Margaret's Ark (10 page)

Michael looked at him with a long-familiar expression of sympathy and restrained impatience. Jack got that look a lot. It hurt more, coming from this man. The angel finally said, “Because sometimes it just doesn’t work that way, Jack.”

“You don't like me, do you?”

Michael closed his eyes. “I'm an angel of God. I love everyone.”

Jack scuffed his feet on the shiny elevator floor. “You don't act like you love everyone.”

The angel began to say something in reply, caught himself and fell silent. A trace of a smile worked itself onto his dark face. He only shook his head. The elevator doors opened. Across the abandoned entrance foyer, the world outside was dark. The guard at the night desk hung up the phone and sat straight in his chair, staring intently at the elevator.

Looking for me
, Jack thought. He remembered what the policeman had said about taking him to jail, and Jack felt a growing terror. He couldn't be taken away. God needed him.

“That's why I'm here, my friend,” Michael said, then ushered him past the guard and through the revolving doors. They disappeared into the cool, dark Boston morning.

*     *     *

Margaret Carboneau stood on the Lavish town common, watching the second of the two delivery trucks drive away, and tried to forget the looks of derision the men had given her. Word traveled fast. Beside her lay piles of lumber - forty-eight sheets of three-quarter inch plywood in one pile, forty-eight more in another. Stacks of two-by-fours, two-by-twos and one-by-ones. Boxes of nails. More boxes of nails. Twenty-three three-gallon jugs of boaters’ glue, twelve rolls of seam tape and two more piles of miscellaneous items including the tools she would need like the hand-held jigsaw and circular saw she'd bought yesterday. Vince had a lot of tools in the cellar but they didn’t include those.

The man from the delivery truck had explained the shipment of cinderblocks would be arriving separately, that they subcontracted that item and delivery came from a masonry plant in San Maria.

Plywood and glue. With this Margaret was supposed to build an ark to carry thirty people above a flood. She watched Katie and Robin running around the wood, whispering excitedly. Plywood and glue, to carry her daughters to safety.

She sat on the grass and dropped her face into her hands. Images from the angel David, every square inch of the ship's construction running through her mind like an eternal movie. She felt like Richard Dreyfus's character in that old movie.
This means something
, he'd said then. She began sobbing, trying to wash away the images with her tears.

God, help me, please. Where do I start? What do I do?

No thunderclap of divine instruction came to her. No angel David to run through his routine again. Just a breeze blowing across the common, lightly caressing the hands covering her face, cooling the tears.

“Mommy?” Robin's voice, a small touch on her shoulder. “I'm sorry, Mommy. We won't touch anything.”

The innocence of the statement sent Margaret into a renewed fit of sobs, until a man's voice broke in.

“Margaret?”

She sniffled once and wiped her face as she pulled her hands away. Marty Santos stood over her but stared at the piles of lumber. The fire chief looked as if he'd like to say more. His mouth opened, then closed.

Margaret cleared her throat and stood up. “Marty, I'm sorry. It's just so overwhelming.” She waved a hand at the wood. “Everything. I'm sorry for lying.” Robin looked between her mother and Marty, then slowly walked back to join her sister waiting a short distance away.

“Don't....” He faltered again. “It wasn't a dream, was it? I really
did
see you out here the other night?”

Margaret nodded. “I guess… yes.”

“Who.... Margaret, what's going on?”

She couldn't tell if he looked nervous or irritated. She told him a condensed version – she didn't have the energy to get into details – but one that she hoped let him understand why she'd deceived him.

When she was finished, Marty remained quiet. Then he turned and walked away, stopped, looked back at the piles of lumber, and returned to stand beside her again.

“Margaret, do you know the least bit about building a ship?”

“No. I mean, not before the dream. God showed me how. I knew what to get, didn't I?”

“Well... plywood? You can't build a boat out of plywood. It'll fall apart.”

Details of the ship's construction hadn't waned in their circuitous journey through her brain. She saw everything, the finished product. The feeling was stronger now, building to some cerebral climax threatening to send her into madness if she didn't act soon. God's way of screaming,
Get your ass in gear, woman
! It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“It will float. If we build it right, it will float. God said it will.” She stood straighter, trying to sound convinced. “So it will.”

Marty tried not to smile. Or was it a grimace? He thought she was nuts. “What do you mean,
we
?”

Margaret shrugged. “I could use the help. At least for a while, until I can find others to join me. I mean, unless there's something else you have to be doing. I assume you're on duty, but - “

Marty raised his hand and said quietly, “Okay; okay. You're scaring me, Maggie. I've never heard you ramble like this before. I'm not saying I believe you. But I guess I can help. For a while, at least. Edgecomb is a jerk and will probably chew me out for doing this, but you know the old saying. Don't ask and they might not say 'no'.”

Adrian Edgecomb was one of Lavish’s three selectmen. The other two usually cow-towed to his belligerence so in effect he ran the town. Until this moment, it never occurred to her that someone might actually take some action against a person building a boat in the center of town.

Two other firemen approached casually from the station. Unlike the police who could cruise around town between calls, firefighters tended to hang at the station during any down time. They were always ready for a distraction.

The younger man, Ben, crouched down to listen to the girls as they gave him the basic run-down of events. Seeing them talk to him like that made Margaret realize she'd neglected one of their old pleasures from the time before Vince died. They loved visiting the station, being spoiled rotten by those on duty. As if on cue, Ben produced a tootsie roll, probably left over from their recent “Traffic Light” fund-raiser.

The second man was shorter, with a stereotypical bushy moustache. Margaret nodded to him, trying to recall his name. He nodded back almost imperceptibly. His eyes studied her for a long moment. It was the same look the men from the delivery truck had worn.

“Building an ark?” he finally asked. The eyes burned into her.

The chief tried to sound conciliatory. “We listen to the news, Margaret. This shit is the talk of the country. Oh, sorry, girls.”

Robin looked up. “Is 'shit' a bad word, Mommy?”

“Yes.”

Marty faced the other men. “Listen, guys. Like it or not, Margaret's planning on building this thing. She's alone,” he lowered his voice but not so much as to keep Margaret from hearing, “and she's Vince's widow.” Then, louder, “What say we help get her started at least?”

The man with the moustache glowered at her, then nodded his head and walked towards the lumber. Ben rose and said, “They're not going to like this too much.”

“Well, for the moment, I don’t really care,” Marty said. Ben hesitated and looked over his shoulder towards the town offices, then joined in undoing the metal braces around the woodpiles. The chief turned back to Margaret. “Well, you've got me, Ben and Al for a while at least.”
His name is Al; thank you, Marty
. “So? Where do we start?”

Margaret wanted to cry again. As much of an insane nightmare as this seemed, God was providing. He wasn't going to make her to fend for herself. Not today, at least. The details of the ship's construction played through her mind. She smiled and said with an authority in her voice that surprised not only her but the others, too, “Get those sheets of plywood separated. Lay six of them out...” she scanned the area. “...there. It's pretty flat. We need to build the floor first, then curve it down.”

She walked around the open green space between the lumber and the road running in front of station. “Here,” she said. “The ark will be forty-eight feet long, sixteen feet wide.” She raised and lowered her arms like a conductor. “Lay the sheets here first, two-by-two.”

Al looked up and mumbled, “No pun intended, I assume.”

She blushed. “No pun intended....”

*     *     *

“The truck will arrive sometime between noon and four o'clock on Tuesday. Sorry we can't be more specific.” Holly stapled the credit card receipt to the packing slip. The man nodded and moved off towards the front of the store.

“Another Jesus freak?”

Holly jumped at Clay's voice behind her. How long had he been standing there? She turned around and said, “No, just a regular order.”

“Just a regular order,” he repeated to himself. His lips tightened and the vein in his neck throbbed. Seeing these signs at home would send her on a stream of apologies, whispered, calming tones, to quell the storm before it grew. She felt safer at work. Most of Clay's other employees knew the look, too, and avoided it. He took the store's copy of the packing slip from her and scanned the list.

“Looks like he's doing a basement,” Clay said. He enjoyed guessing what projects customers were up to by analyzing what they bought. No one dared correct him, though the man who'd just left had mentioned water damage in a spare bedroom. Holly nodded. “I'll bet you're right.”

Clay stared at her, trying to decide if she was being condescending. He laid the sheet on the counter and said, “You scheduled the Carboneau’s order for first delivery.”

“So? Lavish is the next town over. It's the first place they'd hit.”
Careful
, she thought. In order to knock herself down a notch, Holly broke eye contact and slid the paper into the shipper's folder.

“So?” he repeated. “Bad enough there's going to be a run on our inventory by these nutcases, not that it's hurting business any. But I don't want to start thinking you're doing them any favors. Makes me think you believe this stuff.”

“You don't think it's a little weird that so many - “

“I think it's very weird,” he interrupted. “You don’t think so?”

She shrugged, afraid of answering either way. He took it as an affirmative and moved closer to her, as if preparing to kiss her, which she knew he'd never do at work. When he spoke, she smelled chocolate on his breath. “Don't even start,” he whispered. “You going to tell me next
you
had one of those dreams?”

Holly shook her head. She hadn't, and at this moment was very grateful for that. She’d have had a hard time lying when he was this close. Clay knew it.

He nodded, staying his ground a little longer. “Good. Did that woman yesterday ask you to join her?”

Time to lie after all, Holly realized. She looked directly into her boyfriend’s pale blue eyes and said, “No, Clay. I'm guessing she was too busy getting the order in. I didn't understand what it was all about until you figured it out later.”

Keep the gaze on him
, she thought,
make him look at my eyes
. She needed to keep him from seeing the splotch of red on her neck, which showed itself like a birthmark whenever she tried to lie.

Her appeal to his ego worked. He nodded more vigorously, stepped one pace back. He looked around the store. Holly kept the
I'm Lying
mark on her neck turned away.

“If any of them come in again, just take their money and keep it business only. No more than that.”

“No problem.”

He moved around from behind the counter and strutted away. He strutted a lot.

Every time she had one of these close encounters with Clay's dark side, here or at home, Holly felt an overwhelming need to seek out Connor and hold her baby close. The thought sent her breasts to aching, though it wouldn't be time to pump for another hour. Interesting the way a mother's body reacted when she thought of her child. Maybe she'd go home at lunch and feed him herself, though Dot -- her best friend and babysitter -- would remind her that would waste yesterday's milk in the refrigerator at home. Throw off the whole schedule. She tried to ignore the sensation, and hoped she could last another half hour until break.

*     *     *

The base of the hull was a forty-eight foot rectangular plank of plywood, four sheets wide, twelve sheets long. They'd laid it out and attached each section with white nylon seam tape at the adjoining edges, then covered everything with the boating glue. They'd finished the initial layout by two-thirty. As Ben and the girls ventured off to get late-lunch sandwiches for everyone, Margaret led Marty, Al, and two other firemen (one being off-duty but having come by to check his schedule then deciding to stay and help), in laying out a second layer of sheets, staggered so that the seams of the first were covered by the second. Glue again, seam tape all around, then more glue to seal the wood.

Al 's moustache was caked in sawdust as he finished cutting off the protruding half-length of the upper and lower sheets. Along the outer edges of this plank, thin half-inch beams were glued then nailed. Katie and Robin, sporting oversized work gloves, carried the scrap wood to a new pile for use later. A considerable charge was going to hit Margaret's credit card for the supplies. She couldn't waste anything if she could help it. She expected a message at home from the bank asking if the sudden spike in purchases was legitimate. She wondered how many other sudden purchases were being made from home supply stores around the country.

The finished construction had been raised up on the cinderblocks which had been delivered an hour after the work began. The blocks were stacked five-high at each end, at what would be the bow and stern. More concrete blocks were placed on top, dead center, of the wood. When Marty put down the last of them, the forty-eight foot panel buckled under the concentrated weight, bowing until it touched the grass. It didn't happen all at once, as the half-inch beaming along the sides added some tensile strength to the structure. When it
did
touch bottom, Margaret felt a rush of excitement. The bottom hull was now curved front to back, a prelude to the finished shape.