Acts of God Read Online Free

them. John Tucker had two.
    The sergeant called Red Cross headquarters and told them they were staying out another hour. “Volunteers numbers 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and me, Sergeant Dooley Williams. Ten-four.”
    â€œWhere do we start?” Hardin asked.
    â€œAt the first house on the block and work our way around the four sides. We didn’t look all the way into the middle of the cul-de-sac because we found the bodies. Zigzag into the center when you can. Spread out.”
    Hardin had been walking alone through the debris for twenty minutes when he saw the piece of cloth. It looked like a colored square. He drew nearer and saw that it was a cloth doll in the shape of a giraffe. He picked it up. It was soaking wet like everything in the debris. He wrung it out, then stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket. He speeded up, stepping through the broken boards and nails and bricks and the long branches of a fallen oak tree. He pushed apart the branches and then he began to scream. “Over here, Marie, Sergeant Williams, a baby, it’s a baby.”
    He reached down into the branches, which had fallen on a mattress, and picked up a big, fat baby boy dressed only in a diaper and a torn white shirt.
    He picked up the child and held it against his denim jacket. He held it as close as he dared. Its eyes were open. It was breathing. A living, breathing baby boy in a soaking wet diaper. He kept holding it against his shoulder, only once moving it enough so he could be sure it was still breathing. Then Marie was there and Sergeant Williams right behind her. The others were moving toward them, coming from four directions.
    The sergeant called the Red Cross trailer. While they waited for help they stood in a circle with their bodies around the child, barely able to speak in the wonder of their find.
    â€œHe isn’t crying,” Marie said. “He should be crying.”
    â€œHe’s in shock,” the sergeant said. “He’ll be okay. He’s breathing. He’ll be okay.”
    Marie pulled off her windbreaker and her blue Izod shirt and put the shirt on the baby and pulled off the soaking wet diaper and tied her windbreaker around the baby’s legs.
    John Tucker took off his football jersey and put it on Marie and they all moved closer to keep the baby warm.
    â€œThe wind blew him here,” Tommie Anne said. “He flew here on the wind.”
    â€œWhy isn’t he hurt?” Marie said twice. “How did he land?”
    â€œThey’re flexible,” Sergeant Dooley Williams said. “Babies are real flexible from being curled up in the womb while their bones are growing.” Marie had the baby now cuddled up in her arms in her blue Izod shirt and the windbreaker, cuddled up against John Tucker’s Fayetteville High School football jersey. He was a running back. Hardin was a kicker. He kicked the field goals and he was very good at kicking them. He didn’t know why he could kick them. He just could and he practiced hours a week to make sure he didn’t lose the gift.
    They all stood there in the brilliantly clean, rain-cooled and rain-scrubbed air, close around the baby, barely daring to talk about what was happening.
    The baby began to cry. Sergeant Williams called the Red Cross again. “Get someone over here,” he yelled into the phone. “We have a baby here. A living baby. Corner of Chestnut and something. You’ll see us. You can see us.”
    The baby began to cry louder. Sergeant Williams pulled a cookie out of his pocket and broke off a piece and handed it to Marie to give the baby. “He’s big enough to eat,” he said. “I’ve got kids. I know about such things.”
    Police cars were arriving from three directions with their sirens running. Men were running toward them. A very large woman in a police uniform got there first and took the baby from Marie.
    The baby’s name was Rafael and his father was alive. His