The summer after my high school graduation, I saw Noah’s Ark. Though naturally, it no longer belonged to Noah, but instead to a woman named Phoebe, Phoebe Collins to be exact. I don’t know if the Ark was passed down to her ancestrally. If I had to guess, probably not.

Will was driving when we came across the Ark. I was in the passenger seat. I remember because thirty minutes prior, while I was driving, a call from Will’s dad came over the car’s Bluetooth.

“Turn around,” he said.

“What? Why?” Will said.

“Don’t ask me why; you know why.

“107. One-o-fucking-seven. Are you kidding me Will?”

Fuck, I thought.

“I’m sorry Mr. Sage. It’s not Will’s fault. I was driving. Sorry.” 

“Did you know you were going that fast?”

“Not really, no.” 

“You could have killed someone. You could have died. My son could have died.”

“Yeah. I suppose so.”

“You guys need to turn around—now.”

“Well, we really can’t. I’m sorry, but we’ve been driving for eight hours—since two in the morning—and, finally, only have a couple hours left. It makes no sense to turn around. It would be unsafe. You can blame me all you want but don’t get mad at Will. Sorry.

“And anyways, Will is eighteen now,” I added and hung up the phone.

I spent, between apologies, the next several minutes—after the inevitable switch of driving responsibilities—validating all the reasons why we shouldn’t—couldn’t—turn around. Will mostly listened, or was silent, or sunk into himself, or thought about how I was a manipulative friend whose interests consisted only of personal gain, a personal gain very much including an arrival in Lincoln, preferably before sundown. But eventually—having exhausted all arguments—my monologue began to go in circles, and I too faded into silence. 

Outside my window, the sky, construction-paper blue, was uniform and endless, which, in combination with the surrounding cornstalks, equal in their vast uniformity, resulted in the onset of vertigo, or perhaps a sort of anti-vertigo; because despite the universally linear surroundings, the reflexive void of sky and land resulted in a sense of falling much deeper than that from driving on a mountainous road, a sense of falling that was unbounded by direction, gravity, or conventional physics.

I reverted my gaze from the window back to the windshield. We were driving, now at a much more reasonable speed, down I-80, and I thought, if only for a moment, that if I squinted long enough, I could see outlines of suburban buildings on the horizon, coming out of the linear nothingness, though this proved only a symptom of the vertigo.

Finally, Will broke the silence.

“It’s just that—and I know you might not get it—I have, my entire life, had a very close relationship with my family, dad specifically, like ironclad, and don’t ever do things to upset them, him, him especially, especially not something like this, not to be a goody-two-shoes, not out of fear, or being submissive, or because of societal rules, but out of care, love, respect, knowing it matters, little things—things like this, going too fast, driving my parents car, graciously loaned for a road-trip, too fast—matter, 

“matter not to me but to my dad, not because of strictness, but because…”

At that point I stopped listening, or, to be precise, tried my best to continue listening, but the words had lost relation to each other, retaining only their individual, fragmentary meanings; I was somewhere else, falling.

I redirected my gaze to the window, staring blankly until it appeared that the rows of corn were moving, 70-mph in the opposite direction of the car, now a fixed point beside the corn. 

That’s when I first saw it, off ahead to the right, the top of a wooden structure, protruding amongst the corn. I narrowed my eyes into a squint, assuming it, too, was a vertigo-induced mirage, but unlike the suburban buildings, the structure persisted, proving to be—at least in some capacity—a real object. 

“What do you think that is?” I said, pointing at the structure.

“I don’t know. A barn. An outpost.”

“An outpost for what?” I said, ignoring the barn remark due to its logicality. I preferred, at that moment, to think in abstract terms. My mind filled with thoughts of extraterrestrials, crop-circles, paranormality, and YouTube conspiracy-theory video essays. “We should go check it out. It looks like there’s an offramp up there.”

“Bro, no. It’s literally just a building. We have passed so many fucking buildings.”

“Yeah, but it’s weird-looking, in the middle of a corn field in literal nowhere. Plus, we haven’t gotten out of the car in a couple hours. It would be nice to stretch our legs. And I need to piss. There’s probably a bathroom.”

“You always need to piss.”

“C’mon, bro. Please.”

Will shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Well, I’m already fucked anyways,” and merged into the right lane.

The off-ramp led to a small, single-lane road, perpendicular to the interstate. Will, defeated, turned right onto the road. 

“Let’s just get this over with and get back on the road,” he said. “I’m tired and want to get to Lincoln already so we can crash.”

We drove a couple hundred yards down the road before it turned into a narrower gravel road, cut between two corn fields, barely wide enough to fit the car between. Will, upon seeing the gravel road, slowed down, silently voicing his desire to turn around.

“C’mon. We’re almost to it,” I said. “Probably only another half-mile.”

He didn’t respond but increased the car’s speed and continued down the road. The car, rolling over the gravel, steadily vibrated the back of my seat, and I, drifting into a trance-state, turned inward.

I thought of senior year physics. Will and I had been lab partners, in addition to a girl named Caroline, whom Will and I, at different points throughout the year, had both had varying degrees of romantic interest in. 

The final project was a mousetrap car, made from barbeque skewers and cheap craft store supplies, allotted to each group in equal amounts. The last three weeks of the semester had been dedicated to the project, accounting for twenty percent of the final grade. I had gotten an A- on the final exam. Will had gotten a D. And seeing as successful completion of the project would have boosted his grade significantly, Will was, rightfully, invested. Caroline didn’t seem to care much about the project. She completed her portion seamlessly but without earnestness—mechanically. I don’t know if it was because, like me, she didn’t need the grade, or if she simply didn’t care. Behavioral research gathered throughout my time as her lab partner, and, at times, her romantically interested lab partner, seemed to suggest the latter. 

On the day of the final presentation—a race between each group’s cars—I was late. But I was always late. It was first period, and I lived a twenty-minute drive from school. 

I walked into class fifteen minutes after the bell, hair damp with sink water, dripping slightly onto the shoulders of my crumpled t-shirt, worn the day prior and picked up off the floor that morning. Each group was already preparing for the race, doing test runs and final adjustments at their respective lab tables. Everyone stopped what they were doing momentarily to glance at me as I walked through the door, everyone except Will, who was frantically jotting something down in our group’s paper. Caroline was immersed in her phone, smiling. The glow of the screen lit up her turquoise eyes and accented her pale face. 

I speed-walked over to our table in the back left corner, sat down at my stool, said sorry for being late, asked what I missed, and flung my backpack onto the floor. The backpack landed and, in addition to its routine thud, made a snapping sound. I instantly knew. So did Will and Caroline. I lifted the backpack, revealing the crushed vehicle, unmendable, sprung trap clinging to the outer canvas.

Caroline started laughing, collected herself, and said in jest, “idiot,” then broke back into laughter. I felt myself reverting to romantically interested lab partner. I looked over at Will, who hadn’t said anything. Though silent, his face said “fuck” quite plainly, and his eyes, directed at me, or something behind me, said “fuck you” rather un-plainly.

I shuttered, shook away the thought, returned from out of myself, and gazed over at Will, driving, eyes straight ahead, thoughtless, or deep in thought, intent on the narrow road cut geometrically between the corn.

The road got narrower. Stray cornstalks drooped into the road, brushing up against the sides of the car, creating a green tunnel reminiscent of a drive-through car wash. The wooden structure, visible only through the windshield, was growing increasingly defined, concentrically placed in an annular clearing. Only the top was perceptible, a rectangular house, wooden, single-story. Though still obstructed, it was clear—due to the house’s height—that a lower portion existed.

As we rounded a bend the bottom revealed itself, a large boat hull, made entirely of wooden planks, house placed centrally atop the deck. The clearing was in fact a pond, perhaps three hundred feet in diameter. The boat-plus-house took up almost all of the pond. Its exterior walls were so close to the pond’s edge that the pond looked more like a moat than a pond.

“What the hell,” Will said, speaking his rendition of my thoughts into existence.

We parked along the bank of the pond, up against the corn, got out, and approached. An old lady was sitting in a chair on the deck, shaded by the roof’s overhang. Her hair, gray, was curly and unkempt, protruding from her head in various directions. I couldn’t make out any definitive facial features, but I could tell that her skin was leathery, her face sinking. She was reading something resembling a newspaper. 

“Hey,” I said, yelling up at the old lady. “Sorry to interrupt. I wanted to ask about your boat. It’s really, uh—cool.”

“It’s not a boat. It’s an ark, Noah’s Ark,” she said while getting up from her chair and approaching the Ark’s edge. “What’s your name?”

“Butch. This is Will.” I gestured towards him. He nodded and gave a half-attempted wave. “And yours?”

“Phoebe, Phoebe Collins.”

“So how’d you get it, the Ark? Or did you just find it?”

“Is that of any concern to you?”

“Well, no. I was just curious.”

“That’s how we got into this mess, being curious.”

“Can we come aboard to check it out? Get a tour?”

“No, you can’t come aboard. Don’t you know how the story goes? Didn’t you learn in school?”

“Where are all the animals? Where’s Noah? or your husband? or partner? whatever?”

“Working on it, honey. That’s why there hasn’t been a flood yet.”

The conversation continued in that manner for quite a while. I, from the pond’s edge, would yell questions up to Phoebe, on the deck of the Ark, and she would yell down answers. Will, slightly incredulous of the old lady and her ark, stood two yards behind me, in the direction of the car, and didn’t partake in the conversation, instead smoking a cigarette, gazing at the whole scene dishearteningly.

The Ark, though undoubtedly large, still seemed too small for the task at hand. I couldn’t imagine it fitting more than a couple hundred animals, and even then, that seemed like a stretch. When I asked Phoebe about this, she said that over the years the Ark had shrunk considerably due to a natural weathering process of the wood. Of course in hindsight, this doesn’t make much sense, but in the moment, her tone gave me no reason to question the fact. 

I soon ran out of questions. I didn’t know what else to say. How does one converse with the chosen survivor of a God-willed mass-extinction? Even if the possibility was remote, even if it was more likely that Phoebe Collins wasn’t well, a mental-institution escapee, it was still a possibility that had to be considered.

But eventually, Phoebe went back to her chair and returned to her newspaper. And before getting back on the road, while she wasn’t looking, I peed into the pond, my stream hitting the Ark, sinusoidally marking the wood siding.

*

After that summer I moved to San Francisco to live with and work for my uncle, a painter. Will enlisted in the Navy. I tried to talk him out of it, told him it wasn’t worth it. There’s nothing else to do, he said. I didn’t know what to say. Who am I to tell him otherwise, I thought.

It’s been two years. And I haven’t seen him since the going away party, except while looking through my phone’s camera roll, or at a glossy photo, dulled by dust, thumb-tacked to the wall of my undisturbed childhood room while visiting my parents for the holidays. We text, sometimes email, depending on Will’s internet access. Though the conversations are never long, never contain much, and are sometimes left incomplete for months at a time. How’s it been? Good. How’s bootcamp? Good. Miss you. No response.

I used to send him mail, postcards, books I thought he might like, but eventually stopped because he never mentioned it. I don’t know if it was because he wasn’t reading them, or if he never received them. I didn’t want to ask. Too much time had lapsed. 

*

Today, while sitting on a bench in the park, watching a young couple, the boy, shy, attempting to close space between him and the girl, extending his arm to put around her, halfway through retracting it, I felt my phone buzz. It was Will.

Will: got my assignment today

im allowed off base for a week in the meantime

come visit

Me: ill try

so you’re finally going out on a boat?

Will: its not a boat, its a ship, a battleship

Me: where will you be stationed?

No response.

I left the park before sunset. It was mid-fall with signs of an early winter. The bay’s saline breeze turned to a steady wind, brushing against my face and uncovered skin, depositing salt. I grabbed a sweater from my messenger bag and walked the eighteen blocks back to my uncle’s apartment. The sun set halfway through. 

On the way I imagined Will, captain of a navy vessel, rogue, in the middle of the Pacific somewhere between Japan and the West Coast, two months after the nuclear fallout of WWIII, laid out on the deck in a Tommy Bahama beach chair, staring up at the sun, smoking a cigarette. Meanwhile his wife, sitting in the captain’s chair, perhaps Caroline, her turquoise eyes outmatching the surrounding waters, staring at her phone, rendered useless, reduced to an overqualified Sudoku contraption. Below, in the hold, all weaponry—long-gone, used-up in the war—replaced by animals, gathered with no regard for symmetry—eleven chickens, four cats, one dog, no ducks. Will gets up from his chair and goes down to the hold, collects the eggs, feeds the cats, pets the dog, tail-wagging, and commands it to heel. Will, then, dog by his side, walks up to the bridge and approaches Caroline—still sitting in the chair, glaring at her phone, wondering if she misplaced the nine in cell two or eight—and from behind, leans over and kisses her on the cheek. She looks up from her phone, turquoise eyes piercing through his brown. She slides over. He sits down next to her and puts his arm around her, alternating his gaze from sea, to Caroline, to her phone, occasionally offering suggestions for the puzzle. The dog lays on the floor beside them, every so often getting up to rest its head on Caroline’s jeans. She pets the dog with her left hand, completes row three with her right. I watch them from the back right corner of the pilothouse. They don’t know I’m there. I smile.

---

Jacob M. Frericks is from Southern California. He has published fiction in Expat Press. He currently lives in Brooklyn.