The Museum of Extraordinary Things Read online

  There was the fresh green scent of early spring. Mourning cloaks and cabbage white butterflies filled the air. Eddie had occasionally seen the prints of fisher-cats and fox tracked through the mud. It was not far from here that he had recently imagined someone had been watching him. His dog was a gleeful hunter of moles and mice, but, on this particular evening, there seemed bigger game at stake. The hair on Mitts’s back had gone up, and he’d taken off like a shot. The pit bull may have spied a deer in the undergrowth, or perhaps it was the old hermit Jacob Van der Beck, a Dutchman who lived in a rough-hewn cabin. Here was an individual so bitter toward his fellow men, so sure that the building boom in Manhattan would overtake his slice of the world, it was said he had a wolf tied up on his porch to keep interlopers at bay. His family had owned a large tract of land from the time of the Dutch settlers, with ties to the founding families, such as the Dyckmans. He still referred to the Hudson as the North River, as the original settlers had.

  Eddie had once persuaded the old man to sit for a portrait in exchange for a bottle of rye. Beck had been a grumpy and withholding model; he’d crouched upon a moss-covered log and hadn’t batted an eye, vanishing back into the woods as soon as Eddie took his photograph.

  On the evening Mitts ran away, galumphing through the woods, dead set on chasing after some sort of prey, Eddie had eventually found the dog in a clearing. There’d been no sign of Beck and no deer tracks, yet there was a presence. The ground was damp, as if the river had washed up into the meadow grass, leaving a soft path beaten down in the patches of trillium and bloodroot. There was no one in sight, but all the same, when Eddie returned to his campsite, he couldn’t shake the notion that he’d been followed.

  Now, here it was, the last Saturday in March, and Eddie settled down with his rod. He’d left his studio in the dark, and it was hardly daybreak when he began to fish. On both sides of the Hudson the sky was struck with a hazy pink glow. He’d brought along night crawlers and crusts of bread in an old tin pail. Eddie avoided the Harlem River—it was overcrowded and overfished, even more so than the Hudson, littered with oystering boats. Several bridges had recently been built across the waters, disturbing the marsh birds. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the countryside disappeared, as it had in Chelsea, where there was pavement everywhere.

  Through the new leaves of the locust trees, Eddie spied Beck fishing farther down along the bank. An encounter with the old man appeared unavoidable, for the hermit gazed over and nodded. Eddie returned the greeting, considering how to best keep his distance. Beck was known to chase off intruders with a rifle, and there were those who said he vowed to kill any man who hunted the wildlife that was rapidly becoming rare, coyotes and fox and the huge, cantankerous wild turkeys. Past the area of Washington Heights was Hudson Heights, the highest altitude in Manhattan, at 265 feet above sea level. There was the pastoral village of Inwood, and although the subway ran this far, this section of north Manhattan was still dotted with small farms, including a house once owned by the Audubon family. Eddie joined the hermit in his agitation over the constant building in Manhattan. Apartment buildings were rising everywhere. City officials had begun to shore up the ravines that led to Spuyten Duyvil Creek, an offshoot of the Harlem River, where peregrine falcons nested in the trees. The very banks of the Hudson were being fortified against the tides with rock and cement toted by gangs of city workers. The shore of the river had become cluttered with pockets of houseboats in the calm inlets, and their inhabitants washed their clothes and pots and pans with lye soap in the shallows, leaving a yellow scrim of grease at the shoreline.

  Eddie looped a rope around Mitts’s neck to make certain the pit bull wouldn’t charge off and annoy the Dutchman. A fisherman, especially one such as Beck who despised company, was meant to be alone at his task. The river was choppy, because of the rising wind, so Eddie made his way to a small, clear stream that filtered into the Hudson. He hunkered down, his collar raised. Soon enough he found success, a trout that fought valiantly, until it had exhausted itself. When reeled in, the trout was such a lovely specimen Eddie hadn’t the heart to let it gasp its last on the grass. He sloshed some water into his tin pail, then slid the fish inside. The trout, frenzied to find itself captured, leapt up, banging itself against the side of the pail before at last settling to the bottom, spent, a slash of living light.

  Eddie set his camera on its wooden trilegged stand. After all the hackwork he did for the papers, he wondered if he had lost the ability to take an honest photograph. If this was so, he alone was to blame. He was reminded of the Yiddish oath union workers took when setting out on strike lines. If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from this arm I now raise. Perhaps he had become a traitor to his art and to the man Moses Levy thought he might become. The photograph of the fish would be dependent upon skill, and Eddie worried over his talent. Without shadows the image would appear to be nothing more than a bucket of murky water. Without compassion, nothing but a fish, trapped and defeated.

  The hermit, who wrapped his own day’s catch in newspaper, had begun to climb up the bank toward the little stream. Eddie muttered to himself, wishing to be left alone. But Beck was headed straight for him, ferns flattening under his heavy, laced boots. Eddie regretted having given the Dutchman a bottle of rye, for such kindness led to intimacy and confidences, neither of which he wanted.

  The hermit stood nearby to watch as the fish was photographed. When Eddie had finished, Beck peered into the bucket. His beard was long, unkempt, his expression concerned.

  “You should let that fellow go. For his own good and yours.” The hermit was wise to wear a heavy coat. In town, the day was warm, but here beside the river the pale rays of sun did little to warm the chill that drifted off the water.

  “Why’s that?” Eddie did not raise his eyes, so as to keep his distance. He continued to busy himself with packing up his camera. He’d dealt with madmen before. Best not to meet their glance or learn too much about their wretched histories.

  “You took his photograph,” Beck said solemnly. “Now you’re responsible for his soul. You should give him back to the river. Otherwise he’ll take you somewhere you may not want to go.”

  Eddie did his best not to laugh. “It doesn’t work that way.” Only a fool would believe that a soul could be stolen on film, or that a fish was no different than a man and had a soul of equal worth. “If a camera interfered with souls, I’d be equally responsible for yours, since you sat for a portrait.”

  “Maybe that’s why I let you trespass on such a regular basis.” Beck’s expression was thoughtful. “This river used to have schools of shad so thick you could walk across the river on their backs and your boots would stay dry. But then the boats came, and the nets, and now we’re lucky to have what little we’ve got. That’s why I run people off. I’d be within my rights to kill you, but now we’re in this together, like it

  or not.”

  “Surely we’re not in anything together,” Eddie was quick to respond. As far as he was concerned the only thing they were in together was the boggy, green woods. He might have argued further, but he quickly bit his tongue when he noticed a rifle under the hermit’s coat. At crime scenes Eddie paid attention only to the limp forms, the black blood, a collection of images that formed his photograph. He was there to observe and report, nothing more. He’d never wondered if the victims’ throats were dry at the time of their demise, if their hands had been clammy, if they’d gotten down on their knees to beg for their lives. Now his own hands were themselves quite clammy, his throat nearly too dry to speak, though he managed as best he could. “Although I must say I’m glad I’m not another man.”

  Before Beck could respond, Mitts wrenched forward, pulling free from the rope so that he might trot over to the hermit. He cheerfully knocked his stocky body against Beck’s legs.

  “What’s this supposed to be?” the old man asked, surprised by the dog’s good natur
e.

  “He was supposed to be a fighting dog. Then he was supposed to be dinner for the fish.” Eddie lifted his rod over his shoulder. If need be, he could use it to protect himself if the hermit’s suspicious side took over. “Now he’s supposed to be my dog.”

  “He looks more like a rabbit. My dog would eat him in one bite.”

  “Then I’m glad your dog’s not here.”

  “You should be. He’s a wolf.”

  To appease the old man, Eddie offered up the trout in the pail. “Consider this my gift to you.”

  Beck shook the rolled wet newspaper he carried, filled with his catch. He’d clearly done far better than his younger compatriot. “I’ve got my own. I’ve got my own whiskey, too.” He showed off a battered flask tucked in his waistband. There was a glimmer of metal as the rifle shone.

  Eddie was suddenly aware that if he should die here, on this riverbank, on this day, only his dog would mourn him, for there was no one else who knew or cared he was alive. Perhaps that meant he’d led a worthless life, yet alive was what he wished to be. He knew this from his pounding heart, which hit against his ribs as the Dutchman shifted his rifle away from that fragile, beating target. He knew it from the greenness of the trees surrounding him, from the rushing of the river, a wonder and a miracle he could not bear to lose. He gazed at the hermit directly. “I thank you, sir, for the use of your river, but the fish and I are going home.”

  Beck stepped in still closer, squinting, a thoughtful, unreadable expression crossing his weathered face. He stunk of liquor and fish. For a moment the tension was high, then the old man grinned. “Before you go, answer this. What sort of fish walks on two legs?”

  Relieved, Eddie grinned in turn. Riddles didn’t intimidate him. He was quick-witted from his days of working for Hochman. He’d learned that what men most often wished to hear were their own thoughts repeated back to them.

  “The kind that will take me where I might not want to go?” Eddie ventured to say.

  The Dutchman laughed and jabbed his finger into the younger man’s arm. “Exactly.” Cheerful then, he stooped to pet Mitts. “Good-bye, rabbit.”

  The dog slobbered gratefully at the stranger’s attentions, then bounded off when Eddie whistled to call him away. When Eddie glanced over his shoulder, Beck had already disappeared. Eddie broke into a sweat as he climbed down the hillock. The Hudson was churning as the spring melt from upstate washed into the waters, but there was great relief in walking beside it, free and alive on this green day.

  It was a long way to Chelsea, and when Eddie reached home that afternoon, he realized it would have been wiser to have allowed the fish to perish on the riverbank. After more than a hundred blocks, Eddie was tired and not the least bit hungry, though he fed the dog some scraps. After setting the pail on his table, Eddie lay down in his narrow bed for a nap, still wearing his coat and his boots. He hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. Soon enough he dove into sleep the way a drowning man might, headfirst, unaware of the rest of the world, dreaming that the fish he’d caught had turned into a woman whose long dark hair fell down her back. Her feet were bare and cold as she climbed into bed beside him.

  IT HAD BEEN a beautiful springlike day, but at a quarter to five in the afternoon on that same Saturday the sky turned a deep, oily gray and the air was suddenly heavy, the pressure sinking quickly, as it does before a storm. There seemed an instant of clarity and quiet, and then all at once, without warning, the silence of the city was shattered by a wave of noise. Eddie awoke streaming with sweat, his pulse hammering away, his dream disappearing before he could hold on to it. He could hear fire bells and a roar echoing from downtown. He leapt from bed and hurried to shift a wooden chair beneath the skylight in order to climb up and push open the glass to look outside. A cloud of black smoke was spreading above the rooftops. Sparks flew in red bursts, and then, from the east, a great torrent of flame swirled into the sky. It was the way some people said the world would end, in a fire that would engulf both the wicked and the innocent.

  Eddie was thankful he’d slept in his coat and boots. All he needed to do was to grab his camera and lock up his dog before heading downtown. His heart was still pounding, as it had been in his dreams. He couldn’t shake his terror. He took the stairs two at a time; once outside, he quickly headed east on Twenty-third Street. Behind him, the river had turned black with ashes. Fifteen blocks downtown, a fire blazed out of control.

  Despite the protests of the past years, workers were treated no better than they had been when Eddie had first learned the tailoring trade alongside his father. In the fall of 1909, a strike had led to the Uprising of the 20,000, and in the great hall of Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln had once spoken, workers took an oath to be loyal to their cause: the humane treatment of every man and woman who worked in the city of New York. There had been so many strikes that the past twelve months had been dubbed the year of the Great Revolt. But most agreed, workers still had no rights. Protesters were beaten and arrested on the barricades, then brought to night court at the Jefferson Market Courthouse, the men immediately jailed, the women sent to a grim prison workhouse called Blackwell’s Island. Manhattan Fire Chief Edward Croker had warned it was only a matter of time before a tragedy would occur due to the wretched unsafe conditions in the factories of lower New York. If nothing changed, every working man and woman knew there would be a terrible price to pay. Now, on this bitter afternoon, the time for that payment had come.

  Huge crowds had gathered outside the Asch Building, just off Washington Square. Nearly ten thousand people would rush to this address before the day was through, though the police quickly set to holding them back, forming a human chain so that the public might be kept away from the blasts of heat and the danger of falling sparks. Because it was Saturday, the stores on Fifth Avenue were all open—Marshall Field’s on Fifteenth Street and Lord & Taylor on Nineteenth Street, and all the dozens of small shops that lined the Avenue, from corset shops to perfumeries, to Charles Scribner’s Sons publishers, which had offices on Twentieth Street and Twenty-third Street where Fifth Avenue met Madison Park, a location where there was always a line of horse-drawn cabs waiting to bring shoppers back uptown. On the east side of Washington Square there were factories and tenements, but on the west side stood some of the most fashionable addresses. Here, where the grid of Manhattan began, there were dozens of brownstone town houses and the most exclusive stores in the city.

  The streets were crowded with shoppers, and many among them rushed to the site where garment workers, mostly women and girls, had been trapped inside a sewing loft at the end of the workday. Fire ladders reached only to the sixth floor of the building that contained the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where workers as young as twelve were employed. Seamstresses on the eighth and tenth floors had been alerted that a fire had begun by the switchboard operator via telephone, but by the time Eddie arrived at the scene, the entire ninth floor of the factory was in flames.

  The streets were teeming and the air had become a cauldron of heat and ash. The wind carried bits of cotton and wool cloth aflame above them, as if the sky was raining down fire. Photographers were being turned away. Eddie, however, spied Matt Harris, a reporter from the Times who usually had no problem with the police; he quickly attached himself to the newsman. Harris held a handkerchief over his mouth to filter out the ashes, but he could be heard plainly enough.

  “I guess you’re with me,” he remarked drily when he noticed Eddie beside him.

  “I am. If you’ll allow it.”

  “Only the devil would want to keep this to himself,” Harris muttered.

  When the police let Harris through, Eddie slipped past the barricades unnoticed. He thanked the newsman, insisting he would return the favor sometime, but the reporter shrugged off his gratitude. “You won’t be grateful soon enough. We’re about to see a horror. Trust me, you won’t thank me for this.”

 
Like most news photographers, Eddie had the ability to vanish. He’d trained himself to fade into the background, aware that it was best to be ignored by the players in a scene so that they might, in being unaware of him, be their truest selves. He set up his camera where there was less chaos, on the Washington Place side of the building, then quickly got to photographing two elevator operators as the police interviewed them. These men had rescued as many girls as possible, nearly 150 by now, but were now themselves overcome by smoke, unable to go back up the burning elevator chutes. “What will the ones we left behind do now?” one of them cried. Eddie turned his camera to the building. Girls who could find no way out gathered on the windowsills, clustered together in frightened groups, their cries taken to heaven by the updraft the fire had created.

  The stairway from the ninth floor had ended with no exit to the roof. There was only a shaky fire escape, which had melted in the heat. Those trying to make their escape via that exit, twenty-five in all, had fallen to their deaths in the alley below. Scores more followed, but found no way out. When they were unable to get through the flames, the only choice before them was the open air of the windowsills. The horse-drawn fire engines, with rolls of newly invented fire hoses onboard, had arrived, and firemen were unwinding their hoses, stretching them out on Greene Street. But it was too late for many as the fire billowed in cascades of flames. Girls had begun to leap from the windows of the ninth floor, some embracing so they might spend their last moments on earth in each other’s arms rather than face their fates alone. Some jumped with their eyes closed, others with their hair and clothes already burning.