“I’m going to buy us some postcards,” said Gene as they walked across the courtyard on slightly wobbly legs. “I think we might want to remember today.” He left Magda and Tom underneath the airplane boats while he joined the line for a vendor selling colored views of the various attractions.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Magda, gazing overhead at the boats that spun high above them. “It’s so lovely to have a day that is just about today. No worries from the past, no thoughts of the future. Just today.” She twirled round and round, face turned to the glorious sky, skirts flying up around her and let out a laugh. Tom laughed at her joy and when she came to a stop, weaving back and forth from dizziness, he held her elbow to steady her.
“It’s nice to see you so happy,” he said.
“How could you not be happy in a place like this,” said Magda. “It’s magical.”
“No thought of the future, eh?” said Tom.
“Not one. I have planned my future as far as looking at the postcards Gene brings us.”
“But surely you sometimes think of the future. Marriage, children, all those things.”
“I suppose,” said Magda.
“Do you think it might be for you? Marriage, I mean. You’re as independent a woman as I’ve ever known, so I just wondered—could you ever imagine yourself married?”
“I don’t give it much thought,” said Magda, and the statement was mostly true. She would like to imagine what it would be like to be married to Gene, but he had given her no real cause to entertain such fantasies, so she did her best to avoid them. “I suppose I might get married if the right man comes along.”
“Maybe he already has,” said Tom as softly as the sounds of Dreamland would allow.
Was it possible, thought Magda, that Tom knew something she didn’t? Had Gene made some sort of confession to Tom? With a racing heart she answered, “True, maybe he has.”
“Postcards for all,” said Gene, bursting into the conversation and handing a trio of cards to Magda and another set to Tom. One showed the Shoot the Chutes attraction they had just ridden, one Beacon Tower, and the third illustrated a giant angel towering over Surf Avenue.
“What is this one?” said Magda, holding up the angel.
“That’s the entrance to the creation panorama,” said Gene.
“Oh, let’s go, let’s go,” said Magda. “I have to see it. The biggest angel I’ve ever seen was . . .” she had been about to say was in Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Kleindeutschland but she stopped herself. “Was not nearly as big as that,” she said.
A few minutes later they stood on Surf Avenue, gazing up at a thirty-foot-tall, bare-breasted angel, holding up the cavernous arch that led into the creation attraction with her spread wings. They had to cross the street to take it all in, and they walked up Surf Avenue a short way so that the angel, who looked down and to her right, gazed directly at them. Magda held her hands up next to her eyes, blocking out the view of Zeller’s Pharmacy and its signs advertising cigars and ice cream, and suddenly felt herself embraced by this heavenly vision. Though she had promised not to dwell on the past today, she couldn’t help thinking that this angel was the spirit of her mother and of Henry and Rosie, embracing her from above, upholding her, protecting her. She wiped away a tear and grabbed Gene and Tom by the hands.
“Let’s go in,” she said.
They sat in the darkness, still holding hands, and experienced the biblical story of creation in brilliant illusions. Magda would have been happy sitting there, feeling Gene’s slightly sweaty hand in hers, for hours—even though the beauty of the creation story was followed by the much more frightening “end of the world.”
Back in the sunshine, they watched acrobats in a ring at the end of the lagoon while eating popcorn and peanuts. They even met the Broadway actress Marie Dressler, hired as a celebrity overseer of the boys who sold the salty snacks and posed while Tom took her picture. Magda laughed to see how Tom fawned over the buxom star, saying, with deadpan seriousness, how much he had enjoyed her performance last season as Matilda Grabfelder in Twiddle Twaddle.
Magda had previously seen all of the same acrobatic feats featured at Dreamland in Barnum and Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden, but they took on a new sense of danger and beauty when performed outdoors. Against a blue sky and with Beacon Tower rising above them, she saw tightrope walkers and trapeze artists in a new light.
“I can see you’re thinking of putting Dan Dawson on an outdoor tightrope,” said Gene.
“Tom told me I’m not allowed to do research today,” said Magda, who had been thinking exactly that.
“Tom is wise,” said Gene.
After the circus acts, they rode a boat through the “Canals of Venice,” marveling at the Italianate architecture that greeted them at every turn, then descended the steps to the beach, where their attempts to walk in the sand were impeded by a solid wall of humanity, many of them wet, all of them seemingly delighted.
When Magda mentioned she felt hot, Tom immediately led them to the “Coasting through Switzerland” ride, where they boarded a train that zipped them along through Swiss scenery and up to the top of the “Alps,” where a blast of cold air made Magda laugh with glee during the entire dizzying descent.
They left the precincts of Dreamland only once the entire day, because Tom insisted that they lunch next door at Feltman’s, which was famous for a dish it had “invented” a few decades ago—a sausage served on a roll that locals called a hot dog. It seemed like standard German fare to Magda, but she said nothing. Today, more than ever, she felt American, and if that meant calling a sausage a hot dog, then that’s what she would do.
Tom went to fetch beers as they sat over the detritus of their sausages. Gene looked more relaxed that Magda had ever seen him—almost as if every time she had seen him before, he had been hiding something, or holding back slightly.
“You can really be yourself out here,” he said, leaning back with his hands behind his head. “Look at everybody—so free. Not like in New York.”
“What do you mean?” said Magda.
“You’ve seen it,” said Gene. “Men holding girls and girls holding men and people shouting when they’re happy and looking at . . . whatever they want to look at.” Gene had his eyes locked on Tom’s muscular shoulders as he shoved his way toward the counter.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Magda in a teasing voice, sitting up primly in her chair.
“You certainly do,” said Gene with a laugh. “Shoot the Chutes and Hell Gate—those are just excuses for people to grab hold of each other. I saw you clutching on to Tom.”
“I never clutched Tom,” said Magda with mock indignity. Anyhow, it was true, Tom might have clutched her, but she had grabbed hold of Gene.
“I’m sure you clutched somebody,” said Gene absently. He had lost track of Tom in the crowd, but still stared toward the counter, waiting for that beautiful face to reemerge from the crowd. “What was Tom talking to you about when I came back with the postcards? He seemed awfully serious for a day like today.”
Magda thought for a moment about saying that Tom had suggested she and Gene would make a nice couple, but even Dreamland hadn’t given her that much courage. “Oh, some nonsense about whether I’d ever thought about getting married. Not the sort of discussion for a day at Dreamland.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I might think about it, if I ever found the right man.”
“I’m not sure I’m the marrying type,” said Gene, a smile breaking across his face as he spotted Tom returning with three frothy mugs of beer, “but I understand what you mean about finding the right man.”
After Feltman’s, Tom wanted to go to the “Fighting the Flames” attraction. He had seen the show the previous season and, despite his stricture against research for any possible future books, he thought its
depiction of a hotel on fire and the ensuing rescues might prove useful if Magda ended up writing another Dan Dawson book. As they sipped their beers, he had told them all about the show.
“It starts out with all these little street dramas,” said Tom. “A horse cart almost gets run over by a trolley, a street fight gets broken up by police, and then comes a parade of firefighters led by a fife and drum corps. Then it gets exciting. Smoke and flames start pouring from the windows of a six-story building, and horses race in pulling all sorts of firefighting equipment. The best part is all the people escaping from the flames. Some get rescued by firemen on ladders, but some jump from five or six stories up into this huge net where they bounce around before they climb down to the ground. It’s very acrobatic.”
“Sounds exciting,” said Gene.
“It is,” said Tom. “And I was thinking that maybe the next Dan Dawson book could have a fire rescue.”
“If there is another Dan Dawson book,” said Magda.
“I suppose that depends on the first one selling lots of copies,” said Gene.
“Exactly,” said Magda.
“Of course there will be another book,” said Tom. “I don’t know about me and Gene, but Magda’s got the goods. That Lipscomb troll is going to love Dan Dawson.” The others laughed and they clinked their glasses together and for about the hundredth time in the past few hours it seemed the day could not get any better.
Tom led them back across Dreamland to Fighting the Flames, but when they arrived at the massive white facade that fronted the arena, the lettering that stretched across the entire structure did not read fighting the flames, but san francisco earthquake.
“That changed fast,” said Gene. “The earthquake was only a few months ago.”
Tom’s face blanched and he staggered backward. He did not say that he had been in San Francisco—that was still his secret. He did not say that with the earthquake had come havoc that made the most realistic amusement park show seem like little more than an insult. He did not say that even Dan Dawson with his strength and acrobatic skill would have felt helpless against the mass of death and destruction in San Francisco that day. All he could see in that moment, as he looked at those horrible words, was Isabella lying dead on the floor, her life snapped out as easily as turning off a light switch.
“Is everything all right?” said Gene, slipping an arm around Tom. “You look like . . .”
“Like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Magda.
“Just a little light-headed,” said Tom. “Must have been the beer.” As quickly as it had come, the vision faded and Tom felt the blood flowing back into his cheeks. He took a deep breath and stepped toward the entrance. “Shall we go in?”
Inside they sat on wooden bleachers and watched a show that rapidly depicted the whole history of San Francisco. In the first scene, white men arrived in a wagon train at the beautiful natural bay and fought the natives, defeating them with superior weaponry. There followed a scene of a mining camp and its accompanying gamblers and criminals, culminating in the lynching of one of these evil men by a group of vigilantes.
Tom struggled to watch impassively as the next scenes unfolded, trying not to show the pain he felt. The first depicted a typical evening on Market Street in April—well-dressed men and women strolled to the theater (many of them, as Tom well knew, off to see Caruso), and gaiety filled the air. Tom searched the crowd for Isabella, caught up for a moment in the fantasy that the earthquake had not yet happened. Darkness fell, and when the light returned, the earthquake struck. As the whole arena seemed to shake, buildings toppled and fires blazed. The audience cried out in terror, and only Tom seemed to realize what a pale reflection of the true horror this sideshow was.
Yet he watched intently, as if he was recording the whole scene on a reel of moving picture film. Tom wanted to replace his memory of the actual events with this frothy bit of amusement. He wanted to turn the most horrible moments of his life into something as insignificant as a carnival entertainment.
As the smoke cleared in the arena before them, a final scene appeared, under the sign san francisco, 1909. Before them stood a gleaming city of white—all spires and towers, parks and boulevards, with the sea sparkling in the background. It was as if Dreamland itself had been transported across the continent and taken root by San Francisco Bay.
They sat breathless for a minute or two as the crowd filed out around them.
“It seems to me there is only one place for Dan Dawson to go on his next adventure,” said Gene.
“San Francisco,” said Magda. “Tom, you could write the rescue scenes. Think of all the opportunities for Dan to help out.”
Tom was torn. On the one hand, he wanted to forget San Francisco, to put the earthquake and all its associated anguish behind him. However, if Dan Dawson could do the things that Tom could not, if he could save a man entombed in his cellar under a collapsed house, or a woman trapped by fire in the upper floor of a hotel; if Dan Dawson could save Isabella, might that somehow atone for Tom’s own shortcomings? Wasn’t the very reason Tom set out to write a children’s book about a character who rescued people to expunge the helplessness he had felt on that horrible day? And besides, he would welcome any opportunity to spend more time with Magda.
“I might be able to help a little,” he said softly.
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” said Magda. “Dan Dawson and the Great Earthquake. Mr. Lipscomb will love it.”
“Yes,” said Tom, rising from his seat on slightly shaky legs. “I suppose he will.”
As dusk approached, the lights of Dreamland came on—every roofline and turret, every tower and arch and statue, every bridge and colonnade lined with gossamer threads of incandescent lights, their glow gradually intensifying as darkness fell. Magda felt she stood at the center of a great galaxy, cradled in the vastness by the twinkling stars. She knew that to Gene all this was just a scientific achievement, but to her it was transcendent, and she stood for a long time on the boardwalk, soaking in the lights, while the others urged her to come along and ride the Leap Frog Railway.
They boarded a rather squat-looking open-sided railway car that took them at a moderate pace on a pier out into the ocean. From the far end of the pier an identical car traveled toward them on the same track. Collision seemed inevitable until the oncoming car rolled onto tracks affixed to their car, and “leap frogged” over the top. At the end of the pier their car reversed direction, and this time it was their turn to go over the top of the approaching railway car. Like everything else at Dreamland, the ride was accompanied by a soundtrack of shrieks and screams that purported to be of fear, but actually expressed unalloyed delight.
Evening had fully arrived by the time they finished their ride—though the bulbs of Dreamland refused to admit that fact.
“Have we done everything?” asked Magda, as they stood at the foot of Beacon Tower, gazing across the lagoon where the lights reflected in the water.
“Not everything,” said Tom.
Tom shared a knowing glance with Gene. “Wouldn’t you like to see a better view than this?” he said to Magda.
“What could possibly be better?” said Magda.
“The view from there,” said Tom, pointing to the top of the tower.
“I’m not sure I have enough energy left to climb a tower that tall,” said Magda.
“The only energy needed is electrical energy,” said Gene. “We go up in an elevator.”
“I think I might need to stop off at the ladies’ side of the bathing pavilion first,” said Magda, blushing.
“Certainly, certainly,” said Tom, taking her by the elbow and guiding her through the crowd. In another moment, Magda had disappeared inside the pavilion and Tom and Gene stood together by the entrance. Tom jammed his hands in his pockets and turned to look out toward the sea. The two men had rarely been together without Magda, and a
n awkward silence fell between them.
“We got lucky with the weather,” said Gene at last.
“Yes,” said Tom. “Lucky.”
After another silence, Gene tried again. “That Shoot the Chutes is something else.”
“Listen,” said Tom, turning toward Gene. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Sorry for what?” said Gene.
“Sorry that I can never feel about you the way you feel about me,” said Tom.
“What are you talking about?” said Gene, a defensive tone creeping into his voice.
“I see the way you look at me,” said Tom. “And I know things.”
“What things do you know?” said Gene.
“I’m sorry, okay. But you need to tell Magda.”
“Tell her what?” said Gene.
“You know what. She’s in love with you, for God’s sake, not that you would know it.”
“Of course I know it,” said Gene, stepping back from Tom and crossing his arms.
“Well then, tell her, will you? Don’t make me do it. Tell her that you are the way you are.”
“You want me out of the way, don’t you?” said Gene. “So you can swoop in and have her all to yourself.”
“Christ, why do you even want to be in the way?” said Tom. “You don’t even like girls.”
“I like Magda.”
“Not the way I do. I want to marry her. I’m going to ask her tonight.”
“And why should you ask her instead of me?”
“Because you can’t . . . you can’t be with her the way I can. You like . . . you like boys the way I like Magda.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Are you denying it?” said Tom.
“I said, what makes you say that I like boys?” said Gene, raising his voice.
“Because I saw you, okay,” hissed Tom, taking a step closer to Gene. “I followed you and I saw you. I saw you kissing a man and taking men up to your room.” The conversation was not going the way Tom had hoped. Gene was supposed to tell Magda about his proclivities and then gallantly stand aside.
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