The Museum of Extraordinary Things (40 page)

By then, the police began to shoot every animal they saw. Bears and their cubs, horses gone mad, trained birds that could speak in a dozen languages, several tigers, along with a yellow-eyed wolf perched atop the roof of a small museum entirely set aflame, a loyal creature who plunged into the dark garden, lifeless before he landed beside the house.

The tar on the streets was melting and a streetcar burned, letting off oily black clouds. Police went door to door, alerting those who lived nearby to flee. People ran north and east; they climbed into storm cellars and jumped into boats so they might head out to sea. By now the Dreamland Pier was smoldering. The Atlantic had turned dark with cinders and the seaweed washing onto the shore was sparked with embers, giving off the scent of hellfire and salt. Eddie stood in the grass that had already begun to burn. He thought of his mother, and how she had remained a part of him, how he’d carried her with him, just as his father had. He kissed Coralie, believing this to be their good-bye, but she pulled away and said “You know the world is ours,” even though the roof had caught, a line of flames flaring along the gables and the eaves where the Professor had fallen. Eddie wondered if Coralie would suggest they try to make it to the shore, though clearly that was impossible. Every inch between the museum and the beach was burning. By morning little would be standing, with more than four million dollars in property burned, and Dreamland completely destroyed. Johnson’s carousel, the Whirlwind Ride, Taunton’s Bathing Pavilion, Balmer’s Baths, nearly everything along the New Iron Pier would be ashes.

But rather than flee, Coralie pulled Eddie back into the house. Surely she knew it was a death trap, and that every extraordinary thing contained within would burn in a matter of minutes. Still, she insisted. They went through the kitchen, into the parlor, the pit bull following at his master’s heels. There was the cereus plant embellished with two enormous white blooms. This was the plant’s one extraordinary night, but already the flowers were closing, dying so rapidly it was possible for the human eye to see the life sifting out of it. The petals were folding up more and more with every instant, no longer brilliant white, but a pale dove gray.

Coralie led Eddie to the exhibition hall, emptied now of all living creatures. The only things remaining were bones and minerals and the preserved bodies of creatures that would never again be seen: the white alligator, the cat with five legs, the conjoined monkey twins that held each other’s hands. Coralie bid them all good-bye. They were already melting. The heat caused the chemicals inside the glass canisters to rise to a boil and the glass to crack. All at once, there was a wash of clear liquid upon the floor, as there had been in Coralie’s dreams when she was a little girl, when there was so little difference between night and day she expected her dreams and nightmares to greet her at the breakfast table.

They went to the tank where she had been displayed. In her confinement she had always felt a sort of safety, cut off from the outside world of men and their cruelty. Eddie hesitated, confused, possessing the panicked notion that they were entering into their coffin, a place from which there was no escape. He thought of his father at the dock, how his coat floated out around him when he hit the water. They could hear the fire consuming the house with a whoosh of living breath. It swept through the upstairs bedrooms and was racing down the stairs, devouring carpets and beds, wooden banisters and the umber-colored Oriental rug in the Professor’s library. The books caught all at once, the paper flaming into red ash, the leather bindings curling up and flickering into flame. The fire caught the withering cereus plant in its grasp. The twiggy stems caught first, becoming embers in an instant. The fading flowers turned rose-red and soared up to the ceiling before fluttering down to the floor. They carried a fragrant mix of perfume and salt water and cinders.

Coralie dove into the tank, keeping her head above water. “Now,” she told him, for the walls were moving, bending in toward them. Eddie thought he was imagining it, but the plaster was curling up, inching away from the fire. Mitts looked at his master beseechingly, trusting as always. Eddie lifted the dog, dumping him into the tank before splashing in after him. Coralie took his hand, pulling him down, like a mermaid who had captured a sailor, and, like a sailor who desperately wanted that capture, he sank down beside her. She had the breathing tube, which she passed to him, for she herself seemed to have no need for air at all. Perhaps she was more fish than even she had imagined. Eddie gratefully took in air, then grabbed Mitts and pulled the dog to the bottom of the tank, placing the tube in the dog’s mouth.

A sheet of fire passed over them. It was only seconds, but they could feel the burst of heat as the world turned bright and red. If the air they breathed through the tube hadn’t been cooled by murky water, surely they would have burned their lungs. As it was, they huddled together while the water turned black until the roar of the fire moved farther away. Chunks of plaster fell from the charred wooden beams, walls caved in, windows stood alone in empty space. When Eddie climbed from the tank, the half-drowned pit bull under his arm, he found himself standing in a boiling soup, a mixture of spiders and crystals and shards of glass. Luckily he and Coralie had not had time to remove their shoes.

They found the wolf, shot, sprawled out in the blackened grass. They buried him beneath the pear tree, for it was the one thing in the garden to survive the blaze. Though the earth was hot with cinders, Eddie took a shovel from beside the trash heap. He dug until his hands were burning, and each breath burned as well, until Coralie stopped him, assuring him the grave was deep enough. Eddie set the wolf into the earth, knowing he was not made for the streets men built or for the cities they constructed. The hermit had been correct in his assessment. A city as great as New York grew without regard to men and beasts, and where it resided, certain creatures were no longer welcome. As they left, Coralie spied the tortoise. It had crawled under the porch to dig into the cooler earth, where green weeds were matted down. That was where they left the ancient beast, to enjoy its freedom.

On Surf Avenue people were sitting on the stoops of burned-out buildings and weeping. There were children who had seen wild animals on the rooftops, and women who had lost their husbands, and families who had been burned out of their homes and owned nothing, not a scrap of cloth or a cooking pot. There was a scrim of black clouds above them and the sidewalks were hot beneath their shoes. Coralie and Eddie had nothing but the soaking wet clothes they wore, which dried later in the day as they navigated through the marshes, for the sun was bright by then. Eddie knew the way. He and the liveryman had followed this very route, and had stopped nearby to view the body of Hannah Weiss, a young girl who had been robbed of her life.

Nothing was fair in this beautiful world. There were blackbirds settled on stalks of tall plumy grass, and the sky was blue and gold. Mitts walked soberly beside his master. The dog would never be as free-spirited again, and from that time forward he shied away from water, even when they moved outside the city and could see the Hudson from their porch. Eddie, on the other hand, was drawn to water after that night. He drank eight glasses every day, which he had come to believe was a tonic, good for the long life Hochman had promised he’d have. Each time he embraced the woman he loved, he thought of water, for he knew she longed for it, and, because of this, she had saved his life.

At night, when the window was open and his arms were around Coralie, he often dreamed he was fishing. As he slept he prayed that no one would wake him, for it was in dreams that a man found his truest desires. At last he came upon the trout he had been searching for, a slice of living light, darting through the shallows. He walked into the water after it, unafraid, still wearing his shoes, his black coat flowing out around him. It was there he found his father, waiting for him on the shoreline, as if they’d never been apart.