Page 37 of Born to be Wilder

“Wait. So, if… How many animals were in here?” Sylvie asked.

“Almost seven thousand,” I answered.

“And they were all pooping and peeing, so it must have smelled…” She squished up her face. “Eew. It must have been terrible!”

Alice mirrored her disgusted face. “Oh, I grew up on a farm. Even with fresh air and only a couple dozen animals, the smell could be pungent. I can still smell it even sixty years since I last set foot on that farm.”

“They had a system for the manure!” I hurried over and pointed at the display on how Noah had brilliantly designed the Ark for just such a thing.

The girls came over and studied the exhibit explaining the waste management system—an elaborate diagram of channels, collection troughs, and automated systems for managing the waste of thousands of animals over forty days and nights.

“This is literally an exhibit about poop.” Marge snickered.

“Marge! It’s part of the miracle of the Ark!” I defended.

“Yeah, but does it work? What would happen if I peed in that cage? Think it would drain right out like it says?”

“Don’t pee in the cages!” I pressed a hand to my head.

“I’m not going to do it.” Marge peered into the cage. “I’m just saying… what would happen if I did?”

“Stop questioning the miracle!” I shot back, face heating up by the moment.

“Speaking of miracles, why didn’t God just make them, I don’t know… not need to crap for the journey? Now that would be a miracle,” Alice said.

I scoffed, waving toward the cages. “Because the miracle wasn’t avoiding the mess. The miracle was that God saved them and gave them a way to survive. Noah still had to do the work.”

Marge nodded at Alice. “Yeah! Or why not just magically levitate all the animals while the floods came and then set them back down after? Why even need the Ark?”

My blood boiled at the question. How were they not getting it?

“Because the Ark was the miracle!” I said too loudly, exasperated. “God didn’t just snap His fingers and make everything fly. He gave Noah instructions. He gave him the animals. He gave him the strength to build it. That’s the whole point. Faith means trusting God enough to do what He asks—even when it sounds ridiculous and involves… a lot of shoveling.” I gestured wildly toward the waste-management diagram. “And honestly, if God had just levitated everything, we wouldn’t have the story, would we?”

When I finished my tangent, they stood staring at me, blinking.

“Sheesh. Sorry,” Marge whispered, looking at the crowd around us peering over. “It was just a question.”

“You okay, Doris?” Sylvie asked, her brows furrowed as she stared at me.

I realized I’d overreacted and shrank a little. “Sorry. I just… This is serious to me, okay?”

“We know, sweetie.” Sylvie stepped forward and brushed my arm. “They were just asking questions. No one was being rude. Just… curious the way they are.”

The heat started to drain from my face as I stared at them, my widows. She was right. They were the way they were, and sometimes I thought God put them directly in my path to test my faith. But today, deep down, I hoped he’d put them in my path so I could share my faith.

“Let’s just keep going,” I said, moving past them, trying to hide my disappointment that they weren’t all sobbing at the miracle of Noah already.

Patience, Doris. They’ll get it. They have to.

Deck Two opened up into the pre-flood-world exhibits and the family living quarters, where life-size figures of Noah’s sons occupied elaborately detailed rooms—a workshop, a library, a garden with low-light plants, each son given a full biography and a set of interests and hobbies imagined by the exhibit designers.

The widows seemed genuinely interested in all the elaborate details, and admittedly, I was too busy watching them, waiting for the lightbulb moment, to pay as close attention to the details as I should have. I tried to stay focused, really let the breadth of the miracle seep into my every pore, but I couldn’t stop staring at them instead.

“You know,” Alice said, gazing at a model figure of one of Noah’s sons, “I have to say, Ham and Japheth were surprisingly handsome. If I had to be trapped on a boat for forty days and nights, I wouldn’t have minded sharing a grain bin with them.”

She waggled her eyebrows, and the girls erupted in laughter.

“Alice! Language!” I hissed, darting a nervous look around to see if any of the nearby church groups had heard her. “We are in a holy place!”