The Tortilla Curtain, page 32
It was the moment Cándido had been waiting for. He leaned forward with the knife and cut the blue cord that was like a length of sausage and with a rag dipped in water wiped the mess from the tiny limbs and torso. He felt exultant, infused with a strength and joy that made a mockery of his poverty, his hurts and wants and even the holocaust that had leapt out of his poor cookfire in the depths of the canyon. He had a son, the first of his line, the new generation born on American soil, a son who would have all the _gabachos__ had and more. And then, moving the rag over the baby's abdomen as América put it to her breast--and there, between the legs, swabbing it clean--he discovered something in the unsteady wash of light that made him pause, hesitate, stop cold with the rag in his hand. This was no son. This was-- But America already knew. “You know what I'm going to call her?” she said in a drowsy voice, the voice of someone in a dream so beautiful they don't want to let it go.
Cándido didn't answer. He was trying to absorb the fact that he was a father, finally a father--the father of a daughter--and his mind was already leaping ahead to the fire and the deserted houses and where they would stay the night tomorrow and the night after that and what would happen to him if the _gringos__ got hold of him.
The voice came back to him, sticky with contentment. “I'm going to call her Socorro,” she said, “--isn't that a pretty name? Socorro,” she repeated, and she nuzzled the baby's tiny red ear with the bridge of her nose and cooed it for her, “Socorro, Socorro, Socorro...”
It was dawn. The fire had spared them. It had rushed up over the hill in the night with a flap of beating wings and now the helicopters and the big swollen bombers were diving down out of sight behind the ridge. Cándido hadn't slept, not even for a second. He'd turned the wick down low on the lantern and set it beside America and then he'd gone out to sit on the roof of the shed and watch the war of fire and water. He saw men in the distance, stick figures silhouetted against the blaze, saw the arc of their hoses, watched the planes zero in. Twice he thought the flames would overtake them and he was poised to wake America and the baby and make a run for the road, but then the winds turned on a whim and blew at his back, chasing the fire up and over the hill, and they were saved.
Nothing moved out there in the soupy light of dawn, not even the birds. Smoke hung heavy over the canyon and in the distance the blackened hills steamed and the sirens cried out in exhaustion. Cándido eased himself down from the roof of the shed and stood for a moment looking in on América and the baby. América lay asleep on her side, the baby drawn in under the cover of her arm, as oblivious as if she were in a private room in the hospital with a hundred nurses on call. The cat was there too, nestled in the crook of her leg. It looked up at him and yawned when he reached down to turn off the lamp.
He didn't have much time--two, three, four hours at the most--and he knew what he had to do and how much of him it would take. The first thing was food. He was no looter, no thief, no _pandillero__ or _ladrón,__ but this was a question of survival, of necessity--he had a wife and a daughter now and they had to eat--and he swore to the Virgin of Guadalupe that he would pay back everything he appropriated. There was a garden in the house directly behind the wall and he climbed silently atop the shed and slipped down over the wall without thinking how he was going to get back up again.
The yard was still, silent, the whole canyon holding its breath in the wake of the fire. No one was home. But they would be back, back soon, and he had to work fast. He wouldn't enter the house--he would never do that, not even if he was dying of hunger in the street--but there was a garden shed here too (a little one, nothing like the big maintenance shed in which America and his daughter lay sleeping as if they didn't have a care in the world), and in the shed some of the things he would need: a hammer, a box of three-and-a-half-inch nails, four burlap sacks hanging from a hook. He stuffed the hammer into his back pocket, filled his front pockets with nails. Then he waded into the garden and weighed down the sacks with cucumbers, tomatoes and squash, topping them off with oranges and grapefruits from the trees that stood in neat rows in the far corner of the yard. What else would he need? He borrowed a bow saw and a hatchet and told himself he would sneak them back in the night and no one would be the wiser.
And how to get back over the wall? A plastic bucket, ten gallons, with a snug green plastic lid, by the doorstep. But it was heavy. Filled with something. He removed the lid and saw the kibbled dog food inside, reddish-brown pellets shaped like stars. His stomach rumbled--he hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning--and he put a handful of the pellets in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. They tasted like paper, like cardboard, but if the dogs could eat them so could he, and he decided to bring the whole bucketful along--the people in the house would probably think the raccoons or skunks had gotten to it. He set the bucket at the base of the wall as a stepping stool, tossed hammer, saw and hatchet over the top, heaved the groaning sacks of vegetables up beside him one by one and gently lowered them down on the far side. Then he leaned over as far as he could and just managed to hook the wire handle on the bucket of dog food and drag it up the side of the wall.
He left everything where it lay, his stomach roaring, and dodged away through the brush and on up the hill, just outside the scorched zone the fire had left on the slope. The smell of the burn, rank with sodden ash, dominated everything, even the strong sweet fragrance of the sage that broke off and crumbled beneath his fingers as he hoisted himself up, hand over hand. And there was heat too, the baking heat of midafternoon in the cool of the morning, as if there were a thousand ovens turned up high, and places where persistent wreaths of smoke wound their way up into the sky. Cándido was careful to hide himself. There was movement below him now--the firefighters combing back over the area to douse the hot spots--and helicopters beating overhead every few minutes. He couldn't let them catch him out here--that would be fatal. That would involve explanations, interrogation, handcuffs and billy clubs, and if not the gas chamber, then prison, with its iron bars, gabacho guards and high stone walls topped with razor wire. And how would he provide for America then? And for his daughter?
It took him half an hour to find what he was looking for. Zigzagging back and forth across the face of the hill, sharp fragments of stone kicking out from beneath his feet and everywhere rats and lizards and all the other displaced creatures scrabbling away from him with a dry hiss of fur and scales, he came finally to a rock ledge that might have been a fragment of the bank of some ancient stream. It was about five hundred yards up the dry wash that opened out on the development and it afforded him a view of everything that lay below. This was the place. It would have to do. From here he could see anyone approaching from a long way off, and it was close enough to the burn area to discourage casual hikers or joggers--or even the police come to root out Mexican nrebugs--and the scrub all round it was thick and tangled, interwoven in a continuous mat of spikes and thorns. They would never find him here.
As he worked his way back down to the shed he ran over in his mind what he would need. He was starting from scratch, like a shipwrecked sailor, everything they had--clothes, blankets, food, a pair of dented pots and a wooden spoon--consumed in the blaze. He thought of the money then, the replenished apartment fund, and what a joke that was--he was no closer to realizing his dream now than he was at the Tijuana dump. At least then he'd had a board to duck his head under in case it rained. But the money would have survived intact, wouldn't it, safe beneath its rock? Rocks didn't burn, did they? The first thing he would do when things settled down was slip into the canyon and retrieve it, but that might be days yet and they needed shelter now, shelter and food. They couldn't risk staying in the shed for more than an hour or two beyond this. The maintenance man would almost certainly be called in to sweep up the ash and clean out the community pool--Cándido could see the big dark brooding mirror of it in the middle of the development, like a water hole on the African plains where all the horned animals came down to drink and the fanged ones lay in wait--but there was still time, because nothing was moving yet on the canyon road. It was cordoned off. They were afraid of the fire still. Afraid of looters.
He didn't wake América, not yet. He made four trips up to the ledge and back, with the tools, the sacks of vegetables--they could use the empty sacks as blankets, he'd already thought of that--and as many wooden pallets as he could carry. He'd found the pallets stacked up on the far side of the shed, and though he knew the maintenance man would be sure to miss them, it could be weeks before he noticed and then what could he do? As soon as Cándido had laid eyes on those pallets an architecture had invaded his brain and he knew he had to have them. If the fates were going to deny him his apartment, well, then, he would have a house, a house with a view.
He worked furiously, racing against time, glancing up every few seconds to scan the deserted development for the first cars. The pallets were easy to work with--perfect squares, two and a half feet to the side--and they fit together like children's blocks. Fifteen of them, connected with nails, gave him the frame of his house. The sides and back wall were two pallets long and two pallets high, and in the front he simply left a one-pallet gap for a crawl-in entrance. Then he laid four more side by side on the ground to provide a floor and keep them up out of the dirt in the event of rain, and he saw that he could stuff newspaper and rags into the three-inch gap between the surfaces for insulation. It was a good design, especially for something he'd thrown together on the spur of the moment, his fingers trembling and his heart slamming and one eye on the road, but it lacked the most essential thing: a roof.
_No problema.__ Cándido already had a solution, if he had time, and he had to make time, had to drive himself past the hunger and the exhaustion and get everything he could before the people came back and started looking over their shoulders, looking for thieves, for fire-bugs, for Mexicans. But the first thing was America. The morning was wearing on--it must have been nine or maybe ten--and he couldn't risk leaving her in the shed any longer. He scuttled down the slope, trying to keep his balance and dodge away from the helicopters at the same time, and twice he fell, careening headlong into bushes that scraped his face and showered him with twigs and fibers that stuck to his skin and made him itch all over like the victim of a schoolboy prank. The sky was low and gray, saturated with smoke. There was no wind and the sun was barely strong enough to cast a shadow. “América,” Cándido called softly from the door of the shed. In answer, the cat mewled and then there was the gagging rasp of the baby's cry, a new sound in a whole new world. “América,” he repeated, and when she answered him in that soft adhesive voice he said, “we've got to go now, _mi vida,__ we can't stay here.”
“I don't want to go.”
“Don't give me a hard time, please don't. They're looking for me, you know that.”
“I want to go home to my mother,” she said, and her face was puffy and red, the eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “I want to show her my baby. I can't live like this. You promised me--you promised.”
He went to her, crouched beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. His heart was breaking. He couldn't stand to see her like this, to see his daughter deprived and his wife denied. “It's not far,” he whispered, and even as the words passed his lips he was startled by the sound of a car's horn--three sharp blasts--in the distance. “Come on, it's just up the hill.”
Cándido grabbed what he could--a few sacks of grass seed for bedding and he'd come back for more later--and helped her up the sharp incline. She was weak still and her hair was like a madwoman's, knotted and filthy and flecked with bits of vegetation. She didn't want to duck when a helicopter suddenly appeared over the ridge and then fell away from them, but he forced her head down. The baby didn't make a sound. She was the smallest living human in the world, a face out of the immemorial past, her eyes clenched against the light, and she rode up against her mother's breast as if she were attached to it, as if she were part of her still. Cándido had to marvel at that--his daughter, and look how well-behaved she was, and not eight hours old yet.
“What is this place?” America demanded when he settled her in the roofless box, and her voice had lost its contentment.
“Just for now,” he said, “just till I get this straightened out.”
She didn't argue, though he could see she wanted to. She was too tired, too scared, and she sank into the corner and accepted the orange he handed her.
He didn't want to risk going over the wall again--he could see the glint of the first cars on the canyon road as he made his way back down the slope--but he had to, just one more time. There was something he'd seen in the next yard over from the one where he'd got the tools, something he needed to borrow before it was too late. He hit the shed at a bound, then crouched to peer cautiously over the wall and into the yard below, watching the windows of the house for movement. There was no sign of life, though he'd been hearing the cars for a while now--minutes, that's all he had--but this time he wasn't going to leap down behind that wall without a way up, was he? He was. He couldn't help himself. Down the wall he went, crouched low, and he saw the big doghouse in the corner of the yard and the two deep aluminum dishes--one with water, one with kibble--and he stuck his head inside the doghouse and saw the nice green wool-blend carpet they'd put in there for the dog to lie on. They would miss it, sure they would, and the aluminum dishes too, but Cándido was a human being, a man with a daughter, and this was only a dog. Was it wrong, was it a sin, was it morally indefensible to take from a dog? Where in the catechism did it say that?
He threw the whole business over the wall and darted through the hedge into the next yard, and there it was, the thing he coveted, the thing he'd come for: a roof, his roof. It was a single sheet of green-tinted plastic, with corrugations for the rain, and it wasn't even attached to the little greenhouse that sat in a clutch of fig trees just beyond the swimming pool--not even attached, just laid across the top. He stood there a moment in his exhaustion, contemplating it, and the figs seemed to drop into his hands, and then they were in his mouth, pulpy and sweet and with the thick bitter skin to chew on. All the frenzied stinking bad luck and terrible draining exhaustion of the previous day and night began to exact its toll on him then and he just stood there, locked in place, staring stupidly down into the pool. It was a little pool, no more than a puddle compared to the big lake of a thing in the middle of the development, but it was pretty, oval-shaped and blue, cool, clean blue, the water so pure it was transparent but for the film of ash on the surface. How nice it would be to dive in, he was thinking, just for a second, and clean himself of the filth and sweat and black slashes of charcoal that striped him from head to foot like a hyena... But then he started at a sound behind him, away and across the street--the slam of a car door, voices--and he sprang for the greenhouse.
The sheet of plastic was unwieldy, too big for the greenhouse, too big for his little shack, but there was no way to cut it to size and the voices were louder now, closing in on him. He gave it a frantic jerk and the next thing he knew he was on the ground, writhing out from under it. The plastic was looser than he'd thought, more flexible, and that made it all the harder to manipulate. Still, he managed to drag it across the lawn to the wall, and he was just working it up the side to tip it over the top when a window shot up in the house next door and he froze. There was a face in the window, a woman's face, gazing out into the yard that now lacked several hand tools, four sacks of fruit and vegetables, a plastic bucket of kibble, two dog dishes and a scrap of carpet.
Cándido didn't dare breathe, praying that the line of bushes separating the yards would screen him from view. He studied that face as he might have studied a portrait in a gallery, memorizing every crease and wrinkle, waiting for the change to come over it, the look of astonishment, fear and hate, but the change never came. After a moment the woman took her face back into the house. Instantly, with a quick snap of his shoulders, Cándido flipped the sheet of plastic up and over the wall, and then fell to his knees in the shrubbery.
“Okay, Butch, okay, puppy,” a voice called from next door, and there was the woman at the back door and a huge black Alsatian romping out onto the porch and scuttering down the steps to the lawn. When it started barking--a deep-chested thundering roar of a bark--Cándido thought it was all up and he curled himself instinctively into the fetal position, protecting his head and genitals, but the dog was barking at the woman, who held a yellow tennis ball cocked behind her ear in the act of throwing it. She released the ball and the dog loped after it and brought it back. And then again. And again.
Cándido, buried in the shrubbery next door, flattened himself to the ground. There were shouts in the distance, the sound of engines revving and dying, children's voices, more dogs: they were coming back, all of them, and it was only a matter of time--minutes maybe--till someone returned to this house and saw the roof gone from the greenhouse and came out to investigate. He had to do something and fast, and he was thinking about that, his mind racing, when a further complication occurred to him: he had no way over the wall.
