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?”
The mechanic bit his lip for a moment, let it flip free, and said simply, “Yep. Pretty much every day.” He looked at him then. “I just like to see how they're doing.”
“Hmm.” Suresh nodded and looked at Johnson. The tall man looked up from his clipboard, waved to them; then to Suresh's surprise, gave the clipboard to the woman and began walking in their direction.
“Oh, Man,” Bill said, “here were go. He keeps trying to convince me to join his little band of merry nut-heads.”
But you still come , Suresh thought, every day. Craig Johnson was stopped by a teenaged boy who obviously needed an immediate answer to something.
Someone yelled from further down in the crowd, “Hey, Sid, you moron!” The teenager looked up, his face flushing red; then he mouthed a curse and stormed back up the ramp.
Craig Johnson whispered something, apparently to the speaker in the crowd, and looked back towards Bill.
No , Suresh thought. He's looking at me. Why is he looking at me? Not once did Suresh consider that his dark Indian skin might stand out among the predominantly winter-pale Irish and Italian faces. Or perhaps it was something else; the way Johnson held his gaze a moment, a flicker of recognition. But that was absurd. Suresh wouldn’t have spotted him if Bill hadn't pointed him out. Would he?
Johnson walked the final steps towards the fence. Bill muttered, “Hey, Craig.”
Craig turned, as if having forgotten the man was there. “Hi.” Recognition smoothed his expression. “Bill, right? Nice to see you. How does it look? Care to see the inside?”
“No,” Bill said, a little too loudly. Still, he stayed where he was. Johnson turned to Suresh. “Nice to meet you. My name's Craig.” He extended a hand.
“Crazy whack jobs.” It was the voice who'd spoken to “Sid” a moment before, calling out from the crowd. “All of you. Friggin’ sick loons!”
Johnson's hand was still extended. Suresh took a step back and muttered, “I need to get back to work.” He looked at the mechanic. “It was nice talking with you, Bill. Good luck. You should go with them. It's the only way you will live.”
The mechanic looked confused. Suresh began to work his way back through the crowd. He knew that if he didn’t leave then, Bill would have been obliged to offer some retort to save face within the faceless crowd.
When he looked back, through the bobbing heads moving in the direction he'd just come, he caught Johnson's gaze a moment, before the man turned and spoke with the red-haired mechanic.
A bottle sailed into the air, probably from the invisible speaker. Something spilled from the open top, curving in on itself as the bottle spun and bounced off the side of the ark.
Suresh moved away as fast as possible against the flow of people. He heard Johnson bellow with rage, the rattle of the chain link fence. Was he climbing over, going after the person who'd thrown the bottle? Was he coming after Suresh, seeing him as one of the “chosen?” Maybe that man’s angel had known he was going to be coming today. Wanting to stop him from choosing his own path.
Suresh wanted to scream, wanted to run down the road, past his car, down into the throes of Route 3A, propel himself into traffic and let it all end. Shouts from behind him, a fight breaking out.
The world will fall apart before the first water falls from heaven , he thought.
The crowd thinned as he turned onto Macomb. When no one grabbed his shoulder from behind, Suresh began to calm. He thought of his wife's face.
Neha . A goddess's face in a world of mortals. He thought of her smiling - smiling at him. He would think of Neha for the next forty-three days, and no one else. Nothing else. Nothing but Neha.