The Tortilla Curtain

couldn't tell him yet, though she'd been working up her nerve all day--Socorro had to have a doctor, right away, she had to--but when he'd finished eating and warmed himself, then, it would have to be then.
    Cándido's voice was low with wonder. “Then he got out of the car and came after me--and with one of those telephones in his hand, the wireless ones--and I think he was calling the police, but I wasn't going to wait around to find out, you can bet your life on that. But what is it? What did I ever do to him? He can't know about the fire, can he? And that was an accident, God knows--”
    “Maybe he tried to hit you the first time too. Maybe he's a racist. Maybe he's a pig. Maybe he hates us because we're Mexican.”
    “I can't believe it. How could anybody be that vicious? He gave me twenty dollars, remember?”
    “Twenty dollars,” she spat, and she jerked her hand so violently she woke the baby. “And he sent his son down into the canyon to abuse us, didn't he?”
    Later, after Cándido had cleaned up the last of the _cocido__ with three hot tortillas and his shirt had dried and the mud that had caked on his feet crumbled and fell through the slats of the floor, she steeled herself and came back to the question of Socorro and the doctor. “There's something wrong with her,” America said, and a volley of wind-driven rain played off the plastic sheeting like spent ammunition. “It's her eyes. I'm afraid, I'm afraid--” but she couldn't go on.
    “What do you mean, her eyes?” Cándido didn't need this, he didn't need another worry. “There's nothing wrong with her eyes,” he said, and as if to prove it he took the baby from her and Socorro kicked out her arms in reflex and gave a harsh rasping cry: He looked into her face a moment--not too hard, he was afraid to look too hard--and then he glanced at America and said, “You're crazy. She's beautiful, she's perfect--what more do you want?” Socorro passed between them again, soft and fragile and wrapped up in her towel, but for all that, Cándido handled her as if she were a bundle of sticks, a loaf of bread, just another object.
    “She, she can't see me, Cándido--she can't see anything, and I'm afraid.”
    Thunder struck his face. The rain screamed. “You're crazy.”
    “No,” and she could barely get the words out, “no, I'm not. We need the doctor--maybe he can do something, maybe--you don't know, Cándido, you don't know anything, and you don't want to.” She was angry now, all of it pouring out of her, all the pain and worry and fear of the past few days, weeks, months: “It was my pee, my pee burned, that's what did it, because of ”--she couldn't look him in the eye, the fire flickering, the lamp making a death mask of his face--“because of those men.”
    It was the worst wound she could have given him, but he had to understand, and there was no recrimination in it, what's done is done, but she never heard his response. Because at that moment something fell against the side of the shack, something considerable, something animate, and then the flap was wrenched from the doorway and flung away into the night and there was a face there, peering in. A gabacho face, as startling and unexpected and horrible as any face leaping out of a dark corner on the Day of the Dead. And the shock of that was nothing, because there was a hand attached to that face and the hand held a gun.
    Delaney found the shack, and his fingers told him it was made of stolen pallets and slats stripped from the chaparral and the roof that had turned up missing from Bill Vogel's greenhouse. There was light inside--from the fire and maybe a lantern--and it guided him, though the mud was like oil on glass and he lost his balance and gave himself away. He thought he heard voices. More than one. He was outraged--how many of them were there, how many? This couldn't go on anymore, this destruction of the environment, this trashing of the hills and the creeks and the marshes and everyplace else; this was the end, the end of it. He blundered into the stolen flap of rug that concealed the entrance and he tore it aside with one hand because the other hand, his right hand, somehow held the gun now, and it was as if the gun were sentient and animate and had sprung out of the holster and into the grip of his fingers all on its own-- And that was when things got hazy. He'd been hearing the roar for a minute or two now, a sound like the wildest surf pounding against the ruggedest