Free The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle

congenitally rich, the crazies--and some of them, the unscrupulous ones, took advantage of the loneliness of the forlorn and itching wives to put horns on the heads of the men breaking their backs in the land of the _gringos.__ “Señor Gonzales” is what they called these ghouls of the disinterred marriage, or sometimes just “Sancho,” as in “Sancho bedded your wife.” There was even a verb for it: _sanchear,__ to slip in like a weasel and make a _cabrón__ out of an unoffending and blameless man.
    And so, after seven seasons away and six cold winters at home during which he felt like half a man because Resurrección would not take his seed no matter what they tried--and they tried Chinese positions, chicken fat rubbed on the womb during intercourse, herbs and potions from the _curandera__ and injections from the doctor--Cándido came home to find that his wife was living in Cuernavaca with a Sancho by the name of Teófilo Aguadulce. She was six months pregnant and she'd spent all the money Cándido had sent her on her Sancho and his unquenchable thirst for beer, _pulque__ and distilled spirits.
    America was the one who broke the news to him. Cándido came to the door at his father-in-law's place, bearing gifts, jubilant in his return, the all-conquering hero, benefactor of half the village, the good nephew who'd built his mother's sister a new house and had a brand-new boombox radio in his bag for her even now, and there was no one home but America, eleven years old and shy as a jaguar with a pig clenched in its jaws. “Cándido!” she screamed, throwing herself in his arms, “what did you bring for me?” He'd brought her a glass Christmas ball with the figure of a _gabacho__ Santa Claus imprisoned in it and artificial snow that inundated him with a blizzard when you turned it upside down--but where was everybody? A pause, release of the limbs, a restrained dance round the room with the inverted Christmas ball: “They didn't want to see you.” What? Didn't want to see him? She was joking, pulling his leg, very funny. “Where's Resurrecci6n?”
    Then came his season in hell. He took the first bus to Cuernavaca, sought out Teófilo Aguadulce's house and beat on the closed shutters till his hands were raw. He prowled the streets, haunted the _cantinas,__ the markets, the cinema, but there was no sign of them. Finally, a week later, Cándido got word that Teófilo Aguadulce was coming to Tepoztlán to see his ailing grandfather, and when he crossed the plaza at twelve noon, Cándido was waiting for him. With half the village looking on, Cándido called him out, and he would have had his revenge too, and his honor, if the son of a bitch hadn't got the better of him with a perfidious wrestling move that left him stunned and bleeding in the dirt. No one said a word. No one reached down a hand to help him up. His friends and neighbors, the people he'd known all his life, simply turned their backs on him and walked away. Cándido got drunk. And when he sobered up he got drunk again. And again. He was too ashamed to go back to his aunt's and so he wandered the hills, sleeping where he fell, till his clothes turned to rags and he stank like a goat. Children pelted him with rocks and made up songs about him, rhymes to skip rope by, and the keening of their voices burned into him like a rawhide whip. He made for the border finally, to lose himself in the North, but the coyote was a fool and the U. S. Immigration caught him before he'd gone a hundred yards and pitched him back into the dark fastness of the Tijuana night.
    He was broke, and he danced for people on the streets there, begged change from _turistas,__ got himself a can of kerosene and became a _tragafuegos,__ a streetcorner firebreather who sacrificed all sensation in his lips, tongue and palate for a few _centavos__ and a few _centavos__ more. What he made, he spent on drink. When his fall was complete, when he'd scraped every corner of himself raw, he came