Earthquake I.D. by John Domini Page A

allowed the kids to ride out past the gate to Hades.
    If she intended to destroy this family, she had to make the trip. She had to get a whiff of the air outside their cliff-top bubble.
    But how was Barbara going to clear her head here at the Refugee Center? At this a lake of rippling nylon, spread across one of the broader hollows in the landscape—nylon or some other faded synthetic, all of it rippling from the neediness beneath the fabric? Again a crowd greeted the van. Again the gang gathered with hands in the air, waving, seeking, and one or two thumped the vehicle’s windows and panels. There were shouts, too, rough open syllables, vaguely Italian. Barb couldn’t pick out the words at first. Faced with a crowd like this, it took an effort just to realize that no one held up any bits or pieces for Paul to bless. No one carried church bric-a-brac. Yet the terremotati filled the parking lot, a patch of flattened grass. From there the tent city ran down-slope, here and there revealing a nylon cord or an aluminum pole, or a scrap of ground the color of driftwood, or—something else again—a flutter of laundry in party colors. Barbara thought of the old-city warrens in which she’d spent her mornings, this past week. From an occasional tent-corner there trailed a few bright ribbons, as colorful as the laundry. The mother even spotted something like one of the prayer ojetti , perhaps halfway downhill. This appeared to be a group photograph, a collage in an ornate frame, under a corrugated plastic rain cover of dirty turquoise.
    Also here and there played shadows, children still intent on their games. The ones who’d climbed into the sunlight, the flat space surrounding the van, tended to be the parents or grandparents. Their crumpled faces came in a dozen shades of black, under unkempt Afros or wobbly dreadlocks.
    The mother had a question. “These are mostly illegals, right?” She looked to Kahlberg. “I’m saying, do they even have a work visa?”
    The officer went on checking the crowd. “The epicenter was outside the city, in the periphery. That’s where you get the more transient population.”
    â€œAnd the—the radicals? On the hunger strike?”
    The liaison shot her a glance. “One has to expect,” he said slowly, “a certain amount of political tension in marginalized populations. One has to consider, as well, that many of these people arrive on these shores with criminal intent. Their sole purpose for being in Italy is to generate as much income as they can. Chris, big shooter. You know what the old Silk-man’s talking about, don’t you?”
    The shifts of tone sounded doubly spooky under the blurred shouts from outside.
    â€œLibya used to be an Italian colony,” Chris said. “Ethiopia too.”
    â€œAnd Ethiopia—” Barbara began.
    â€œSee,” Chris said. “Mussolini was all fired up about a new Roman Empire.”
    â€œChris, Ethiopia is starving.” Barbara tried not to glare.
    â€œA seriously depressed economy, big shooter, over a disturbingly long term.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m saying.” She concentrated on the Lieutenant-Major. “So far as the folks outside are concerned, Naples is the land of milk and honey.”
    Kahlberg stared back mildly.
    â€œYou know,” John Junior said, “when Mom was a kid, she couldn’t tell the difference between the pictures of Jesus and the pictures of Che Guevara.”
    â€œStop it, stop it.” Barbara whipped around; the teens were grinning, slapping hands. “If I hear one more stupid sarky remark—”
    â€œThere’s Papa!” shouted Sylvia. “Papa, right there!”
    Right there. Jay changed the whole shape of the scene beyond the windows. The man had his vice-president’s swagger even here, and as he approached the Humvee you could see he was bigger than nine tenths of the brown crowd