“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.
“Sacrifice,” 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.
“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.”
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.
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.