Margaret's Ark

again – about having them checked when Doctor Allen came around next week. “Good,” Jack said. “That’s good. I’ll be here. Just, well...”

“I’ll remind you.”

Jack couldn’t find Michael anywhere. Wait – there he was, waving him over to the far end of a table where two empty seats faced each other. Somehow, he already had his food. Rick waited until Jack turned back around before loading up his tray.

 “You all right, Jack?”

“Yea, sorry.” He moved on, let the woman with the big curly hair put a plastic glass of orange juice on his plate, then found Michael again.

They sat and ate in silence. When Jack looked up, the guy’s tray was empty.

“Jack,” he said, looking directly at him. Jack found himself returning the stare. Michael’s eyes were clear white, no red from drinking or lack of sleep. Eyes full of peace, so much that they overflowed, filled his own body. He thought of his dream again. Michael had been in it. He was remembering.

“That’s good,” Michael said, smiling. “Now,” he reached out, laid a hand over Jack’s, the one holding the fork, which now began bouncing up and down. More than calm flowed through him from this young man with the dark face and clear eyes. Also love, understanding. Michael said, “Remember.”

Jack remembered, then closed his eyes and tried to forget again. Too much, the dream, his mission; he wasn’t worthy. Michael, standing with him on a long-forgotten plot of grass, outside a home he knew once but no longer. Telling him the Terrible Truth of what was to come. Jack was lost in its massive presence. Lost, but not without a place in God's world. Jack had been chosen to lead his people to salvation before it was too late. There was something else... an ark - of the Covenant perhaps? It was probably just talk like they do in churches. Holy Speak.

Michael’s hand squeezed his. The Flood was coming. A really bad one, a new Great Flood and Jack understood his responsibility was to come forth from the desert and prepare the way for Judgment.

“Not judgment,” Michael whispered. “Salvation.”

But Jack did not hear. There was too much strength coming from God, through and out of the young man across the table. Too much power. He was Jack the Baptist. But he wouldn’t use water for this new consecration. That was reserved for God alone. No! What was he thinking? He needed to get a grip; the world was sliding away again. He would cover the people with words. His Words. Jack's words. God's words.

“Jack?”

Rick was standing where Michael had been a moment ago, the chair pulled out. The shelter’s director laid both hands flat on the table and leaned toward him. “Jack, you okay?”

Jack stared at the man, then past him, looking for the angel. Where was Michael? Something important was slipping away, washed clean by his Mission. He tried to regain it, but it was lost. All he had left was what he had to do, from now until he died in the waters with his new congregation. I need to focus; I need –  he would never again lose what was said to him in his dream, his vision. At least the overall idea of it. God is in the details, he thought again, but details were too small to hold. He had to... preach. It was too important. He needed to get to work, reach His people.

“Jack, come on, let’s –”

He got to his feet, walked towards the front doors, past the line of hungry lost souls for whom this was just another day but for whom there would be so few days left. Rick was calling him from far away in that other world Jack had finally lost forever. Now he had nothing, squinting in the bright Spring morning, trying to form the words he must speak until the world died.

They would come. The words. He was in God's graces now.

58

It was the same dream. That's what Margaret thought, at first. The night was cool,  the damp, sweaty months not yet upon them. She walked in her backyard with David. Tree shadows swayed around them, moving of their own volition. No, she was moving, gliding over the grass. David held her left hand in his right. The touch was light, a breeze among the breezes. They passed through a fence. Then a house.

Leave me alone , a child whispered in his dream; I don- and they moved past, through more houses, more trees, more fences.

Lavish town common, labeled as such by the original founders who had settled here from the east coast in the mid-1800s. An extensive, triangular plot of land in the town center, the common was bordered on one side by Lavish’s municipal buildings, police and fire departments, town hall. The communal property hosted outdoor concerts and an annual Christmas tree lighting. At this late hour, the roads intersecting the town center were abandoned. As well they should be, she supposed, considering none of this was real. Just a dream. She and David walked now, still not speaking, along one of the paved walkways interspersed web-like across the angular lawn. The sky in the east was a pale pink. The sun would be rising soon. To the west, deep purple, almost black, defying the onset of morning.

She stared at the steady red light mounted in front of the fire department's familiar brick facade. In an upstairs window, a man stood, backlit by a single lamp. He stared out over the square. Margaret recognized Marty Santos. Not by the fire chief’s face, obscured in shadow, but by his silhouette. Short, wide-shouldered. What was he doing up, and in her dream?

Silence in the world, like before; only the feel of the wind against her skin, the angel's touch on her hand. David stopped in the center of the largest plot of grass.

“Build it here,” he said.

His voice was soft, but its presence among so much quiet startled her. She knew what “it” was. Last night's dream remained crystalline in her memory, especially now.

“An ark?” she said, hoping the question didn't convey too much skepticism.

“Yes.”

Margaret felt a little foolish asking the next question, considering none of this was real. “Ark as in boat, I assume, not what God commissioned Moses to build....?”

David smiled, a soft, patient expression. “Yes, as in boat, to carry your family and twenty-seven others above the flood.”

So much dramatics in this silent dream. The breeze ruffled her nightgown a little harder, irritating her with its softness.

“I can't build a boat of any kind. I've never been good with wood. And I'm too busy to start - “

“There will be others, if you begin soon to tell them His message.”

“You mean God's.” She said it as a statement, not a question, her tone harsher.

David took a few steps away, eyes to the grass, looking for flaws, perhaps in his choice of location. He did not look up as he said, “Yes. God’s. Yours and mine. The God of Abraham and the Apostles. Of Muhammad and Elijah. The God of believers and of atheists. Even those of great faith, a faith in the unknown, which you and your family have demonstrated so often, will sometimes need proof. These dreams, and those experienced by thousands of others, will be a sign for you to believe and obey. The days are slipping away from you, but faith in such things as this first sign might take time. In the meantime, I'm here to teach you.”

The wind tugged at Margaret's gown. She said nothing, assuming anything this person had to say would be said in his own time. She wanted to wake up. The last dream didn’t end well, and judging by the way the breeze was picking up, this one wasn't going to, either. She tried to turn, look up at the fire station and pull some moral support from Marty's outline.

As was natural in dreams gone sour, Margaret couldn’t move her feet.

“Let me go.” She had to shout over the wind.

“Behold,” David said, then doubled over as if in pain. He landed on the grass and his body split apart. It happened quickly, in seconds, but the details played themselves out in dreamlike clarity. His ribs became long, straight planks, tearing forth from his chest. More wood grew like branches from shoulders and hips. Some widened into sheets of plywood, flipping into the air to arrange themselves in haphazard order. The angel's skull cracked apart. More wood poured forth. In seconds, David was gone and the mystical construction was complete. The boat