“Can you believe this?” the zookeeper says to Mauro when he pauses to refill someone’s lemonade. The Italian is leaning against the counter and gazing over the diner like a lion surveying his pride. Since the word of his impromptu rescue has spread, Mauro has become something of a town celebrity, his air more pompous and all-knowing than normal.
“Yes,” he says now in a tone that is self-consciously solemn and wise. “The people are buying up all the things in my store, too. All the lightbulbs, the batteries. All the water, all the cereal, and also cans. They are buying so many things that they cannot be fitting them all in their cars. They are wanting me to come also with them in my truck.” He shakes his head. “The worst is the fighting. When they are taking the cans from the other people’s shopping cart, when they are stealing the juices from the other people’s car. I am seeing it happen in the parking lot. I am not surprised if soon we are having thieves in the night!”
“Do you mean that?” asks the zookeeper. “It can’t be everyone.”
“Everyone,” insists Mauro. “Even the ones you are not expecting! The little Leesl is buying up much more than one person could be needing. She is coming to my store four, five times every day. What are you making of that?”
“It’s pandemonium,” mutters the zookeeper. He glares at the crowd in the diner. How is he supposed to remain patient with them when they are behaving so badly? All of this hoarding, this hiding, this sneaking around and stealing from their neighbors’ caches—why, they are no better than a conspiracy of ravens.
While he is working to become the best person that he can possibly be for his future child, the townspeople are devolving into the worst versions of themselves. The zookeeper almost died twice while crossing the street this morning, so reckless and impatient have his neighbors become while driving. Then, on the streets and in the stores, he saw them stealing one another’s umbrellas—which could only be done out of spite, not necessity, since each townsperson owns more umbrellas of different shapes and sizes than there are days of the week.
What vexes him the most about this is his own reaction, his feeling of surprise. He knows better than that. He knows that people are selfish, petty, covetous, stubborn, mean-spirited creatures, which is why he has always preferred to spend his time in the animal kingdom. The animals, at least, are what they are. They present no pretense of aspiring to anything higher, of possessing any driving force other than simple, unadulterated instinct. He trusts them in a way he cannot trust his neighbors—not now, not like this. He slams his notepad down on the counter and stomps into the kitchen to inform Mrs. McGinn that he will no longer be waiting on her customers. Let them get their own damn soup, if they want it so badly. Let them take it from their neighbors.
When Mrs. McGinn’s daughter eventually appears in the dining room, her face a little green around the edges, she finds him sitting alone in a corner booth, nursing an oversized bowl of oatmeal. She greets him and sits down. For a few minutes she watches him mope.
“You’ve got to give them a break,” she says.
“What are you talking about?”
She shrugs. “They’re not themselves right now. Everyone’s frightened, confused. This is the second minister that’s gone into the river and the second one they’ve lost, whether they wanted him here or not. Haven’t you listened to the conversations at the tables? It’s all that anyone can talk about.”
The zookeeper raises his shaggy head. It was a shock to wake up to the news that Noah and his wife had departed—that much was true. Although the zookeeper never cared much for the minister, he had grown more dependent on the minister’s wife than he cared to admit. The fact that she left without any notice, that she did not stop to bring him her animals or say a proper good-bye—well, it is enough to make even a person like the zookeeper (with his prickly soul and his deeply rooted disdain for others) feel somewhat forsaken. Perhaps this is a natural reaction; perhaps, after being so many times abandoned, the townspeople cannot stop themselves from grabbing at things, from holding them close.
“Do you think we drove him to it?” the zookeeper asks, the words rising to his lips unbidden.
He hates himself for asking it, hates that the question is as impossible to answer for this minister as it was for the last one. Why do you think he did it? the townspeople are asking one another across their lukewarm lunches on the day of Noah’s departure—the same question they were asking themselves on the day of his arrival.
“Maybe he just needed to get away,” says Mrs. McGinn’s daughter. The zookeeper’s attention snaps back to her, drawn by the peculiarity of her tone. “Look at this place.” She indicates in the cramped diner, the charcoal skies, the muttered complaints of their neighbors. “Can you blame him?”
“No,” the zookeeper admits. “I suppose not.”
“But you still refuse to go?”
The zookeeper stares at her, his patience evaporating. “Not now, Angie,” he declares. “We’ve been over this about a thousand times. We’ve got responsibilities here!” He stops, steadies himself. “This is my job,” he reminds her, more calmly. “If I’m not a zookeeper, I’m not anything.”
“And what about me?” she demands. “What am I?”
“Right now? You’re a citizen of this town. You’re a daughter and a fiancée and soon you’ll be a mother. You need to focus on the big picture, Angie. You need to get some perspective.” He reaches for her hands and lowers his voice. “We’ve talked about this enough. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
She nods, her expression tight. To the zookeeper, it seems that her face is rounder, softer than it used to be. “You’re right,” she says. “I won’t bring this up again.”
She rises and moves toward the kitchen, her steps heavier than usual. The zookeeper sighs and pushes his half-empty bowl away from him.
What does it matter why Noah walked into the river, why the last minister died, why anyone does anything at all? People are impossible to predict. Look at his neighbors: one day so helpful with the animals, so attentive to their needs; and the next day cramming pepper packets down their pants. He knows that they are frightened, but isn’t it too late for fear? Those who wanted to go, who were able to go, have left. These are the people who remain, the hearty souls who cling to their houses and their memories and their hope for something better while they are waiting for the rain to end and praying that the river does not rise up any higher.
And what if, he asks himself, this little town is washed away? Would the world be so much worse without it?
In reality, he doubts that anyone would notice they were gone.
twenty-seven
Noah wishes that his wife had not come with him to the church.
He doesn’t want her to see him like this: shaky, uncertain. He stumbled over the threshold on the way out of Dr. Yu’s house this morning and suddenly she was right there beside him, lifting up his elbow and guiding him out to the car. I’m not an invalid, he nearly snapped at her—but then again, how could he be certain? The memory of their flight two nights before left him feeling tentative and cowed. He recalled the sound of their tires splashing through puddles the size of small ponds and the image of the headlights beaming weakly through water while he shivered in the passenger seat and his wife tried not to look unnerved. The rain cleared once they were out of the hills, and for the remaining hours of their drive he leaned back against the headrest and peered mutely at the stars.
What the hell had he been thinking?
“There is something strange about that place,” the head elder says now, shaking his silver head with something between compassion and disdain. “You did your best, Noah,” he continues gravely. “Lord knows you tried. It simply wasn’t meant to be.”
Around the table the other elders murmur their assent, their clasped hands reflected in the sheen of the great mahogany table. Noah stares at their familiar faces with a flood of deep relief, the tension of the past two days finally easing from his muscles. They are rig
ht, of course—it was the town! How can any man be expected to stay sane in a place like that?
The head elder clears his throat and then continues. “Unfortunately we cannot offer you a position back here at the present time,” he says. His eyes are deep-set and unblinking. “In your absence, of course, we called someone else to take your place. But if you are willing to wait a few days—a few weeks at most—I am sure we will have no trouble identifying a new assignment for you in a different church. As you well know, any congregation would count itself fortunate to have you.” The elder pauses and shuffles through the stack of papers before him. “In the meantime, I’m afraid that we cannot return you to your former house, as the new minister and his young family are quite settled in it by now. Do you have a place to stay?”
Noah nods, unthinkingly. It is only when he and his wife have left the committee room and are stepping softly through the nave that he realizes he should have checked with her before responding.
“April won’t mind?” he asks her, and she shakes her head, her dark hair swinging across her shoulders.
“No,” she says. “I think it will be fine.” She glances sidewise at Noah, something odd in her expression. “I’m sure that we can stay as long as you like,” she adds, “if you’re certain that this is what you want.”
He halts at the back of the church, troubled by her statement. The vaulted ceiling soars above him, the candles blaze upon the altar. This church is twice the size of the one he has just left behind. In comparison, this one is opulent, grandiose, miraculously intact.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
She shrugs, fiddles with the cuffs of her checkered blouse. “Nothing,” she says. “I only meant—” Then she stops herself, shaking her head. “Nothing. I guess I thought that once you were feeling better, we would be going back.”
“Back?” The idea appalls him.
“Most of our things are still there. We left in a hurry,” she reminds him gently. She hesitates, and then she adds: “Besides—we took in so many of those animals. Who will look after them if we’re not there?”
Noah pictures the town. He imagines the rain pouring into the streets, the townspeople sealed within their houses, watching from behind closed windows. He can almost hear the howling of the wind, can almost feel the rain slamming against the walls. His hands tremble and sweat soaks the back of his shirt. For a moment his vision tunnels into darkness, and when his head clears he is unsteady on his feet, supported once again by his wife. He tries to pull away to prove that he can stand just fine on his own, but the earth sways beneath him and he cannot stop himself from leaning on her shoulder.
“Let’s get you home,” she says, and he doesn’t protest.
He wouldn’t have leaned on her so fully had he thought that anyone was watching them; he would have tried to manage on his own. But it is only when they approach the curb that he notices a figure leaning on the hood of their car, considering Noah and his wife from beneath a dark, sardonic brow, and so there is no time for him to straighten up. Noah does not recognize the man at first—the sun makes his head ache, makes the entire day feel like a dream.
“Well,” says the man, striding forward to offer his assistance. “What a coincidence.”
His face strikes an ominous chord, but still Noah fails to place him. It is his wife who speaks first. “The weatherman?” she says.
The man smirks, slick-haired and red-faced, a patch of dry skin peeling from his sunburned nose. “That’s what I used to be, sure,” he says with a fake and brilliant grin. He extends his hand. “But not anymore. I’ve been fired, so you might as well call me Jonas.”
“Excuse me, Jonas,” says Noah’s wife while Noah removes his arm from hers and grasps the man’s hand. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I’m sorry to hear about your job.”
“Me?” he scoffs. “I didn’t expect to see you here! I had you pegged for a true believer—I thought you were determined to stick it out in that ghost town until the bitter end.” He shrugs. “Anyway, I saw your car out here—recognized it as I was heading down the street for lunch. I haven’t seen that much mud and rust on a car since I hightailed it out of those hills two weeks ago. The feathers and claw marks in the upholstery were a dead giveaway, too. God, I’m glad to be out of there.”
Noah’s wife smiles at him in sympathy, the skin crinkling at the corners of her eyes. She responds but Noah does not hear what she is saying; he only lets his eyes rest upon her face. Her skin is still pale from weeks without sun, and when she smiles at Jonas her soul seems to shine right through it. She is clever and calm, generous and lovely. Noah warms at the sight of her and wonders, as he has wondered before, how she came to be so good.
Their relationship has always worked because the balance is just so: he is the one who guides them, dreaming of a distant point, while she steadies them and keeps them on course. He has never found someone as utterly devoted as she is—to her friends, to her work, to her clients, to him. Whenever he forgot his books at home, she would bring them to him. While he composed prayers to say at dinner, she made sure the meal was on the table. And yet although he loves how she supports him, he has not been able to ignore the fact that lately she seems driven to support many people in a similar fashion. He tries to ignore the doubt that tugs at the corners of his mind, but what if the truth is that he and she are not the perfect complements they appear to be? What if his wife is simply very good at being complementary?
“So,” Jonas is saying, his tone as conversational as if the three of them had been friends for years. “How many people came out with you? Is there anyone left back there?”
“About half the town left after your meeting,” replies Noah’s wife.
“The other half is still there?” he exclaims. His eyebrows rise halfway up his forehead. “Two full weeks later, and it hadn’t stopped raining?”
She shakes her head. “Not when we left.”
He exhales in a whistle, low and flat. “Damn it,” he says. He squints at her. “Tell me—why aren’t you with them? What finally changed your mind?”
Noah’s wife glances briefly at her husband. “Things took a turn for the worse,” she says.
Jonas nods. “Listen,” he says after a moment, his tone thick with rancor. “You’ve got to take care of yourself first, before you try to take care of anyone else. Look out for number one.” He pauses, shoots Noah a look whose significance Noah does not understand. “As for the rest of them, don’t give them another thought. They’re a bunch of misfits, and they made their choice. How can they expect anyone to help them if they won’t help themselves?”
Yes, Noah wants to say—that town, that church, those people. He wants to be able to say that they have ruined him. And yet … ? The church towers in the background behind his wife, its brick walls hard and unyielding, its steeple gleaming as if freshly sharpened. He shivers in the sun. The building that should provide him with that old sense of inspiration and purpose only leaves him with a gut full of dread. He felt this way before he left, he suddenly remembers. The feeling is familiar; it is the reason why he sought a change.
“Stubborn as pack mules, they are,” Jonas continues. “Stupid. Self-involved. Hopeless. If they hadn’t been so pigheaded, I could have convinced them to evacuate. Then I’d still have my job.” He shrugs, kicks at a yellow weed spiking out of the sidewalk. “The point is: it’s a beautiful day out here. The sun is shining. Might as well sit back and enjoy unemployment while it lasts—isn’t that right, Minister?”
Noah cannot listen anymore. “It was a foolish project to begin with,” he interjects, his tone uncharacteristically sour. “We were bound to fail. I couldn’t save that town any more than you could.”
Jonas does not seem to appreciate the comparison. “I didn’t fail,” he insists, his face glistening with sweat. He glances at Noah’s wife. “I simply stopped trying. If I’d wanted them out, I could have gotten them out, no problem. The fact is that it wasn’t worth the hassle. There wa
s nothing worth saving there.”
“You lost your job over it,” Noah reminds him.
“My peace of mind was more important than my job.”
Noah shakes his head. “The truth is you couldn’t have done it. It’s fine. I couldn’t do it, either.” He keeps his gaze fixed on Jonas even though he feels the shadow of the church looming over him. He is desperate to explain his revelation, but he cannot find the words to share it. The idea that we can change the people around us, that we can help them or save them or make them something other than what they are—it’s a delusion. It’s the illusion of control. Noah did not see that before, but he certainly sees it now.
“I could have gotten them out,” Jonas repeats. His face remains placid but his grin is sharper than it was. “I could still get them out. Sounds like a challenge.”
Noah’s wife stands between them, looking from one to the other, all the light gone now from her face. Noah turns away from her and shrugs.
“Life is not a challenge,” he murmurs, as if to himself. “It’s not a test, or a choice. It’s simply something you’re born into.”
His wife is saying something, but he cannot hear her. Before he knows what he is doing he has taken off again, striding through the dappled light that the branches have thrown across the sidewalk, gliding smoothly over pools of shade. His legs are long and he has already gone two blocks before his wife catches up to him, breathless, calling his name. If she had not snagged his sleeve when she did, if he had not looked down into her face and been struck right there on the pavement with all the force of her devotion and all the weight of how he loved her, he might have gone on walking for miles, the church at his back, putting as much distance between himself and that steeple as any man could.
twenty-eight
Someone must take action to save this sinking town.
And if not Mrs. McGinn, then who? Mauro? He might have pulled the minister out of the river, but he did no more than any lifeguard would have done. Her own daughter worked as a lifeguard at the outdoor pool in the years before it closed, and then the indoor one after that. If she had been at the river, she could have saved Noah’s life as well as anyone.
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