The cars streamed by in a rush, even at this hour. Four lanes in each direction, the torrent of headlights, sixty-five and seventy miles an hour: suicide. Cándido shot a glance at the two men beside him-both young and scared-and then he began to jog up the shoulder, against the traffic, looking to make it to the next exit and disappear in the bushes, no thought but that. The two men-they were boys really, teenagers-followed his lead and the three of them ran half a mile or more, two hard-nosed men from the Immigration flinging themselves up the shoulder behind them, the traffic raging, thundering in their ears, and when they came in sight of the exit they saw that _La Migra__ had anticipated them and stationed a green van on the shoulder ahead. The boys were frantic, their breathing as harsh as the ragged roaring whine of the engines as the headlights picked them out and the first of the police sirens tore at the air. Was it worth dying for this? Half the people on those buses would be back in a day, back in forty-eight hours, a week. It wasn't worth it. It wasn't.
Cándido would never forgive himself for what happened next. He was the one, he should have known, and they were only boys, scared and directionless. It wasn't worth it, but when the agents came panting up to them, their faces contorted and ugly with their shouts and threats, something uncoiled inside of him and he sprang out into the traffic like a cornered rabbit leaping from a cliff to avoid the dogs. The boys followed him, both of them, and they gave up their lives. All he could remember was the shrieking of the brakes and the blare of the horns and then the sound of all the glass in the world shattering. Pulp, that's what those boys were-they were nothing forever-and they could have been back in forty-eight hours. The first boy went down like a piston, torn off his legs at the hip, down and gone, and the second made it nearly to Cándido in the third lane over when he was flung into the air in one whole pounded piece. The fourth lane was free and Cándido was across it while the apocalypse of twisted metal and skating cars blasted the world around him till even the traffic across the divider was stopped dead in horror. He climbed the divider, walked to the far side on 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 at him like angry eyes, unmistakable, irrefutable. “What happened?” he demanded, masking the damage with a trembling hand. “Was it that _rico?__ Did he try anything with you, the son of a bitch-I swear I'll kill him, I will-”
Her voice was tiny, choked, the faintest intrusion on the sphere of the audible: “They took my money.”
And now he was rough, though he didn't mean to be. He jerked at her shoulders and forced her to look him in the face. “Who took your money-what are you talk”Wháare you ting about?“ And then he knew, knew it all, knew as certainly as if he'd been there: ”Those _vagos?__ It was the one with the hat, wasn't it? The half-a-_gringo?__"
She nodded. He forgot his hunger, forgot the pot on the coals, the night, the woodsmoke, the soil beneath his knees, oblivious to everything but her face and her eyes. She began to cry, a soft kittenish mewling that only infuriated him more. He clutched at her shoulders, shook her again. “Who else?”
“I don't know. An Indian.”
“Where?” he shouted. “Where?”
“On the trail.”
On the trail. His heart froze around those three words. If they'd robbed her in the parking lot, on the road, at the labor exchange, it was one thing, but _on the trail__… “What else? What else did they take? Quick, tell me. They didn't, they didn't try to-?”
“No,” she said. “No.”