The Tortilla Curtain

that was an answer to her prayers too. They waited till there was a break in the traffic before emerging from the bushes and they kept their heads down and their feet moving as they hurried up the shoulder of the road. The cars terrified her. There was a chain of them, always a chain--ten, twenty, thirty--and they sucked the air with them, tore it from her lungs, and left a stink of exhaust behind. The tires hissed. The faces stared.
    It was early, very early, and they were the first ones at the labor exchange, there even before Candelario Pérez. Most of the men took buses or hitched rides to get there, some coming from twenty and thirty miles away. And why go so far? Because they were country people and they hated the city streets, hated lining up on _las esquinas,__ the street corners, where there were gangs and dirt and filthy things written on the walls. America didn't blame them. She remembered her trip to Venice, the terror and disconnectedness of it, and as she settled into her customary spot against the pillar, drawing her legs up under her, she looked out into the heavy ribs of the trees and felt glad to be there.
    Cándido sat heavily beside her, the good half of his face turned toward her in soft focus. He was fidgeting with his hands, snatching twigs from the dirt, snapping them in two and flicking the pieces away from him, over and over again. He'd removed the sling from his arm, but he still carried it awkwardly, and some of the crust had fallen away from the wound on his face, pale splotches of flesh like paint flecks showing through. He was quiet, moody, all the high spirits of the previous night dissolved in a look of silent fury that reminded her of her father, bent at night over the fine print of the newspaper, his back aching and his feet twisted from the confinement of the shoes they made him wear in the restaurant. Cándido was brooding, she could see that, afraid no one would choose him for work because of his face and the limp he couldn't disguise--even though he was first in line and would work his heart out. And though he hadn't said a word, neither of apology nor of thanks, she knew it hurt him to have a woman earning his keep. She made small talk to distract him--It was going to be warm, wasn't it? The stew had turned out well, hadn't it? Would he be sure to remind her to pick up a little soap powder so she could wash their clothes tonight?--but no matter what she said he responded only with a grunt.
    Candelario Pérez arrived ten minutes later in a battered white pickup with six other men, and then the lot began to fill. Men came singly and in groups of two or three, appearing out of nowhere, loose-jointed and hopeful, men of all ages, their hands empty, their clothes simple and clean. A few of them stood apart, gathering across the road at the intersection of one of the side streets, or milling around in clumps of two or three in the post office parking lot, taking their chances with the _gringos,__ but most shuffled across the expanse of gravel, dust and weed to report to Candelario Pérez.
    And then the contractors began to arrive, the white men with their big bleached faces and soulless eyes, enthroned in their trucks. They wanted two men or three, they wanted four or five, no questions asked, no wage stipulated, no conditions or terms of employment. A man could be pouring concrete one day, spraying pesticide the next--or swabbing out urinals, spreading manure, painting, weeding, hauling, laying brick or setting tile. You didn't ask questions. You got in the back of the truck and you went where they took you. And the bosses, the ones who did the hiring, sat up front, as motionless as if they were carved of wood. América wondered if they were somehow grafted to their trucks, if their mothers had given birth to them right there on the seat of the cab and they'd sprouted up behind the windshield like some sort of unnatural growth. All she ever saw of them was elbows and faces. She sat there quietly, waiting for someone who might need a floor mopped or an oven cleaned and the trucks pulled up, the tinted windows sank noiselessly into the gleaming door panels and the elbows appeared, followed by the sharp pointed noses and oversized ears, the flat hard calculating eyes wrapped in sunglasses.
    Ten trucks must have pulled into the labor exchange that morning--and another half dozen into the lot by the post office--and forty men got work. Cándido was the first in line each time and each