Margaret's Ark (25 page)

He stood a while, watching the twilight sky lighten above the thinning clouds, then said, “Is it done?”

“Sure seems that way,” she said with a sigh.

Ben turned to face her. Margaret returned the gaze. Unlike most of the firemen in the station who sported either a moustache or beard, he was clean-shaven. His face was pockmarked with the scars of childhood chicken pox. According to Vince, Ben had almost died from it when he was three years old.

“I mean,” he said, “is it done? All of it?”

Somehow the question, the quietly desperate tone with which it was asked, filled Margaret with a sorrow so deep that she wanted to cry. For Ben, for the late-comers and vultures emerging from their cars like butterflies from chrysalises. They would all be asking this question and she would have an answer, just not one they wanted to hear.

“No,” she said. “It's not over.” She straightened, deciding that if she was to save anyone at all, she needed to be honest. “In thirty-nine days,” she added quietly, “the true flood will come. I don't know how. I don't know if the rain will come back in a few days or next week. Save for those on the arks, the world as we know it will be gone.”

Ben chewed on something, tight-lipped, working it around and around. He looked up to the sky, where a few patches of early evening blue were beginning to show, pouring late sunlight down on the earth like the rain that had preceded it.

“June eighth,” he muttered. His face hardened and the childhood scars faded. He looked at her again, and said quietly, “Fuck you and your stupid boat.”

Margaret laughed, a tired and uncaring sound. She said in a false southern drawl, “Why, Mister Fireman, you say the
sweetest
things.” She flashed her eyelashes at him. Ben's expression softened, and if Margaret stayed, she might have seen him smile. But she turned and walked back inside. If they were to get the ship righted before nightfall, everyone would have to get back here. Estelle and the others were still at home. The thought of going out among the milling masses did not appeal to her while she was alone. Upstairs, she playfully kicked Carl in the leg and picked up the telephone.

*     *     *

Neha had worked an abbreviated shift, her light two-day schedule courtesy of Bernard Meyers as an additional incentive for his dinner guests to arrive on time and stay late. The rain stopped at nine-fifteen that night. The clouds thinned, then broke to reveal a sky so clear the stars nearly outshone the barrage of streetlights and lanterns dotting the neighborhood.

She was curled up on the couch, leaning heavily against Suresh. Knowing his wife was coming home at a decent hour, he’d stopped at the Market of India both for food and their extensive Hindi movie collection at the back of the store. Neha was far from the film addict her husband was, but her rounds – shortened as they had been – had been wearing. Forest Grove was more insulated from the flooding casualties because of their location in Boston's Back Bay. Hospitals such as Choate and Winchester, with their suburban clientele, were inundated with drowning victims when the Charles River, already running high with melting snowfall, flooded into streets and basements.

Neha treated three people for electrocution - two from standing in their flooded townhouse basements replacing fuses in their outdated electrical boxes, one from a live wire fallen across Commonwealth Avenue. This, on top of the usual crowded emergency cases that invariably arrived when the weather turned sour.

Neha and Suresh both looked up when the rain stopped. Suresh pressed “mute” on the remote. “Listen,” he said.

Neha did not reply. She slowly sat upright. A steady drip of water on the back porch. She sighed nervously, expectantly. Together they walked to the front door.

The street glistened in the light of the overhead lamps. In bare feet, Neha stepped onto the front porch. Water dripped from the roof into her hair. She laughed, softly, and when she turned to face Suresh, he felt heartened at her obvious joy, and wary. For in such joy, in that wild gleam in her beautiful brown eyes, something was emerging. More than a simple “I told you so” expression. Perhaps a hint of rage, anger at having felt, even subconsciously, that she was in danger.

He wrote off the feeling as paranoia when Neha, beautiful, god-like Neha, kissed him hard on the lips, pulled him with one hand down the steps to the lawn. She released him, laughed, twirled barefoot on the wet grass.

“You see?” she said under the emerging starlight. “No more rain! It's over! Over!” She twirled again, almost stumbled. Suresh ran to catch her. He held her in his arms, kissed her again. This time, the kiss lingered, lips pressed so perfectly that he felt his soul melting into hers.

“I love you,” he whispered, “with everything that I am.”

She touched his face, smiled and said again, “It's over.” Neha twirled away like a school girl across the lawn. Suresh watched her, tried to smile as full and boldly as his wife, and fought to suppress his growing apprehension.

38

Father Nick Mayhew read Sunday's Gospel passage and finishing with a pronounced, “The Word of the Lord,” as he raised the book above his head.

The congregation answered automatically, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ,” and sat. Nick moved out from behind the pulpit to address the crowd, pacing in a tight circle before the altar. Hovering behind the pulpit too long bred wandering minds in the listeners. At least that had always been his theory.

The estimated seating capacity of the pews in the small church was two hundred and fifty. All were filled. The remainder of the visitors stood along the walls, beginning to the left of the sanctuary beside the organist, around the back of the church, and returning up to the point where a small railing stood guard before the tabernacle housing the Eucharist.

The church hadn’t even been this crowded at Easter last week. Faces the young priest recognized were wedged into the pews or forced to stand among a multitude of newcomers. People had come to learn the truth.
To hear that they don't have to worry, that they can go about their usual business
.

Since the rain began Friday, Nick barely had time to perform his regular duties, let alone eat a decent meal or get more than a few hours’ sleep. They sought him out as soon as the sun disappeared behind the clouds. Regular parishioners, long-absent Catholics, people from other denominations in town unable to locate their own pastors but driving by and seeing lights shining through the windows of the rectory office.

Everyone wanted to know the
truth
about the rain.

“Is this God's doing, Father?”

“Are
we
going to die, or just the sinners?”

“Does this mean Mrs. Carboneau is right? Should we sign up?”

As the world slowly dried, the sea of faces inside followed his slow progress from one side of the sanctuary to the other. Faces which expected their pastor to denounce recent events as trickery, as a sin upon those people wise enough to disregard a madwoman's ravings.

“Last week,” he said, “we celebrated the most holy of Christian holidays. Two thousand plus years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead and began His reign as high priest over all the world, over all our hearts. A perfect example of God's love for us, a perfect sacrifice.”

The microphone clipped to the collar of his robes carried his voice, even to the crowded
crying room
in the back of the church. “Yesterday,” he said quietly, “the rain stopped. The strange, magical rain that came from nowhere and went away just as quickly, was much like the human life of our Lord.” He stopped pacing. “All of us stepped from our homes and looked skyward, saw that our fears had been unfounded. The rains were gone. The danger had passed.”

The congregation stirred. Nick could tell they liked where his sermon was heading. “Many of you are here so I can tell you everything is over. The sirens have wound down; the air raid has ended.” He resumed pacing. “You want to hear that God was never behind this, that He wasn’t the one who sent the waters. That He would never inflict upon the world another Great Flood.”

He looked down only for a moment, to let any murmurings die away. “Well,” he said finally, “that’s true. He wouldn’t. He promised as much thousands of years ago, didn’t He? But the Earth itself made no such promise. It has cast the waters over the land before, destroyed cities with hurricanes, leveled towns with tornadoes. Such is the nature of our planet. Such is, well,
nature
. The Lord is not going to send a flood to the world.” Smiles, cautious looks of hope. Nick continued, “But the flood is coming. Not by His hand. He’s told this to his messengers. But by His hand, held out to us all,” at this Nick held out his own, palm up, “we could all be saved. Live another day, have a second chance.”

The smiles had dropped away, mouths opened in shock and fear.
No turning back
, he thought.
No going home
.

“According to Margaret Carboneau and so many others across the world, in thirty-eight days the flood will come and the world will be lost to us.” He raised his voice. “They tell us that on June eighth, we're all going to die unless we climb aboard one of these arks. Or unless we build one ourselves to God's specifications.

“Like you,” he pointed to a couple with two squirming children in the front row, “and you, all of you, I've had to witness these events unfolding and decide on faith, alone, whether I saw and heard an act of God or just a bunch of well-organized lunatics. I'm very, very sorry to say, my brothers and sisters in Christ, that lunatics, especially that many, are not so organized as to come out in public at the same moment and say the same thing. These people are not insane. They're normal people living mundane, spiritual lives. Others may have been sinners, perhaps even drug dealers, rapists, murderers. Who knows? One thing is for certain...”

He stood now between the two front pews. Those in the back craned their necks to see him. Nick lowered his voice again, fighting to remain calm and speak in a calm and natural voice, from his own heart and not some prefabricated evangelical tongue. “They are not crazy. They are not lying. Everything they're telling us is the truth.” He pointed behind him to the statue of Christ dying on the cross. “God's honest truth. The flood is coming. God wants us to live, and has given us a way to do just that.”

*     *     *

“Amen, amen, I say. Amen,
God
says.” Jack walked among the crowd, his motions jerky, like a beggar among the masses. His steps were uncertain, but his eyes, his gaze, pierced every heart he passed. People took an involuntary step back as he stumbled by them. But they listened. Oh, yes, he could see in their faces that they were listening. “For God himself has spoken, has shown all of you the way of your demise. Has warned us with these rains, that what He says through his prophet, which I utter to you now and forever is true. Amen, amen.”

He stopped, tried to remember the train of thought along which he'd been traveling. It was a good one, he knew that. He cursed his weak mind, his unworthiness to stand here and be the mouth of the Holy One.

The crowd sat wherever they could find a dry spot. Jack stood, motionless, now silent in their midst. He finally remembered what he was saying and resumed his sermon, his awkward gate punctuating the words.

“God does not pick and choose those he loves. The Lord Most High does not decide one man shall fall, while another shall live. We will all be with Him, in the glorious kingdom of light and love, if we fall to our knees and admit in silence and repentance the filth our lives have become. We must clean our souls and prepare for the day, soon, when He shall sweep His Mighty Arm across the world and gather our dead bodies up to him. He will burn the weeds, and pick the flowers. Repent now! Fall to your knees and beg Him to look down and see your shining light, before His gaze passes you by forever!”

He was shouting, waving his arms in random patterns - patterns he knew were guided by God's strings. Shreds of dirty white gauze, worked free from the plastic coating on his cast, sailed in the breeze as he moved.

A man in a business suit stood in front of him. He rolled his eyes when Jack looked at him, then walked away. Jack shouted after him but did not follow. “Do not turn your back to Heaven's word! There's so little time for you to be saved, for your soul to shine!”

To his glorious joy, he noticed a young man and woman deep in the crowd’s outer edges, fall to their knees and begin to pray. The sight, glimpsed through the restless bodies surrounding him, filled the preacher with energy.
The Power of God
. This Power slowly tore him apart, then rebuilt him as a stronger, more worthy child of the One Being.

He spun, smiled, and preached.

*     *     *

The parishioners of Holy Trinity in Arlington were restless this morning. Father McMillan stood behind the pulpit and spoke in a calm, reassuring voice. Unlike many of the younger priests emerging from the seminary these days, McMillan was not one to parade around the altar during his homily. Staying in one place allowed the people to focus, not be distracted from God's word as their priest wandered around like someone uncertain of what to do with himself.

The people were frightened. He saw it in their eyes. They needed comfort. “In today's gospel, we heard of Thomas’s doubt. He needed proof that the Lord had risen. We are preparing to celebrate the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. We will celebrate his glory in all its accouterments as He is lifted up. Like Thomas, Jesus Himself had doubted for that one moment in the garden, of what he was doing. Was it right? He followed the path laid before him and was rewarded by his Father in heaven. We should remember that in our own lives.”

People stopped fidgeting, were in fact paying more attention to his sermon than the priest was used to. McMillan knew why, knew they feared the past days' events. He understood that the worse thing a priest could do at this moment was to feed those fears. His sermon seemed to be heading of its own accord in that direction, however. Scanning his notes, he skipped the next few points.