Tortilla Curtain

Migrants

The community

A big house in a development of big houses locked away behind a brand new set of gates.

Candido knew what those gates were for and who they were meant to keep out, but that didn’t bother him.

He’d been working up in Idaho, in the potatoes, sending all his money home to Resurreccion, 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 a 1971 Buick Electra with a balky transmission and four bald-as-egg tires for three hundred and seventy-five dollars and started south in the middle of the season’s first snowstorm.

For sixteen hours he gripped the wheel with paralyzed hands, helpless to keep the car from skittering like a hockey puck every time the turned the wheel or hit the brakes.

Wagontire, Oregon

WagontireOregonWagontire is an unincorporated community in Harney County, Oregon, United States, on U.S. Route 395. The population has varied recently between zero and two people.

Finally the snow gave out, but so did the transmission and they’d only made it as far as Wagontire, Oregon, where six indocumentados piling out of the smoking wreck of a rust-eaten 1971 Buick Electra were something less than inconspicuous.

Wagontire, Oregon

WagontireOregonWagontire is an unincorporated community in Harney County, Oregon, United States, on U.S. Route 395. The population has varied recently between zero and two people.

Finally the snow gave out, but so did the transmission and they’d only made it as far as Wagontire, Oregon, where six indocumentados piling out of the smoking wreck of a rust-eaten 1971 Buick Electra were something less than inconspicuous.

They hadn’t had the hood up ten minutes, with Hilario leaning into the engines compartments in a vain attempt to fathom what had gone wrong with a machine that had already drunk up half a case of transmission oil, when the state police car cruiser nosed in behind them on the shoulder of the road.