The Tortilla Curtain

of one of the big bombers came low overhead and there was the whoosh of its load driving back the flames below them, and Cándido smelled the strong human smell of the birth and the placenta coming out too, rich and warm in that shed full of seed and chlorine and manure. América's face was transported. She took the baby in her arms, the blue cord attached to it still, and cleared its mouth and started it breathing, started it crying, a thin mewl like the cat's, and she cradled it, the real thing, alive and healthy.
    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