Read Online Palisades Park by Alan Brennert - Free Book Online Page B

fifteen hundred visiting children—white, black, rich, poor—who, in May, had received free tickets to Palisades at Hearn’s Department Store. They came from New York City, swarming eagerly over the park, riding the coasters, the Carousel, the miniature train, and flocking to the George Hamid circus troupe two blocks away, to be entertained by clowns, jugglers, acrobats, and the trained animals of Captain Walker’s Jungle Wonders.
    Most of those kids were at the circus at 4:45 that afternoon when Eddie—having just handed some cotton candy to an eight-year-old tyke, one of perhaps fifty left on the midway—felt his nose twitch at a familiar, ominous smell and then heard the cry most feared by carnies everywhere:
    “Fire!”
    Eddie’s head jerked up. A park staffer was running up the midway, sounding the alarm—as behind him clouds of bilious black smoke rose from the Old Mill, only a few hundred yards down. Licks of flame charred the low wooden roof of the ride as cinders ignited the walls of the squat, rambling structure. In the time it took for Eddie to lock his cash register and jump the counter, the flames were consuming most of the Mill.
    Other concessionaires now jumped their counters, the ones closest to the Mill unfurling a long fire hose. It quickly inflated and began spraying water onto the blaze like an elephant spitting water from its trunk.
    Eddie looked across the midway to Adele’s stand and saw her standing inside, frozen to the spot by the fiery spectacle. He ran across the midway, grabbed her by the wrist and said, “Get out of there! Hurry!”
    That shook her out of her daze, and she quickly clambered over the counter. In the distance came the sound of approaching sirens.
    But when they looked back at the fire they saw that the flames had spread to the Spitfire ride next door to the Old Mill. It was not lost on anyone that the fire was now blocking the path to the park’s front gate.
    Among the spectators were dozens of children standing there transfixed, drawn like moths to the raging fire and the billowing clouds of smoke. “Somebody’s got to do something about all these kids,” Adele said. Before Eddie could reply she ran up to a ten-year-old boy enraptured by the flames, grabbed him by his shoulders, and turned him around:
    “Get out of here! Run!” she told him. “There’s an exit by the pool, you know where that is?”
    “Uh, yeah,” the boy said, “I think so.”
    “Up to the end of the railway, turn left, run straight out! Go!”
    The boy did as he was told and Adele rushed up to a young girl, giving her the same instructions. As Eddie got as many kids into the hands of Hearn’s employees as he could, the Spitfire lived up to its name and began spewing hot cinders across the midway—where they quickly ignited the fencing around the Whip. From there the sparks jumped to the Fascination game booth next door, its canvas roof erupting into flames with a rush of air like the beating of giant wings. The flames raced down the roof supports as if they were fuses and in less than a minute the entire booth exploded.
    Eddie could hear the crackle of timber being consumed and felt the heat being pushed up the midway on an easterly breeze. The smoke was so thick he could no longer make out the Old Mill, or what remained of it.
    “Shit,” he told Adele, “we’ve got to get out of here, now!”
    They herded together as many kids as they could and led them to the Hudson gate near the pool. There were thousands of visitors hurrying to leave the park, but no panic, as park employees calmly guided people to the available exits. When Eddie and Adele reached the Hudson gate they found a fire company from Fort Lee waiting and left the children in their care.
    By now the fire engines of seven communities—Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, Edgewater, Englewood, Leonia, Fairview, and Ridgefield—had begun converging on the park. The engines pulled up to Palisade Avenue, hooked up hoses to hydrants,