Chapter
One
The End
This
is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie
dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all
endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
The
last hour of Eddie's life
was spent, like most of the others, at Ruby Pier, an amusement park by a great
gray ocean. The park had the usual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel,
roller coasters, bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where you could shoot
streams of water into a clown's mouth. It also had a big new ride called
Freddy's Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would be killed, in an
accident that would make newspapers around the state.
At
the time of his death, Eddie
was a squat, white-haired old man, with a short neck, a barrel chest, thick
forearms, and a faded army tattoo on his right shoulder. His legs were thin and
veined now, and his left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He
used a cane to get around. His face was broad and craggy from the sun, with
salty whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, making him look prouder
than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his left ear and a ring of keys hooked
to his belt. He wore rubber-soled shoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale
brown uniform suggested a workingman, and a workingman he was.
Eddie's
job was "maintaining"
the rides, which really meant keeping them safe. Every afternoon, he walked the
park, checking on each attraction, from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Pipeline Plunge.
He looked for broken boards, loose bolts, worn-out steel. Sometimes he would
stop, his eyes glazing over, and people walking past thought something was
wrong. But he was listening, that's all. After all these years he could hear
trouble, he said, in the spits and stutters and thrumming of the equipment.
With
50 minutes left on earth, Eddie took his last walk along Ruby Pier. He
passed an elderly couple.
"Folks," he mumbled,
touching his cap.
They nodded politely.
Customers knew Eddie. At least the regular ones did. They saw him summer after
summer, one of those faces you associate with a place. His work shirt had a
patch on the chest that read Eddie
above the word Maintenance, and
sometimes they would say, "Hiya, Eddie Maintenance," although he never
thought that was funny.
Today, it so happened, was
Eddie's birthday, his 83rd. A doctor, last week, had told him he had shingles.
Shingles? Eddie didn't even know what they were. once, he had been strong
enough to lift a carousel horse in each arm. That was a long time ago.
"Eddie!"
. . . "Take me, Eddie!" . . . "Take me!"
Forty minutes until his
death. Eddie made his way to the front of the roller coaster line. He rode every
attraction at least once a week, to be certain the brakes and steering were
solid. Today was coaster day -- the "Ghoster Coaster" they called this one
-- and the kids who knew Eddie yelled to get in the cart with him.
Children liked Eddie. Not
teenagers. Teenagers gave him headaches. Over the years, Eddie figured he'd
seen every sort of do-nothing, snarl-at-you teenager there was. But children
were different. Children looked at Eddie -- who, with his protruding lower jaw,
always seemed to be grinning, like a dolphin -- and they trusted him. They drew
in like cold hands to a fire. They hugged his leg. They played with his keys.
Eddie mostly grunted, never saying much. He figured it was because he didn't
say much that they liked him.
Now Eddie tapped two little
boys with backward baseball caps. They raced to the cart and tumbled in. Eddie
handed his cane to the ride attendant and slowly lowered himself between the
two.
"Here we go . . . . Here
we go! . . . " one boy squealed, as the other pulled Eddie's arm around
his shoulder. Eddie lowered the lap bar and clack-clack-clack, up they
went.
A
story went around about
Eddie. When he was a boy, growing up by this very same pier, he got in an alley
fight. Five kids from Pitkin Avenue had cornered his brother, Joe, and were
about to give him a beating. Eddie was a block away, on a stoop, eating a
sandwich. He heard his brother scream. He ran to the alley, grabbed a garbage
can lid, and sent two boys to the hospital.
After that, Joe didn't
talk to him for months. He was ashamed. Joe was the oldest, the firstborn, but
it was Eddie who did the fighting.
"Can
we go again, Eddie? Please?"
Thirty-four minutes to
live. Eddie lifted the lap bar, gave each boy a sucking candy, retrieved his
cane, then limped to the maintenance shop to cool down from the summer heat. Had
he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he
did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the
world were still to come.
One of the shop workers, a
lanky, bony-cheeked young man named Dominguez, was by the solvent sink, wiping
grease off a wheel.
"Yo, Eddie," he said.
"Dom," Eddie said.
The shop smelled like
sawdust. It was dark and cramped with a low ceiling and pegboard walls that held
drills and saws and hammers. Skeleton parts of fun park rides were everywhere:
compressors, engines, belts, lightbulbs, the top of a pirate's head. Stacked
against one wall were coffee cans of nails and screws, and stacked against
another wall were endless tubs of grease.
Greasing a track, Eddie
would say, required no more brains than washing a dish; the only difference was
you got dirtier as you did it, not cleaner. And that was the sort of work that
Eddie did: spread grease, adjusted brakes, tightened bolts, checked electrical
panels. Many times he had longed to leave this place, find different work, build
another kind of life. But the war came. His plans never worked out. In time, he
found himself graying and wearing looser pants and in a state of weary
acceptance, that this was who he was and who he would always be, a man with sand
in his shoes in a world of mechanical laughter and grilled frankfurters. Like
his father before him, like the patch on his shirt, Eddie was maintenance -- the
head of maintenance -- or as the kids sometimes called him, "the ride man at
Ruby Pier."
Thirty
minutes left.
"Hey, happy birthday, I
hear," Dominguez said.
Eddie grunted.
"No party or nothing?"
Eddie looked at him as if
he were crazy. For a moment he thought how strange it was to be growing old in a
place that smelled of cotton candy.
"Well, remember, Eddie, I'm off
next week, starting Monday. Going to Mexico."
Eddie nodded, and Dominguez
did a little dance.
"Me and Theresa. Gonna
see the whole family. Par-r-r-ty."
He stopped dancing when he
noticed Eddie staring.
"You ever been?"
Dominguez said.
"Been?"
"To Mexico?"
Eddie exhaled through his
nose. "Kid, I never been anywhere I wasn't shipped to with a rifle."
He watched Dominguez return
to the sink. He thought for a moment. Then he took a small wad of bills from his
pocket and removed the only twenties he had, two of them. He held them out.
"Get your wife something
nice," Eddie said.
Dominguez regarded the
money, broke into a huge smile, and said, "C'mon, man. You sure?"
Eddie pushed the money into
Dominguez's palm. Then he walked out back to the storage area. A small "fishing hole" had been cut into the boardwalk planks years ago, and Eddie
lifted the plastic cap. He tugged on a nylon line that dropped 80 feet to the
sea. A piece of bologna was still attached.
"We catch anything?"
Dominguez yelled. "Tell me we caught something!"
Eddie wondered how the guy
could be so optimistic. There was never anything on that line.
one day," Dominguez
yelled, "we're gonna get a halibut!"
"Yep," Eddie mumbled,
although he knew you could never pull a fish that big through a hole that small.
Twenty-six
minutes to live. Eddie
crossed the boardwalk to the south end. Business was slow. The girl behind the
taffy counter was leaning on her elbows, popping her gum.
Once, Ruby Pier was the
place to go in the summer. It had elephants and fireworks and marathon dance
contests. But people didn't go to ocean piers much anymore; they went to theme
parks where you paid $75 a ticket and had your photo taken with a giant
furry character.
Eddie limped past the
bumper cars and fixed his eyes on a group of teenagers leaning over the railing.
Great, he told himself. Just what I need.
"Off," Eddie said,
tapping the railing with his cane. "C'mon. It's not safe."
The teens glared at him.
The car poles sizzled with electricity, zzzap zzzap sounds.
"It's not safe,"
Eddie repeated.
The teens looked at each
other. one kid, who wore a streak of orange in his hair, sneered at Eddie, then
stepped onto the middle rail.
"Come on, dudes, hit
me!" he yelled, waving at the young drivers. "Hit m --"
Eddie whacked the railing
so hard with his cane he almost snapped it in two. "MOVE IT!"
The teens ran away.
Another
story went around about
Eddie. As a soldier, he had engaged in combat numerous times. He'd been brave.
Even won a medal. But toward the end of his service, he got into a fight with
one of his own men. That's how Eddie was wounded. No one knew what happened to
the other guy.
No one asked.
With
19 minutes left on earth,
Eddie sat for the last time, in an old aluminum beach chair. His short, muscled
arms folded like a seal's flippers across his chest. His legs were red from
the sun, and his left knee still showed scars. In truth, much of Eddie's body
suggested a survived encounter. His fingers were bent at awkward angles, thanks
to numerous fractures from assorted machinery. His nose had been broken several
times in what he called "saloon fights." His broadly jawed face might have
been good-looking once, the way a prizefighter might have looked before he took
too many punches.
Now Eddie just looked
tired. This was his regular spot on the Ruby Pier boardwalk, behind the
Jackrabbit ride, which in the 1980s was the Thunderbolt, which in the 1970s was
the Steel Eel, which in the 1960s was the Lollipop Swings, which in the 1950s
was Laff In The Dark, and which before that was the Stardust Band Shell.
Which was where Eddie met
Marguerite.
Every
life has one true-love
snapshot. For Eddie, it came on a warm September night after a thunderstorm,
when the boardwalk was spongy with water. She wore a yellow cotton dress, with a
pink barrette in her hair. Eddie didn't say much. He was so nervous he felt as
if his tongue were glued to his teeth. They danced to the music of a big band,
Long Legs Delaney and his Everglades Orchestra. He bought her a lemon fizz. She
said she had to go before her parents got angry. But as she walked away, she
turned and waved.
That was the snapshot. For
the rest of his life, whenever he thought of Marguerite, Eddie would see that
moment, her waving over her shoulder, her dark hair falling over one eye, and he
would feel the same arterial burst of love.
That night he came home and
woke his older brother. He told him he'd met the girl he was going to marry.
"Go to sleep,
Eddie," his brother groaned.
Whrrrssssh.
A wave broke on the beach. Eddie coughed up something he did not want to see. He
spat it away.
Whrrssssssh.
He used to think a lot about Marguerite. Not so much now. She was like a wound
beneath an old bandage, and he had grown more used to the bandage.
Whrrssssssh.
What was shingles?
Whrrrsssssh.
Sixteen minutes to live.
No
story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes
they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.
The end of Eddie's story
was touched by another seemingly innocent story, months earlier -- a cloudy
night when a young man arrived at Ruby Pier with three of his friends.
The young man, whose name
was Nicky, had just begun driving and was still not comfortable carrying a key
chain. So he removed the single car key and put it in his jacket pocket, then
tied the jacket around his waist.
For the next few hours, he
and his friends rode all the fastest rides: the Flying Falcon, the Splashdown,
Freddy's Free Fall, the Ghoster Coaster.
"Hands in the air!" one
of them yelled.
They threw their hands in
the air.
Later, when it was dark,
they returned to the car lot, exhausted and laughing, drinking beer from brown
paper bags. Nicky reached into his jacket pocket. He fished around. He cursed.
The key was gone.
Fourteen
minutes until his death.
Eddie wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Out on the ocean, diamonds of sunlight
danced on the water, and Eddie stared at their nimble movement. He had not been
right on his feet since the war.
But back at the Stardust
Band Shell with Marguerite -- there Eddie had still been graceful. He closed his
eyes and allowed himself to summon the song that brought them together, the one
Judy Garland sang in that movie. It mixed in his head now with the cacophony of
the crashing waves and children screaming on the rides.
"You made me love you -- "
Whsssshhhh.
" -- do it, I didn't
want to do i -- "
Splllllaaaaashhhhhhh.
" -- me love you -- "
Eeeeeeee!
" -- time you knew it, and all the
-- "
Chhhhewisshhhh.
" -- knew it . . . "
Eddie felt her hands on his
shoulders. He squeezed his eyes tightly, to bring the memory closer.
Twelve
minutes to live.
"'Scuse me."
A young girl, maybe eight
years old, stood before him, blocking his sunlight. She had blonde curls and
wore flip-flops and denim cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt with a cartoon
duck on the front. Amy, he thought her name was. Amy or Annie. She'd been here
a lot this summer, although Eddie never saw a mother or father.
"'Scuuuse me," she
said again. "Eddie Maint'nance?"
Eddie sighed. "Just
Eddie," he said.
"Eddie?"
"Um hmm?"
"Can you make me . . ."
She put her hands together
as if praying.
"C'mon, kiddo. I don't have all
day."
"Can you make me an animal? Can
you?"
Eddie looked up, as if he
had to think about it. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out
three yellow pipe cleaners, which he carried for just this purpose.
"Yesssss!" the little
girl said, slapping her hands.
Eddie began twisting the
pipe cleaners.
"Where's your parents?"
"Riding the rides."
"Without you?"
The girl shrugged. "My mom's with
her boyfriend."
Eddie looked up. Oh.
He bent the pipe cleaners
into several small loops, then twisted the loops around one another. His hands
shook now, so it took longer than it used to, but soon the pipe cleaners
resembled a head, ears, body, and tail.
"A rabbit?" the little
girl said.
Eddie winked.
"Thaaaank you!"
She spun away, lost in that
place where kids don't even know their feet are moving. Eddie wiped his brow
again, then closed his eyes, slumped into the beach chair, and tried to get the
old song back into his head.
A seagull squawked as it
flew overhead.
How
do people choose their final
words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?
By his 83rd birthday, Eddie
had lost nearly everyone he'd cared about. Some had died young, and some had
been given a chance to grow old before a disease or an accident took them away.
At their funerals, Eddie listened as mourners recalled their final
conversations. "It's as if he knew he was going to die . . . . " some
would say.
Eddie never believed that.
As far as he could tell, when your time came, it came, and that was that. You
might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say
something stupid.
For the record, Eddie's
final words would be "Get back!"
Here
are the sounds of Eddie's
last minutes on earth. Waves crashing. The distant thump of rock music. The
whirring engine of a small biplane, dragging an ad from its tail. And this.
"OH MY GOD! LOOK!"
Eddie felt his eyes dart
beneath his lids. Over the years, he had come to know every noise at Ruby Pier
and could sleep through them all like a lullaby.
This voice was not in the
lullaby.
"OH MY GOD! LOOK!"
Eddie bolted upright. A
woman with fat, dimpled arms was holding a shopping bag and pointing and
screaming. A small crowd gathered around her, their eyes to the skies.
Eddie saw it immediately.
Atop Freddy's Free Fall, the new "tower drop" attraction, one of the carts
was tilted at an angle, as if trying to dump its cargo. Four passengers, two
men, two women, held only by a safety bar, were grabbing frantically at anything
they could.
"OH MY GOD!" the fat woman yelled.
"Those people! They're gonna fall!"
A voice squawked from the
radio on Eddie's belt. "Eddie! Eddie!"
He pressed the button. "I see it!
Get security!"
People ran up from the
beach, pointing as if they had practiced this drill. Look! Up in the sky! An
amusement ride turned evil! Eddie grabbed his cane and clomped to the safety
fence around the platform base, his wad of keys jangling against his hip. His
heart was racing.
Freddy's Free Fall was
supposed to drop two carts in a stomach-churning descent, only to be halted at
the last instant by a gush of hydraulic air. How did one cart come loose like
that? It was tilted just a few feet below the upper platform, as if it had
started downward then changed its mind.
Eddie reached the gate and
had to catch his breath. Dominguez came running and nearly banged into him.
"Listen to me!" Eddie
said, grabbing Dominguez by the shoulders. His grip was so tight, Dominguez made
a pained face. "Listen to me! Who's up there?"
"Willie."
"OK. He must've hit the
emergency stop. That's why the cart is hanging. Get up the ladder and tell
Willie to manually release the safety restraint so those people can get out. OK?
It's on the back of the cart, so you're gonna have to hold him while he
leans out there. OK? Then . . . then, the two of ya's -- the two of ya's
now, not one, you got it? -- the two of ya's get them out! one holds the
other! Got it!? . . . Got it?"
Dominguez nodded quickly.
"Then send that damn cart down so
we can figure out what happened!"
Eddie's head was
pounding. Although his park had been free of any major accidents, he knew the
horror stories of his business. once, in Brighton, a bolt unfastened on a
gondola ride and two people fell to their death. Another time, in Wonderland
Park, a man had tried to walk across a roller coaster track; he fell through and
got stuck beneath his armpits. He was wedged in, screaming, and the cars came
racing toward him and . . . well, that was the worst.
Eddie pushed that from his
mind. There were people all around him now, hands over their mouths, watching
Dominguez climb the ladder. Eddie tried to remember the insides of Freddy's
Free Fall. Engine. Cylinders. Hydraulics. Seals. Cables. How does a cart
come loose? He followed the ride visually, from the four frightened people at
the top, down the towering shaft, and into the base. Engine. Cylinders.
Hydraulics. Seals. Cables . . . .
Dominguez reached the upper
platform. He did as Eddie told him, holding Willie as Willie leaned toward the
back of the cart to release the restraint. one of the female riders lunged for
Willie and nearly pulled him off the platform. The crowd gasped.
"Wait . . ." Eddie said
to himself.
Willie tried again. This
time he popped the safety release.
"Cable . . ." Eddie
mumbled.
The bar lifted and the crowd went "Ahhhhh." The riders were quickly pulled to the platform.
"The cable is unraveling . .
. ."
And Eddie was right. Inside
the base of Freddy's Free Fall, hidden from view, the cable that lifted Cart
No. 2 had, for the last few months, been scraping across a locked pulley.
Because it was locked, the pulley had gradually ripped the cable's steel wires
-- as if husking an ear of corn -- until they were nearly severed. No one
noticed. How could they notice? only someone who had crawled inside the
mechanism would have seen the unlikely cause of the problem.
The pulley was wedged by a
small object that must have fallen through the opening at a most precise moment.
A car key.
"Don't
release the CART!" Eddie yelled. He waved his arms. "HEY! HEEEEY! IT'S THE
CABLE! DON'T RELEASE THE CART! IT'LL SNAP!"
The crowd drowned him out.
It cheered wildly as Willie and Dominguez unloaded the final rider. All four
were safe. They hugged atop the platform.
"DOM! WILLIE!" Eddie
yelled. Someone banged against his waist, knocking his walkie-talkie to the
ground. Eddie bent to get it. Willie went to the controls. He put his finger on
the green button. Eddie looked up.
"NO, NO, NO, DON'T!"
Eddie turned to the crowd.
"GET BACK!"
