The Museum of Extraordinary Things(81)

“Why’d they do that?” my companion asked. For all his alleged meanness he truly didn’t understand the callousness and cruelty of others. “For the fun of it? Or did you betray someone or mess with the wrong sorts?”

“I fell in love. That’s my crime. With the mermaid.”

“You can’t be blamed for that,” the hermit said soberly.

“You’ve been in love?” I ventured to ask.

The hermit looked at me darkly.

“Not that it’s any of my business,” I added.

“Do you think I want to talk about my life?” Beck asked in return. “I came here to escape my existence. I couldn’t stand the way people in the city treated each other, how they managed to ruin everything they touched. But now it seems the city is following me. Soon enough they’ll pave beneath these trees we’re standing under.”

Beck’s wife, Annetje, was also from an original Dutch family. She became ill with lung disease before she reached the age of twenty, and died in the bed they shared, one Beck’s father had crafted as a wedding present from the wood of an enormous tulip tree that was said to have been planted on the day Henry Hudson first encountered the native Lenapes in 1609. It was their word for island that gave Manhattan its name, for it was the great island then, as it has remained. The Lenape people were accomplished archers and hunters who believed that the Milky Way, which they called the Starry Path, guided the souls of the departed on their journey to the world beyond ours, somewhere in the sky.

Beck abandoned his life soon after his wife’s death, leaving his small farmhouse to fall into ruin. The neighbors helped themselves to his sheep and goats. The chickens became wild, and Beck occasionally found their descendants nesting in the woods. His wife had babied the chickens and let them stay inside during storms, yet they now lived hardily in what was wilderness, while she, who’d been so young and healthy, was gone after an illness of a mere two weeks.

“I didn’t know you had a wife,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“What do you know?” Beck muttered.

“Apparently nothing. I’d be grateful for any instruction.”

The hermit laughed out loud. “You’re talking to the wrong man.”

“Tell me this, do you regret it?”

“The lung disease? Are you an idiot?” he growled. “Of course I do. The weather was bad and our home poorly heated. Oh, I regret it, more than I can say. If I were a rich man, maybe the illness wouldn’t have befallen her.”

I shook my head, for that wasn’t what I’d meant. I meant did he regret his marriage and the pain it caused him to have had a great love. When I explained, he glared at me. “Are you asking if I would have been better off if I’d never met my wife, or married her, or lost her? I’ll tell you this, a day with her was better than a life without her.”

I was stunned by the emotion in his voice. I had not expected so much from such a gruff fellow, and we both fell deep into our own thoughts. As we sat in silence, a covey of what I thought were quail flew up from the bushes, and we both turned, startled, as if a ghost were near. I voiced my initial notion, that spirits had been close by.

“I wouldn’t mind being haunted. I’d be happy for it,” Beck said as we watched the game birds trotting into the ferns.

When I left he offered me his congratulations.

“On what?” I asked, confused.

“Being human.”

I made my way down to the river. I had the oddest feeling that just as we had become friends, we had also said our good-byes, and would never see one another again. Perhaps that was why he’d told me the intimate details of his life, so that someone would remember him. I noticed tracks in the mud and felt a shiver down my back. Possibly the birds had been startled not by a spirit but by a flesh-and-blood ghoul. Mitts charged off, following the trail all the way to the Old Post Road. As it turned out the game birds we’d spied weren’t quail but wild chickens perching in the undergrowth. There were signs that someone had been past recently, for I could see the fresh tracks of a horse whose rider had made his way down the old road. It seemed an odd coincidence. I wondered if I had been followed to this place, and, just as curious a thought, I wondered what reason anyone might have for doing so.



The following day, I still couldn’t shake the odd feeling I’d had when I left Beck. I wondered if some of the talent I’d had as a boy had stayed with me, and I could still read the thoughts and fortunes of men. It was possible that my concern upon leaving him had been meaningful and he was in danger. I was too worried to let it be. I headed back to the woods, in such a hurry I didn’t bother to bring Mitts along. I had a panicked feeling, as if I’d no understanding of the world or of being alive. I was fairly certain I’d wasted a good portion of my life. Only now did I realize what the hermit was telling me, that love was never a regret. I felt the need to thank him for speaking to me so frankly.

I’d let love take me like a river, and carry me forth, and I wouldn’t fight it any longer.

Beck wasn’t at any of his usual fishing spots. I shouted out for him, but heard nothing in response. When I went up into the woods I saw only charred wood in his fire pit. The air was scented with a sulfuric stink. There was a tin plate on the ground and a wash of silence in the clearing, except for the low calling of doves. Then I knew I was right, and that we had indeed said our last good-bye. I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn’t bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn’t be lost. I would always know that his wife was so kindhearted she’d taken the chickens into their home during spells of bad weather. I would know that he was filled with emotion, as if he were still a young man in love.