Margaret's Ark

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.

By the time the decision was made to stop for the day, one of the sides had been constructed in much the same manner as the base. Forty-eight feet long, eight feet high, with seam tape and glue all around. This side was raised while Al and Marty climbed over the sagging floor, and fastened the side of the hull using nails through the half-inch support beams. More glue along these seams. Ben took his turn with the hand saw and cut the side corners away, as close to the curved hull as he dared.

The town common smelled of sawdust and glue. Margaret felt like both crying and laughing. She decided on neither, knowing that some of these men, though obviously having fun working on the project, already assumed she was insane.

At this rate, the ship would be done in a couple of weeks. It would look clunky and un-seaworthy, but it would be finished, and it would float. Such was God's promise.

Everyone gathered a few paces back from the construction to admire their handiwork. The men commented on their progress as if they'd been working on nothing more significant than a house deck.

It looked like a cross-section of an incomplete ship, with only one side up, but it did look like a boat.

Adrian Edgecomb pulled alongside the curb and slowly got out of his car. With an “Uh, oh,” Marty broke from the ranks and moved to intercept the selectman. The other firemen exchanged nervous glances as Marty and Edgecomb fell into loud debate. Why were town employees making “doll houses” on duty, and “what was that monstrosity doing” on his town square. Marty spoke in a lower voice, now and then looking towards Margaret and the girls who hovered close to their mother.

Ben and the two of the other firemen quietly debated the logic of hanging around and made noises about heading back. In contrast, Al busied himself laying out the planks for the starboard side, as if nothing untoward was