Jose must have guessed right because after another five twisting miles they topped a rise that looked down over a river valley punctuated by a town of mud, slat, and adobe buildings set adjacent to a modern factory. Metal piping wrapped itself around a white building that took up nearly half the space of the entire town. A lifeline of high-tension power lines stretched from the factory upstream, presumably to a dam, along a trickle of mountain-blue water that glittered like a ribbon of steel.

Where the blue sky and water met the factory, nature came undone. Dual metal stacks churned out a diabolical plume of their own, rivaling their city cousins, and several foaming discharges left the stream shabby with filth. The plumes, which rose like twin spires, quickly dispersed to the south, following the strangled yellow river and cloaking the valley in an unending cloud of sulfur, carbon dioxide, and soot.

"Isodora said something about a soap factory," Casey said, climbing back in beside him.

"That's a hell of a mess to make soap," Jose said, taking his foot off the brake and beginning the bumpy descent.

They rolled to town on the factory road, passing storefronts haunted by gaunt dirty keepers who stared at the jeep. Women in soiled white dresses, mostly hatless, made up the sparse foot traffic in the streets. The church spire stood taller than anything this side of the factory. With the dark smoke as its backdrop, the ancient bronze cross glowed pale green. A blackened bell lurked in the tower like a watchful eye. The rim beneath the tower's arched opening wept with the mess of pigeons. Jose parked the jeep and they mounted stone steps worn smooth by countless feet.

He pushed open one of the massive wood doors clasped in iron and allowed Casey to enter first. Cool air and the smells of incense and burned candles welcomed her. Above the altar glowed a single arched pane of stained glass. Widows in black sat scattered about, hunched over or kneeling with their gnarled hands clasped. Chanting over them, a priest in a white hat invoked God in Spanish too rapid and low for Casey to catch even a word. From the corner of her eye she saw Jose cross himself and briefly dip his chin. From the wall, faded images of saints looked down from their frescoes and the bullet holes, chips, and cracks bestowed upon them from a time before Texas earned its statehood. Casey and Jose stood waiting for Mass to end, then swam upstream against the current of black crepe to meet the priest.

Jose spoke Spanish to the priest, whose eyes flickered between Jose and Casey before he inclined his head toward Casey as if to greet her. When Jose mentioned Isodora's name, the priest considered them thoughtfully for a minute with dark smoldering eyes, then launched into an explanation that painted a bitter look on Jose's face.

"What?" Casey asked.

"When the factory came, they used pamphlets to spread word of jobs all across the countryside, all the way down to Costa Rica. Those the factory pays get paid double what you could get anywhere else, but the acid burns the workers' skin and the men drop dead young from cancer. But with the money the factory pays, every time a man or woman goes down, there are hundreds more waiting in these huts out back for the chance to take their place."

"What huts?" Casey asked.

Jose shrugged and said, "I don't know. He said 'huts,' like a hovel."

Casey swallowed and asked about Isodora.

"She showed up the way a lot of them do," Jose said quietly. "They hire a ride to Higueras from the airport. Crooked drivers bring them to the ridge, rob them of everything they own, and send them walking down into town. By the time they get here, the crooks are long gone."

The priest chattered in an undertone.

"Isodora did better than most," Jose said. "He says they left the baby alone and for that he praises God."

Casey's mouth dropped open. She directed her gaze at the priest, who nodded appreciatively and said something she didn't understand.

"He says lots of small towns across Mexico have American factories in them and he thanks God they all have churches to help the people," Jose said. "He says as bad as the soap factory is, there's worse."

"Worse?" Casey asked. "How?"

Jose raised an eyebrow. He turned and spoke with the priest, back and forth for a minute or so. The priest grew quite animated before Jose finally turned back to Casey.

Jose frowned and said, "He says some of the peasants who come in from the north say there's a drug factory where they use people for experiments."

"Drugs like cocaine and heroin?" Casey asked.

"No," Jose said, "I think like Lipitor and Paxil. He says they bring them in by the truckload from the States."

"Human guinea pigs?" Casey said. "Trucking people from America? That's crazy. That can't be true. It's some wives' tale."

"Yeah, well, this isn't the US," Jose said. "Crazy there and crazy here are two different things."

"It's the twenty-first century, though," Casey said.

Jose just stared at her.

Casey turned to the priest and studied him until he crossed himself, nodded, and motioned for them to follow him.

Several acres of packed dirt made up the church's backyard. Like mushrooms after a rain, hundreds of crate-wood and cardboard huts populated the ground where two main paths led to latrines by the back. An eight-foot whitewashed wall encompassed the yard, protecting the people from more thieves, but offering no shield against the factory managers who would rob them of their health. In the dust, children in soiled frocks squealed with delight, playing games with chicken bones, stones, and greasy lengths of rawhide while babies shrieked with hunger beneath the folds of their mothers' Indian blankets.

As the priest swished past in his robes, the destitute people quieted and bent their heads. Halfway down the track to the left they pulled up short beside a muddy hut roofed with a rusted sheet of corrugated metal. A small army of flies milled about on a sunlit patch of the dirt-stained wall, fearlessly vying for a drink from human eyes, noses, and mouths. Casey gasped and thrashed the air, ceasing only when they had entered the hut to find Isodora lying atop a pile of rags in the corner, staring blankly at the ceiling with a tearstained face. She cradled the baby in her arms, its sleep rendered fitful by a small cloud of flies.

"Oh, my God, Isodora," Casey said.

She swept at the flies on the baby and pulled the young mother close, holding her tight and feeling for a sign of life from the baby. Her eyes found Jose and even though her tears distorted his face, she knew he shared her horror. She reached for him and he gripped her hand in his own.

"Come on, Isodora," she said, helping her up. "We're taking you home."

ON THEIR WAY OUT OF TOWN, JOSe PULLED OVER AT A ROADSIDE stand selling pieces of grilled chicken and orange soda in old Fanta bottles, scratched and scarred from years of reuse. The boy behind the cinder-block counter who took their money could only have been six or seven. His arms were little more than stubby claws and Casey stared back behind them at the plumes of smoke, wondering. They sat on a metal bench in the shade of the shack. Isodora tore into the meat, pulling away pieces and slipping them into her little girl's eager mouth.

They wiped their fingers on bits of newspaper and climbed into the jeep. Casey rode in back so that Isodora could huddle up behind the windshield with her baby. Jose slowed for the worst of the bumps and after a while the baby stopped crying and faded off to sleep. They hit the main highway going north at about three in the afternoon. The hot pavement shed its heat, waffling the air. Casey longed for the relative coolness of the dusty and broken country roads. Blue mountains turned green and the road climbed into a pass. At its peak, the air cooled and a field of deep blue smiled down at them from beyond the treetops. The oasis quickly faded as they descended into the waiting reds, browns, and yellows of the wasteland beyond.