Outrun the Moon(93)

“I told you, he’s my best prospect.” Her voice lifts with frustration. “My brother gets the restaurant. How else am I to make my way?”

“What I think,” I say slowly, “is that you know many ways to cook a noodle.”

We approach a pair of soldiers rummaging through a leather trunk as the owner stands by, and it provides a convenient end to further discussion on the subject. There’s a track mark in the soot from where the man dragged his trunk down the sidewalk. One soldier holds up a child’s stuffed bear, which is missing most of its parts but still managed to hold onto its fur. Not finding any purloined goods, the soldier waves for him to move on. The sight of the old man gently tucking the bear back among his clothes makes me want to give those soldiers a good dressing-down.

I tap Winter with my heels and move us along. A part of me understands the need to keep order, but another part worries that we are being led to fear the wrong things.

It’s just like Chinatown and all the laws passed to contain us. We were never the enemy. The enemy was our country’s own fear.

“Seems like insult on injury to have one’s home opened like that for the whole world to see,” says Francesca, directing my attention to a house whose front facade has completely fallen away. Save for a few broken lamps and scattered books, each room remains almost intact. On the ground floor, a chandelier swings over a grand piano, and a wall clock is frozen at 5:12. On the top floor, unmade beds and dressers with drawers pulled open keep the panic of the moment when the earthquake hit frozen in time.

“Yes. But I bet whoever lived there doesn’t care about that anymore. It seems the quake made us all rethink what’s important.”

We pass a store selling musical instruments. As with most stores on this street, the windows have shattered, leaving the instruments ripe for the picking in the display windows. But no one seems to have any use for a brass tuba, or a clarinet. There’s even a bugle, shiny enough for the angel Gabriel himself to play.

We approach Market Street, where the air seems to darken and clot. Dazed citizens stream around us, along with a handful of automobiles, but few seem to be going our direction. Something bad must be ahead.

I feel for Jack’s penny, still in my pocket. It may not be lucky, but its presence has remained a comfort, even a reminder that luck isn’t something to bank on. To the contrary, the only way to overcome hard luck is hard work.

A woman wails, “She’s gone! She’s gone!”

Another voice wails, “Blue! Bah-loo!” A small child points at the sky, which is so thick with smoke, you could drag a finger through it.

His mother tries to pull him along. “It’s not blue. It’s black, dear. Come along now, come along!” She yanks his arm.

“Blue!” he insists, plopping down on the sidewalk.

Winter moves us past them, and I don’t see what becomes of the little boy who the sky let down.

We cross Market, and move down Valencia into South of the Slot.

It’s as if the dragon and the tiger waged their final battle here, breathing fires across rooftops, stomping big holes in the ground, biting chunks out of buildings. The earth is a jigsaw puzzle, with cable car tracks sticking up at dangerous angles, and dust bleeding from every crack.

Several houses have sunk completely, all except their chimneys, stony periscopes into the chaos. Firemen and civilians run at the buildings that have not yet caught fire, stamping out smoke with wet sacks. The dragon’s hot breath is everywhere. A living, wheezing hell.

I don’t see any sign of Ba or his cart through the thick veils of debris. Winter stumbles on the loosened cement, but recovers. After several more paces, the Valencia Hotel appears in the distance, like a black smudge in a grainy world without color. Dark figures scurry around the front of the hotel, which appears much shorter than the four stories I remember.

Four thumbs its nose at me again.

I urge Winter forward, not sure I believe my eyes. The whole hotel seems to have bent so the top floor hangs over the street, like someone inspecting the rug for fleas.

“It doesn’t look possible,” Francesca breathes by my ear.

The building next to the Valencia has caught fire, and men scramble to put it out. Bottles of wine are poured on feed sacks, which are then used to flog any embers. “Isn’t wine flammable?” I ask.

“Not the cheap stuff.”

We cut a circle around them. There’s too much destruction for my horrified eyes to make sense of it all. Winter throws back his head at the louder noises, and I pray he does not bolt.

“Look!” Francesca points at a building across from the Valencia. At least, it was once a building. Now it is only a foundation made from piles of wall fragments and bricks. She inhales sharply and points. “Oh, Mercy.”

A flash of red protrudes out of a pile of rubble. The tongue of a cart!

With a cry, I slide off Winter and run toward the pile. Each labored breath feels like a hot sock stuffed down my throat. I collapse at the pile, gasping, then pry off the smaller bricks, one by one. The rough concrete tears at my skin, but I hardly feel it.

A gray cap peeks out among the rubble.

“Ba!” I scream, my eyes beginning to water. “No!” The bricks that have crushed him are the size of hay bales, but I continue to claw. If I could just—He can’t be gone!

“I’m here now, Ba. Hold on. I’m here.” I shove and strain at the cement blocks, trying to get the top one to budge.