The bell rang.
The crowd surged.
The voice called.
And against all odds and historical evidence, the children actually paid attention.
The tour of the fire exhibit had begun.
“Come on, come on,” said the museum guide.
“Come on, come on,” said the teacher, out of educational camaraderie and the desire not to be left out.
“Hurry up, hurry up,” said the guide.
“Hurry up, hurry up,” said the teacher, really getting into the spirit of things now. Then he realized that he was falling behind and ran after the group, pants flapping.
“Shh!” the guide told the teacher and his pants.
“Shh!” the children told the teacher, delighting in the turning of tables.
“Shh!” the guide told the children, and they growled and raised their hackles at him, but not too sharply. The first exhibit was at hand.
It was a little building in a little box, made of little things – smears of clay, matchstick twigs, slivers of stone. It had a red roof and a blue door.
“Whose house does this look like?” asked the guide.
“Mine!” said one child.
“Hers!” said another child.
“Theirs!” volunteered a third.
“Wrong!” said the guide. “It looks like the first house built in this city that wasn’t a shack or a cabin or a hovel or a lean-to or a shanty. It looks like the grand manor of Mayor Brickabrack.
Does anyone here know about Mayor Brickabrack?”
A hand shot up at the back of the pack, lonely in the crowd.
“Yes. You. Speak.”
“hewasthefirstmayorofthetownandhebuiltthedamandthequarryandthemainroadandthenhebuilthishouseand”
“That will do,” said the guide with the kind and welcoming air of a corpse. “Yes. He built all those things that still stand today, and then he built this house. Now, why do you think they still stand and this house doesn’t?”
“FIRE!” concluded the entire class at the top of its lungs.
“Yes,” said the guide. “Now, look at the building. See the cross-section? See all that dry hay in the walls to act as insulation? See all those candleholders in the hall? See that staircase set too close, and see how it was (against all sense and reason) insulated as well? See what happens when you press this button?”
It wasn’t a big button, and it wasn’t a big fire. But then again, it wasn’t a big building.
It went ‘fwooMP.’
The children cheered.
“Shh!” said the guide.
“Shh!” said the teacher, hungry for validation.
“Shh!” said the children. And the teacher hungered for his belt and the harsh days of his forefathers, but he knew they were behind him and he had no recourse.
The next exhibit was much larger – the glass case it was sealed away in could have housed a motorboat of respectable size. Inside were hundreds upon hundreds of extremely small trees, all of them very cunningly faked with cotton balls, twigs, birchbark, bird’s nests, and other powerful techniques. Scattered through it were mud roads, crude sheds, and tiny specks that could’ve be either people or fleas.
“Now, what is this?” asked the guide.
“Trees!’ hollered a child.
“FOOREST,” insisted another.
“Incorrect” snapped the guide. “Deeply incorrect. This is the Smittely Wood. It was right off the highway heading north. Do any of you know why this place was important?”
There was a deep and abiding stillness and silence, broken only by the wave of a single hand in the crowd. A high-pitched and excited tittering followed its every move.
“Speak.”
“itwasalloldgrowthtimberandcoudlbeusedforship’smastsandlongbeamsandandnandandand”
“Fine,” said the guide. “True enough. Mayor Brickabrack oversaw the building of the sawmills and the carving of the logging roads. Those roads do not exist today, and there is no trace of the mills. Why? What happened here?”
“FIRE!” hollered the class diligently.
“Yes,” said the guide. “Examine the lean of the trees, see the habitual direction of the wind. Look at the lay of the land. Check where the cuts were freshest and the dry timber was stacked. Now, see those men here and think of one of them smoking and tapping out a pipe or stubbing out a cigarette or just dropping a match. Then watch this.”
This button wasn’t any bigger, but the effect was. Incandescent light blistered up in a noise like ‘FWAshhhhhh,’ and then the box was filled with thick, ashy smoke.
“Yay!” said everyone.
“Shh!” said the guide.
“Shh,” whispered the teacher, quietly, to himself. And he looked at his charges and wished for matches.
The third exhibit took up an entire room.
“By eighteen eighty nine Mayor Brickabrack was bent towards civil infrastructure. More bodies were needed to lend the town prosperity, and they needed comforts and staples to tempt them. The fields had been cleared, the orchards planted, and in midsummer the rail line was completed, and was bringing in its first passengers.” With each statement the guide’s finger poked and thrusted and jabbed, spelling out HERE and THERE and THERE.
It was a breathtaking thing. A whole town – a little town maybe, but a town – locked in a single glass case. Someone had spent entirely too much time and effort on it.
“The summer was dry, and the fields were too. The train was an older model, and its smokestack was dirty and improperly cleaned. It caught ablaze, and can anyone tell me what happened next?”
A long dead lull. And then, a hesitant wave and a tremulous giggle.
“Explain yourself,” said the guide.
“theyputthedepottoocloseandthecoalcaughtalightandthewindtookitandspreaditintothefieldsanditallwentupin”
“Flames, yes, yes, YES,” said the guide. “Like so.”
The button went click. There was a long dead moment of nothing until the students realized that the fire was already there, burning eternally in the mouth of the little toy train.
Then it slid out – gently buoyed on some invisible jet of air – and alit on some buildings, which exploded.
It went very quickly after that.
“Hooray!” said the class.
“Shh!’ hissed the guide.
“Shh!” said the teacher alongside him, regaining his nerve. He was ignored, and this both pleased and irritated him.
“Come,” said the guide. And they followed him from the rooms and down the halls and into the stairways and passages that turned.
When they stopped turning, it was in a very small room. Its walls were blackened, not black.
And in its center was a thing that wasn’t quite a furnace.
“This was nearly the turn of the century,” said the guide. “The town was choked on its own ashes, and Mayor Brickabrack had leadership of almost nobody and little life let in any of his body. Gangrenous slough had consumed three of his limbs and black veins were coursing towards his heart. He had made many mistakes.”
“Fire!” shouted a student.
“Fwoosh!” enunciated another.
“Crispy!” giggled a third.
“Silence!” said the guide.
“Silence!” agreed the teacher.
The guide turned to him and gave him a smile that froze his heart in his chest even in the swelter of the little basement, then spoke to the class.
“Now. Here is the important question. What did Mayor Brickabrack do to save this town? Your town. My town. His town.”
The students rustled and murmured. One or two almost waved their arms, but held them low at the last minute.
And then that little giggle started again, hesitantly.
“Speak,” said the guide.
“ohnoi’mnotsure”
“Speak,” said the guide. “Now.”
“oooooohokayheknewthatitwasallhisfaultandsohedecidedto”
“Yes,” said the guide. And he smiled so wonderfully that the class was in awe. “Yes. He saw that he had never given fire the respect it deserved. So he explained this to the town, and they held one last vote, and into this very iron kettle went Mayor Brickabrack.”
The guide pulled the door of the chamber open. It was very well-oiled, and made no noise whatsoever.
Then he left it open.
Then he turned to the class and said one word.
“Choose.”
“Choose,” said the teacher, a little too loudly. And then he realized what he’d just said and went pale as a sheet as three dozen glittering little eyes devoid of pity or remorse turned upon him and studied his face with great care. His legs skittered inside his pants like anxious beetles, and he almost fell over.
They laughed at him. And one of the laughs was a high-pitched little titter, and every one of their faces turned towards it.
Grinning.
“ohnonononono,” said the student with the hasty hand. And they might’ve said more, but it was lost in the cheers.
They just made the last bus out of the museum. The teacher was first on, elbowing his students left and right to make it to his seat, and whatever he said to the bus driver was enough to make him scream out of the parking lot on a strip of rubber thick enough to make a new tire.
The guide watched them go, smiling mirthlessly. Then he sighed, and took off his name tag and took out his matches.
“My term is complete,” he said to anyone who might be listening, which was no one.
And then the mayor descended into the depths of the ghostly, char-bricked museum, to press a particularly well-worn button.
Nobody heard what happened next.
But it sounded like ‘fwooosh.’