Margaret's Ark (12 page)

John
simply looked at the ground, content to let his wife do the talking. He looked as uneasy as Nick felt. “Still, she might listen to you. I mean, if her own pastor says this is wrong, maybe she'd understand and get some help.”

Nick continued walking towards the ark. “Have you spoken to her yourself?” His question was like a rope, pulling her reluctantly forward. Margaret was now shading her eyes to see who was coming.

“Well, no. I'm almost afraid to. What if she takes it the wrong way? She's holding power tools, for God's sake. Oh, I'm sorry, Father.”

Recognition crossed Margaret's features. She dropped her hammer and ran towards them.

“Oh, no. She's coming.” In light of the approaching madwoman, all courtesies were dropped. “Please,” a quickly receding voice, “tell her to stop. She's frightening the children.”

“Of course,” Nick said and embraced Margaret. She was crying. He held her for a long time, until he felt her retreat slightly and knew it was time for space.

Her face was wet with tears, but she smiled. “Sorry,” Margaret said. “I've been crying a lot lately.” She laughed and pulled a handkerchief from her jeans pocket, wiped her face. When she stuffed it away, the woman waved her arms dramatically towards the ship-in-progress and said, “Welcome to my nightmare.”

*     *     *

“Holy Trinity, Father McMillan speaking.”

“Good evening, Father. It's Nick Mayhew.”

“
Evening
is a relative term, Nick. Need I remind you that you're three hours behind the east coast?” Father McMillan's Irish brogue was strong, despite the fact he had emigrated from Ireland fifty-two years earlier. The older priest blamed it on his Arlington, Massachusetts parish. According to McMillan, it was a venial sin to lose your accent in that predominantly Irish neighborhood, worse if you were the pastor of the church. Nick spent his entire residency at Holy Trinity under this man, until his transfer three years ago to California.

Nick looked at his clock. Eight-thirty, which implied eleven-thirty in Arlington. Still, McMillan had answered after one ring. “I'm sorry. Did I wake you?”

After an appropriate pause to imply that his answer would be given out of politeness only, the priest said, “No, not at all. How are things in California?”

Not in the mood for small talk, Nick jumped right in. “If my guess is correct, about as interesting as on your end.”

“Indeed,” the older priest said. Normally Nick found his pseudo-Irish brogue and high-browed speech ingratiating. Not tonight. McMillan continued, “I assume the west coast has just as many doomsayers as the east?”

“You sound skeptical.”

Another pause, then, “And you don't.”

Nick took a sip from his coffee, collected his thoughts. “On the contrary,” he said. “Though it's our job to teach faith, we're obliged to be critical of anything that appears as false prophecy. Anything that might draw the faithful away from Jesus' teachings.”

“I see, taken verbatim from the lesson books, was that?”

Nick's face flushed. “Listen, Tim,” he said, “do me a favor and stop your posturing just once?”

McMillan laughed. “Ah,” he said, “Young Nicholas comes of age. A bright spot in an otherwise frustrating day. I apologize for being such an ass, Father.”

Nick smiled in spite of himself. “No problem.”

McMillan took a deep breath, and said, “Strange times we're living in.”

“One of my parishioners, a woman named Margaret Carboneau, claims to have received the visions. She's building an ark in the middle of town.”

“How well do you know this woman?”

He told him, then added, “Do you, I mean --”

“Do I think these nocturnal visitations by angels are legitimate? That the people receiving the visions – what they've experienced – are messages from God? Is that what you want to ask me, Father?”

Nick felt himself sink deeper into his chair. He wondered if McMillan wasn't as sarcastic as he tried to sound. He thought about the question, felt a warm and familiar sense of certainty fill him. He said, “Yes, Father. That
is
what I'm beginning to think.”

“Under other circumstances, I'd stop the conversation right here, hang up and call Bishop Leonard to have you removed. However, as I assume you're also doing,” a hint of a warning in his tone, “I've been quietly inquiring of other parishes, and doing my own research.”

“And...?”

“We’re still having this conversation, aren’t we?”

The man's answer didn't sit well with him. Nick needed to hear something concrete. “But do you think it’s possible, Father? That these are from God, Himself, I mean?”

McMillan at first did not reply, but when his voice returned, even with his short answer, Nick felt his sense of reality tip. He was sliding into a dark new world. One that looked the same as yesterday, but felt completely alien.

“Anything is possible with God,” the priest answered.

*     *     *

The sanctuary was quiet at night. Ten thirty, and the usually darkened church was softly aglow in red candlelight. Normally, Nick would make his way through the church and extinguish any lighted votive candles, the prayers they represented having long reached God's ear. Since his conversation with McMillan, he wasn't yet ready to snuff the flames. The altar wavered in the light cast by the glass. He sat in the first pew, staring at the red-cast image of Jesus hanging on the cross behind the altar. It was comforting, sitting in the midst of Lord's refuge. He knew, even now, that it always would.

Nick didn't know which disconcerted him more. That a miracle of biblical proportions was unfolding before him, or that McMillan actually believed it. Most likely the latter. His mentor was always the voice of reason, taking the logical stance on every event. Keeping fellow priests and parishioners from drifting too far into speculative obscurity.

The man believed – or at least did not deny -- that God was, indeed, behind these people’s visitations. This belief somehow brought the ever-intangible spiritual nature of Nick’s own vocation home to him.

Red light danced on the image of Christ, darkening the painted blood on the hands and feet, setting the face of the world's Savior afire.

Father McMillan had relayed his own observations over the phone, of similar scenes to what Nick witnessed in the center of Lavish. One was being built in an Arlington front yard - no small feat considering the claustrophobic closeness of neighborhoods in that historic, over-built city. McMillan also planned a drive soon into Burlington a few miles to the north, where construction of yet another ark had begun on that town’s common.

A troubling point to Nick's visit with Margaret this morning was the crowd. The police had set up haphazard barricades around the perimeter of the building site, perhaps to show the townspeople they weren't ignoring what was happening. They didn't seem to know what else to do about it. Vincent Carboneau had been well-liked, and the police and fire departments were hard-pressed to hide their protectiveness towards his widow.

Their support was thin, however. Nick could feel the derision of some onlookers. More than simple mockery. He sensed fear. The
what if she's right
questions that might turn onlookers into a mob-like
she's a threat
.  When he mentioned this to one officer standing duty, speaking in a forced casualness, the man simply nodded and said, “That's what we're afraid of, Father.”

Now, Nick looked at his watch. Almost midnight. He rose from the bench and blew out  the votive candles one by one.

51

When Carl Jorgenson came downstairs for his usual, quick bowl of Cheerios and glass of orange juice, he knew something was wrong. His parents weren't very talkative this early in the morning, but halfway down the stairs, he could hear a heated, whispered discussion.

As soon as he stepped into the kitchen, the talk stopped. Dan and Sarah Jorgenson looked at him with somber expressions. Carl stood in the doorway and wondered who had died. He thought of his grandfather, and suddenly the sparse appetite he garnered every morning drifted away.

“What's up?”

His mother finished her coffee in one last, over-exaggerated swallow and stood from the table. “Nothing. You'd better get moving.”

Carl accepted the response long enough to pour himself a bowl of cereal and add the milk. The orange juice was already on the table, a routine his mother went through every day, preparing a glass for Carl and his father at the same time she poured her own. In fact, Carl was so used to this routine that if one day she did
not
pour the glass, he’d likely go without it and never notice.

At eighteen, an age when boys were supposed to think of their parents as being out-of-touch with the outside world, Carl appreciated how good he had it. They loved him but didn’t dote, were strict, but not overbearing. He felt fortunate to have realized this early on, especially when he contrasted them with some of his friends' families -- Max more than anyone.

He sat across the table from his father. The man was tall, with short cut hair and a moustache that never grew in thick enough to warrant the title.

“What's up?” Carl asked again. He held the spoon but dared not eat until he heard the news.  Dan Jorgenson smiled weakly, looked at his wife as if to say,
May as well tell him
. Carl braced himself for the first words he knew were coming:
It's your grandfather....

When Sarah said nothing, Carl’s father flipped the sheets of newspaper and turned a particular page to face him. “It's your science teacher.”

*     *     *

Carl
did
eat breakfast, but not until after finishing the entire article. Its neutral tone was neither accusing nor flattering. It didn’t have to be. When you write about a woman who leaves her job to build a boat on the town square because God says there's going to be a flood, you don’t
need
to call her crazy.

And then there was the photograph. Random piles of lumber beside a makeshift construction of beams and plywood that looked no more seaworthy than a pile of bricks.

Al ong with Mrs. Carboneau, the article interviewed a few firemen who were quick to point out they were merely helping a colleague's widow (that was how one man phrased it). No mention of God from these people, nor a flood. In contrast, Mrs. Carboneau had no qualms about explaining why she was doing what she was doing. Her words were a rehearsed version of her brief speech to Carl’s class on Thursday.

When the article trailed off to discuss the fire last year that killed her husband, perhaps to offer some explanation for her behavior, Carl skipped ahead. There was no further mention of the boat, save a quick reference to the ark in the Bible and Mrs. Carboneau’s statement that there would be no animals brought on board. “Not this time,” was the quote that ended the piece.

Carl ate his cereal slowly. His parents busied themselves with preparations to leave. He wondered why no one had mentioned anything during baseball practice, or the two games played this weekend. Granted, Saturday's was in Medfield, but Sunday was a home game. Someone might have mentioned her, but that particular line of discussion had burned rampant among everyone since Thursday. After a few initial forays into the talks - usually centered around their teacher’s obvious nervous breakdown - Carl did his best to avoid them. He liked Mrs. Carboneau. She'd always struck him as the least nutty person he knew. The exception had been that day in the school parking lot, but....

Mrs. Carboneau was not the only one. Carl remembered this detail even before following the instructions to “See related story, page C4.” Another mention, though brief, of an ark going up twenty miles away, and another on private land near the Presidio in San Francisco. The latter was being sponsored by a televangelist named Mick Starr - a California
nom de plume
if Carl had ever seen one. Built within the compound of the Holy Rock Church, the project was “under a cloak of secrecy”.

“I have to go,” Sarah Jorgenson said, and she kissed Carl on the top of his head. “You Okay?” Her eyes told volumes of how she didn't think he was, remembering how shaken he'd been Thursday night telling them about the outburst in class.

“I -” He lost his voice. A sudden boiling up of emotions struck him in that moment. He swallowed them down, mostly because he didn’t understand what he was feeling. Sadness for his favorite teacher? Maybe pity.

Carl's father slid into his sport coat. Though his company no longer enforced shirt and tie dress, he enjoyed dressing up for work. It starkly contrasted the t-shirt and jeans he wore on weekends. “Carl, listen,” he said, “if there isn't anything pressing at school, well, if you want to stay home today, that's fine with us.”

He spoke as if Carl's teacher was dead. For some reason, Carl thought about his grandfather again. It felt like Mrs. Carboneau
had
died.

But she hadn't. In fact, she was only five miles away.

His mother did her usual mind-reading trick. “Carl,” she said quietly, “please stay away from the center of town. Please. After this article, it's going to be a madhouse over there.” She looked down. “I'm sorry. You know what I mean. But your father and I would appreciate it if you'd keep your distance. At least until we see how things turn out.”

Mrs. Carboneau had tossed herself willingly into this circus, Carl knew, the fringe of which he was only just seeing. He stared at his empty bowl, tipped it sideways to make the milk splash in mini-waves against the side. Mrs. Carboneau was doing all this because God told her to.

“Carl?”

Maybe if he'd been one of those kids dragged kicking and screaming to church every week, he'd understand her faith more. Or her madness.

He looked up. His parents were waiting for an answer. “I'll probably go to school. See what folks are saying there.”

Not madness. It didn’t fit with what he knew of his teacher.