Read Online Tarnished Image by Alton L. Gansky - Free Book Online Page A

God, but Mama had. She had said, “When you’re sad or frightened, pray. There’s power in the prayer.” Twice a month, Mama would go to a little church that was a twenty-minute walk away. The people met in a small, old building with walls covered in peeling white paint. They prayed there too. When Mama had first become ill, Angelina prayed. She prayed hard. She prayed often. But even so, Mama died. Angelina hadn’t prayed since.
    At first she had been angry with God. How could He take her mother? He was God, what did He need with her? Angelina needed her Mama more than God did. Now that months had passed, she no longer felt that way. She still missed Mama, but she was no longer angry with God. She didn’t know when that change had happened, but it had. Now she was beginning to pray again. Would it be right to pray for a new mother for herself and a new wife for Papa? Perhaps God would understand.
    A gust of warm wind startled Angelina. Sand blew past her feet and stung her bare legs. Quickly she shut her eyes and raised her arms to cover her face. It was blowing harder now, swirling, twisting. She could hear a faint moan as the wind blew past her ears. Was this God talking?
    Seconds later the wind was gone. Angelina looked at the other children as they stood in the surf. They too had covered their eyes against the sudden breeze. Now that the breeze was gone, they looked at each other and resumed their play.
    Odd
, Angelina thought.
I don’t think I like that.
Shelooked in the direction from which the wind had come, but could see only boats on the ocean and large billowy clouds in the sky.
    Juanita had said that Mama lived with the angels above the clouds. The thought made Angelina happy. A new warmth filled her. Except Mama wouldn’t live above those clouds. Mama liked pretty things, and the distant clouds were dark and puffy and looked like old bruises.
    No, Mama wouldn’t live above those clouds.

    David pushed the play button on the remote for the fourth time in the last twenty minutes. He was seated behind the custom teak desk that stood near the large picture windows that made two of the four walls of his office. Across from the desk and on the opposite wall was an entertainment center that housed a large-screen television. The television was a tool, not a luxury. Barringston Relief was a global operation, and the monitoring of international news necessary. In addition to that, many reports from relief workers abroad came via video. This allowed the staff not only to read or to hear a report, but to see events with their own eyes. Consequently, every executive office was equipped with a television and VCR.
    No sound came from the television; David had muted it, preferring instead to take in the images without the voice of the aircraft’s passengers. He was watching the same video that had been played in the conference room. The communications department routinely recorded such special broadcasts and distributed them to those departments that might be affected by the news.
    David was in awe of what he was seeing. Despite thevisual proof before his eyes, he was having trouble believing that such a monster could rear its head so quickly and cause so much damage. It was, after all, just water. He knew the illogic of that thought. Osborn Scott had made it very clear that water was dangerous in many situations. David had seen news coverage of floods in the Midwest that had literally carried two-story houses for miles before depositing them, broken and twisted, along a muddy bank. In essence, this tsunami was a gigantic flood that had traveled through the ocean at five hundred miles per hour and impacted the shore at over seventy miles an hour. At that speed, water was not the soft, giving liquid that people used every day—it was a wall nearly as solid as brick.
    A knock on the door jarred David from his thoughts. “Come in,” he shouted as he pressed the pause button on the remote. Timmy peeked around the corner.