The Tortilla Curtain

this. The maintenance man would almost certainly be called in to sweep up the ash and clean out the community pool--Cándido could see the big dark brooding mirror of it in the middle of the development, like a water hole on the African plains where all the horned animals came down to drink and the fanged ones lay in wait--but there was still time, because nothing was moving yet on the canyon road. It was cordoned off. They were afraid of the fire still. Afraid of looters.
    He didn't wake América, not yet. He made four trips up to the ledge and back, with the tools, the sacks of vegetables--they could use the empty sacks as blankets, he'd already thought of that--and as many wooden pallets as he could carry. He'd found the pallets stacked up on the far side of the shed, and though he knew the maintenance man would be sure to miss them, it could be weeks before he noticed and then what could he do? As soon as Cándido had laid eyes on those pallets an architecture had invaded his brain and he knew he had to have them. If the fates were going to deny him his apartment, well, then, he would have a house, a house with a view.
    He worked furiously, racing against time, glancing up every few seconds to scan the deserted development for the first cars. The pallets were easy to work with--perfect squares, two and a half feet to the side--and they fit together like children's blocks. Fifteen of them, connected with nails, gave him the frame of his house. The sides and back wall were two pallets long and two pallets high, and in the front he simply left a one-pallet gap for a crawl-in entrance. Then he laid four more side by side on the ground to provide a floor and keep them up out of the dirt in the event of rain, and he saw that he could stuff newspaper and rags into the three-inch gap between the surfaces for insulation. It was a good design, especially for something he'd thrown together on the spur of the moment, his fingers trembling and his heart slamming and one eye on the road, but it lacked the most essential thing: a roof.
    _No problema.__ Cándido already had a solution, if he had time, and he had to make time, had to drive himself past the hunger and the exhaustion and get everything he could before the people came back and started looking over their shoulders, looking for thieves, for fire-bugs, for Mexicans. But the first thing was America. The morning was wearing on--it must have been nine or maybe ten--and he couldn't risk leaving her in the shed any longer. He scuttled down the slope, trying to keep his balance and dodge away from the helicopters at the same time, and twice he fell, careening headlong into bushes that scraped his face and showered him with twigs and fibers that stuck to his skin and made him itch all over like the victim of a schoolboy prank. The sky was low and gray, saturated with smoke. There was no wind and the sun was barely strong enough to cast a shadow. “América,” Cándido called softly from the door of the shed. In answer, the cat mewled and then there was the gagging rasp of the baby's cry, a new sound in a whole new world. “América,” he repeated, and when she answered him in that soft adhesive voice he said, “we've got to go now, _mi vida,__ we can't stay here.”
    “I don't want to go.”
    “Don't give me a hard time, please don't. They're looking for me, you know that.”
    “I want to go home to my mother,” she said, and her face was puffy and red, the eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “I want to show her my baby. I can't live like this. You promised me--you promised.”
    He went to her, crouched beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. His heart was breaking. He couldn't stand to see her like this, to see his daughter deprived and his wife denied. “It's not far,” he whispered, and even as the words passed his lips he was startled by the sound of a car's horn--three sharp blasts--in the distance. “Come on, it's just up the hill.”
    Cándido grabbed what he could--a few sacks of grass seed for bedding and he'd come back for more later--and helped her up the sharp incline. She was weak still and her hair was like a madwoman's, knotted and filthy and flecked with bits of vegetation. She didn't want to duck when a helicopter suddenly appeared over the ridge and then fell away from them, but he forced her head down. The baby didn't make a sound. She was the smallest living human in the world, a face out of the immemorial past, her eyes clenched against