The Tortilla Curtain

by T. C. Boyle

  The problem, of course, lies at our own doorstep. In our blindness, our species-specific arrogance, we create a niche, and animals like the raccoon, the opossum, the starling and a host of other indigenous and introduced species will rush in to fill it. The urban coyote is larger than his wild cousin, he is more aggressive and less afraid of the humans who coddle and encourage him, who are so blissfully unaware of the workings of nature that they actually donate their kitchen scraps to his well-being. The disastrous results can be seen in the high mortality among small pets in the foothills and even the as yet rare but increasingly inevitable attacks on humans.

  I had the infinitely sad task last year of interviewing the parents of Jennifer Tillman, the six-month-old infant taken from her crib on the patio of the Tillmans’ home in the hills of Monte Nido, directly over the ridge from my own place of residence. The coyote involved, a healthy four-year-old female with a litter of pups, had been a regular daytime visitor to the area, lured by misguided residents who routinely left tidbits for her on the edge of their lawns.

  But forgive me: I don’t mean to lecture. After all, my pilgrimage is for the attainment of wonder, of involving myself in the infinite, and not for the purpose of limiting or attempting to control the uncontrollable, the unknowable and the hidden. Who can say what revolutionary purpose the coyote has in mind? Or the horned lizard, for that matter, or any creature? Or why we should presume or even desire to preserve the status quo? And yet something must be done, clearly, if we are to have any hope of coexisting harmoniously with this supple suburban raider. Trapping is utterly useless—even if traps were to be set in every backyard in the county—as countless studies have shown. The population will simply breed up to fill in the gap, the bitches having litters of seven, eight or even more pups, as, they do in times of abundance—and with our interference, those times must seem limitless to the coyote.

  Sadly, the backlash is brewing. And it is not just the ranchers’ and hunters’ lobbies and the like pushing for legislation to remove protections on this animal, but the average homeowner who has lost a pet, humane and informed people, like the readers of this periodical, devoted to conservation and preservation. Once classified as a “varmint,” the coyote had a price on his head, governmental bounties paid out in cash for each skin or set of ears, and in response he retreated to the fastnesses of the hills and deserts. But we now occupy those fastnesses, with our ready water sources (even a birdbath is a boon to a coyote), our miniature pets and open trash cans, our feeble link to the wild world around us. We cannot eradicate the coyote, nor can we fence him out, not even with eight feet of chain link, as this sad but wiser pilgrim can attest. Respect him as the wild predator he is, keep your children and pets inside, leave no food source, however negligible, where he can access it.

  Little Jennifer’s neck was broken as neatly as a rabbit’s: that is the coyote’s way. But do not attempt to impose human standards on the world of nature, the world that has generated a parasite or predator for every species in existence, including our own. The coyote is not to blame—he is only trying to survive, to make a living, to take advantage of the opportunities available to him. I sit here in the comfort of my air-conditioned office staring at a jar of scat and thinking of all the benefit this animal does us, of the hordes of rats and mice and ground squirrels he culls and the thrill of the wild he gives us all, and yet I can’t help thinking too of the missing pets, the trail of suspicion, the next baby left unattended on the patio.

  The coyotes keep coming, breeding up to fill in the gaps, moving in where the living is easy. They are cunning, versatile, hungry and unstoppable.

  6

  THE DA ROS PLACE WAS A WHITE ELEPHANT. THERE was no way it was going to move in this market, unless at a significantly reduced price, and though the house had cast a spell over Kyra, she was beginning to wonder if it would ever cast the same kind of spell over a qualified buyer. No one had even looked at the place in the past two weeks and the maintenance issue was becoming one big emotional drain. She’d called Westec about the two men she’d encountered on the property and Delaney had insisted on putting in a report with the Sheriff’s Department too, but nothing came of it. The Westec people had poked around and found no evidence that the men had been back. They didn’t think anyone had been camping there either, at least not recently, though they did find a ring of blackened stone in the scrub at the northwest corner of the property. “But what you got to realize is that could’ve been there for years,” the security officer explained to her over the phone, “there’s just no way of telling.”

  Kyra wasn’t satisfied., She warned the gardener to keep an eye out for anything unusual, and of course she was there herself twice a day, opening the place up in the morning and closing it down again at night. Which had become a real chore. She wasn’t frightened exactly, not anymore, but every time she turned up the drive her stomach sank— almost as if someone had knocked the wind out of her—and she had to bend forward to the air-conditioning vent and take little gulps of air till her breathing went back to normal. The encounter with those men—those drifters or bums or whatever they were—had shaken her more than she would admit, a whole lot more. She’d always been in command of her life, used to getting her way, trading on her looks and her brains and the kind of preparation that would have prostrated anybody else, man or woman, and she felt the equal of any situation, but that night she saw how empty all of that was.

  She’d been scared. As scared as she’d ever been. If it hadn’t been for her quick thinking—the lie about her husband, the fictitious brother, cocktails for god’s sake—who knew what might have happened? Of course, it could have been innocent—maybe they were just hikers, as they claimed—but that wasn’t the feeling she got. She looked into that man’s eyes—the tall one, the one with the hat—and knew that anything could happen.

  She was thinking about that as she wound her way up the road to the Da Ros place, hurrying, a little annoyed at the thought of the burden she’d taken on when she’d jumped at the listing. Now it almost seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth. And tonight of all nights. It was almost seven, she hadn’t been home yet, and she’d agreed to help Erna Jardine and Selda Cherrystone canvas the community on the wall issue at eight.

  That was Jack’s doing. He’d called her two days after Osbert had been killed, and she was still in a state of shock. To see her puppy taken like that, right before her eyes, and on top of everything else ... it had been too much, one of the worst experiences of her life, maybe the worst. And Jordan—he was just a baby and he had to see that? Dr. Reineger had prescribed a sedative and she’d wound up missing a day at the office, and Jordan had gone to his grandmother’s for a few days—she just wouldn’t let him stay in that house, she couldn’t. She was sitting at her desk the next day, feeling woozy, as if her mind and body had been packed away in two separate drawers for the summer, when the phone rang.

  It was Jack. “I heard about your little dog,” he said, “and I’m sorry.”

  She felt herself choking up, the whole scene playing before her eyes for the thousandth time, that slinking vicious thing, the useless fence, and Osbert, poor Osbert, but she fought it back and managed to croak out a reply. “Thanks” was all she could say.

  “It’s a shame,” Jack said, “I know how you must feel,” and he went on in that ritualistic vein for a minute or two before he came to the point. “Listen, Kyra,” he said, “I know nothing’s going to bring your dog back and I know you’re hurting right now, but there is something you can do about it.” And then he’d gone into the wall business. He and Jack Cherrystone, Jim Shirley, Dom Flood and a few others had begun to see the wisdom in putting up a wall round the perimeter of the community, not only to prevent things like this and keep out the snakes and gophers and whatnot, but with an eye to the crime rate and the burglaries that had been hitting the community with some regularity now, and had she heard about Sunny DiMandia?

  Kyra had cut in to say, “How hig
h’s the wall going to be, Jack? Fifteen feet? Twenty? The Great Wall of China? Because if eight feet of chain link won’t keep them out, you’re just wasting your time.”

  “We’re talking seven feet, Kyra,” he said, “all considerations of security, aesthetics and economics taken into account.” She could hear the hum of office machinery in the background, the ringing of a distant phone. His voice came back at her: “Cinder block, with a stucco finish in Navajo White. I know Delaney’s opposed on principle—without even thinking the matter through—but it so happens I talked with the coyote expert at UCLA the other day—Werner Schnitter?—and he says stucco will do the trick. You see, and I don’t want to make this any more painful for you than it already is, but if they can’t actually see the dog or cat or whatever, there’d be no reason for them to try scaling the wall, you follow me?”

  She did. And though she’d never have another dog again, never, she wanted those hateful sneaking puppy-killing things kept off her property no matter what it took. She still had a cat. And a son. What if they started attacking people next?

  “Sure, Jack,” she said finally. “I’ll help. Just tell me what to do.”

  She started with Delaney that night after work. He’d fixed a salade niçoise for dinner, really put some effort into it, with chunks of fresh-seared tuna and artichoke hearts he’d marinated himself, but all she could do was pick at it. Without Jordan and Osbert around, the house was like a tomb. The late sun painted the wall over the table in a color that reminded her of nothing so much as chicken liver-chicken-liver pink—and she saw that the flowers in the vase on the counter had wilted. Beyond the windows, birds called cheerlessly to one another. She pushed her plate away and interrupted Delaney in the middle of a monologue on some little bird he’d seen on the fence, a monologue transparently intended to take her mind off Osbert, coyotes and the grimmer realities of nature. “Jack asked me to work on the wall thing,” she said.

  Delaney was caught by surprise. He was in the middle of cutting a slice of the baguette he’d picked up at the French bakery in Woodland Hills, and the bread knife just stuck there in the crust like a saw caught in a tree. “What ‘wall thing’?” he said, though she could see he knew perfectly well.

  She watched the knife start up again and waited for the loaf to separate before she answered. “Jack wants to put a wall around the whole place, all of Arroyo Blanco. Seven feet tall, stucco over cinder block. To keep burglars out.” She paused and held his eyes, just as she did with a reluctant seller when she was bringing in a low bid. “And coyotes.”

  “But that’s crazy.” Delaney’s eyes flared behind his lenses. His voice was high with excitement. “If chain link won’t keep them out, how in god’s name do you expect—?”

  “They can’t hunt what they can’t see.” She threw her napkin down beside the plate. Tears started in her eyes. “That thing stalked Osbert, right through the mesh, as if it wasn’t even there, and don’t you try to tell me it didn’t.,”

  Delaney was waving the slice of bread like a flag of surrender. “I’m not. won’t. And I’m sure there’s some truth in that.” He drew in a breath. “Look, I’m as upset about this as you are, but let’s be reasonable for a minute. The whole point of this place is to be close to nature, that’s why we bought in here, that’s why we picked the last house on the block, at the end of the cul-de-sac—”

  Her voice was cold, metallic with anger. “Close to nature,” she spat back at him. “Look what good it did us. And for your information, we bought in here because it was a deal. Do you have any idea how much this house has appreciated since we bought it—even in this market?”

  “All I’m saying is what’s the sense of living up here if you can’t see fifty feet beyond the windows—we might as well be living in a condo or something. I need to be able to just walk out the door and be in the hills, in the wild—I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s what I do, it’s how I make my living. Christ, the damn fence is bad enough—and that fucking gate on Arroyo Blanco, you know I hate that, you know it.”

  He set the bread down on his plate, untouched. “This isn’t about coyotes, don’t kid yourself. It’s about Mexicans, it’s about blacks. It’s about exclusion, division, hate. You think Jack gives a damn about coyotes?”

  She couldn’t help herself. She was leaning forward now, belligerent, angry, channeling it all into this feckless naive unrealistic impossible man sitting across the table from her—he was the one, he was guilty, he was the big protector of the coyotes and the snakes and weasels and tarantulas and whatever in christ’s name else was out there, and now he was trying to hide behind politics. “I don’t ever,” she shouted, “want one of those things on my property again. I’d move first, that’s what I’d do. Bulldoze the hills. Pave it over. The hell with nature. And politics too.”

  “You’re crazy,” he said, and his face was ugly.

  “Me? That’s a laugh. What do you think this is—some kind of nature preserve? This is a community, for your information, a place to raise kids and grow old—in an exclusive private highly desirable location. And what do you think’s going to happen to property values if your filthy coyotes start attacking children—that’s next, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?”

  He put on his exasperated look. “Kyra, honey, you know that’s not going to happen—that incident in Monte Nido, that was an aberration, a one-in-a-million chance, and it was only because the people were feeding the animals—”

  “Tell that to the parents. Tell it to Osbert. And Sacheverell, don’t forget Sacheverell.”

  Dinner didn’t go well. Nor the rest of the evening either. Delaney forbade her to work on the wall committee. She defied him. Then she took over the living room, put on her relaxation tapes and buried herself in her work. That night she slept in Jordan’s room, and the next night too.

  All that was on her mind as she punched in the code, waited for the gate to swing back, and turned into the long, familiar Da Ros drive. The gate closed automatically behind her and she felt the flutter in her stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as usual—she was in too much of a hurry to dwell on it and she was preoccupied with Delaney and the wall and too many other things to count. She did take what had now become the standard precaution of dialing Darlene, the receptionist at the office, to tell her she’d just entered the Da Ros property. They’d agreed on a fifteen-minute time limit—no lingering anymore, no daydreaming, no letting the house cast its spell. If Kyra didn’t get back to Darlene at the end of those fifteen minutes to say she was leaving, Darlene would dial 911. Still, as Kyra cruised slowly up the drive, she was intensely aware of everything around her—it had been almost three weeks now, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that had come over her that night when she understood just how vulnerable she was out here in the middle of nowhere. And in a way, she didn’t want to shake it. Get complacent, and you become a statistic.

  The house emerged through the trees, the front windows struck with light. She softened when she saw it. The place was something, after all, one of a kind, the fairy-tale castle you see on the underside of your eyelids when you close your eyes and dream. And it was hers in a way no other had ever been, white elephant or not. She’d seen it happen a thousand times with her buyers, that look in their eyes, that click of recognition. Well, this was her click of recognition, the place she would have bought if she was in the market. And yes, Delaney, she thought, I’d wall it in with seven feet of cinder block and stucco, that’s the first thing I’d do.

  Kyra swung round in the driveway, the car facing the way she’d just come, and before she switched off the engine she took a good long penetrating look out across the lawns and into the trees at the edge of the property. Then she lowered the window and listened. All was still. There was no breeze, no sound anywhere. The shrubs and trees hung against the backdrop of the mountains as if they’d been painted in place, flat and two-dimensional, and the mountains themselves seemed as lifeless as the mountains of the moon. Kyra stepped out of the car
, leaving the door open behind her as a precaution.

  Nothing’s going to happen, she told herself as she strode up the walk. They were hikers, that was all. And if they weren’t, well, they were gone now and wouldn’t be back. She concentrated on the little things: the way the grass had been hand-clipped between the flag-stones, the care with which the flowerbeds had been mulched and the shrubs trimmed. She saw that the oleander and crape myrtle were in bloom, and the bed of clivia beneath the library windows. Everything was as it should be, nothing amiss, nothing forgotten. She’d have to remember to compliment the gardener.

  Inside too: everything looked fine. None of the zones had been tampered with and the timed, lights had already switched on in the kitchen and the dining room. There were no realtors’ cards on the table in the foyer, and that was a disappointment, a continuing disappointment, but then it would take the right buyer to appreciate the place, and it was bound to move, it was, sure it was—especially if she could convince Patricia Da Ros to drop the price. She checked her watch: five minutes gone. She made a quick circuit of the house—no need to kill herself since nobody had shown the place—then returned to the entrance hall, punched in the alarm code and stepped back out on the porch. One trip round the back and she’d be on her way.