The Tortilla Curtain

local citizens, the labor exchange closed down at noon--they might have been liberal and motivated by a spirit of common humanity and charity, but they didn't want a perpetual encampment of the unemployed, out of luck and foreign in their midst. Twelve o'clock came and you went home, unless you were lucky enough to have found a job for the day, and then you went home when the boss told you to go. They were very strict about camping in the ravine or in the brush along the road--not only the _gringos,__ but men like Candelario Pérez, who knew that one encampment could ruin it for them all. There was nothing to stop the _gringos__ from tearing down this building and calling in the cops and the hard-faced men from the INS. America knew nothing of this, and that was a small mercy. She did know that it was noon, and that the gathering was breaking up voluntarily.
    She walked aimlessly round the lot. Cars went by on the canyon road, but fewer of them now, and at greater intervals. There was a gas station, a secondhand-clothing store; across the street, the post office, and then the little shopping center where the _paisano__ from Italy had his store. The men were staring at her openly now, and their stares were harder, hungrier. Most of them were here alone, separated from their families--and their wives--for months at a time, sometimes years. They were starving, and she was fresh meat.
    The image spooked her, and she started off down the road, conscious of their eyes drilling into her. All the warmth she'd felt earlier, the familiarity, the brother- and sisterhood, was gone suddenly, and all she could think of, looming nightmarishly, was the faces of those animals at the border--_Mexican__ animals--the ones who'd come out of the night to attack her and Cándido as they crossed over. Mexicans. Her own people. And when the light hit them their faces showed nothing--no respect, no mercy, nothing.
    America had been terrified to begin with--what she and Cándido were doing was illegal, and she'd never done anything illegal in her life. Crouching there beside the corrugated iron fence, her mouth dry and heart racing, she waited through the long night till the _coyote__ gave the word, and then she and Cándido and half a dozen others were running for their lives on the hard-baked earth of another country. Two-thirds of their savings had gone to this man, this _coyote,__ this emissary between the two worlds, and he was either incompetent or he betrayed them. One minute he was there, hustling them through a gap in the fence, and the next minute he was gone, leaving them in a clump of bushes at the bottom of a ravine in a darkness so absolute it was like being thrust into the bottom of a well.
    And then the animals jumped them. Just like that. A gang of them, armed with knives, baseball bats, a pistol. And how did they know that she and Cándido would be there beneath that particular bush--and at the ungodly hour of four a. m.? There were six or seven of them. They pinned Cándido down and cut the pockets from his trousers, and then, in that hot subterranean darkness, they went for her. A knife was in her face, their hands were all over her, and they jerked the clothes from her as if they were skinning a rabbit. Cándido cried out and they clubbed him; she screamed, and they laughed. But then, just as the first one loosened his belt, taking his time, enjoying it, the helicopter came with its lights and suddenly it was bright day and the vermin were scattering and Cándido had her and the wash of the propellers threw the dirt against her bare skin like a thousand hot needles. “Run!” Cándido screamed. “Run!” And she ran, naked, her feet sliced by the rocks and the stabbing talons of the desert plants, but she couldn't outrun a helicopter.
    That was the most humiliating night of her life. She was herded along with a hundred other people toward a line of Border Patrol jeeps and she stood there naked and bleeding, every eye on her, until someone gave her a blanket to cover herself. Twenty minutes later she was back on the other side of the fence.
    Bitter reflections. She continued down the road, thinking to duck off onto one of the hilly side streets to her right, as she'd done yesterday. There were backyard gardens there, fruit trees, tomatoes and peppers and squash. She didn't mean to steal. She knew it was wrong. And she'd never stolen a thing in her life.
    Until yesterday.
    The voices echoed through the confined space of