Dreamland Social Club(8)
Feet shuffled and squeaked as everyone got up to follow Mr. Simmons out the door. Jane spotted Tattoo Boy in the chaos and her heart pounded harder. He was in her first class, a junior like her. And the seahorse tattoo was just as familiar today as it had been yesterday. It was more car-toonish than his other tattoos, like it was based on something fake, but that didn’t help Jane to place it.
Babette was there, too, and Jane wasn’t sure yet how she felt about that. Her assigned escort seemed sort of like a know-it-all, but then maybe that was exactly the kind of person Jane needed to befriend.
It was early, barely 8:00 a.m., and fine mist clung to the air as they walked along the boardwalk past shuttered amusements and closed-up clam shacks. Mostly, Jane just kept her head down, watching the warped and splintered boards under her feet, until they arrived at a building marked CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM. She trailed her classmates up a narrow staircase and then into the reception area.
Mr. Simmons led them into the main room—past walls of old posters for something called the “Mermaid Parade” and photos of human oddities who’d performed in Coney’s famous sideshows over the years and of beachgoers in different eras. In a far corner, some old beach chairs and metal lockers sat below a bunch of old signs for different bathhouses. Jane wanted to linger on every item, every detail, sit in every chair—maybe even look for her mother in the pictures on those parade posters, because maybe that had been what she’d meant in her note about having been a mermaid once—but Jane didn’t want to get left behind.
Finally, people started to gather around Mr. Simmons, who had stopped near a large television.
“We came here today to talk about Topsy,” he said. “She was an elephant that worked at Luna Park, one of the great amusement parks of the turn of the century here on Coney, where she killed three men before she was sentenced to execution. That third victim, mind you, tried to feed dear Topsy a lit cigarette.”
Tattoo Boy said, “Ouch,” and some of the boys around him laughed. Jane closed her eyes and saw his tattoo in her mind’s eye.
“Ouch indeed.” Mr. Simmons stroked a goatee that didn’t look like it had the nerve to be a beard. “Now, the death penalty for men had very recently been changed from hanging to the electric chair, so hanging Topsy was deemed cruel and unusual.”
Mr. Simmons started to walk among his students. “Enter Thomas Edison, who was competing with George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla for the contract to build the nation’s electric grid. He decided to use his competitor’s alternating current to execute Topsy, in order to show how deadly AC electricity could be.
“And”—Mr. Simmons paused dramatically here—“he decided to film it so he could show it to audiences around the country.”
“Now”—he waved an arm toward a bunch of chairs set up in the middle of the room, facing the TV—“those of you who would like to can take a seat and view Edison’s film. Those of you who don’t want to watch such a disturbing thing—again, we’re talking about the electrocution of an elephant—can step back out into the hall.”
Jane had never been on a field trip this odd and thought she should probably bolt, but then Tattoo Boy said, “I’ve seen it before; I’ll bite.” He sat beside Mr. Simmons, and then his disciples moved to fill in seats around him.
A bunch of kids walked out into the hall and a bunch of others sat down and then Babette took a seat beside Tattoo Boy. Under the glare of the museum’s overhead spotlights her black hair took on a bluish sheen, while her skin looked so white that Jane wondered whether she had somehow bleached it. She looked extraordinary right then—like a rare orchid or endangered bird. Jane only realized she was the only person left in the room standing when Babette shook her head, leaned toward Tattoo Boy, and said, “Five bucks says she won’t do it.”
There was something wrong with wanting to see such a thing.
Wasn’t there?
Tattoo Boy looked up at Jane, took a moment to study her, and said, “I’m not so sure I’d take that bet.”
The words “ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT, A film by Thomas A. Edison” appeared, white letters on black, along with the year, 1903, and some kind of reference code: H26890. The type itself seemed to shiver on-screen, but Jane wondered if it was actually she who was shaking. Then Topsy—an elephant-shaped shadow in a mostly white shot—appeared, but the quality of the film was so bad that it was hard to know what was even going on. It looked like footage of an elephant in a blizzard, all whitewashed and chilling.
There seemed to be a cut then to another shot of Topsy, walking up closer to the camera. Then puffs of what could only be smoke—yes, smoke—appeared under Topsy’s feet and started rising to engulf her. She fell—forward, toward her right eye—as the smoke started to dissipate. A dark figure of a man rushed through the front of the frame as if in a panic and then it went to black.
It was over before Jane had even realized what was happening, before she could even work up the cry that had started to form deep in her gut.
“That’s it?” someone in class protested.
The lights came up and Tattoo Boy said, “That is some f*cked-up shit.”
“Watch it, Mr. LaRocca,” Mr. Simmons said.
So his last name, at least, was LaRocca.
Mr. Simmons looked at his watch, then led everyone out into the hallway where the rest of the class was waiting. “Tonight I want you all to write two hundred words about why you felt compelled to watch—or not watch—what you had to know would be a disturbing film. If you hesitated in your choice, and I know who you are”—Jane averted her eyes from his gaze—“I want to know why you did that, too.”