Ark Nemesis
“Gracious Lord, it’s your humble servant Ken again.”
Mally loved how her husband started his nightly prayers. Like a little boy, he kneeled by the side of the bed, fingers interlaced, eyes squeezed shut, head cocked up like he smelled potroast. And every night, when he invited her to pray with him, she told him she already had. Instead, she tuned in to the TV, donned her Bluetooth headphones.
The throat-clearing meant he was about to dig in. “Only through your infinite mercy and your powerful grace can…”
Just like that, silence. His prayers, bless them, muffled out by those headphones he got her for Mother’s Day, bless him. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy praying with him — she did. It was just time for the news, where strong, Christian-looking newsmen spoke in that voice she liked, and she wondered if newsmen made better preachers, or would preachers make better newsmen? She really couldn’t stand the lady anchorwoman, with her dress practically- what? Aw, Jeez! The news show was going on about an alligator at Disney. Eating a baby? She pulled her earphone off to tell him about it, but stopped when she heard the tone in his voice.
“… and if thy will be done, please smite Mrs. Whipple, and let her suffering be an example to those Sodomites and afflicted masturbators who- ”
“Who’s Mrs. Whipple?”
Kenny shot her a look across his knuckles that made her hand jump. The headphones snapped against her head. She removed them, turned off the TV.
“I’m sorry, Kenny. I know you hate when I interrupt your prayer — ”
“Of course I bloody do!”
Mally looked down, but she knew he felt bad for snapping at her.
“She’s just a… She’s a teacher from this morning.”
Mally folded the earphones back into their zippered pouch as quick as she could. Sensing the tug of duty, she coaxed the front curlers out of her hair and put on the expression she usually saved for church.
“Tell me what happened.”
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“Hello boys and girls- DEMITRIUS STOPPIT!”
Demetrius stopped it.
Mrs. Lima continued, somehow scanning her middle school student body without taking her eyes of Demetrius. “Boys and girls, we have a special guest with us today. Mister Ken Ham is from Aus-tray-lee-ah.” She exchanged a nod with one section of the bleachers waving the little green and yellow flags they made in art class. “As you all know, Mr. Ham is building the Noah’s Ark over in Williamstown.”
A girl whose hand had been in the air the whole assembly could contain herself no longer. “My daddy works there! He built the Noah’s Ark!”
Mrs. Lima stopped her. “Thank you, Kaitlyn.” She went off-script. “Quick show of hands. How many of you learned about our guest this week during your classes?”
The sea of raised hands brought her smile out of hiding.
“Who can tell us something they learned about Mr. Ham? Brucie?”
Everyone (including Mrs. Lima) knew Brucie hated being called on, but there was an answer right there in her mouth, rising up from wherever the teacher had drilled it, surprising the rest of her face with the sounds coming out. “’Spanning 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, this modern marvel amazes visitors young and old.’” She sank back into the bleachers.
Mrs. Lima looked where everyone else was looking, towards Ken Ham, to see his reaction. He had been standing off to the side, unnoticed. The sudden celebrity awakened something in him and he glided his tall frame automatically toward the podium, accepting the microphone from Mrs. Lima, the rest of his introduction curled in her hand.
Scott Safie started clapping because he was hyperactive, but it caught on around the gym, and Ken Ham looked genuinely impressed at the volume of applause. He held up a hand for silence, and Mrs. Lima nodded imperceptibly. The entire student body stopped clapping at once. Except Scott Safie. No, he waited until Ken Ham was about to talk, and started clapping again. Mrs. Lima tried to induce an aneurism in him telepathically. Mr. Kane, the volleyball coach, made like he was going to get him. Then all movement stopped and a voice came booming down from the loudspeaker above.
“’FOR THE WRATH OF GOD IS REVEALED FROM HEAVEN AGAINST ALL UNGODLINESS AND UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF MEN’,” Ken Ham’s smile zeroed in on Scott Safie, “Or boys, depending.”
He turned toward Mrs. Lima, who snapped out of her fantasy in time to beam at him. “Thank you Mrs. Lima, and thank you Dry Ridge Middle School. You’ve obviously done your homework.” He let this word land on Brucie, who sat up straight again.
Then he did his thing. He told the story he’d been telling to the media, to his congregation, to the Creation Museum, to churches and local schools. How he felt his calling, started Answers in Genesis, and finally the big story of the ark. As he described the six miles of timber, the 800 acres of land, the miracle of the whole thing, his heart swelled seeing teachers and students giving each other thumbs-up, like he was making their lessons come to life, their class time well spent.
He was really enjoying the last part of his talk, the part about the dinosaurs, when he noticed something. It pinged in his brain like a mouse falling on a piano key, and it took him a second to rewind his scan of the crowd and pick out what it was. One teacher and one student had exchanged a look.
“… is only 6,000 years old, and that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR YOUR SINS, you know.”
Like a wolf, the words came rushing out, overtaking his previously scheduled programming. The lower half of his face swallowed and composed itself. The top half glared at the teacher and her student. The student looked down at his feet, but the curly-haired teacher looked right back at him through her glasses.
He let the next words fall out like lamb’s breath into the microphone, “Yes, young man. He did. And for you, too, young lady. A teacher, I suppose. Less young that that young man, but still a young lady. No older than Jesus himself when he was crucified by the Jews.” He saw some of her students look confused. Jesus, these kids. “Would you like to be reborn after the consummation or not?”
One eighth-grade hand crept up.
“Yes, young man! I’m glad one of you heard me. Now, I’m sure he’s not the only one who wants to avoid eternal, burning hell, is he? Who else?”
“Um. No sir?” Mrs. Lima and everybody turned on Adam Buhman, the boy connected to the hand.
Ken Ham’s eyes narrowed.
“It’s that I raised my hand because, well…” in the next instant his entire life flashed before him: the time he peed his pants during softball, the time he won Grand Theft Auto, the kiss he got after his Bar Mitzvah. “It’s that dinosaurs and man, they didn’t…” he looked to his teacher for help. She smiled vaguely back. “It’s that Mrs. Whipple says dinosaurs became x-stink 65 million years ago. Also I’m Jewish,” and he sat down.
Ken Ham smiled at the boy, and talked to Mrs. Whipple through him. “Then I would recommend Mrs. Whipple read her scrip-sha!” His accent went bush when it was angry. He continued.
“When we accept that our lives mean nothing without the Lord Jesus Christ, we know the Bible as the word of God, don’t we? Everything a man needs to know… Excuse me, what is the problem?”
Kelly Sayer? No way. Kelly was the best student in the school. Mrs. Lima was conflicted. “Mr. Ham?” she asked. He didn’t respond, but she stood up anyway. “My name is Kelly, Kelly Sayer. And we learned in Mrs. Whipple’s class about the iridium-rich layer of ash at the K-T Boundary, and the dinosaur fossils underneath.”
Ken Ham rolled his eyes. “Let me see, she told you how 65 million years ago a meteor struck the earth and magically blotted out the sun, and the dinosaurs died?” He had interrupted her, which her classmates knew she hated, but he had gotten it mostly right. So she nodded.
“Well then who made the meteor? Hmm? Who made the sun? The answers to our creation are laid out, plain as day, in the Bible. Do you know the Bible well, Kelly Sayer?”
“I’m sorry, Sir. But Mrs. Whipple taught us about the scientific method, and how — if you ask questions about something — there’s this whole, like, method? There are steps.”
On cue, Mrs. Whipple’s class began chanting, “Question, Research, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusion, RESULTS!” Everyone cheered at the “results” part, immediately silenced by a look from Mrs. Lima.
“’Zat so, is it?” Ken Ham let the air out of the building. Dead silence.
Except for Kelly. “Yes, Sir. It is.”
“What?”
“Can I ask, if you don’t like science, why do you have a computer? I saw you using them during your talks on youtube.”
“EXCUSE ME?”
“I think, like, if you reject science, then you need to reject technology, too. Live like the…” She pantomimed milking a cow, then a beard, then churning butter, and was about to get really frustrated until Glenn Helmuth suggested, “The Amish?”
“Yes! Thanks, Glenn. You know I voted for you for secretary, sorry you lost. Anyway, if you want to wind it back to the Bronze Age, then be real, you know?”
Kelly’s parents never hit her, so she didn’t recognize what was happening with Ken’s face. So she went on.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot since Mrs. Whipple’s science fair. Remember the fair, guys?”
Even Julius joined in, nodding at the recollection of the only thing he’d ever remember about school.
“Mr. Ham, at the science fair I had an awesome project: a solar-generated laser beam. And I lost to Edgar. Edgar! I’m sorry Edgar, but your project…”
Edgar nodded in agreement. “I made stalactites with salty water and toilet paper.”
For Kelly, the wound was still raw. “The judge loved it! Said it proved Young Earth Theory!”
“You are a jealous little girl.”
Mrs. Whipple stood up.
In hindsight, he wished he hadn’t said that.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Mally was waiting in bed, propped on her elbow, looking at him like she did in church. Bugger that ratbag from the assembly. He was Ken Ham, dammit, and here was his beautiful wife, with the curlers mostly out of her hair.
However he was going to phrase what happened in the assembly, the news story on the muted TV killed it.
Over Mally’s shoulder, there she was, in his bedroom: Mrs. Whipple. On the news, in a shaky cellphone video, and there he was in a shouting match with her. It was bad.
Lord, give me strength. Ken’s hand reached across Mally’s body and the breath caught in her throat. Was he going to touch her tonight? He grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. Rolling onto her, he wondered which animals on the ark mated first.
