The Tortilla Curtain

his shoulders. He didn't care whether they deported him or not, didn't care whether they put him in prison or stretched him on the rack, just so long as he got warm.
    And then the farmer was standing there, towering over him, a man of huge hocks and beefy arms with a head the size of a prize calabash and great sinewy thick-fingered hands, a man who could easily have earned his living touring Mexico as the thyroid giant in a traveling circus. The man--the giant--looked stunned, shocked, as surprised as if this actually were another planet and Cándido a strange new species of being. “Pleese,” Cándido said through jackhammering teeth, and realizing that he'd already used up the full range of his English, he merely repeated himself: “Pleese.”
    The next thing he knew he was wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a big gleaming American kitchen, appliances humming, a steaming cup of coffee clutched in his hands. The farmer moved about the kitchen on feet the size of snowshoes. All the broad geometry of his back was in motion as he fussed over his appliances, six slices of toast in the shining silver toaster, eggs and a slab of ham in the little black oven that congealed the yolks and set the meat sizzling in two minutes flat, and then he was standing there, offering the plate and trying to work his face into a smile. Cándido took the plate from the huge callused hands with a dip of his head and a murmur of _“Muchísimas gracias__,” and the big man lumbered across the kitchen to a white telephone hanging on the wall and began to dial. The eggs went cold in Cándido's mouth: this was it, this was the end. The farmer was turning him in. Cándido crouched over the plate and made like a wall.
    There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness. The farmer motioned him to the phone, and on the other end of the line there was an angelic voice, the sweet lilting gently lisping voice of Graciela Herrera, a _chicana__ from a town five miles away, talking to him in the language of their ancestors. Graciela picked him up in her bright yellow Volkswagen and dropped him off at the bus station, where she translated for the ticket agent so he could purchase his ticket. Cándido wanted to raise a shrine to her. He kissed her ricá kissed hfingertips and gave her the only thing he had to give: the laminated picture card of the Virgin of Guadalupe he carried for luck.
    In Canoga Park, Cándido was able to find Hilario's cousin with no problem--the town was like a Mexican village writ large--and he got work right away, with an English-speaking boss who managed half a dozen gardening crews of three men each. The cousin's name was Arturo and he showed Cándido what to do--it was nothing: pull the cord on the mower, walk behind the airblast of the blower, cultivate the flowerbeds and trim the shrubs--while they both awaited news of Hilario. Weeks went by. Cándido shared a place off Shoup in Woodland Hills with six other men and the close quarters and the dirt and the foul smells reminded him of his first stay in Los Angeles, in the filth of Echo Park. He sent money home and wired Resurrecci6n that he'd be home by Christmas. News came finally that Hilario was back in Guerrero, deported from Oregon and stripped of everything he owned by the Federal Judicial Police the minute he reentered Mexico.
    Things were good for a while. Cándido was making a hundred and sixty dollars a week, spending two hundred a month on rent, another hundred on food, beer, the occasional movie, and sending the rest home. Arturo became a good friend. The work was like play compared to struggling through the mud of the potato fields like a human burro or picking lemons in hundred-and-twenty-degree heat. He began to relax. Began to feel at home. Wagontire, Oregon, was a distant memory.
    And then the roof fell in. Someone tipped off La Migra and they made a sweep of the entire area, six o'clock in the morning, snatching people off the street, from in front of the 7-Eleven and the bus stop. A hundred men and women were lined up on the sidewalk, even a few children, staring at their feet while the puke-green buses from the Immigration pulled up to the curb to take them one-way to Tijuana, the doors locked, the windows barred, all their poor possessions--the eternally rolling TVs, the mattresses on the floor,