Margaret's Ark

said nothing, but Suresh felt him watching.

Suresh stood then, and looked away from his wife. The mango trees swayed in a slight wind, rustling their leaves in whispered song. It was beautiful here, as beautiful as the sleeping form behind him. More so, perhaps, but he loved Neha and that was enough. “I do love her,” he repeated softly. Then, with more conviction, “Action rightly denounced brings freedom, does it not?”

The deva said nothing at first, his face soft and radiant but without emotion. He looked past Suresh, apparently at the woman, then simply nodded. Before the dream ended, he said with the same, indifferent tone, “Truth, rightly denounced, also brings untruth, does it not?”

Suresh awoke, rolled over to look at his wife in this real, tangible world. She was not there. Of course not, he realized. She was on duty until eleven that morning.

That had been last Thursday, and when Neha had later inquired about his dreams as they watched the evening news, watched the story of those who had not turned away from God, he lied and said the visions had stopped.

It felt as though her question was in fact the deva speaking through her, asking one more time if he would repent his decision. He did not, breathed easier knowing he was trading one responsibility for another. One truth for another. Whether or not this other was a lie, as the angel implied, did not matter. He’d made his decision. It was enough.

Now, he turned right off of Massachusetts Avenue. The lunchtime traffic, even in such a residential community as Arlington, was heavy. The old historic city was a major pass-through between the congested Route 128 traffic and the back roads into Cambridge. Still, as he pulled from the main thoroughfare, skirting the center, he thought there were still too many cars. At a red traffic light, he checked the map he'd printed from the Internet, outlining the neighborhood. He'd have to cut over to Route 3A which eventually led back north to the highway, but break off before the town line onto a small road named Macomb Street. From there, he had only one more turn and he would find what he was looking for.

They would be back in this area on Friday, he and Neha, further up Mass Ave in the wealthy suburb of Lexington. They'd been invited to attend a dinner by Neha's employer. An older man from the way Neha described him. She had clearly stressed the importance of the upcoming event, and had been gracious in not asking him more than a couple of times to refrain from participating in any discussions about the “Flood People,” unless he was asked pointedly. He agreed. She seemed content with his promise. Neha acted as if her husband’s earlier visions never truly happened, that perhaps it was she who dreamed the whole thing.

The light turned green. Suresh followed the traffic until it stopped at the next light. On his right spread a massive cemetery, so many headstones he wondered how they found room. He stared at the markers, at the grass only beginning to shimmer that brilliant new green which he and Neha so loved about this country. Spring meant joy for people and plants alike.

There would be no more. Perhaps not all of this would be destroyed; perhaps the forces behind the pending deluge would only prune, snip away the overgrowth like a woman tending her garden.

The horn of a car jolted him from this reverie. Suresh jerked his car forward. Already the gap between his and the next leading car was enough to make the Dodge Ram behind him try pulling around. Heaven forbid us to have open space on the road, Suresh thought, and pressed the accelerator to close the gap. The Ram was forced to move back into its place, but not without a flannel arm stuck from the window with the official Boston salute.

Macomb Street was on the left. All but two of the cars ahead of him turned that way, waiting for those coming south to also turn in. The Ram blared its horn again, but Suresh assumed it was directed at the entire crowd of cars this time. After a few minutes, and an appropriate gap in traffic, Suresh pulled his Chevrolet onto Macomb. Two things became obvious. He was not the only one with this particular trip in mind today, and if he was going to get back to work this afternoon without using up a vacation day, he would need a new tactic.

He checked his map, glancing quickly at the cars ahead to be sure he wasn't driving into someone's bumper. His destination wasn't far. Suresh pulled the sedan into the first open spot by the sidewalk and turned off the engine.

It was a nice day. He could walk.

As it turned out, he'd chosen well. The closer he came to his destination, the fewer parking possibilities remained. The sidewalk ran along the tree-lined road, heavy roots occasionally pushing through asphalt. The leaves neared full bloom, casting him and the other walkers in a soft, luminous green. The constant smell of car exhaust, though not eradicated, was greatly reduced here among the old neighborhood homes. The smell of cut grass was life, cool, always moving. He walked by a rose bush. Two yellow bees emerged to fly about his head, offered their obligatory warning, then buzzed away to continue feeding.

The houses were mostly shingled in yellows and browns, perhaps due to some unwritten town rule, or perhaps to cover the slow deterioration of the homes they adorned. The house with the rose bush was vinyl-sided in a powder blue. It stood out from the others in an embarrassing social faux pas.

He walked at his own pace, yet moved faster than the cars traveling the narrow road. The houses were bigger on this street than where he’d parked, by a small, but noticeable, margin.

It was a calm neighborhood, peaceful.

The crowd on the sidewalk grew more congested. Suresh had to bend and twist to pass some of the slower walkers. He was still five houses away, curving around a thick-trunked tree which was inexorably tearing itself free from the sidewalk, when he saw it.

The ark's frame was massive. The walls were curved planks and, from what Suresh could tell, perfectly aligned. Round holes had been roughed out in the sides, near the upper deck. Portholes, perhaps?

The bow was raised, by what he could not yet see, so that its prow pointed at the sky, waiting for the rain to come.

Suresh slowed his pace, waiting for those in front to move, following them, feeling part of a herd, or a log floating downstream, bumping into obstacles but continuing forward. How many people were here today? A hundred? Two? Not that many, but it did not take much to fill the sidewalk.

When he reached the front of the neighboring property, the ship didn’t seem as large as he’d first imagined. The front yard on which it rested was roomier than most, since many of the other houses were set close to the street to create more room in the back.

The ark stood at a diagonal away from the house, the bow cresting over the short, chain-link fence. Suresh continued forward until the front of the ark was overhead. He reached up into the yard, over the waist high fence, and could just touch the wood, rough, covered in a thick layer of dried glue.

The instructions the deva had given him played out in his mind, though the angel had mentioned using plywood, and this ship was plank and beam. Solid. The builder must have been fortunate to know something about shipbuilding.

“Makes you wonder how a nice boat like this could have been built by such a raving lunatic, huh?”

Suresh lowered his arm quickly and turned towards the speaker. The man was taller than himself, and massive in the shoulders. He wore a tee-shirt under an open blue Mobile Service work shirt, the faded name “Bill” on the breast. His curly red hair was matted down on one side.

Suresh nodded and looked back into the yard. “It is,” he agreed. “So big for such a small yard. I wonder how they bring in supplies, with so many cars.”

Bill looked up and down the road, hands in his jeans pockets, and shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe they got all their supplies ahead of time.” He laughed. “'Cause they sure ain't getting deliveries now.”

Suresh looked about the yard and tried to distinguish among the crowd, milling within and about the vessel like ants next to an anthill, who might have been chosen, who might have seen what he had seen.

“I wonder who is the one who had the dream,” he said, to himself more than the other man.

“That one,” Bill said, pulling his hand from a pocket and pointing to a tall man in overalls. The tall man was speaking with a woman while pointing to something on a clipboard. “Name is Craig Johnson; used to work as a clerk at City Hall in Waltham. Then one night he goes nuts and starts building this thing. Says God told him, but I guess you already know that.”

Suresh looked back and realized Bill, like himself a moment before, was talking more to himself. The man's face was screwed up in concentration, as if trying to remember something important.

Suresh said, “Have you been here before?”