated, full of pity and hate, her heart in her mouth, no bed, no shower, no nothing. The nearest service station was five blocks up the street, up Sherman Way, and nobody said a word to her with Cándido at her side, his face a flag of blood, his pantlegs flapping like ragged banners. The attendant was Nicaraguan and he looked at her like she was dirt when she asked for the key to the rest room without buying anything, but she smiled and used her smallest voice and he relented. She took advantage of the opportunity to use the commode and cushion the back strap of her sandals with toilet paper, while Cándido washed the blood from his face and patted the mouth of the wound dry with paper towels. His face was pale and bristling with a vagrant's short stiff whiskers, but his hair hid the black slash of the contusion and when he'd finished he looked almost presentable, but for his torn shirt and the frayed ends of his trousers and the pit under his left eye that was part of him forever now.
He walked two steps ahead of her and he had nothing to say, his shoulders squared up like a fighting cock's, his eyes eating up the street. The few people out at this hour--drunks, mainly--gave him a wide berth. Though she was tired and shot through with despair, though her feet hurt and her stomach clenched on nothing, America didn't dare ask him where they were going or what the plan was or where they would sleep, eat, wash, live. She just followed along, numbed and vacant, and all the acid odors of the street assaulted her as if they'd been distilled just for her, for her and her alone. They walked for blocks and blocks, heading west, then turned onto a bright big boulevard to the south and followed it eternally, past shuttered restaurants, record shops and great hulking dimly lit malls floating like factory ships in black seas of macadam. It was very late. The leaves of the trees hung limp. There were hardly any cars at all on the streets.
