The Ark

We’d scramble up the other side of the bridge and put pennies on the tracks so the engines could flatten them. Me and Carl loved watching the big freights rumble past like monster ghosts from some other time.

We walked over to find the old man who lived in the little shed back of the vacant lots along the tracks. I thought he was a hobo even though I had never met a hobo before. He had a long grey beard down to his belly and long grey hair tied back and an engineer’s cap on his head. Everyone called him Dangerous Dan. The guys who ran the burger place said they called him that because he killed a man once in a bar-fight.

We found him there dragging skids and ripping them apart. He used a crowbar to pry the planks off and the claw of a hammer to yank out the nails. Dad said steer clear but we wanted to find out what he was up to.

“Mr. Dan, Mr. Dan?”

“Huh, whadayou want, kid?”

“Mr. Dan, are you building something?”

“It’s a, it’s a… I’m making an ark.”

“You mean like a ship?”

“A fuckin’ ark.”

“How come.”

“I had a vision.”

“A vision?”

“There’s gonna be a flood, see. I’m gonna float this fucker down Maria St over to Runnymede and south down to the lake.”

“Aren’t there supposed to be animals two by two and all that?”

“I dunno kid, that wasn’t in the vision.”

“So you’re just gonna float away on your own?”

“I ain’t got nobody else. Just me and the rats.”

“Can I come?”

“Hey Carl, c’mon, we gotta get back for lunch.”

“Yeah kid, you can come.”

“Carl…Carl?”

“When do we leave?”

“When the rains come in the spring, they won’t stop. You just be here before the flood gets too deep.”