The Museum of Extraordinary Things(82)

I found him in the ferns, facedown, splattered with mud. He was wearing his long underwear. Nothing more. His feet were bare. Someone must have surprised him, possibly when he was sleeping, for I’d never seen him without his boots. There was blood on the ground, and in his hair, where a shovel or a club had split his skull open. When I turned him over, he was stiff, and I could tell he’d been gone for a while. Perhaps he had been murdered soon after I last saw him. I’d thought the trail I’d found was leading away, disappearing into the weeds. But it appeared I’d been wrong. It had led to him instead. The rider may have been waiting for me to pass him by so he might find his way to the hermit’s shack under cover of the night.

I leaned down to close his eyes, already rheumy and paling. That was when I saw that his mouth had been sewn closed with blue thread. I wondered what Beck had seen or known that had brought him such a horrible fate. Someone did not want him to tell all he knew.

I had no choice but to do as he said he’d done. I removed the thread with a knife I found among his pots and pans, telling myself it was only fishing line I was unhooking. But I wept as I did so. Then and there I decided I’d give up fishing. The sport and hungers of men seemed wretched and insincere compared to the run of life in the river. I’d do no harm to any of its inhabitants from now on.

I buried Beck in a high meadow, where the land was not as marshy and there was a long, sweeping view of the river. I used an old shovel with a half-broken handle, and had only my one good hand, so the going was difficult. I didn’t care. I was streaked with dirt when I was done and sweating through my clothes. My bad hand cramped, and my left shoulder was sore. I knew he wouldn’t have wanted a coffin, he’d have wanted me to bury him in the earth, and I did so. That is the way of my people; we bury our own dead as a final and lasting gift. I said the prayers I’d been taught as a boy and tore my shirt, for this was the only way I knew how to mourn. Standing there, I felt I had lost something more than a man. It seemed a part of our city had been buried with him. The part I loved best.

Beck had told me to destroy his house when he was no longer in our world. He said that the Manhattan he knew would be gone when he was, and perhaps he was right in that. The villages that lined the highlands of upper Manhattan had already begun to drift into each other as the city moved northward. Soon there would be sidewalks in the last patches of the woods, and buildings to house families, and skyscrapers and highways. No one would know that deer had made their home here once, and that coyotes were spied in the dark, or that there had been wolves that had ventured down the river on those rare occasions when it froze solid in the most brutal winter months.

The wolf-dog was chained to the porch, frantic. I assumed he had seen the murder of his master, and because he was shackled he could do nothing to defend Beck. I thought he might attack me, but, when I set him off his chain, he merely darted into the woods. Good, I thought, for that was what the old man had wanted, for the beast to be set free.

I then burned the shack to the ground, as Beck had asked. I had the rain barrel readied to ensure the flames wouldn’t get out of control. My bad hand was aching even more, and my heart was aching as well, but I set to my work with a vengeance. Beck’s house was a flimsy edifice, and it went up easily. I’d seen enough of fire, and I hoped this one would be the last I ever saw. Afterward, I poured water on the remaining embers in case a flame or two should survive.

It was near dark, but I had no fear of these woods. I felt I had inherited them for whatever time there was left for them. It was then I saw Beck’s wolf staring at me through the smoke. If there was anyone in the world who might understand who I’d been and how I’d lived my life it was this creature. We couldn’t go back to the lives we were meant to live. Beck had wanted the wolf to be free, but there was no wild for him to return to and no man to be his master, and he stood there uneasily, between worlds. I called him to me, and he came. I had said I would care for him, and I would do so. We walked downtown together, not quite companions, wary of each other, but together all the same. When we reached the more populated avenues, I found a rope on the street and looped it around his neck so that he wouldn’t startle when he saw carts and automobiles. He was surprisingly calm. Though the horses in the stable below my studio panicked at the sight of him, the wolf ignored them, as he ignored Mitts, choosing to slink beneath the table, where he made a sort of den for himself. I do not know if he had a name, but I called him North, an appellation I think Beck would have approved of, for it was the name the Dutch called the Hudson River when they first came here, when men set to changing the world in their image, and gave all the wild things their own names.





MAY 1911

THEY WOULD come for the body in broad daylight, during the afternoon show, for they were less likely to be seen in the midst of a crowd. The Professor would be engaged at this time, his attention on the flow of customers. No one would expect thievery, if that was what it could be called, in the middle of the day.

“This is a task best done by ghouls,” the liveryman said, for even he, with his criminal history, was queasy over the work that lay ahead.

“Then that’s what we’ll be,” Eddie said grimly.

“And how will we get into the cellar, if you don’t mind me asking?” When Eddie held up the keys Coralie had given him, the liveryman grinned. “I see I should give you a bit of credit. I won’t ask where you got those, brother.”