Margaret's Ark (22 page)

He balanced against the black iron chains strung fence-like before the harbor inlet at Long Wharf. He leaned into every gust, his back to the park and the avenue where he’d met the boy and girl, not remembering anything but knowing he did not want to look in that direction. He faced the waters of the harbor, staring out across the myriad of whitecaps dotting its surface. Far out to sea, the sky was clear and blue. Above and all around him the air whipped itself in frenetic adjustment to the change in pressure a mile from shore. Jack’s ears rang, popped and cleared, tightened again.

As he talked, he paid no heed to the crowd of two-dozen milling nervously behind him. Two benches away, on his right, a brooding young black man watched the events unfold. Jack thought he knew him, but with the excitement of the day could not recall from where.

Pat.

Pat.

Pat. Pat. Pat. Pat pat pat pat pat.

Drops of rain, like tears, fell across Jack's face, ran down the sleeve of his coat. He turned to face the crowd, blinking away a heavy drop that landed in his eye. He breathed in the damp, salty air and exhaled. The raindrops became a slow and steady stream of water from the sky. He screamed and raised his arms.

The rain increased in intensity, became sheets muffling the preacher's voice. “My people!” he shouted. “Feel the rain upon your faces, upon your sins! Behold the power of God!”

No thunder, no flashes of lightning, but as if on cue, the rain thickened to a deluge, falling hard upon the heads of the spectators. Jack laughed and continued his preaching, buffeted by rain. Where it was exposed beneath the wind-swept coat, his shirt saturated with water, warm wetness sticking to his chest. Rain trickled under his belt. He was of the world, and the world would be filled with God's tears, with his sorrow for all mankind. But this was only a warning, Jack shouted. One which must be heeded else all will perish when the flood truly comes.

Most of the crowd had dispersed, looking for shelter. Some crossed Atlantic Avenue, looking for relief inside the marketplace. Others found partial shelter under the vine-laden concourse running through the center of the park. Five people remained, shielding themselves with their hands. One man held aloft a newspaper, its pages peeling away in the wind. A woman struggled as her umbrella flipped inside out.

The rain continued throughout the day. Jack’s hands and feet went numb. Alternately shivering in the wet and sweating from his pacing and preaching, he screamed what words the Lord fed him though the mysterious umbilical from heaven. The crowd increased. More umbrellas, more struggling with the wind and rain. They shouted replies Jack could not hear. In anger, some ran to him, grabbed his soggy coat, his shirt, screamed for him to make it stop.

At these times, Jack would hesitate in his sermon, long enough to smile and spit water from his mouth, say, “I cannot stop what God has begun. Only God will stop it, and only your repentance will save you. Pray now, to the Almighty Father, to forgive what you have done. Ask to be accepted into His kingdom when the water fills your lungs.”

These words, which Jack would repeat verbatim every time someone approached, would cast them away, back into the ever-changing crowd, or someone would come and drag the other person away. This was usually done by the brother sitting on the bench; he grabbed from behind those moving on Jack with too much hate. He would use his entire body to pull them away, send them hurtling back into the crowd or down onto the brick flagstones. His strength belied his size, and the one being ejected would look around, uncertain what had just happened or who had done it.

The crowd, for the most part, did not want Jack to stop. At times, two or three men in suits and dripping overcoats would come to his rescue instead. These people were the majority, frightened by what was happening. Though Jack did not yet know this, they had heard the warning from the ark-builders one too many times on the news. These sound bites blended into the crazy man's sermons, became prophecy. People needed answers, more and more as the rain continued without abating, as flood warnings crossed the bottom of television screens during daytime soap operas or CNN's headlines.

Springtime, snows melting, falling into the rivers, the rain pouring from heaven to raise the water over the banks. As the day waned, creeks became streams became rivers over roads.

The forecasters could only promise their listeners that a front such as this could not continue indefinitely. The moisture must soon abate; the pressure must rise. That was how nature worked.  The rain would end, had to end. They said this during every broadcast, both scheduled and those interrupting regular programming. They tried to be convincing, but their fear was palpable, eyes diverted; shaking hands moved across maps and historical charts of rainfall, always moving, for to stop while the camera was upon them would risk exposing the truth.

*     *     *

Even as the rains began in earnest, Margaret and her crew hadn't completed the final preparations for its onslaught. Three large blue tarps had been sewn together with nylon string and fastened over the top of the ark, their sides flapping where the tarp hadn't yet been temporarily nailed to the hull. The truckload of additional pallets hadn't arrived until eight-thirty that morning, and the six piles of unused lumber were now in their hurried transition from stacks atop the original staging to their perches two-pallets high, above any potential flooding. Margaret had been to the town hall to study the topography of the Lavish town square, and found it to be one of the higher elevations in town. This assurance wasn't enough to make her assume the rain David had promised wouldn't rise up.

This would be a warning shot over the bows of the non-believers, she knew, not the true flood. Such a threat would have to be a convincing display, however. As soon as the rain intensified to its current deluge, Margaret knew her instincts had been right. She'd watched the weather on television that morning with a mix of excitement and horror, seeing the clouds appear from nowhere and hearing the hurried changes in forecasts. From the nervous timbre in the voices reporting the anomaly, she knew it would last only long enough to have its effect.

At least, she hoped so.

Still, rain was rain and she didn't want to spend the next week drying everything out. Most of her crew, now twenty men and women since the sudden changing of the forecasts, finished stacking the lumber. The others were inside working on the supports, or continuing with the segmentation of the lower deck for storage, finishing supports for the upper deck. As it was, the lower deck and storage compartments were nearly completed, watertight with their double layers of glue. Unfortunately, this meant draining any water that found its way in through the open sections of the unfinished upper deck would be harder.

Carl Jorgenson and Tony Donato hoped to install drainage ports throughout the hull. Carl had obtained every ship-building book he could find in the library and searched the Internet to see what was possible.

As soon as yesterday's six o'clock news had aired the fourth follow-up piece on Margaret – one she had taken advantage of to say there would be a warning from God today – six more people had arrived to fill, then exceed, the gap left by the old couple. Ten more to go.

By nine o'clock, the falling rain upgraded from a spattering of heavy drops to the current downpour. A dozen cars pulled to a stop alongside the common, their occupants watching from the safe, dry vantage of their interiors. Margaret busied herself with the final work to secure the site, but soon could no longer ignore her growing apprehension as more cars pulled to the curb. She was never one to attend rock concerts when she was younger, but wondered if this fear was akin to that of standing at the gate before a large crowd, waiting for the doors to open while the mass of bodies pushed slowly, unrelentingly, from behind.

The crowd, though most sheltered within the confines of their automobiles, was growing.

Thirty people. She had been reminded of this limit by the angel who appeared briefly in her otherwise dreamless sleep the night before. She'd pleaded with him to tell her why, give her some reason for the set figure. But the dream faded, and Margaret had awoken only momentarily, wondering if she and her fellow humans weren't the only ones having to accept so much on faith.

Thirty. She played the number over in her head as she worked with the waterlogged but still beautiful student Fae draping another blue tarp over a pile of two-by-fours.

One o'clock in the afternoon. The swirling vortex in her gut increased as the rain fell harder. Puddles on the grass, water waiting for an opening in the already saturated ground. Three more cars. Some people with ineffective umbrellas strolled out, approached, wandered to the side,
circling like sharks
, her beleaguered nerves imagined.

The weather kept the news crews busy with other matters, watching the rising levels of rivers and creeks. Flash flooding in the long-dried arroyos were the highest concern. The Channel Two van had pulled in by mid-afternoon to film her but, seeing nothing interesting, withdrew its crew and moved on to greener, and wetter, pastures.

Their departure was ill-timed. Twenty minutes after the van pulled away, a drove of cars pulled alongside the common. Margaret wondered if perhaps their occupants had waited for school to let out. It didn't matter.

It -- whatever
it
was going to be -- had begun.

As the newcomers stumbled from their cars, splashing into the hundreds of puddles across the ground, those waiting in and around their own cars saw any earlier opportunity they might have had slip away. They raced out into the storm and ran for the ark. Women in trench coats, newspapers over their heads, sometimes children in hand, men in business suits or jeans, umbrellas sagging from the weight of the water, teenagers whose fear shone brightest in their young eyes, all moving with distinct purpose across the lawn.

The rain fell in sheets across Margaret and her crew. They all wore rain slickers and hats, bought after David's initial warning. They watched the approaching mob, for that's what it had suddenly turned into.

Even as the first people reached them, more cars arrived. Their headlights were weak through the rain.

“Please,” the first woman said, “is it too late? I didn't know what to believe; it's all so insane, but now, the rain –” Her hair was in her face. She’d donned only a light windbreaker. The woman was pushed aside by a bald man in full outdoor attire, including crotch-high hip boots. He began to climb the ladder, trying to work himself under the flapping blue tarp.

Al Hawthorne grabbed one of the man's boots then stepped back as the guy lost his footing and fell. He scrambled to his feet, almost falling again as he fought against the awkwardness of the boots. “What the hell are you doing? I was here first. You touch me again and -”

“You want to sign up with Mrs. Carboneau,” Al said, quietly but with a fire in his gaze Margaret hadn't often seen. “She's over here, and if you wait your turn, we can see if there's room.”

His statement wasn't just to appease the other man. Already more than a dozen people were trying to get Margaret's attention. Those they'd arrived with, teenagers and spouses and small children, circled the ark and its flapping blue tarp as if searching for alternate routes inside.

Margaret thought of the story of Christ crowded with followers wanting to be healed. She felt herself drowning in the rain and the surge of fear and desperation of the crowd. Faces pleaded; angry words spoken she couldn't concentrate on long enough to understand. The ring of people, thicker every moment, closed in.

Through the bobbing of heads, she saw others try to climb the ladder. A sneaker came down from beneath to stomp on someone's fingers as a woman gripped the rungs. The rest of Carl jumped down, barely missing the girl he'd kicked away, and Margaret lost sight of him as the wall of people closed in.

“I was here first!” one man yelled and pushed another away. The latter’s place was filled with a crying woman. The first man shoved himself in front of her.

“Please!” Margaret yelled. She was caught in a stampede, all rushing headlong her way. “One at a time. I don't have enough room for all of you!”

Too late she realized the mistake in saying that. The crowd exploded in panic, arms pushing faces aside, reaching out. A fight broke out less than six inches from her. Someone grabbed Margaret's hair from behind. She found herself staring into the rain as she opened her mouth to scream. The person behind her pulled harder. She stumbled backward, away from the center of the human flood, lost her balance.

The world went out of focus. A teenager appeared above her, half-kneeling on her chest. She didn't recognize him, but wondered if he knew Carl or Andy. Then she saw the knife. A long woodsman's blade.

“Stop this rain now,” he hissed, “or I'll cut your heart out.” He flicked the flat side of the blade across her chin for effect. Margaret heard someone scream, but could only focus on the boy. Rain poured into her eyes. She saw his liquid shape fly off her, felt the sudden loss of his weight. A second shape passed overhead, then was gone. Margaret rolled onto her belly. The first thing she saw was the knife on the ground. She grabbed for it, tucked it beneath her.

Carl knelt over the boy, one arm then the other raised in a crooked arch, slamming down into the boy's face. “Carl, no! Stop it!”

Al roughly knocked Carl aside then checked on Margaret's attacker. The boy was dazed and bloody, flailing his arms. Al rolled him roughly aside and lifted him, arms pinned against his back. The boy's nose was a mass of blood. He screamed, “Stop it! Make it stop!” For a moment, Margaret thought he meant Carl's punches, then understood.
Make the rain stop. Please make it stop
.

I can't. I'm sorry
.

Al shoved him towards an approaching police officer.

Margaret stood slowly, after pressing the knife into the soft, wet earth, point first. She cried out of fear and exasperation, then turned to face a worse nightmare unfolding.