T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

He lingered over the beer, standing in front of the fogged-over door, comparing prices, the amber bottles backlit so that they glowed invitingly, and he was thinking: One? Or two? America wouldn't drink any, it was bad for the baby, and if she drank beer she might forget how implacably and eternally angry she was and maybe even let a stray smile fall on him. No, she wouldn't drink any, and one would make him feel loose at the edges, little fingers crepitating in his brain and massaging the bad side of his face, but two would be glorious, two would be thanksgiving. He opened the case and let the cool air play over his face a moment, then reached into the back and selected two big one-liter bottles of Budweiser, the King of Beers.

He was thinking nothing at the checkout, his face a mask, his mind back in Tepoztlán, the rocky _cerros__ rising above the village in a glistening curtain of rain, the plants lush with it, fields high with corn and the winter dry season just setting in, the best time in all the year, and he didn't pay any attention to the _gringos__ in line ahead of him, the loud ones, two men already celebrating the holiday, their garish shirts open at the neck, jackets tight in the shoulders. “Turkey?” one of them shouted in his own language, and his voice was rich with amusement, with mockery, and now Cándido looked up, wondering what it was all about. “What the hell do we want with a turkey?”

The man who'd been speaking was in his twenties, cocky, long-haired, rings leaping out of his knuckles. The other one, his companion, had six little hoops punched through his earlobe. “Take it, man,” the second one said. “Come on, Jules, it's a goof. Take it, man. It's a turkey. A fucking turkey.”

They were holding up the line. Heads had begun to turn. Cándido, who was right behind them, studied his feet.

“You gonna cook it?” the first man said.

“Cook it? You think it'll fit in a microwave?”

“That's what I'm saying: what the fuck do we want with a fucking turkey?”

And then time seemed to slow down, crystallize, hold everything suspended in that long three o'clock Thanksgiving moment under the dead light of the store and the sharp cat-eyed glances of the gringos. “What about this dude here? He looks like he could use a turkey. Hey, man”-and now Cándido felt a finger poke at his shoulder and he looked up and saw it all, the two sharp dressers, the plastic sack of groceries, the exasperated checkout girl with the pouf of sprayed-up hair and the big frozen bird, the _pavo__ in its sheet of white skin, lying there frozen like a brick on the black conveyor belt-“you want a turkey?”

Something was happening. They were asking him something, pointing at the turkey and asking him-what? What did they want from him? Cándido glanced round in a growing panic: everyone in the line was watching him. “No espick Ingliss,” he said.

The one nearest him, the one with the hoops in his ear, burst out laughing, and then the other one, the first one, joined in. “Oh, man,” the first one said, “oh, man,” and the laughter twisted in Cándido like a knife. Why did they always have to do this? he thought, and his face went dark.

Now the checkout girl chimed in: “I don't think we can do that, sir,” she said. “It's for the customer who made the purchase. If he”-and she indicated Cándido with a flick of her enameled fingers-“rings up fifty dollars he gets his turkey, just like you. But if you don't want one-”

“God, a turkey,” the first one said, and he was giggling so hard he could barely get the words out, “what a concept.”

“Hey, come on, move it, will you?” a tall black man with a knitted brow crowed from the back of the line.

The man with the rings shook out his long hair, looked back at the black man and gave him the richest smile in the world. “Yeah,” he said finally, turning back to the checker, “yeah, I want my turkey,” and Cándido looked away from his eyes and his leering smile and the turkey found its way into a plastic bag. But the men didn't leave, not yet. They stood just off to the side of the checker and watched her ring up Cándido's purchases with two frozen grins on their faces, and then, as Cándido tried to ease past them-he didn't want any trouble, he didn't, not now, not ever-the first man hefted the big frozen twelve-pound turkey and dropped it into Cándido's arms and Cándido had no choice but to grab the dead weight of it, rock-hard and cold through to the bone, and he almost dropped his bottles of beer, his precious beer, and still he didn't understand.

“Happy Thanksgiving, dude,” the one with the rings said, and then the two of them were out the door, their long gringo legs scissoring the light, and the hot wind rushed in.

Cándido was dazed, and he just stood there looking at all those white faces looking at him, trying to work out the permutations of what had just happened. Then he knew and accepted it in the way he would have swallowed a piece of meat without cutting it up, gulping it down because it was there on the tines of the fork. He cradled the lump of the frozen bird under one arm and hurried out the door and across the lot before someone came and took it away from him. But what luck, he thought, skittering down the road, what joy, what a coup! This would put a smile on América's face, this would do it, the skin crusted and basted in its own juices, and he would build up the coals first, make an inferno and let it settle into a bed of coals, and then he would roast the _pavo__ on a spit, slow-roast it, sitting right there and turning the spit till it was brown all over and not a blackened spot on it.

He hurried down the trail, and nothing bothered him now, not his hip or his cheekbone or the wind in his face, thinking of the beer and the turkey and América. “Gobble, gobble,” he called, sloshing across the pool to where she sat like a statue in the sand, “gobble, gobble, gobble, and guess what _papacito's__ got for you!”

And she smiled. She actually smiled at the sight of the thing, stripped of its head and its feet and its feathers, rolled up into one big ball of meat, turkey meat, a feast for two. She took a sip of beer when he offered it to her and she pressed his bicep with her hand as he told her the insuperable tale of the turkey, and already the flames were rising, the wind sucking them higher as it tore through the canyon, and should he get up from the sand and the beer and America and all the birds in the trees and the frogs croaking at the side of the pool and feed it some more?

He got to his feet. The wind snatched at the fire and the fire roared. He went up and down the streambed in search of wood, rapping the bigger branches against the trunks of the trees to break them down, and every time he came back to feed the fire America was sitting there cradling the pale white bird as if she'd given birth to it, kneading the cold flesh and fighting to work the thick green spit through the back end of it. Yes, he told her, yes, that's the way, and he was happy, as happy as he'd ever been, right up to the moment when the wind plucked the fire out of its bed of coals and with a roar as loud as all the furnaces of hell set it dancing in the treetops.

“BUT IT'S ONLY A COUPLE OF BLOCKS,” DELANEY WAS saying to the steamed-over bathroom mirror while Kyra moved behind him in the bedroom, trying on clothes. He'd towel-dried his hair and now he was shaving. Even with the hallway door closed he could smell the turkey, the entire house alive with the aroma of roasting bird, an aroma that took him back to his childhood and his grandparents' sprawling apartment in Yonkers, the medley of smells that would hit him in the stairwell and grow increasingly potent with each step of the three flights up until it exploded when the door swung open to reveal his grandmother standing there in her apron. Nothing had ever smelled so good-no French bakery in the first hour of light, no restaurant, no barbecue or clambake. “It seems ridiculous to take the car.”