Ernie's Ark

by Monica Wood

  “All buckled in,” she says to her father, who has made no mention of safety.

  Her father flings a hand through the shiny long waves of his hair and starts the car. “What’s your report about?” he asks as they round the long, wet curve of River Road. It has been raining for days, the snow disappearing in gulps from the winter-weary woods. Across the footbridge, near the mill’s south gate, Francine can just make out a group of picketers, quiet and tightly thronged in mid-shift. At shift change there will be more of them, to make a noisy gauntlet. She knows many of them by name.

  “Jesse Jackson,” she tells her father. “The Reverend Jesse Jackson.”

  Her father slides her a half-smile. “What is it, Black History Month at Abbott Falls Middle School?” He says this because there are no black people in Abbott Falls, a place where he is marking time, a very long time, it seems, until he can get seduced—that’s the word he uses, seduced—away from this backwater to a place where you can get a decent latté and find somebody to hold a conversation with besides a papermaker with bad teeth.

  “He’s coming to speak to the strikers next week,” Francine says. Her father’s crack about white Abbott Falls feels like a prejudice all its own, a paradox she cannot articulate. It’s true the strikers hate the black men who came up to take their jobs, but they hate the white ones, too. If there were vile words for being a white person, Francine is pretty sure she’d have heard some by now. In her father’s talk, which is always smart and well-turned, she hears his desperation, his smallness. He likes to tell people he chose Abbott Falls because it is a real place inhabited by real people, but in truth he can’t afford a house on College Row.

  Francine grasps all this, fleetingly, in the grayish privacy of her own head, where she works out the problem of family as if it were algebra, coming up with formulas that work cleanly, both sides equal. But in practice the formulas don’t hold, they never hold, they crumble into pieces so fine they can’t be put back.

  Blaine College, about forty miles and fifteen solar systems west of Abbott Falls, is a formidable stonemasoned sanctuary where sixteen hundred students study philosophy and art and rarely venture off campus. The library, where her father drops her off, reminds Francine of a castle—it even has a turret. It occurs to her that steady exposure to a place like this might have a tendency to make some people feel royal.

  The librarian, the queen of the castle in a tight dress, wears a ceramic badge that says LIBRARIAN. “Call me Gloria,” she tells Francine, then, leaning into a whisper: “I’m one of the few here who properly apprehend the full meaning of your father’s gifts.”

  “Well, he’s very frustrated,” Francine agrees.

  Gloria’s peachy face hovers, composed and hopeful. “Yes, he is.” She straightens up. “Let me grab the keys and I’ll take you to AV.”

  Francine, stranded in the carpeted atrium, glances furtively around the library. Almost everyone here is white, as it turns out, despite her father’s smirkiness about Abbott Falls. Through the window, across the soaked campus green, gallops a bronze-colored student with a letter jacket hunched over his head to combat the rain. Except for his color he looks a lot like those galootish full-backs on the Abbott Falls football team. She would like to find someone more stately, charismatic, possessed of a dignified anger, someone who can look at what he is seeing and express it exactly. Someone like the Reverend Jesse Jackson. She does spot one other black person, a girl slouched in a chair by the window, her hair smoothed into an old-fashioned pageboy. But she looks kind of dopey, maybe hungover, like a sorority sister who had a bad night, and she’s talking to a white girl in dreadlocks with a jewel in her forehead. What does this mean?

  In her head she calls him Jesse. Just plain Jesse. Her friend Jesse.

  She has come here armed with the facts of his life: his illegitimate birth, his absent father, his Greenville childhood, his faultless forward march toward nobility. I was born in the slum, but the slum was not born in me. Into Jesse’s childhood street, Haney Street (in which she pictures a lonely, gifted black boy, so lonely and searching), she has placed tin cans rattling mournfully in the gutter, a single broken streetlight, and two dogs that pack together, one black, one white—little Jesse’s first metaphor. We sit here together, a rainbow, a coalition.... She has acquired two photographs: one, the fragile Jesse, a little child with chestnut cheeks and parted hair; the other, the rakish preacher, broad shouldered and mustachioed, arms folded, an immaculate handkerchief triangled out from his breast pocket.

  Gloria is back, rattling keys. “Now,” she says, all business: “You wanted to see some footage?”

  Francine nods, eyeing the stacks. “Whatever you have. I just want to hear him talk.”

  Gloria unlocks a room cluttered with sound and video equipment and leads Francine to a computer terminal. “Most of what we have is on CD,” she explains, sitting Francine down and reaching over her to scroll through an index, then another, and another. Francine, who notes several shortcuts that Gloria either doesn’t know or does not wish to take, waits patiently until Gloria finishes her orientation and leaves.

  The first thing Francine notices, watching the screen version of her friend Jesse striding to the podium at the 1988 Democratic Convention, is that he walks like a man with no intention of ever stopping. It is almost a surprise when he does. His voice is melodic, with certain imperfections of speech, a stoppage here and there as certain syllables blot together. His mouth fills with poetry, then the poetry floats out, not perfectly. She is entranced. Although she has memorized whole sections of his speeches, and this speech in particular, Jesse’s voice visits her as something both familiar and strange, as if she’d stepped into her morning shower and out poured gold dust, or feathers, or butterflies. Francine does not understand that she is falling, that Jesse Jackson is the first in what will be a series of miserable crushes, that when the news of Jesse’s love child breaks two years hence, she will be sick with betrayal. Instead, she feels as if she is rising. Rising toward knowledge. She waits for the feeling to pass, and mercifully, it doesn’t. By the time Jesse Jackson lifts his chin and exhorts his listeners to “keep hope alive, keep hope alive, keep hope alive,” she believes he is talking directly to her.

  Her father does not turn up at the appointed time, so Francine takes in Jesse’s speeches again, each one of them, before turning in the disks, thanking Gloria, and crossing the soggy campus. Though she thinks rarely of her mother, who lives in London and hates rain, this kind of weather does bring her to mind. She clops over the granite steps of the art building, which is smallish, old, one of the last to merit renovation. It smells of turpentine and other chemicals, and also of must and ancient wood and a different century. She climbs the worn stairs to the third floor, fearful of finding something she has not heretofore imagined in any detail, but when she creeps down the hall, past the splattered art rooms to her father’s gloomy office, she finds the door ajar and her father alone at his desk. He gets up when he sees her and gathers his things. “Finished already?” he asks.

  Francine just stands there. “You said four. It’s five-thirty.”

  He makes a show of inspecting his watch. He taps it a few times, as if Francine is too young to tell time and cannot see that his watch is fine. “Well, kiddo,” he says, “I guess it’s time to go.”

  His closed briefcase sits upon his desk. There are two coffee cups, one half-drunk, the other full, on a table by the one window. He has a couch in there. It is then she sees the girl, so dark in the murk of her father’s office that at first glance she appears one with the long, soft drape. Their eyes lock. Her face is angled, plum-colored, her lips billowed and shiny. Her irises resemble burnt holes in a white, white eye. She steps into the room, revealing herself, and her father says, “This is Shaleese,” as if he were introducing someone from the office next door. The girl nods, then leaves, her hair rattling with beads. Francine listens to the rattling echo: tapa-tapa-tapa-tapa-tapa. Down one flight, tapa-tapa-tapa-tap
a, down the next flight, tapa-tapa-tapa, fainter now, like a far-off musical instrument, an instrument used for sending signals, fainter and fainter, then the soft hush of a door.

  Her father grabs his briefcase, cool, offhand, lips pursed. He touches the small of her back and hustles her out the door. On the way downstairs, he asks, “So, kiddo, get lots of info on Dr. King?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Lots.” Outside the sky has cleared. It seems impossible that the bloated clouds have disintegrated in so short a time, and yet they have, leaving an ordinary late-afternoon sky, low-lit and clear, as if it had not rained at all.

  They get into the car and head home. Her father is talking, but Francine’s head fills with Jesse’s voice, grand and comforting. I understand. I know abandonment. Jesse’s passion makes her feel enfolded, taken in, thrillingly blue-collar. For a moment the contrast is such that she imagines she hates her father. But the ride home is long and quiet, and by the time they reach Abbott Falls, her hate has dissolved into the usual yearning, that soft, monotonous ache, like a bruise that keeps getting whacked afresh.

  On Monday afternoon, last period, Mrs. Therriault, whose husband is the treasurer of Local 20, gives Francine an A on the spot, casting a disapproving eye over Francine’s classmates, who have done run-of-the-mill reports on historical figures like Paul Revere. Francine is glad enough to get the A, but the public nature of her triumph is bound to strain her relationship with her classmates, which isn’t very chummy to begin with.

  “You will note Francine’s emphasis on the Reverend Jackson’s efforts on behalf of the American labor movement,” Mrs. Therriault informs the class. Her glasses slide down her long nose, giving her the appearance of an educated giraffe. “Very timely, considering his forthcoming visit.” Francine leans forward, hoping for another of Mrs. T’s pro-union diatribes, which she finds enthralling. Mrs. T, however, has been informally enjoined from expressing in-class opinions about Atlantic Pulp & Paper—a clear violation of her civil rights, she announced to the class a month ago, and that was the last she was going to say about the matter.

  Now it seems she is about to disobey her gag order. She gathers herself, sliding her glasses back up. Most of the kids look eager. Not Cora Spencer, whose father and aunt crossed the picket line; not Marty Fallon, whose mother manages Laverdiere’s Drug and was the one to complain about Mrs. T’s current-events lessons. “I hope you will all turn out next Saturday for the Reverend’s speech,” she intones, “a speech that is sure to soothe the heart of many a foot soldier in the war against—”

  The next words—the corporate barracudas whose jagged teeth have bitten into the very flesh of our community—remain unspoken. The class has heard this speech before. Mrs. T clears her throat, looks as martyred as possible, and finishes up: “Well. Heaven forbid I should violate any mandates.” She folds her arms. “Thank you, Francine. And I hope the rest of you were listening for a change. Now. Chapter questions on the Constitution.”

  Francine goes for her book, but just then Mrs. T clears her throat again, loud. “Speaking of the Constitution,” she says, leveling them with a look that could fell trees, “freedom of speech is a right. It’s a right, people.” She waits, tapping her pink fingernail against her teeth. “Well, guess what. I believe I’ve just had one of my ideas.” Everyone in the class—not Cora Spencer, not Marty Fallon—straightens up. Mrs. T notes the shift, then continues: “Consider for a moment the Reverend Jackson’s special fondness for young people and his inspiring work on their behalf.” She glares around, as if defying them to deny the frigid fact that young people are ingrates first and last. “Wouldn’t it be wonderfully a propos if one of my young people introduced Reverend Jackson at the rally?”

  Francine cannot believe what she is hearing. Mrs. T has a lot of influence—Francine has seen her at the union hall, grading papers and making picket signs simultaneously—and there is no question that her wish will be somebody’s command. Already Francine imagines the surge of warmth as her friend Jesse enfolds her hand in his—the meeting of kindred spirits. Already she imagines adjusting her glasses, evening up her note cards, staring out at the multitude collected in the high school gym. Keep hope alive, she thinks. Her father will beam from the crowd, and Cindy, and Kenny (who’s been nothing but kind since returning home); maybe they’ll call London to let her mother know.

  Face flaming, she looks up at Mrs. T. But Mrs. T is looking at Eddie Little. Everybody is looking at Eddie Little, son of Roy Little, president of Local 20. Francine has just given a report on the Reverend Jesse Jackson, has delivered a pitch-perfect imitation of his famous lines, but still everybody is looking at Eddie Little.

  Then Mrs. T snaps up a notepad and aims her pen. “Let’s get a ballpark on how many of you would like to be considered for the privilege.” Three hands shoot up, three volunteers, three combatants: Francine, Eddie, and Meghan Bouvier, who is beautiful, period, and has won every single thing she has ever competed for. Except this time. She wonders if Meghan will mind. If it hurts more to lose if you never lose.

  “Fine,” Mrs. T says, scribbling the names on a pad. “Tomorrow. Two-minute practice intro from each of you. The class will vote.” Most of the time she treats the class like feeble-minded inmates, except for the times, as now, when she treats them like game-show contestants.

  When the end-of-day bell rings, Francine marshals her courage and waylays Eddie Little at his locker. “I’m very qualified,” she says, her body humming with panic; she fears her lips may tremble clean off her face. “You heard my report, right?”

  Eddie looks at her, registering surprise. She has never spoken to him outside of class, though he was her peer reviewer for language-arts last fall. Good similars, he’d written on her poem, a long rhyming poem called “The Fifteen Fingers of Freedom.” Eddie is tall and well-liked. He plays basketball and this is a basketball town. Some of the other kids have stopped to gawk, and Francine feels like a big, ugly toad-person, a slug-person, a creature made of fat and slime.

  “You’re not even from here,” Eddie says.

  “My mother is,” Francine says, then corrects herself: “My stepmother.” She remembers, a second too late, that Cindy was once married to Eddie’s uncle. That Cindy broke Eddie’s uncle’s heart into about four million pieces.

  Eddie blinks at her. “She’s not from here, either,” he says, meaning: Not a mill family.

  This is the worst thing you can say in this town, at this time.

  “She grew up right on Lincoln Street,” Francine says, suddenly enraged on Cindy’s behalf. “She’s your aunt.”

  “Not anymore,” Eddie informs her. But he is not a mean boy—there are mean boys in this school, and Eddie Little is not one of them—so he knocks her gently on the shoulder and says, “May the best man win.”

  Which allows Francine to flee the hallway still in possession of a shred of dignity. This is the first time she has been touched by a boy. For this she will be grateful to Eddie Little, she is sure, all her life.

  When Francine arrives at the union hall on the following Saturday, two hours early for Jesse’s arrival, something is wrong. The usual people are there: Eddie’s father, Roy Little; three of Eddie’s uncles, including the one whose heart Cindy broke; Mrs. Therriault’s husband, talking on the phone with his face afire; Allan Landry, in his too-small T-shirt, belly half-mooning above his belt; and about twenty more of the inside circle, everybody talking at once, low and secret and disbelieving.

  There has been bad news.

  Two other phones are ringing and nobody answers. Voices crack and thunk, the phone ringing over them.

  Francine sets to work, trying to make herself both useful and inconspicuous. She joins two women boxing food at a long table. “What’s going on?” she asks, grabbing an empty crate.

  One of the women is old, the other just looks old. The old woman—a parishioner from St. Anne’s—shakes her head. “Maybe Jackson canceled, is all I can think of.”

  The other woman—
a lean, leathery striker whom Francine has seen shrieking on the gauntlet—lifts her chin. “Big surprise,” she mutters. She picks up a canned ham and looks at it. She wants it.

  “He wouldn’t cancel,” Francine says, eyeing the ham. “Jesse would never do that.”

  “Right,” the woman says. “They’re so famous for keeping their word.”

  An uncomfortable silence descends upon them. The old woman pretends not to have heard. Thwuk, thwuk, thwuk, goes the food into the boxes. The leathery woman’s bunions, pink and bare, poke out from the ripped uppers of her sneakers.

  Francine moves away, down the length of the table where she can work alone. She boxes up a couple of cans of soup, some spaghetti sauce, tins of cat food and tuna fish, some toilet paper: a little of everything necessary to get through a day without crossing over. The box will be delivered without fanfare, anonymously, to a striker family with no second income and a cleaned-out savings account. When she peers sideways at the women, she catches the leathery woman, whose bunions must be cold, staring at the older woman’s hair, which has just been permed. Not everybody has suffered equally. At first everybody was equally angry, their anger a straight, perfectly directed line, like an electrical current running from Abbott Falls, Maine, to the headquarters of Atlantic Pulp & Paper in New York City. Now the long months have intervened. Their anger is no longer perfect. It is less an electrical current than a lightning bolt, jagged and hard to control and not as fussy about its target. How many times in these long months have those two women stood here, on what Ray Little calls this hallowed floor? What have they really been thinking? Solidarity forevvver, solidarity forevvver, they have sung many times, standing on this hallowed floor: The union makes us stronnng! Francine loves that song, she hums it all the time. But solidarity is not a floor, she has found. It is a ladder. People end up on different rungs.