And how to get back over the wall? A plastic bucket, ten gallons, with a snug green plastic lid, by the doorstep. But it was heavy. Filled with something. He removed the lid and saw the kibbled dog food inside, reddish-brown pellets shaped like stars. His stomach rumbled-he hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning-and he put a handful of the pellets in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. They tasted like paper, like cardboard, but if the dogs could eat them so could he, and he decided to bring the whole bucketful along-the people in the house would probably think the raccoons or skunks had gotten to it. He set the bucket at the base of the wall as a stepping stool, tossed hammer, saw and hatchet over the top, heaved the groaning sacks of vegetables up beside him one by one and gently lowered them down on the far side. Then he leaned over as far as he could and just managed to hook the wire handle on the bucket of dog food and drag it up the side of the wall.
He left everything where it lay, his stomach roaring, and dodged away through the brush and on up the hill, just outside the scorched zone the fire had left on the slope. The smell of the burn, rank with sodden ash, dominated everything, even the strong sweet fragrance of the sage that broke off and crumbled beneath his fingers as he hoisted himself up, hand over hand. And there was heat too, the baking heat of midafternoon in the cool of the morning, as if there were a thousand ovens turned up high, and places where persistent wreaths of smoke wound their way up into the sky. Cándido was careful to hide himself. There was movement below him now-the firefighters combing back over the area to douse the hot spots-and helicopters beating overhead every few minutes. He couldn't let them catch him out here-that would be fatal. That would involve explanations, interrogation, handcuffs and billy clubs, and if not the gas chamber, then prison, with its iron bars, gabacho guards and high stone walls topped with razor wire. And how would he provide for America then? And for his daughter?
It took him half an hour to find what he was looking for. Zigzagging back and forth across the face of the hill, sharp fragments of stone kicking out from beneath his feet and everywhere rats and lizards and all the other displaced creatures scrabbling away from him with a dry hiss of fur and scales, he came finally to a rock ledge that might have been a fragment of the bank of some ancient stream. It was about five hundred yards up the dry wash that opened out on the development and it afforded him a view of everything that lay below. This was the place. It would have to do. From here he could see anyone approaching from a long way off, and it was close enough to the burn area to discourage casual hikers or joggers-or even the police come to root out Mexican nrebugs-and the scrub all round it was thick and tangled, interwoven in a continuous mat of spikes and thorns. They would never find him here.
As he worked his way back down to the shed he ran over in his mind what he would need. He was starting from scratch, like a shipwrecked sailor, everything they had-clothes, blankets, food, a pair of dented pots and a wooden spoon-consumed in the blaze. He thought of the money then, the replenished apartment fund, and what a joke that was-he was no closer to realizing his dream now than he was at the Tijuana dump. At least then he'd had a board to duck his head under in case it rained. But the money would have survived intact, wouldn't it, safe beneath its rock? Rocks didn't burn, did they? The first thing he would do when things settled down was slip into the canyon and retrieve it, but that might be days yet and they needed shelter now, shelter and food. They couldn't risk staying in the shed for more than an hour or two beyond this. The maintenance man would almost certainly be called in to sweep up the ash and clean out the community pool-Cándido could see the big dark brooding mirror of it in the middle of the development, like a water hole on the African plains where all the horned animals came down to drink and the fanged ones lay in wait-but there was still time, because nothing was moving yet on the canyon road. It was cordoned off. They were afraid of the fire still. Afraid of looters.
He didn't wake América, not yet. He made four trips up to the ledge and back, with the tools, the sacks of vegetables-they could use the empty sacks as blankets, he'd already thought of that-and as many wooden pallets as he could carry. He'd found the pallets stacked up on the far side of the shed, and though he knew the maintenance man would be sure to miss them, it could be weeks before he noticed and then what could he do? As soon as Cándido had laid eyes on those pallets an architecture had invaded his brain and he knew he had to have them. If the fates were going to deny him his apartment, well, then, he would have a house, a house with a view.
He worked furiously, racing against time, glancing up every few seconds to scan the deserted development for the first cars. The pallets were easy to work with-perfect squares, two and a half feet to the side-and they fit together like children's blocks. Fifteen of them, connected with nails, gave him the frame of his house. The sides and back wall were two pallets long and two pallets high, and in the front he simply left a one-pallet gap for a crawl-in entrance. Then he laid four more side by side on the ground to provide a floor and keep them up out of the dirt in the event of rain, and he saw that he could stuff newspaper and rags into the three-inch gap between the surfaces for insulation. It was a good design, especially for something he'd thrown together on the spur of the moment, his fingers trembling and his heart slamming and one eye on the road, but it lacked the most essential thing: a roof.
_No problema.__ Cándido already had a solution, if he had time, and he had to make time, had to drive himself past the hunger and the exhaustion and get everything he could before the people came back and started looking over their shoulders, looking for thieves, for fire-bugs, for Mexicans. But the first thing was America. The morning was wearing on-it must have been nine or maybe ten-and he couldn't risk leaving her in the shed any longer. He scuttled down the slope, trying to keep his balance and dodge away from the helicopters at the same time, and twice he fell, careening headlong into bushes that scraped his face and showered him with twigs and fibers that stuck to his skin and made him itch all over like the victim of a schoolboy prank. The sky was low and gray, saturated with smoke. There was no wind and the sun was barely strong enough to cast a shadow. “América,” Cándido called softly from the door of the shed. In answer, the cat mewled and then there was the gagging rasp of the baby's cry, a new sound in a whole new world. “América,” he repeated, and when she answered him in that soft adhesive voice he said, “we've got to go now, _mi vida,__ we can't stay here.”
“I don't want to go.”
“Don't give me a hard time, please don't. They're looking for me, you know that.”
“I want to go home to my mother,” she said, and her face was puffy and red, the eyes sunk deep in their sockets. “I want to show her my baby. I can't live like this. You promised me-you promised.”
He went to her, crouched beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. His heart was breaking. He couldn't stand to see her like this, to see his daughter deprived and his wife denied. “It's not far,” he whispered, and even as the words passed his lips he was startled by the sound of a car's horn-three sharp blasts-in the distance. “Come on, it's just up the hill.”
Cándido grabbed what he could-a few sacks of grass seed for bedding and he'd come back for more later-and helped her up the sharp incline. She was weak still and her hair was like a madwoman's, knotted and filthy and flecked with bits of vegetation. She didn't want to duck when a helicopter suddenly appeared over the ridge and then fell away from them, but he forced her head down. The baby didn't make a sound. She was the smallest living human in the world, a face out of the immemorial past, her eyes clenched against the light, and she rode up against her mother's breast as if she were attached to it, as if she were part of her still. Cándido had to marvel at that-his daughter, and look how well-behaved she was, and not eight hours old yet.