Ernie's Ark

by Monica Wood

  James looked up, apprehensive. “I meant what I said.”

  “You can help me fix up the ark.”

  James seemed bewildered. “The front steps are a mess,” he said. “Your gutters are clogged, the garage needs painting. If we’re going to do a fix-up, Dad, there are a hundred other places to start.”

  “You want to do something, this is the thing needs doing,” Ernie said. “Your mother’d have a cow if she could see how I let the thing go.” He took his cap from a peg next to the kitchen door. “You in or out?” He lingered at the door, feeling suspended, waiting for his son.

  James got up reluctantly, picking up his jacket. “All right. Sure. I’m in, sure.”

  “I thought maybe we take the table saw up from the basement,” Ernie said. “Rip us some batten strips out there in the sunshine, cover those gaps.” Time loosened just then; the millions of stalled minutes since Marie’s passing stuttered open. “You’ll need some easier clothes,” he told his son.

  They set up in the yard with some fudge, a bite of lunch, and the table saw. Ernie ripped a series of strips and handed them up to James, who stood on a ladder in Ernie’s clothes.

  When Francine came back with the dog, she unhooked the leash and placed it on the sunporch steps in a neat coil. She stepped into the unmowed grass, looking at them. “I’m finishing the dance lessons, Mr. Whitten,” she yelled over the whining saw. “My stepmother gave me the money.” Then, to James: “How long are you staying?”

  Ernie stopped the saw so they could hear each other. “Not long,” James said. He never stayed long. Looking up at his son’s awkward work, Ernie saw what James had inherited: wrapped tight to himself, his fine mouth slackened by unmet promise, James was the man Ernie might have been but for the steady love of a good woman.

  “If you’re still here on Friday, you can come watch the class,” Francine said, then turned for home.

  James flashed that smile again—Marie, Marie—and called after her, “I don’t think I’m ready to see my father in tap shoes.”

  “You’d be surprised what a man is ready for,” Ernie said.

  “They’re just regular shoes,” Francine insisted, her voice sailing over the gate. “You don’t get taps unless you want them.”

  “Right-o,” James said, chuckling a little—a pleasant, foreign sound, easy on the ears. Ernie dug into the work, feeling good, a flimsy breeze easing across his shoulders.

  The remains of the afternoon felt reminiscent of the first time he’d been up here, hammering and nailing and showing off for his wife. He cleared out some debris from the biggest gaps, leaving alone the ones that looked like active nests. Car horns sounded here and there throughout the afternoon. “What’s all that?” James asked. He had his sleeves rolled up, his white forearms, though not strong, looking a lot like his father’s.

  “Victory,” Ernie said. He started to tell James the story of the town’s long, unhappy road to working again, but as it turned out, there was too much of it he didn’t know, and so his story was short, not much more detailed than what he’d read in the papers. He would have to get out, ask around, get the lay of the land again.

  “Dad,” James said, wiping his forehead, “there’s standing water all over this thing. Shouldn’t we be waterproofing the wood or something?”

  “That’s a loser’s game, son,” Ernie said. “There’s no staying ahead of it.”

  “It’s going to rot away eventually.”

  “I imagine so,” Ernie said. “But there’s nothing wrong with looking handsome in the meanwhile.”

  James shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, patting the ark’s broad side. Above them the afternoon sky floated smooth and blue as a tablecloth. Ping, went their hammers. Ping, went their nails. They worked long into evening, father and son, battening down the hatches, two by two.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Natalie Harris and Andy Dephtereos, two-thirds of a small but mighty writing group, for reading multiple drafts of these stories with such generosity and goodwill. I also thank my brother, Barry, whose life and work influenced parts of this book. Although Abbott Falls is a composite of paper-mill towns and cities all over the country, I owe a special debt to my hometown of Mexico, Maine, and to the old friends and neighbors who remain close to my heart.

  Thank you, Jay Schaefer, Gail Hochman, Dan Smetanka, and Allison Dickens, for such kind attention both to my work and to me; and a belated thank you to Meg Drislane and Julia Flagg, whose talents I have so appreciated. Thanks also to Laura Lovett for her generous eye. My love and gratitude, as always, to Dan Abbott.

  Some of these stories have previously appeared in print: “Ernie’s Ark” in Glimmer Train Stories and the Pushcart Prize Anthology 1999; “That One Autumn” in Glimmer Train Stories; “Take Care Good Boy” in Yankee; “The Temperature of Desire” in Orchid; and “At the Mercy” (under a different title) in Confrontation. My sincere thanks to the editors of these publications.