The Tortilla Curtain

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