“It's going to get harder before the end. Even before the town meeting tonight.”
The yard was darkening. Margaret assumed she was about to wake up. David blended in with the darkness. “Hold fast, Margaret. Don't be discouraged, no matter what happens when you awaken.”
She didn't like the sound of that. The dream faded. Bells rang. In the darkness before her, green lines formed, swirled. The bells were shrill, electronic. The green lines came into focus. Her clock. It was four twenty-nine in the morning. The cell phone beside the clock rang again. Estelle's phone, which the woman had insisted Margaret keep with her since so few people knew the number. She in turn used Margaret’s and handled any calls from the increasing number of people who had learned her cell number. Margaret had permanently disconnected her house phone.
She sat up, fumbled with the small device until she found the right button.
“Hello?”
“Margaret?” Al's voice. It was tinny with digital static, the connection broken but still a vast improvement over the nearly unusable signals during the rain last weekend.
“Yes?”
“I'm sorry,” he said. “You need... get ov... ere as fast as possible.”
* * *
In ten minutes, Margaret was dressed and driving her car towards the town center. Her hair was pulled back in a hurried ponytail, which pressed against the back of the seat. She’d woken Jennifer Donato to tell her where she was going. She and Estelle remained at the house to be there when the girls woke up, but Tony insisted on coming with her. Even before rounding the corner to the common, Margaret saw the emergency lights. Red and white flashing against the front of the House of Pizza, the post office and the fire station. With the driver’s window down, the smell of smoke was pungent.
Carl waited at the curb, removed the orange cones left to preserve her parking space. The scene was awash in spotlights. The flames had died down, but the smoke still twisted and roiled into the air, lost in the pre-dawn sky.
* * *
They weren't allowed to approach the ark until after eight o'clock that morning. The back of the ship, the stern, was gone - either burned out or hacked to pieces by the firemen as they fought to contain the blaze. They'd caught it early enough that the bulk of the ship was still intact near the bow. The morning air smelled like a wet campfire. The stink was more powerful when Margaret stepped though the charred opening into the lower deck. She stared through the hole that once was the back of the ship. She wanted to cry, to fall to the floor and wail like a child with a broken toy. She wanted to give up. They’d won. The people could not accept what she was telling them and struck out rather than accept that it would not stop what was going to happen.
Margaret’s throat ached with the wet, burning stench, and she silently cursed the angel for not warning her beforehand so this could be prevented. What horrible sin had she committed to be laden with this? Why did God make life so hard sometimes for people who believed in him?
Outside, Al, Tony and Carl looked through the hole. They nodded to her, but spoke to each other, pointing to the closest intact beams. Already, they planned how to rebuild. It wasn't coming any easier to them, at least not from what Margaret saw of their faces, tight with rage. But they were doing something. They weren't wallowing in self- pity.
She clambered above deck, did a cursory inspection before heading down the ladder and rounding the hull to join them. Only then did she think to look across the common, where the second ark had been making such great strides. Benson's ark was a pile of smoldering ash. The fire crew had responded to Margaret's fire first, perhaps deciding her nearly-finished ark was more valuable than the few days’ growth across the square. She hoped Vince Carboneau's widow hadn’t simply gotten preferential treatment.
Benson and his crew were standing around the ashes. He did not look up. Margaret was grateful for that. She would walk over there as soon as she and the men worked out what they needed to do with their own situation.
“It's gonna stink,” Carl said. “No matter what we do. I suppose we can cut a few more vents up high, and hang a lot of air fresheners or something.”
Al 's moustache twitched. “I suppose. Let's cut out the hull at this point.” He pointed a few inches in from the burnt wood. “Cut here, square, all the way around, double the beam there, and work our way back.” He sighed. “I suppose we could just close out the stern at this point instead. It'll make the overall size a little shorter, but the extreme back was going to be for shelving anyway. We can move those four post and harness points forward a bit, double up a little. Save us from trying to build it all out and risk the integrity of the hull any further.”
He looked at Margaret. “What do you think? A slight deviation from the plans you got, but I'd have to assume accommodating the right number of people is all that matters, anyway.”
His expression was calm. And he was mostly right. Margaret said nothing, just stepped forward and hugged him. He hugged her back awkwardly, then cleared his throat as Margaret stepped sideways and hugged Carl then Tony. “Thank you,” was all she could say.
* * *
As the sun rose higher and the morning chill burned away, the rest of the crew arrived. When a handicapped van pulled onto the grass, Tony ran to it. He and Jennifer helped Estelle and her chair down the small lift. Katie and Robin walked slowly across the grass, their eyes moving back and forth between their ark and the remains of Benson's across the way.
When they saw their mother they ran the few remaining steps into her arms. Robin was crying, Katie darkly silent. The older girl said simply, “Is it over now?”
Margaret froze. A small question that could mean a dozen different things. She held a hand to Katie's cheek and whispered, “No, Katie. We're going to fix it, and keep going forward.”
The girl’s eyes focused sharply, glanced at the others gathering around. Her jaw worked back and forth. Grinding her teeth like that was a recent habit. “Are you sure,” Katie said at last. “It looks pretty bad.”
“Yes. It'll be OK.”
She pushed away her mother's hand and stepped back. “No, it won't!” Tears rolled down her face. “It won't be okay. Everyone hates us because we tell them they're going to die. Now they're
“Katie, don't -”
“Shut up!” the girl screamed. “Shut up! Shut Up! Why don't you all leave me alone! I don't want to do this anymore!”
Little Robin buried herself against her mother's shoulder, her sobbing growing louder as her big sister shouted. Carl put a hand on Katie's shoulder, but she swatted his arm away and ran across the grass towards the Donato's van.
Margaret watched until her daughter clambered into the front seat and slammed the door shut. Katie hunkered down, out of sight below the window.
* * *
The Lavish High School auditorium was warming quickly with bodies and tempers. Even before the meeting was officially underway, loud discussions and one shoving match between two fathers nearly closed the meeting. Every available police officer and a handful of firefighters were on hand. The police were positioned at every door, along the back of the hall and onstage. Like many of the townspeople there that night, they looked frustrated.
Margaret was seated onstage with Edgecomb and the other two selectmen. She didn't know their names, never having to worry herself with town politics before. One of the men she recognized from Vince's funeral; the other was elected only last November. He was older, sparse white hair barely covering a spotted scalp. All three looked nervous, understanding the potential mob scene as clearly as did the police.
Not surprisingly, Adrian Edgecomb took control of the meeting.
“Ladies and gentleman, can we please quiet down now? We're about to begin. Normally, even for special town meetings such as this, we would proceed with a normal round of motions and what-not. Considering the heat, and the fact that most of you are here for one reason only, we'll dispense with most of the formalities tonight.”
Murmurs of appreciation. Margaret scanned the crowd. Nearly everyone seated was looking at her. In the
