T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

“Don't be scared,” he said, though he himself was terrified. What would they do to him now, what would they do. if they found out? They had the gas chamber here in California, didn't they? Sure they did. They'd put him in a little room with cyanide pellets and his lungs would fill with the corrosive fumes, but he wouldn't breathe, wouldn't open his mouth, he wouldn't… He took a long drink from the slack hose and thought he was going to vomit. The smoke was blacker now, pouring over them. The wind had changed and the fire was coming up the canyon. “Get up,” he said, and his voice was shot through with urgency, with panic, infested with it, a crazy man's voice. “We've got to go. Now!”

She sat there in the mud from the hose, her big maternity shorts soaked through, the big wet folds of the maternity blouse clinging to the perfect ball of her belly, hair in her mouth, her face smudged and bleeding, her eyes wild. “No,” she said, “I won't get up. I'm tired. I feel sick.”

He jerked her to her feet. “You want to burn?” he shouted, and his grip on her arm was punishing. “You want to die?”

The smoke thickened. There was no one around, no one, and it was eerie, spooky, like some horror movie with the aliens closing in. Sirens wailed in the distance. América snatched her arm away from him, curled her lip to show her teeth. “Yes,” she hissed. “Yes, I do.” *** *** ***

It was dark, darker than Cándido could ever have imagined it, all the homes in the canyon without electricity, the people evacuated, a pall of smoke closing over the sky against the distant flare of the fire. From here, high up the canyon, the fire sat low on the horizon, like a gas burner glowing under the great black pot of the sky. The winds had died down with nightfall, and the blaze was in remission, settling into its beds of coals to await the coming of day and the return of the winds. Or maybe they would put it out, maybe the _gringos__ would keep attacking it with their planes and their chemicals till they'd snubbed it out like a cigarette ground under the heel of a boot. Cándido didn't know what the next day would bring, but as he looked down into the darkened canyon he felt awed by the enormity of his bad luck, stunned by the chain of events that had led from the windfall of the turkey and the simple joy of the campfire to this nightmare of flames and smoke and airplanes that exploded across the sky. Had he really been the cause of all this? One man with a match? It was almost inconceivable, too much for his poor fevered brain to take in.

But he didn't want to think about it. He was in trouble, deep trouble, and he needed to take stock of the situation. He was lost, hungry, with sixteen dollars and thirty-seven cents and a rusted switchblade in his pocket and all their hoard of money, their apartment fund, buried somewhere in the midst of the conflagration, and for the past two hours America had been complaining of pains deep in her gut, pains down there where the baby was, and wouldn't it be just his luck if the baby came now, at the worst possible time? It was the story of his life, pinched like a bug between two granite rocks, and how long before he was squashed?

They were lying in a clump of bushes somewhere halfway up the western rim of the canyon, and he knew now what a worthless plan it had been to try for the top. The fire would have caught them in the chaparral and they wouldn't have had a chance. But he was afraid of the road, of all those _gringo__ police and firemen, and he was guilty and scared and ashamed and all he could think of was making it to that peak where they'd be safe. He'd been stupid. Panicky and stupid. But now the fire was back in its lair, at least till morning, and they were in the middle of nowhere and America lay beside him like a shadow, crying out with pain every few seconds. What now? What next? They didn't even have water.

“I'm afraid,” América said for the second time that day, her voice pinched and low, coming at him out of the void. All around them the brush crepitated with the tiny feet of rodents and lizards and the shuffling slink of snakes and insects fleeing the fire. There was a crash of bigger things too-deer, he supposed-and a persistent stirring and scratching of dead leaves that could have been anything from a skunk to a bobcat. He didn't answer her, not right away, not until he confirmed what he'd been dreading: “Cándido,” she whispered, “I think my water broke. The baby's coming, I can't help it.” She paused to draw in a sharp breath. “It's coming.”

“It's going to be all right,” he told her, and he knelt beside her in the dark and ran his fingers over her face and stroked her brow, but all the while he could feel the little wheels racing inside him. There was no doctor here, no midwife, no apartment, no hospital, electricity, water, no roof even. He'd never delivered a baby. He'd never seen one delivered, except in the movies, He got to his feet. The night clung to him like a stocking. Off in the distance, to the north, there was a string of lights, cars turning back at the top of the canyon, a police cordon maybe, and just to the west of that was the staging area for the helicopters. But that was at least three or four miles as the crow flies, and how could he get her there, and if he did, then what? They'd seize him in a minute, a Mexican coming out of the bushes and the whole canyon ablaze-they'd see it in his eyes, see it in the color of his skin and the way he slouched up to them like a whipped dog, and what kind of mercy could he expect then?

“You stay here,” he told her, his own voice as strange in his ears as a disembodied voice talking out of the radio. “I'm going to see if I can't find a house or, or-” He didn't finish the thought. “Don't worry, _mi vida,__ I'll be just a minute. I'll find help, I will.”

And then he was weaving his way through the scrub, drawn like an insect to the promise of the distant lights. A helicopter clattered off down the valley, its running lights blinking green and red. Something plunged into the bushes ahead of him. He went a hundred feet and called out. America answered him. He couldn't go too far or he'd lose her, he knew that, and he was afraid of losing her, lightheaded with the thought of it, but what else could he do? He decided he would only go two hundred feet, counting out the steps aloud, then double back and go out in the opposite direction. The hills were studded with houses, houses climbing the hills like some sort of blight-there were hundreds of houses out here, hundreds. And roads. Electric poles, water mains, sewers. There were trash cans and automobiles and pavement. There had to be something here, there had to be.

He shouted out twice more and heard América's weak bleat of response, all the while counting higher-_ciento ochenta__ y _uno, ciento ochenta__ y _dos__-as he eased through the brush like a man tiptoeing across a minefield. He was worried about his feet, all the snakes on the move, the son and brother and uncle of that one he'd killed, but he went on, feeling his way, and what choice did he have? He'd rather be attacked by all the snakes in the world than have to deliver that baby out here in the desert of the night, or anywhere, for that matter. He was no doctor-he was a fool, a fool stumbling through an ever-expanding obstacle course, the cards stacked against him, the fates howling, and everything that was good or precious or even possible depended on him and him alone. He'd reached a hundred and ninety-five, the wheels racing, despair in his gut, when he saw a faint glow ahead, and then, all of a sudden, it was there and he was pressed against it: a wall, a white stucco wall.

Cándido worked his way along the wall, feeling for an opening. There was no light but for the unsteady glow of the fire in the distance, and the sky was black, as black as the night sky in Tepoztlán during the rains. Gone was the yellow reflection of the city, every last watt of light driven down and conquered by the smoke of his little campfire that had gone berserk. The thought frightened him all over again. All this-the magnitude of it. If they caught him-oh, his _pinche__ life would be worth nothing then. But what was he thinking? What did his life matter? America was the one. She'd followed him into this mess and she was out there now, the underbrush rustling with rats and crawling things, out there in the utter absence of light, and her baby was coming and she was thirsty and tired and scared.