The Tortilla Curtain

this, but she forced herself to stand firm, watching for sudden movement.
    The man turned his head, spat out something to his companion, and for the first time she noticed the strange high breathy quality of his voice. “Sorry,” he repeated, coming back to her eyes. “A mistake, that's all. No problem, huh?”
    The blood pounded in her temples. She could hardly breathe. “No problem,” she heard herself say.
    “Okay,” the man said, and his voice boomed out as he tugged at his bedroll and turned to leave, the decision made, the moment expended, “okay, no problem.” She watched them head back the way they came, and she'd begun, almost involuntarily, to drift toward the car, when the tall one suddenly stopped short, as if he'd forgotten something, and turned back to level his smile on her. “You have a nice day, huh?” he said, “--you and your husband. And your brother too.”

The Tortilla Curtain

2
    CáNDIDO HAD BEEN LUCKY. DESPITE HIS FACE AND his limp and the fact that it was half an hour after the labor exchange closed down for the day and everyone had gone home, he got work, good work, setting fence posts for five dollars an hour, and then later painting the inside of a house till past dark. The boss was a Mexican-American who could speak English like a _gringo__ but still had command of his native tongue. Cándido had been sitting there in the dirt by the closed-down labor exchange, feeling hopeless and angry, feeling sorry for himself--his wife had got work, a seventeen-year-old village girl who didn't know the first thing about anything, and he hadn't, though he could do any job you asked him, from finish carpentry to machine work to roofing--when Al Lopez pulled into the lot. He had an Indian from Chiapas in the back of the truck and the Indian called out to him, _“¿Quieres trabajar?”__ And then Al Lopez had stuck his head out the window and said, _“Cinco dólares__,” because his regular man, another Indian, had got sick on the job, too sick to work.
    It was nearly one o'clock by the time they got to the place, a big house in a development of big houses locked away behind a brand-new set of gates. Cándido knew what those gates were for and who they were meant to keep out, but that didn't bother him. He wasn't resentful. He wasn't envious. He didn't need a million dollars--he wasn't born for that, and if he was he would have won the lottery. No, all he needed was work, steady work, and this was a beginning. He mixed concrete, dug holes, hustled as best he could with the hollow metal posts and the plastic strips, all the while amazed at the houses that had sprouted up here, proud and substantial, big _gringo__ houses, where before there'd been nothing. Six years ago, the first time Cándido had laid eyes on this canyon, there had been nothing here but hills of golden grass, humped like the back of some immemorial animal, and the dusty green canopies of the canyon oaks.
    He'd been working up in Idaho, in the potatoes, sending all his money home to Resurrección, and when the potatoes ran out he made his way south to Los Angeles because his friend Hilario had a cousin in Canoga Park and there was plenty of work there. It was October and he'd wanted to go home to his wife and his aunt Lupe, who'd practically raised him after his mother died and his father remarried, and the timing was right too because most of the men in the village were just then leaving to work in the citrus and he'd be cock of the walk till spring. But Hilario convinced hihadther othm: You're here already, he'd argued, so why run the risk of another crossing, and besides, you'll make more in two months in Los Angeles than you did in the past four in Idaho, believe me. And Cándido had asked: What kind of work? Gardening, Hilario told him. Gardening? He was dubious. You know, Hilario said, for the rich people with their big lawns and their flowerbeds and the trees full of fruit they never eat.
    And so they pooled their money with four other men and bought a rusted-out 1971 Buick Electra with a balky transmission and four bald-as-an-egg tires for three hundred and seventy-five dollars, and started south in the middle of the season's first snowstorm. None of them except Cándido had ever seen snow before, let alone experienced or even contemplated the peculiar problems of driving in it. With its bald tires on the slick surface, the Buick fishtailed all over the road while huge howling semitrailers roared past them like