One Amazing Thing Read Free Page A

could through the rubble and grabbed their shoulders. The older man allowed himself to be pulled away, but the younger one flung him off with a curse and wrenched at the handle again.
    A splinter of rage jabbed Cameron’s chest, but he tried to keep his voice calm. “The door may be what’s holding up this part of the room. If you open it suddenly, something else might collapse. Also, there may be a pile of rubble pressing against the door from the outside. If it’s dislodged, who knows what could happen. We will try to open it—but we have to figure out how to do it right.”
    Something glistened on the young man’s cheekbone. In the inadequate light, Cameron couldn’t tell if it was blood or tears. Butthere was no mistaking the fury in his shoulders and arms, the lowered angle of his head. He came at Cameron, propelled by compressed fear. Cameron had seen men like him before. They could hurt you something serious. He stepped to the side and brought the edge of his hand down on the base of the man’s skull—but carefully. Such a blow could snap the neck vertebrae. The men he had faced elsewhere would have known to twist away, to block with an upraised elbow. But this boy—that’s how Cameron suddenly thought of him, a boy younger than his son would have been, had he lived—took the full force of the blow and fell facedown on the floor and stayed there. In the shadows someone whimpered, then stopped abruptly, as though a palm had been clapped over a mouth. Cameron massaged his hand. He was out of shape. He had let himself go intentionally, hoping never again to have to do things like what he had just done.
    “I’m sorry I had to hit him,” he called into the semidarkness. “He wouldn’t listen.” He repressed the urge to add, I am not a violent man . A declaration like that would only spook them further. He held up his hands to show that they held nothing except the minuscule flashlight. “Please don’t be afraid of me,” he said. He wanted to tell them what he’d seen in Mexico, where he’d gone to help after an earthquake in one of his attempts at expiation. People who had been too impatient and had tried to dig themselves out of the rubble often died as more debris collapsed on them, while people who had stayed put—sometimes without food and water for a week or more—were finally, miraculously rescued. But it was too much to try to explain, and the memory of all the mangled bodies he hadn’t been able to save were too painful. He merely said, “If he’d yanked that door open like he was aiming to, he could have killed us all.”
    Silence pressed upon him, unconvinced, unforgiving. Finally,from underneath a chair, a woman’s voice asked, “So did you kill him instead?”
    Cameron let out the breath he’d been holding unawares and said, “Not at all! He’s stirring already. See for yourself. You can come out from under your chair. It seems safe enough.”
    “I can’t move too well,” the woman said. “I think I’ve broken my arm. Can you help me?”
    He felt a loosening in his shoulder blades at the last words, the corners of his mouth quirking up. Who would have thought he would find anything to smile about in a time like this? He stepped forward.
    “I’ll sure give it a try,” he said.
     
    MALATHI GRIPPED THE EDGE OF THE CUSTOMER-SERVICE COUNTER with her left hand, carefully avoiding the broken glass that littered it, and raised herself surreptitiously off the floor, just enough to check on what the black man was doing. She needed to fix her sari, which had fallen off her shoulder, but her right hand was pressed tightly against her mouth, mashing her lips against her teeth, and she dared not relax it. Because then she wouldn’t be able to keep in the cry that was also a supplication— Krishna Krishna Krishna —but most of all a prayer for forgiveness, for she might have been the reason the earthquake had happened. And if the black man heard her, he might decide to turn around