by Anthology
Suddenly an eight-foot-tall figure appeared: Mose the Fireman, spoken of in legend. He wore a leather firefighter’s helmet as big as a barrel and a pair of humongous rubber boots, each the size of a sailboat. His coat declared that he was part of the Engine 40 unit. “Hello, little lady,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“Please,” Adele said. “You must save me from the fire. You must save my family.”
Mose the Fireman took a swig of beer from the fifty-gallon keg he kept on his belt. The beer trickled down his thick white beard, and suddenly both beer and beard vanished. “I can’t save anyone unless you save yourself.”
“But—but you’re Mose the Fireman. You rescue people from fires! You swam the Hudson in two strokes! You’ve lifted trolley cars out of your path to run to the rescue of babies!”
“I’ve retired and moved to Hawaii,” he replied.
Suddenly, Mose the Fireman wasn’t Mose anymore, but her father. Adele watched in horror as her father called out to her in puzzlement. “Adele?”
“Father!” she shouted, but she was too late, as the flames licked closer and closer, filled with glee as they chose between immolating Adele or her father first . . .
And Adele’s nightmare ended. She awoke gasping for air, as she had many times since her father’s death, with her body and head wrapped snugly in her blanket.
Lucas Schmidt entered eighteen-year-old Adele Weber’s life on a Sunday in May. As usual, after services at St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church had ended, the congregants lingered to talk. Cigar smoke filled the air and voices speaking German filled the room, with only the occasional English word as a reminder that the community actually lived in the United States. People eagerly spread news about the everyday events of each other’s lives.
Adele and her mother were no exception. They found themselves chatting with Philip Straub and his wife while the three Straub children ran around playing with other children.
Just as the Straubs took their leave, Adele and her mother were approached by Reverend George Haas, the pastor of the church, and a dark-haired stranger.
Haas adjusted his glasses and stroked his salt-and-pepper beard. “Mrs. Weber, Miss Weber,” he said in English. He nodded to each one in turn. “And how are you this Sunday?”
“We are doing quite well, thank you sir,” Adele replied. Although she returned the nod, her eyes were drawn to the handsome stranger, partly because of his looks but mostly because of his odd behavior. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. He kept his mouth closed, while his gaze darted around the room. Tiny beads of sweat covered his brow, and his hands repeatedly pulled at his collar and tie. Adele stifled a laugh, while waiting for the presumed introduction.
Finally, Haas said, “Allow me to introduce Mr. Lucas Schmidt.”
Schmidt nodded. “A pleasure to meet you both.”
“Mr. Schmidt,” Adele said. “A pleasure to meet you as well. I take it you are new to New York City?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“Where do you come from?”
“I—I have just arrived from abroad.”
“Really? I’m surprised to hear it. Your accent does not sound like that of the old country.”
Schmidt blushed, reminding Adele of a schoolboy caught in a lie. “No. Um, my family emigrated to England many years ago. I grew up speaking English much more than German.”
“Whereas I grew up fluent in both,” Adele said.
Suddenly, Schmidt began coughing repeatedly, and Haas pounded him on the back. “Are you all right, Mr. Schmidt?”
Schmidt nodded and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “It’s all the cigar smoke. I’m not used to it.”
“Don’t they smoke in England?” Adele asked.
“Um. Not where I come from.”
“How strange. Well, welcome to Kleindeutschland, Mr. Schmidt.”
He nodded. “Little Germany.”
There was an awkward pause, and then Haas spoke up. “Mr. Schmidt needs a place to stay. And I seem to recall that you still have that room for let.”
“Well,” Mrs. Weber said, “that all depends. How old are you, Mr. Schmidt? How do you earn your living?”
“I’m twenty-five, Mrs. Weber. And I work as a journalist.”
“Oh,” Adele said, a touch disappointed.
Haas smiled. “You’ll have to forgive Miss Weber. She was just telling me how scandalous she finds the newspapers.”
Schmidt turned to look at her, and Adele shifted under his gaze. “Indeed? Are you a regular reader?”
Adele’s mother spoke up again. “My daughter is quite a voracious reader.”
“Yes,” Adele said, slightly nettled. “I am a reader.”
“And you find the newspapers scandalous?”
She sighed. “The newspapers should spend more time reporting the truth, and less time dredging up spectacles.”
Schmidt shrugged. “I tend to agree with you, Miss Weber, but I must point out that newspapers need to sell copies to stay in business.”
“They could sell just as many copies appealing to man’s greater instincts.” She sniffed. “Tell me, Mr. Schmidt, for which paper do you write?”
“I work for the New York World.”
“Oh, Joseph Pulitzer’s paper. That’s not as bad as some of the others. Given that, I think you’d be acceptable.”
“I am honored, Miss Weber,” Schmidt said. He turned to Adele’s mother. “So I’ve been interviewed by both mother and daughter. When will I get to meet Mr. Weber?”
Adele and her mother looked at each other. “My father passed away six years ago,” Adele said after a moment.
“Oh,” Schmidt replied. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Weber sighed. “He left me to finish raising Adele on my own. But the community has been helpful. Somehow, I manage to find enough work cleaning offices or taking in laundry to help us live.”
“And taking in boarders?” Schmidt asked.
Adele’s mother smiled. “Yes,” she said. “And taking in boarders. And you do come with good references,” she added, nodding at Reverend Haas.
“Then,” Schmidt said, “if it’s not presumptuous of me to ask, I will need to know my new address.”
“We live three blocks south of here, on Third Street.” She turned to her daughter. “Adele, perhaps you can help Mr. Schmidt find his way to our apartment?”
Adele and Schmidt exchanged an awkward glance.
“Are you going somewhere, mother?” Adele asked.
“I need to stay for a while and talk with Mary Abendschein about the excursion. I have some ideas for her.”
“Excursion?” Schmidt asked. “What excursion?”
“You’ve come to our community at a good time,” Mrs. Weber said. “Next month we’ll have a day to get away from the heat of the city.”
“When?”
“Wednesday, June fifteenth,” Reverend Haas said. “It’s our annual excursion to celebrate the end of the Sunday school year. We charter a steamboat for the day, and head out to Locust Grove, a picnic ground on the northern shore of Long Island. There’ll be food, fun, music, and games. You should join us if you can get away from work.”
“It sounds like quite an outing,” Schmidt said. “You said that you do this every year?”
Haas smiled. “This is our seventeenth one. The church started running them in 1888.”
Mrs. Weber laughed. “You’re being far too modest, Reverend. After all, the excursions were your idea.”
“Really?” Schmidt asked.
Haas waved his hands and shook his head, as if to say that it had not been that much of an achievement. “It just seemed to me that it would be nice if we could celebrate the end of the Sunday school year with some sort of picnic. And it’s so popular that many of our former congregants return from Yorkville and Brooklyn to join the festivities.”
“Some even come from as far off as New Jersey,” Adele said. “Such as my uncle and cousins.”
“We usu
ally get close to a thousand people,” Haas added.
Schmidt whistled. “And what about the program book?”
Adele and her mother exchanged a puzzled glance with Haas. “We didn’t mention the program book,” Adele’s mother said.
“Oh,” Schmidt replied. “Well, perhaps I heard it from someone else. But you did mention Mary Abendschein. I would imagine she has something to do with the program book.”
“Ah, yes,” Haas said. “Mary is in charge of putting it together, along with many of the other details of organizing the event.”
“I would like to assist her, if I could. It seems like a good way of getting to know my new community.”
Haas smiled. “A capital idea. She only started last month, so I imagine her committee could use one more person.”
“Perhaps Mrs. Weber and Miss Weber could introduce me to her.”
“Certainly,” Adele’s mother said. “And then afterwards, Mr. Schmidt, let us escort you to your new home.”
Lucas Schmidt did his best to prevent himself from disrupting the Weber family routine. As part of the boarding arrangement, he shared breakfasts and dinners with Adele and her mother. He would come down to the dining room right on time for the morning meal, made sure to leave before Adele’s mother or Adele herself needed to start working, and he always returned by the scheduled dinner hour.
He even offered to clean the dishes, or to assist the Webers with the household laundry, much to their delight and amusement.
“Most men of my acquaintance wouldn’t do such things,” Adele had told him.
“Does that mean you’d rather I didn’t?”
“Oh, not at all. We’ll gladly take you up on your offer.” She smiled. “But we’ll be sure not to tell anyone, so your reputation remains unbesmirched.”
Schmidt’s behavior and appearance enchanted Adele so much that she and her mother decided upon a plan for Adele to spend some time alone with their new boarder. So the following week, Mrs. Weber told Mr. Schmidt that she had been hoping to take her daughter on an outing to Coney Island. “But,” she said, “my health is not what it once was. Still, I hate to disappoint my daughter. Might you by chance be willing to accompany us?”
From behind the back stairs, Adele heard the whole thing. She felt a small thrill of delight when Schmidt agreed. She admittedly had been shocked when her mother had suggested a Coney Island outing; despite the amusement parks that had been there for almost ten years, it still bore a reputation for vice. Still, friends of the Webers had gone with their young children and declared that they had enjoyed the rides immensely—even if they only mentioned it quietly, and away from the pastor and other officials of the church.
“Why, of course I will,” Schmidt replied.
“Thank you. I know how much Adele is looking forward to seeing Luna Park.”
“Luna Park?”
“It’s a new amusement park that opened just recently on the location of the old Sea Lion Park.”
“Oh, yes, I remember reading something about that.”
“I would have expected you to, if you work at the World.”
That Saturday morning, as the three of them ate breakfast, Adele and her mother completed their plan. Mrs. Weber told Schmidt that she was feeling under the weather and that perhaps they ought to cancel the outing. Schmidt immediately offered to escort Adele on his own.
When Schmidt got up from the table to carry the dishes into the kitchen, Adele and her mother exchanged a wink.
Shortly after breakfast, Adele and Mr. Schmidt boarded a steamboat to Brooklyn, along with hundreds of other New Yorkers eager to get away for the day. Schmidt, who had been quiet and reserved as they had walked over to the Third Street pier, became slightly agitated when he saw the steamboat. He came to a stop, forcing Adele to fight the crowd as she backed up to where he stood, going back and forth between staring at the boat and looking down at his feet.
“Mr. Schmidt? Are you coming with me or not?”
He looked up, and Adele noticed a slight reddish tinge to his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Miss Weber. I haven’t been on a boat in a while.”
“I thought you said you came over from Europe. What did you do, flap your arms and fly over here?”
“Something like that, yes,” he said with a broad smile.
“Seriously, Mr. Schmidt.”
“Seriously, I’m just a tad nervous.” He paused. “I just wasn’t expecting to board a steamboat, that’s all. I should have known better.”
“Do you get seasick, Mr. Schmidt?” Adele asked, trying to show her concern.
He chuckled. “No.”
“Did you have a bad experience on a boat?” Adele asked.
Schmidt nodded. “Sort of.”
“Well, relax. The ferries between Manhattan and Brooklyn run all the time. Nothing’s going to happen.”
He stared into her eyes for a moment. “Of course, you’re right. I would have known otherwise.”
“What?”
“I mean, if something had happened to any of the ferries, I would have heard.”
“So are we going?”
He smiled. “Yes. Let’s go.”
Mr. Schmidt paid their fare and they boarded the steamboat. The trip was uneventful, and within an hour they found themselves disembarking at the steel pier at Coney Island. The beautiful blue sky above the beach and boardwalk held but a wisp of white, fluffy clouds. As they walked down the pier, Mr. Schmidt bought a copy of “Seeing Coney Island” for ten cents from a barker, and using the guidebook they found their way to Luna Park.
At the entrance stood a huge stone arch with the words “Luna Park” on a scaffold. Directly in the middle of the arch sat a giant red heart, proclaiming Luna Park “The Heart of Coney Island.” Underneath that, carved in stone, were the names “Thompson & Dundy.” And underneath that, of course, people wandered into and out of the amusement park.
Adele and Schmidt joined the crowd walking into the park, and were hit by a variety of sounds and smells. The music of a brass band some distance away mixed with the laughter and shouting of the crowd of people. An odor of hay and manure wafted by, and Adele jumped away as an elephant lumbered by, led by a man in turban and carrying two couples who chatted away, seemingly unaware of the spectacle they were creating. As the crowds parted, Adele had to stick close to Schmidt to avoid being jostled away from him.
“Wow,” Schmidt said. Goggle-eyed, he slowly turned around and stared at everything Luna Park had to offer. Adele turned with him.
After taking in all the sights, Schmidt started pointing to the signs around the park that advertised rides and exhibitions: Ride the Trip to the Moon! Experience Dragon’s Gorge Scenic Railway! Take a Trip to the North Pole! See the new Fire and Flames!
“What shall we do first?” Adele asked.
“Fire and Flames looks interesting,” Schmidt said, pointing in the direction the sign indicated. “Let’s go see that.”
“I’m not sure,” Adele said. The name Fire and Flames made her uncomfortable. She studied the other signs, and then asked, “Wouldn’t you rather ride the Trip to the Moon?”
Schmidt looked her in the eyes. “I’ll make you a deal. First I’ll go with you to the Moon, and then you come with me to see the Flames.”
Reluctantly, Adele agreed. The two of them walked in the direction of the Moon ride, which was housed in one of the more modest buildings, past the huge Electric Tower with the sculpted dragon at the base.
They joined the long line in front of the building. Eventually, they reached the front of the line, and Schmidt handed over two dimes for their admission.
Workers ushered them and the other spectators into a cavernous room, in the middle of which sat a rounded spaceship that came to a point at one side. They were gently herded into the spaceship and asked to take seats in one of the rows. Adele took a seat next to a porthole, with Schmidt next to her.
A few seconds after the door closed, the spaceship started to rock back and forth. Looking o
ut the portholes, Adele saw the walls vanish below, replaced by blue sky, which darkened until the only light came from pinpoint stars.
“Amazing,” she said, almost breathless with wonder. Schmidt made no comment.
Very soon after, the Moon appeared as a small rock in one of the portholes. It got larger and larger, until finally it swung below, disappearing from view, and the ship stopped rocking and came to a stop with a sudden thump.
“What now?” someone asked.
“We explore the Moon,” said the pilot.
He opened the door to the spaceship, and the spectators exited. No longer could they tell that they were still in the large room of the building that housed the ride. Instead, to all eyes, it appeared as if they stood on the populated surface of Earth’s nearest neighbor. Everywhere they looked were caverns and grottos. Giants and midgets dressed in elaborate silver costume greeted them, along with a man on a throne who claimed to be the Man in the Moon. Dancing moon maidens gave the spectators pieces of green cheese to take back with them as souvenirs of their voyage. Eventually, the pilot ushered all the paying customers back into the spaceship, and after a slightly shorter trip, the ship “landed” and they were escorted outside into the bright sunny day on Earth.
Adele noticed that Mr. Schmidt had a bemused expression on his face. “Did you enjoy that?”
“I thought it was rather quaint,” he said.
“Quaint? The Trip to the Moon is quaint?”
“Well, it’s just an interesting picture of the future.” He smiled. “Are you ready for Fire and Flames now?”
Adele repressed a shudder. “I’m ready.”
Once again, they stood on a long line, and when they finally got to the front, Mr. Schmidt handed over two dimes for their admission to the theater. They took seats among the rows of other spectators, and waited for the curtain to lift.