The Five People You Meet in Heaven (8 page)

"The rest probably took off when they heard the bombing," the Captain whispered. "We're the last group left."

The oil barrels were pitched at the first rise of the hill. Less than 100

yards away was the entrance to the coal mine. There was a supply hut nearby and Morton made sure it was empty, then ran inside; he emerged with an armful of grenades, rifles, and two primitive-looking flamethrowers. "Let's burn it down," he said.

45

Today Is Eddie's Birthday

The cake reads "Good luck! Fight hard!" and on the side, along the
vanilla-frosted edge, someone has added the words, "Come home
soon," in blue squiggly letters, but the "o-o-n" is squeezed together, so it
reads more like "son" or "Come home son
."

Eddie's mother has already cleaned and pressed the clothes he will
wear the next day. She's hung them on a hanger on his bedroom closet
doorknob and put his one pair of dress shoes beneath them.

Eddie is in the kitchen, fooling with his young Romanian cousins, his
hands behind his back as they try to punch his stomach. One points out
the kitchen window at the Parisian Carousel, which is lit for the
evening customers.

"Horses!" the child exclaims.

The front door opens and Eddie hears a voice that makes his heart
jump, even now. He wonders if this is a weakness he shouldn't be
taking off to war.

"Hiya, Eddie," Marguerite says.

And there she is, in the kitchen doorway, looking wonderful, and
Eddie feels that familiar tickle in his chest. She brushes a bit of
rainwater from her hair and smiles. She has a small box in her hands.

"I brought you something. For your birthday, and, well . . . for your
leaving, too."

She smiles again. Eddie wants to hug her so badly, he thinks he'll
burst. He doesn't care what is in the box. He only wants to remember
her holding it out for him. As always, with Marguerite, Eddie mostly
wants to freeze time.

"
This is swell
,"
he says
.

She laughs. "You haven't opened it yet
."

"
Listen
."
He moves closer. "Do you—
"

"
Eddie!" someone yells from the other room. "Come on and blow out
the candles
."

"Yeah! Were hungry!"

"Oh, Sal, shush!"

"
Well, we are
."

There is cake and beer and milk and cigars and a toast to Eddie's
success, and there is a moment where his mother begins to cry and she
46

hugs her other son, Joe, who is staying stateside on account of his flat
feet.

Later that night, Eddie walks Marguerite along the promenade. He
knows the names of every ticket taker and food vendor and they all
wish him luck. Some of the older women get teary-eyed, and Eddie
figures they have sons of their own, already gone.

He and Marguerite buy saltwater taffy, molasses and teaberry and
root beer flavors. They pick out pieces from the small white bag,
playfully fighting each other's fingers. At the penny arcade, Eddie pulls
on a plaster hand and the arrow goes past "clammy" and "harmless"

and "mild," all the way to "hot stuff."

"
You're really strong
,"
Marguerite says
.

"Hot stuff," Eddie says, making a muscle.

At the end of the night, they stand on the boardwalk in a fashion
they have seen in the movies, holding hands, leaning against the
railing. Out on the sand, an old ragpicker has built a small fire from
sticks and torn towels and is huddling by it, settled in for the night.

"You don't have to ask me to wait," Marguerite says suddenly.

Eddie swallows.

"I don't?"

She shakes her head. Eddie smiles. Saved from a question that has
caught in his throat all night, he feels as if a string has just shot from
his heart and looped around her shoulders, pulling her close, making
her his. He loves her more in this moment than he thought he could
ever love anyone.

A drop of rain hits Eddie's forehead. Then another. He looks up at
the gathering clouds.

"Hey, Hot Stuff?" Marguerite says. She smiles but then her face
droops and she blinks back water, although Eddie cannot tell if it is
raindrops or tears.

"Don't get killed, OK?" she says.

47

A
FREED SOLDIER is often furious. The days and nights he lost, the torture and humiliation he suffered—it all demands a fierce revenge, a balancing of the accounts.

So when Morton, his arms full of stolen weapons, said to the others,

"Let's burn it down," there was quick if not logical agreement. Inflated by their new sense of control, the men scattered with the enemy's firepower, Smitty to the entrance of the mine shaft, Morton and Eddie to the oil barrels. The Captain went in search of a transport vehicle.

"Five minutes, then back here!" he barked. "That bombing's gonna start soon and we need to be gone. Got it? Five minutes!"

Which was all it took to destroy what had been their home for nearly half a year. Smitty dropped the grenades down the mine shaft and ran.

Eddie and Morton rolled two barrels into the hut complex, pried them open, then, one by one, fired the nozzles of their newly acquired flamethrowers and watched the huts ignite.

"Burn!" Morton yelled.

"Burn!" Eddie yelled.

The mine shaft exploded from below. Black smoke rose from the entrance. Smitty, his work done, ran toward the meeting point. Morton kicked his oil barrel into a hut and unleashed a rope-like burst of flame.

Eddie watched, sneered, then moved down the path to the final hut. It was larger, more like a barn, and he lifted his weapon.
This was over
, he said to himself.
Over
. All these weeks and months in the hands of those bastards, those subhuman guards with their bad teeth and bony faces and the dead hornets in their soup. He didn't know what would happen to them next, but it could not be any worse than what they had endured.

Eddie squeezed the trigger.
Whoosh
. The fire shot up quickly. The bamboo was dry, and within a minute the walls of the barn were melting in orange and yellow flames. Off in the distance, Eddie heard the rumble of an engine—the Captain, he hoped, had found something to escape in—and then, suddenly, from the skies, the first sounds of bombing, the noise they had been hearing every night. It was even closer now, and Eddie realized whoever it was would see the flames. They might be rescued. He might be going home! He turned to the burning barn and . .

.

What was that?

He blinked.

What was that?

48

Something darted across the door opening. Eddie tried to focus. The heat was intense, and he shielded his eyes with his free hand. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he'd just seen a small figure running inside the fire.

"Hey!" Eddie yelled, stepping forward, lowering his weapon. "HEY!"

The roof of the barn began to crumble, splashing sparks and flame.

Eddie jumped back. His eyes watered. Maybe it was a shadow.

"EDDIE! NOW!"

Morton was up the path, waving for Eddie to come. Eddie's eyes were stinging. He was breathing hard. He pointed and yelled, "I think there's someone in there!"

Morton put a hand to his ear. "What?"

"Someone . . . in . . . there!"

Morton shook his head. He couldn't hear. Eddie turned and was almost certain he saw it again, there, crawling inside the burning barn, a child-size figure. It had been more than two years since Eddie had seen anything besides grown men, and the shadowy shape made him think suddenly of his small cousins back at the pier and the Li'l Folks Miniature Railway he used to run and the roller coasters and the kids on the beach and Marguerite and her picture and all that he'd shut from his mind for so many months.

H
EY! COME OUT!" he yelled, dropping the flamethrower, moving even closer. "I WON'T SHOO—"

A hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him backward. Eddie spun, his fist clenched. It was Morton, yelling, "EDDIE! We gotta go NOW!"

Eddie shook his head. "No—no—wait—wait—wait, I think there's someone in th—"

"There's nobody in there! NOW!"

Eddie was desperate. He turned back to the barn. Morton grabbed him again. This time Eddie spun around and swung wildly, hitting him in the chest. Morton fell to his knees. Eddie's head was pounding. His face twisted in anger. He turned again to the flames, his eyes nearly shut.
There. Was that it? Rolling behind a wall? There
?

He stepped forward, convinced something innocent was being burned to death in front of him. Then the rest of the roof collapsed with a roar, casting sparks like electric dust that rained down on his head.

49

In that instant, the whole of the war came surging out of him like bile.

He was sickened by the captivity and sickened by the murders, sickened by the blood and goo drying on his temples, sickened by the bombing and the burning and the futility of it all. At that moment he just wanted to salvage something, a piece of Rabozzo, a piece of himself, something, and he staggered into the flaming wreckage, madly convinced that there was a soul inside every black shadow. Planes roared overhead and shots from their guns rang out in drumbeats.

Eddie moved as if in a trance. He stepped past a burning puddle of oil, and his clothes caught fire from behind. A yellow flame moved up his calf and thigh. He raised his arms and hollered.

I
'LL HELP YOU! COME OUT! I WON'T SHOO—"

A piercing pain ripped through Eddie's leg. He screamed a long, hard curse then crumbled to the ground. Blood was spewing below his knee.

Plane engines roared. The skies lit in bluish flashes.

He lay there, bleeding and burning, his eyes shut against the searing heat, and for the first time in his life, he felt ready to die. Then someone yanked him backward, rolling him in the dirt, extinguishing the flames, and he was too stunned and weak to resist, he rolled like a sack of beans.

Soon he was inside a transport vehicle and the others were around him, telling him to hang on, hang on. His back was burned and his knee had gone numb and he was getting dizzy and tired, so very tired.

T
HE CAPTAIN NODDED slowly, as he recalled those last moments.

"You remember anything about how you got out of there?" he asked.

"Not really," Eddie said.

"It took two days. You were in and out of consciousness. You lost a lot of blood."

"We made it though," Eddie said.

"Yeaaah." The Captain drew the word out and punctuated it with a sigh. "That bullet got you pretty good."

In truth, the bullet had never been fully removed. It had cut through several nerves and tendons and shattered against a bone, fracturing it vertically. Eddie had two surgeries. Neither cured the problem. The doctors said he'd be left with a limp, one likely to get worse with age as the misshapen bones deteriorated. "The best we can do," he was told.

50

Was it? Who could say? All Eddie knew was that he'd awoken in a medical unit and his life was never the same. His running was over. His dancing was over. Worse, for some reason, the way he used to feel about things was over, too. He withdrew. Things seemed silly or pointless. War had crawled inside of Eddie, in his leg and in his soul. He learned many things as a soldier. He came home a different man.

D
ID YOU KNOW," the Captain said, "that I come from three generations of military?"

Eddie shrugged.

"
Yep
. I knew how to fire a pistol when I was six. In the mornings, my father would inspect my bed, actually bounce a quarter on the sheets. At the dinner table it was always, 'Yes, sir,' and, 'No, sir.'

"Before I entered the service, all I did was take orders. Next thing I knew, I was giving them.

"Peacetime was one thing. Got a lot of wise-guy recruits. But then the war started and the new men flooded in—young men, like you—and they were all saluting me, wanting me to tell them what to do. I could see the fear in their eyes. They acted as if I knew something about war that was classified. They thought I could keep them alive. You did, too, didn't you?"

Eddie had to admit he did.

The Captain reached back and rubbed his neck. "I couldn't, of course.

I took my orders, too. But if I couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.

"For me, that little idea was what I told you guys every day. No one gets left behind."

Eddie nodded. "That meant a lot," he said.

The Captain looked straight at him. "I hope so," he said.

He reached inside his breast pocket, took out another cigarette, and lit up.

"Why do you say that?" Eddie asked.

The Captain blew smoke, then motioned with the end of the cigarette toward Eddie's leg.

"Because I was the one," he said, "who shot you."

51

E
DDIE LOOKED AT his leg, dangling over the tree branch. The surgery scars were back. So was the pain. He felt a welling of something inside him that he had not felt since before he died, in truth, that he had not felt in many years: a fierce, surging flood of anger, and a desire to hurt something. His eyes narrowed and he stared at the Captain, who stared back blankly, as if he knew what was coming. He let the cigarette fall from his fingers.

"Go ahead," he whispered.

Eddie screamed and lunged with a windmill swing, and the two men fell off the tree branch and tumbled through limbs and vines, wrestling and falling all the way down.