John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

She had to ask. “So what happens now?”

The chaplain kissed the silk and hung it around his neck, evening its ends around his dangling T, and explained that he worked freeform. “As far as I’m concerned, the terremotati can do anything this side of animal sacrifice.”

“What? What are you saying? Is this a church service or not?”

“Mrs. Lulucita. In here, it’s new heaven, new earth. If someone’s in the camp, that means they’ve seen their world destroyed twice over.”

“But, seems to me, that’s why they need something reliable. If you show them one God one day and another the next, you’ll only confuse them.”

Somebody laughed, somebody American. American, with an accent more Southern than the minister’s. Silky Kahlberg, sure, and Barb couldn’t suppress a scowl. She hadn’t been joking. She wondered whether, just by coming to the Center, she’d asked for everything and the kitchen sink.

The NATO liaison had already worked his way to the front of the tent. He’d made it through the congregation even though he was walking backwards, cupping to his stomach one end of some long stick of furniture. In his ice-cream suit, and still chuckling, he backed past Barb. Behind him, carrying the other end of the piece, came Paul. The boy acted on the officer like an anchor, stumbling, never knowing where to put his feet. As his mother watched, the eleven-year-old had to stop and hike up his carpenter’s belt. Yet Barb remained where she was, her hand in the gypsy’s. When she wasn’t watching Paul, she eyed the two reporters who trailed him.

Of course Silky had brought along the remaining media. He and the Americanino toted a great visual, a freshly constructed cross. Freshly treated pine on a simple box stand, it went up tall and bare as chaplain Interstate.

“We heard you could use one of these,” the liaison announced.

Barb looked the thing over. Insta-Icon, the cross revealed uneven stain along its upright and furred sanding at the corners. Then there was her child, his face drained, his gaze intent. He wasn’t two feet from his mother and her quake victim, yet he squinted at the two women as if trying to make out some distant temple frieze.

Kahlberg turned and squatted beside Barbara, finger-combing his hair. “A little lay ministry?”

Barb made no answer. Paul too ignored everyone other than her and the invalid. The boy hardly gave a jiggle when Interstate opened the service by clapping him on the shoulder and loudly giving thanks.

“You don’t know the good you do,” the chaplain declaimed. ‘You and this gift from God you call a family.”

“Mn,” the Lieutenant-Major whispered, “if I were you, Ma’am, I’d be careful about the way Paul’s looking at that girl.”

What? Barbara’s grip on the gypsy’s hand retightened.

“A girl like her, you’d never find her in church before the quake, know what I mean? Not unless there were a hundred Euro in it.”

Now the mother was angry plain and simple — her first entirely clear and justifiable emotion all morning.

“Fact is, anybody who comes to church in this place, he’s playing catch-up ball. These people’re nothing but lowlife.”

Another word and she would’ve clawed out the man’s eyes right there before the altar. But in the next moment Paul stepped away from the cross and the coffee table, away from the preacher. Interstate had let go of him and launched into some swaying prayer, and as the man’s arms rose the boy went down. He knelt between the girl’s useless legs. Clumsy preadolescent though he was, Paul managed this without interference from his tool belt, his movement in fact appeared seamless, and he tugged off his heavy gloves too, he flung them aside, all nothing like the hobbled mess he’d made of coming in. Also he was talking, Barbara’s middle child, though she couldn’t hear what he was saying, muttering, since to see him like this, easing himself between those young legs, mounting the helpless girl — to see Mr. Paul like this sent the mother’s emotions into whistling new cartwheels, and she herself began to speak.

“Honey,” Barb groaned. “No, no, honey…”

She needed to jump in and she couldn’t even get her hand free. Barbara remained in the gypsy’s grip as she jerked off her chair, or half off, tottering into the NATO man’s cologne. The scent made her eyes prickle.

“The chaplain can handle it,” Kahlberg was saying. “He gets a lot of holy rolling at these things.”

“Mr. Paul.” Barbara touched a hand to the boy’s back, a white slab against the girl’s spangled upper body. “Baby, I’m sorry…”

The hundred-throated prayer around them drowned her out. Not that these strangers needed to hear about it anyway, the trouble Barb recalled, seeing her youngest boy in so nasty an embrace.

“Just a touch,” Paul might’ve said. “A-all she needs is a touch.”

The same as he’d said over his father, a week ago down by the Naples waterfront. But Barbara was thinking of other trouble, worse, back outside New York.

“C-can’t you feel it?” Paul might’ve said. “Can’t you just tell?”

There was also the reek of carpentry, another reminder of downtown. Every alleyway in the centro had some kind of construction going, and with that thought the mother staggered at last off her chair, away from Silky’s cologne. The change in perspective gave her a moment’s relief, she no longer saw her child as a rapist, but on second look Paul’s body-length embrace began to seem, if anything, even more of a nightmare. Barbara glanced at Maddalena, the only other person here who’d been present at Jay’s healing. What had she heard last time, and what did she think now?

The camerawoman was merely doing her job, swinging this way and that under the fluttering purple and lavender. Now she took in the pileup around the wheelchair, now the crowd’s reaction. And DiPio too, though he was a part of the pileup, didn’t seem to realize what the boy could be up to. The doctor showed more concern for the girl, saying something like Easy, please , and nudging the liaison man aside in order to reach towards Paul. When the black-and-white child straightened for a moment to undo the work belt, DiPio caught hold of one narrow shoulder; when Paul pulled free Barbara felt pride. They couldn’t stop her boy. A mother’s pride, fond and blushy, how about that, on top of fear on top of rage on top of guilt — all slashing back and forth under her breastbone, along with thoughts of the other kids, the boys in the hospital and the girls in the kitchen — how about that, a mother’s bedlam?

Around the cross-clutching over the wheelchair the dim tent had grown louder. The foreigners buzzed and the cameras went click , while the preacher had started bawling in mixed languages.

Guarda! Look! L’amore di Dio, sempre nuova! God’s love, forever new!

Well, maybe new, but certainly strange. Once Paul got his shoulder free, he wedged his small hips more deeply between the gypsy’s thighs. He actually pawed the girl. One hand worked around her waist, clutching her unresponsive body up into his, while the other traveled over shawl and neck to face. The doctor bent closer, his own odors tickling Barbara’s nose; his soap had a hint of rose. The more Paul manhandled the girl, the farther stretched the wrinkles on the old man’s face. Then DiPio’s voice started to rise, yet another strain of frenzy in the tent.

“E possibile?” he yelped. “Possibile?”

In Barbara’s hand the gypsy’s grip likewise revealed mixed emotions, shifting and sweating. Her sideways glance, however, revealed something more sophisticated. The eyes remained angular and warlike as ever, but they suggested a touch of amusement, like Somebody get a leash for this puppy . As Paul gripped her you couldn’t help but notice her young breasts, too, her sweetly tapered midsection, and Barbara had to wonder about the wheelchair’s decoration. What was the point of all this tasseled party drapery, all but leopard-skin? And how could the girl within find the fun in today’s muttering assault? Yet Paul did look a little like a puppy, at play across the gypsy’s body. A boy at a game, again. With the hand around the gypsy’s waist he searched for some spot between spine and wheelchair, pulling at her bohemian swaddling.