“Ahh no, no, Eddie,” he moaned, grabbing his head. Security workers arrived. They pushed people back. But then, they, too, fell into impotent postures, hands on their hips, waiting for the ambulances. It was as if all of them—the mothers, the fathers, the kids with their giant gulp soda cups—were too stunned to look and too stunned to leave. Death was at their feet, as a carnival tune played over the park speakers.
How bad is it? Sirens sounded. Men in uniforms arrived. Yellow tape was stretched around the area. The arcade booths pulled down their grates. The rides were closed indefinitely. Word spread across the beach of the bad thing that had happened, and by sunset, Ruby Pier was empty.
From his bedroom, even with the door closed, Eddie can smell the beefsteak his mother is grilling with green peppers and sweet red onions, a strong woody odor that he loves.
“Eddd-deee!” she yells from the kitchen. “Where are you? Everyone’s here!”
He rolls off the bed and puts away the comic book. He is 17 today, too old for such things, but he still enjoys the idea—colorful heroes like the Phantom, fighting the bad guys, saving the world. He has given his collection to his school-aged cousins from Romania, who came to America a few months earlier. Eddie’s family met them at the docks and they moved into the bedroom that Eddie shared with his brother, Joe. The cousins cannot speak English, but they like comic books. Anyhow, it gives Eddie an excuse to keep them around.
“There’s the birthday boy,” his mother crows when he rambles into the room. He wears a button-down white shirt and a blue tie, which pinches his muscular neck A grunt of hellos and raised beer glasses come from the assembled visitors, family, friends, pier workers. Eddie’s father is playing cards in the corner, in a small cloud of cigar smoke.
“Hey, Ma, guess what?” Joe yells out. “Eddie met a girl last night.”
“Oooh. Did he?”
Eddie feels a rush of blood.
“Yeah. Said he’s gonna marry her.”
“Shut yer trap,” Eddie says to Joe.
Joe ignores him. “Yep, he came into the room all google-eyed, and he said, ‘Joe, I met the girl I’m gonna marry!’ “
Eddie seethes. “I said shut it!”
“What’s her name, Eddie?” someone asked.
“Does she go to church?”
Eddie goes to his brother and socks him in the arm.
“Owww!”
“Eddie!”
“I told you to shut it!”
Joe blurts out, “And he danced with her at the Stard—!”
Whack.
“Oww!”
“SHUT UP!”
“Eddie! Stop that!!”
Even the Romanian cousins look up now—fighting they understand—as the two brothers grab each other and flail away, clearing the couch, until Eddie’s father puts down his cigar and yells, “Knock it off, before I slap both of ya’s.”
The brothers separate, panting and glaring. Some older relatives smile. One of the aunts whispers, “He must really like this girl.”
Later, after the special steak has been eaten and the candles have been blown out and most of the guests have gone home, Eddie’s mother turns on the radio. There is news about the war in Europe, and Eddie’s father says something about lumber and copper wire being hard to get if things get worse. That will make maintenance of the park nearly impossible.
“Such awful news,” Eddie s mother says. “Not at a birthday.”
She turns the dial until the small box offers music, an orchestra playing a swing melody, and she smiles and hums along. Then she comes over to Eddie, who is slouched in his chair, picking at the last pieces of cake. She removes her apron, folds it over a chair, and lifts Eddie by the hands.
“Show me how you danced with your new friend,” she says.
“Aw, Ma.”
“Come on.”
Eddie stands as if being led to his execution. His brother smirks. But his mother, with her pretty, round face, keeps humming and stepping back and forth, until Eddie falls into a dance step with her.
“Daaa daa deeee,” she sings with the melody, “… when you’re with meeee … da da … the stars, and the moon … the da … da … da … in June …”
They move around the living room until Eddie breaks down and laughs. He is already taller than his mother by a good six inches, yet she twirls him with ease.
“So,” she whispers, “you like this girl?”
Eddie loses a step.
“It’s all right,” she says. “I’m happy for you.”
They spin to the table, and Eddie s mother grabs Joe and pulls him up.
“Now you two dance,” she says.
“With him?”
“Ma!”
But she insists and they relent, and soon Joe and Eddie are laughing and stumbling into each other. They join hands and move, swooping up and down in exaggerated circles. Around and around the table they go, to their mother’s delight, as the clarinets lead the radio melody and the Romanian cousins clap along and the final wisps of grilled steak evaporate into the party air.
Eddie felt his feet touch ground. The sky was changing again, from cobalt blue to charcoal gray, and Eddie was surrounded now by fallen trees and blackened rubble. He grabbed his arms, shoulders, thighs, and calves. He felt stronger than before, but when he tried to touch his toes, he could no longer do so. The limberness was gone. No more childish rubbery sensation. Every muscle he had was as tight as piano wire.
He looked around at the lifeless terrain. On a nearby hill lay a busted wagon and the rotting bones of an animal. Eddie felt a hot wind whip across his face. The sky exploded to a flaming yellow.
And once again, Eddie ran.
He ran differently now, in the hard measured steps of a soldier. He heard thunder—or something like thunder, explosions, or bomb blasts—and he instinctively fell to the ground, landed on his stomach, and pulled himself along by his forearms. The sky burst open and gushed rain, a thick, brownish downpour. Eddie lowered his head and crawled along in the mud, spitting away the dirty water that gathered around his lips.
Finally he felt his head brush against something solid. He looked up to see a rifle dug into the ground, with a helmet sitting atop it and a set of dog tags hanging from the grip. Blinking through the rain, he fingered the dog tags, then scrambled backward wildly into a porous wall of stringy vines that hung from a massive banyan tree. He dove into their darkness. He pulled his knees into a crouch. He tried to catch his breath. Fear had found him, even in heaven.
The name on the dog tags was his.