The Tortilla Curtain

it to keep up your strength.”

The Tortilla Curtain

8
    IN THE EAST, FALL CAME IN ON A GUST OF CANADIAN air, invigorating and decisive. The leaves changed. The rain fell in cold gray splinters and the puddles developed a second skin overnight. The world was closing down, getting snug in dens and burrows, and the equinox was no casual thing. But here, in the bleached hills above Los Angeles, fall was just another aspect of the eternal summer, hotter, drier, hurled through the canyons on the breath of winds that leached all the moisture from the chaparral and brought combustible oils to the surface of every branch and twig. This was the season Delaney had the most trouble with. What was there to recommend in hundred-degree temperatures, zero-percent humidity and winds that forced fine grains of degraded sandstone up your nostrils every time you stepped out the door? Where was the charm in that? Other writers could celebrate the autumnal rituals of New England or the Great Smoky Mountains--watching the birds flock overhead, cutting wood for the stove, cranking up the cider press or stalking somnolent bears through the leafless woods with the first wet scent of snow in the air--but what could Delaney do to color the dismal reality of the season here? Sure, he educated his audience about fire-dependent germination, solvent extractives in manzanita and chamise, the release of nutrients in wood ash, but what could you do with a season that anticipated not the first soft magical transforming bl itoor? ce anket of snow but the hellish raging infernos that vaporized everything in their path and shot roiling columns of atramental smoke twenty thousand feet into the air?
    The winds blew, and Delaney sat at his desk and tried to make sense of them. He was still collecting material for a column on introduced species and population conflict, but the seasonal phenomena had to take precedence. How did the ground squirrels react to the drop in humidity? he wondered. Or the lizards? Maybe he could do something with the lizards, and not just the homed lizard, but all of them--the fence lizard, the western skink, the side-splotched lizard, the banded gecko. Did the winds change their behavior? Did the moisture content of their prey go down? Did they spend more time in their burrows during the heat of the day? He should have been out observing them, but the weather was getting him down. A high-pressure system had been stalled over the Great Basin for weeks now and every day was a replica of the day before: hot, cloudless, wind like a rope burn. He'd been out on the trails yesterday and spent most of his time applying Chap Stick and chasing his hat. Dust blew in his eyes. The scrub was whipped flat as if by the force of some great invisible hand. He cut his hike short and went home to sit in the air-conditioned living room, shades drawn, watching a joyless football contest between panting fat men who looked as if they'd rather be elsewhere.
    Still, the lizard idea was a good one, definitely worth exploring, and he got up from his desk to sift through his nature library, picking up tidbits about the six-lined racer (eats the eggs of small ground-nesting birds by crushing them with its jaws and lapping up the contents), the chuckwalla (strictly vegetarian) and the gila monster (stores fat in its tail). But then, unaccountably, he thought of vultures--they must do pretty well under these conditions. No one had written much about the turkey vulture--too pedestrian--and that might make for an unusual column. And this was their season, no doubt about it. Water sources were drying up. Things were dying.
    He was sitting there, lost in lizard lore and statistical analyses of disgorgement rates in nesting vultures, when the doorbell rang, a dull metallic passing of gas that hissed through the nether regions of the house like air leaking out of a balloon. He debated whether or not to answer it. This was his private time, his writing time, and he guarded it jealously. But who could it be at this hour? The mailman? Fed Ex? Curiosity got the better of him and he went to the door.
    A man in a dirty T-shirt was standing there on the doormat, a cement mixer and two flatbed trucks piled high with cinder blocks looming behind him at the curb. He was wearing a hard hat and his arms were bruised with tattoos. Behind him, milling around the trucks, was a crew of Mexicans. “I just wanted to tell you we'll be coming through here today,” he said, “and it