The Five People You Meet in Heaven (9 page)

W
HY? YOU BASTARD! You bastard! Not you! WHY?" They were grappling now on the muddy earth. Eddie straddled the Captain's chest, pummeling him with blows to the face. The Captain did not bleed. Eddie shook him by the collar and banged his skull against the mud. The Captain did not blink. Instead, he rolled from side to side with each punch, allowing Eddie his rage. Finally, with one arm, he grabbed Eddie and flipped him over.

"Because," he said calmly, his elbow across Eddie's chest, "we would have lost you in that fire. You would have died. And it wasn't your time."

Eddie panted hard. "My . . . time?"

The Captain continued. "You were obsessed with getting in there. You damn near knocked Morton out when he tried to stop you. We had a minute to get out and, damn your strength, you were too tough to fight."

Eddie felt a final surge of rage and grabbed the Captain by the collar.

He pulled him close. He saw the teeth stained yellow by tobacco. "My . . .

leggggg!" Eddie seethed. "My
life!"

"I took your leg," the Captain said, quietly, "to save your life."

Eddie let go and fell back exhausted. His arms ached. His head was spinning. For so many years, he had been haunted by that one moment, that one mistake, when his whole life changed.

"There was nobody in that hut. What was I
thinking
? If only I didn't go in there . . ." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Why didn't I just die?"

"No one gets left behind, remember?" the Captain said. "What happened to you—I've seen it happen before. A soldier reaches a certain 52

point and then he can't go anymore. Sometimes it's in the middle of the night. A man'll just roll out of his tent and start walking, barefoot, half naked, like he's going home, like he lives just around the corner.

"Sometimes it's in the middle of a fight. Man'll drop his gun, and his eyes go blank. He's just done. Can't fight anymore. Usually he gets shot.

"Your case, it just so happened, you snapped in front of a fire about a minute before we were done with this place. I couldn't let you burn alive. I figured a leg wound would heal. We pulled you out of there, and the others got you to a medical unit."

Eddie's breathing smacked like a hammer in his chest. His head was smeared with mud and leaves. It took him a minute to realize the last thing the Captain had said."The others?" Eddie said. "What do you mean, 'the
others'
?"

The Captain rose. He brushed a twig from his leg.

"Did you ever see me again?" he asked.

Eddie had not. He had been airlifted to the military hospital, and eventually, because of his handicap, was discharged and flown home to America. He had heard, months later, that the Captain had not made it, but he figured it was some later combat with some other unit. A letter arrived eventually, with a medal inside, but Eddie put it away, unopened. The months after the war were dark and brooding, and he forgot details and had no interest in collecting them. In time, he changed his address.

"It's like I told you," the Captain said. "Tetanus? Yellow fever? All those shots? Just a big waste of my time."

He nodded in a direction over Eddie's shoulder, and Eddie turned to look.

W
HAT HE SAW, suddenly, was no longer the barren hills but the night of their escape, the hazy moon in the sky, the planes coming in, the huts on fire. The Captain was driving the transport with Smitty, Morton, and Eddie inside. Eddie was across the backseat, burned, wounded, semiconscious, as Morton tied a tourniquet above his knee.

The shelling was getting closer. The black sky lit up every few seconds, as if the sun were flickering on and off. The transport swerved as it reached the top of a hill, then stopped.

There was a gate, a makeshift thing of wood and wire, but because the ground dropped off sharply on both sides, they could not go around it.

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The Captain grabbed a rifle and jumped out. He shot the lock and pushed the gate open. He motioned for Morton to take the wheel, then pointed to his eyes, signaling he would check the path ahead, which curled into a thicket of trees. He ran, as best he could in his bare feet, 50

yards beyond the turn in the road.

The path was clear. He waved to his men. A plane zoomed overhead and he lifted his eyes to see whose side it was. It was at that moment, while he was looking to the heavens, that a small click sounded beneath his right foot.

The land mine exploded instantly, like a burping flame from the earth's core. It blew the Captain 20 feet into the air and split him into pieces, one fiery lump of bone and gristle and a hundred chunks of charred flesh, some of which flew over the muddy earth and landed in the banyan trees.

The Second Lesson

A
W
, JESUS," EDDIE SAID, CLOSING HIS EYES, dropping his head backward. 'Aw, God. Aw, God! I had no idea, sir. It's sick. It's awful!"

The Captain nodded and looked away. The hills had returned to their barren state, the animal bones and the broken cart and the smoldering remains of the village. Eddie realized this was the Captain's burial ground. No funeral. No coffin. Just his shattered skeleton and the muddy earth.

"You've been waiting here all this time?" Eddie whispered.

"Time," the Captain said, "is not what you think." He sat down next to Eddie. "Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning."

Eddie looked lost.

"I figure it's like in the Bible, the Adam and Eve deal?" the Captain said. "Adam's first night on earth? When he lays down to sleep? He thinks it's all over, right? He doesn't know what sleep is. His eyes are closing and he thinks he's leaving this world, right?

54

"Only he isn't. He wakes up the next morning and he has a fresh new world to work with, but he has something else, too. He has his yesterday."

The Captain grinned. "The way I see it, that's what we're getting here, soldier. That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays."

He took out his plastic cigarette pack and tapped it with his finger.

"You followin' this? I was never all that hot at teaching."

Eddie watched the Captain closely. He had always thought of him as so much older. But now, with some of the coal ash rubbed from his face, Eddie noticed the scant lines on his skin and the full head of dark hair.

He must have only been in his 30s.

"You been here since you died," Eddie said, "but that's twice as long as you lived."

The Captain nodded.

"I've been waitin' for you."

Eddie looked down.

"That's what the Blue Man said."

"Well,
he
was too. He was part of your life, part of why you lived and how you lived, part of the story you needed to know, but he told you and he's beyond here now, and in a short bit, I'm gonna be as well. So listen up. Because here's what you need to know from me." Eddie felt his back straighten.

S
ACRIFICE," THE CAPTAIN said. "You made one. I made one. We all make them. But you were angry over yours. You kept thinking about what you lost.

"You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's
supposed
to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to
aspire
to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.

"A man goes to war. . . ."

He stopped for a moment and looked off into the cloudy gray sky.

"Rabozzo didn't die for nothing, you know. He sacrificed for his country, and his family knew it, and his kid brother went on to be a good soldier and a great man because he was inspired by it.

55

"I didn't die for nothing, either. That night, we might have all driven over that land mine. Then the four of us would have been gone."

Eddie shook his head. "But you . . ." He lowered his voice. "You lost your life."

The Captain smacked his tongue on his teeth.

"That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

The Captain walked over to the helmet, rifle, and dog tags, the symbolic grave, still stuck in the ground. He placed the helmet and tags under one arm, then plucked the rifle from the mud and threw it like a javelin. It never landed. Just soared into the sky and disappeared. The Captain turned.

"I shot you, all right," he said, "and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know it yet. I gained something, too."

"What?"

"I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind."

He held out his palm.

"Forgive me about the leg?"

Eddie thought for a moment. He thought about the bitterness after his wounding, his anger at all he had given up. Then he thought of what the Captain had given up and he felt ashamed. He offered his hand. The Captain gripped it tightly.

"That's what I've been waiting for."

Suddenly, the thick vines dropped off the banyan branches and melted with a hiss into the ground. New, healthy branches emerged in a yawning spread, covered in smooth, leathery leaves and pouches of figs.

The Captain only glanced up, as if he'd been expecting it. Then, using his open palms, he wiped the remaining ash from his face.

"Captain?" Eddie said.

"Yeah?"

"Why here? You can pick anywhere to wait, right? That's what the Blue Man said. So why this place?"

The Captain smiled. "Because I died in battle. I was killed in these hills. I left the world having known almost nothing but war—war talk, war plans, a war family.

"My wish was to see what the world looked like
without
a war. Before we started killing each other."

56

Eddie looked around. "But this
is
war."

"To you. But our eyes are different," the Captain said. "What you see ain't what I see."

He lifted a hand and the smoldering landscape transformed. The rubble melted, trees grew and spread, the ground turned from mud to lush, green grass. The murky clouds pulled apart like curtains, revealing a sapphire sky. A light, white mist fell in above the treetops, and a peach-colored sun hung brilliantly above the horizon, reflected in the sparkling oceans that now surrounded the island. It was pure, unspoiled, untouched beauty.

Eddie looked up at his old commanding officer, whose face was clean and whose uniform was suddenly pressed.

"This," the Captain said, raising his arms, "is what I see."

He stood for a moment, taking it in.

"By the way, I don't smoke anymore. That was all in your eyes, too."

He chuckled. "Why would I smoke in heaven?"

He began to walk off.

"Wait," Eddie yelled. "I gotta know something. My death. At the pier.

Did I save that girl? I felt her hands, but I can't remember—"

The Captain turned and Eddie swallowed his words, embarrassed to even be asking, given the horrible way the Captain had died.

"I just want to know, that's all," he mumbled.

The Captain scratched behind his ear. He looked at Eddie sympathetically. "I can't tell you, soldier."

Eddie dropped his head.

"But someone can."

He tossed the helmet and tags. "Yours."

Eddie looked down. Inside the helmet flap was a crumpled photo of a woman that made his heart ache all over again. When he looked up, the Captain was gone.

MONDAY, 7:30 A.M.

57

The morning after the accident, Dominguez came to the shop early, skipping his routine of picking up a bagel and a soft drink for breakfast.

The park was closed, but he came in anyhow, and he turned on the water at the sink. He ran his hands under the flow, thinking he would clean some of the ride parts. Then he shut off the water and abandoned the idea. It seemed twice as quiet as it had a minute ago.

"What's up?"

Willie was at the shop door. He wore a green tank top and baggy jeans. He held a newspaper. The headline read "Amusement Park Tragedy."

"Hard time sleeping," Dominguez said.

"Yeah." Willie slumped onto a metal stool. "Me, too."

He spun a half circle on the stool, looking blankly at the paper.

"When you think they'll open us up again?"

Dominguez shrugged. "Ask the police."

They sat quietly for a while, shifting their postures as if taking turns.

Dominguez sighed. Willie reached inside his shirt pocket, fishing for a stick of gum. It was Monday. It was morning. They were waiting for the old man to come in and get the workday started.

The Third Person Eddie Meets in Heaven

A
SUDDEN WIND LIFTED EDDIE, AND HE spun like a pocket watch on the end of a chain. An explosion of smoke engulfed him, swallowing his body in a flume of colors. The sky seemed to pull in, until he could feel it touching his skin like a gathered blanket. Then it shot away and exploded into jade. Stars appeared, millions of stars, like salt sprinkled across the greenish firmament.

Eddie blinked. He was in the mountains now, but the most remarkable mountains, a range that went on forever, with snow-capped peaks, jagged rocks, and sheer purple slopes. In a flat between two crests was a large, black lake. A moon reflected brightly in its water.