The Tortilla Curtain

melting legs, vaulted the fence and became one with the shadows.
    And after that? After that the trauma drove him from yard to yard, from green strip to green strip, and finally up over the dry Valley-side swell of Topanga Canyon and into the cleft of the creekbed. He bought food and two pints of brandy with the money in his pockets and he lay by the trickling creek for seven days, turning the horror over in his mind. He watched the trees move in the wind. He watched the ground squirrels, the birds, watched light shine through the thin transparent wings of the butterflies, and he thought: Why can't the world be like this? Then he picked himself up and went home to Resurrección.
    That was the first time he'd seen the canyon, and now he was here again, feeling good, working, protecting América from all that was out there. His accident had been bad, nearly fatal, but si _Dios quiere__ he would be whole again, or nearly whole, and he understood that a man who had crossed eight lanes of freeway was like the Lord who walked on the waters, and that no man could expect that kind of grace to descend on him more than once in a lifetime. And so he worked for Al Lopez and painted till nearly ten at night aen án at nighnd then Al Lopez dropped him off at the darkened labor exchange, fifty dollars richer.
    America would have missed him, he knew that, and the stores were closed at this hour, everything shut down. At seven, Al Lopez had bought Pepsis and _burritos__ in silver foil for him and the Indian, and so he didn't need to eat, but still he felt a flare of hunger after all those days of enforced fasting. As he limped down the dark road, flinching at the headlights of the cars, he wondered if America had kept the fire going under the stew.
    It was late, very late, by the time he bundled up his clothes and waded the pool to their camp. He was glad to see the fire, coals glowing red through the dark scrim of leaves, and he caught a keen exciting whiff of the stew as he shrugged into his clothes and called out softly to America so as not to startle her. “América,” he whispered. “It's me, Cándido--I'm back.” She didn't answer. And that was strange, because as he came round the black hump of the ruined car, he saw her there, crouched by the fire in her underthings, her back to him, the dress in her lap. She was sewing, that was it, working with needle and thread on the material she kept lifting to her face and then canting toward the unsteady light of the fire, the wings of her poor thin shoulder blades swelling and receding with the busy movement of her wrists and hands. The sight of her overwhelmed him with sadness and guilt: he had to give her more, he had to. He'd buy her a new dress tomorrow, he told himself, thinking of the thrift shop near the labor exchange. There were no bargains in that shop, he knew that without looking--it was for _gringos,__ commuters and property owners and people on their way to the beach--but without transportation, what choice did he have? He fingered the bills in his pocket and promised himself he'd surprise her tomorrow.
    Then he came up and put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Hey, _mi vida,__ I'm back,” and he was going to tell her about the job and Al Lopez and the fifty dollars in his pocket, but she jerked away from him as if he'd struck her, and turned the face of a stranger to him. There was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before, something worse, far worse, than what he'd glimpsed the night before when she left the rich man in his car. “What is it?” he said. “What's the matter?”
    Her face went blank. Her eyes dropped away from his and her hands curled rigid in her lap till they were like the hands of a cripple.
    He knelt beside her then and talked in an urgent apologetic whisper: “I made money, good money, and I'm going to buy you a dress, a new dress, first thing tomorrow, as soon as--once I'm done with work--and I know I'm going to get work, I know it, every day. You won't have to wear that thing anymore, or mend it either. Just give me a week or two, that's all I ask, and we'll be out of here, we'll have that apartment, and you'll have ten dresses, twenty, a whole closetful...”
    But she wasn't responding--she just sat there, hanging her head, her face hidden behind the curtain of her hair. It was then that he noticed the welts at the base of her neck, where the hair parted to fall forward across her shoulders. Three raised red welts that glared