The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Five People You Meet in Heaven By Mitch Albom Random House Large Print Publishing Copyright ©2003 Mitch AlbomAll right reserved. ISBN: 0375432329 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 storywith an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don'tknow it at the time. The last hour of Eddie's life was spent, like most of the others, atRuby Pier, an amusement park by a great gray ocean. The park had theusual attractions, a boardwalk, a Ferris wheel, roller coasters,bumper cars, a taffy stand, and an arcade where you could shootstreams of water into a clown's mouth. It also had a big new ridecalled Freddy's Free Fall, and this would be where Eddie would bekilled, 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 armytattoo on his right shoulder. His legs were thin and veined now, andhis left knee, wounded in the war, was ruined by arthritis. He useda cane to get around. His face was broad and craggy from the sun,with salty whiskers and a lower jaw that protruded slightly, makinghim look prouder than he felt. He kept a cigarette behind his leftear and a ring of keys hooked to his belt. He wore rubber-soledshoes. He wore an old linen cap. His pale brown uniform suggested aworkingman, and a workingman he was. Eddie's job was "maintaining" the rides, which really meant keepingthem safe. Every afternoon, he walked the park, checking on eachattraction, from the Tilt-A-Whirl to the Pipeline Plunge. He lookedfor broken boards, loose bolts, worn-out steel. Sometimes he wouldstop, his eyes glazing over, and people walking past thoughtsomething was wrong. But he was listening, that's all. After allthese years he could hear trouble, he said, in the spits andstutters and thrumming of the equipment. With 50 minutes left on earth, Eddie took his last walk along RubyPier. He passed an elderly couple. "Folks," he mumbled, touching his cap. They nodded politely. Customers knew Eddie. At least the regularones did. They saw him summer after summer, one of those faces youassociate with a place. His work shirt had a patch on the chest thatread 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 evenknow what they were. Once, he had been strong enough to lift acarousel 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 ofthe roller coaster line. He rode every attraction at least once aweek, to be certain the brakes and steering were solid. Today wascoaster day - the "Ghoster Coaster" they called this one - and thekids 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 trustedhim. 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. Theyraced to the cart and tumbled in. Eddie handed his cane to the rideattendant and slowly lowered himself between the two. "Here we go.... Here we go! ..." one boy squealed, as theother pulled Eddie's arm around his shoulder. Eddie lowered the lapbar and clack-clack-clack , up they went. A story went around about Eddie. When he was a boy, growing up bythis very same pier, he got in an alley fight. Five kids from PitkinAvenue had cornered his brother, Joe, and were about to give him abeating. Eddie was a block away, on a stoop, eating a sandwich. Heheard his brother scream. He ran to the alley, grabbed a garbage canlid, and sent two boys to the hospital. After that, Joe didn't talk to him for months. He was ashamed. Joewas the oldest, the firstborn, but it was Eddie who did thefighting. "Can we go again, Eddie? Please? " Thirty-four minutes to live. Eddie lifted the lap bar, gave each boya sucking candy, retrieved his cane, then limped to the maintenanceshop to cool down from the summer heat. Had he known his death wasimminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what weall do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in theworld were still to come. One of the shop workers, a lanky, bony-cheeked young man namedDominguez, 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 lowceiling 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. Stackedagainst one wall were coffee cans of nails and screws, and stackedagainst another wall were endless tubs of grease. Greasing a track, Eddie would say, required no more brains thanwashing a dish; the only difference was you got dirtier as you didit, not cleaner. And that was the sort of work that Eddie did:spread grease, adjusted brakes, tightened bolts, checked electricalpanels. Many times he had longed to leave this place, find differentwork, build another kind of life. But the war came. His plans neverworked out. In time, he found himself graying and wearing looserpants and in a state of weary acceptance, that this was who he wasand who he would always be, a man with sand in his shoes in a worldof mechanical laughter and grilled frankfurters. Like his fatherbefore him, like the patch on his shirt, Eddie was maintenance -the head of maintenance - or as the kids sometimes called him, "theride 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 howstrange it was to be growing old in a place that smelled of cottoncandy. "Well, remember, Eddie, I'm off next week, starting Monday. Going toMexico." 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'tshipped 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 theonly 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 outback to the storage area. A small "fishing hole" had been cut intothe boardwalk planks years ago, and Eddie lifted the plastic cap. Hetugged on a nylon line that dropped 80 feet to the sea. A piece ofbologna was still attached. "We catch anything?" Dominguez yelled. "Tell me we caughtsomething!" Eddie wondered how the guy could be so optimistic. There was neveranything on that line. "One day," Dominguez yelled, "we're gonna get a halibut!" "Yep," Eddie mumbled, although he knew you could never pull a fishthat big through a hole that small. Twenty-six minutes to live. Eddie crossed the boardwalk to the southend. Business was slow. The girl behind the taffy counter wasleaning on her elbows, popping her gum. Once, Ruby Pier was the place to go in the summer. It had elephantsand fireworks and marathon dance contests. But people didn't go toocean 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 ofteenagers leaning over the railing. Great, he told himself. Justwhat I need . "Off," Eddie said, tapping the railing with his cane. "C'mon. It'snot 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 orangein 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 itin two. "MOVE IT!" The teens ran away. Another story went around about Eddie. As a soldier, he had engagedin combat numerous times. He'd been brave. Even won a medal. Buttoward the end of his service, he got into a fight with one of hisown men. That's how Eddie was wounded. No one knew what happened tothe other guy. No one asked. With 19 minutes left on earth, Eddie sat for the last time, in anold aluminum beach chair. His short, muscled arms folded like aseal'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 bodysuggested a survived encounter. His fingers were bent at awkwardangles, thanks to numerous fractures from assorted machinery. Hisnose had been broken several times in what he called "saloonfights." His broadly jawed face might have been good-looking once,the way a prizefighter might have looked before he took too manypunches. Now Eddie just looked tired. This was his regular spot on the RubyPier boardwalk, behind the Jackrabbit ride, which in the 1980s wasthe Thunderbolt, which in the 1970s was the Steel Eel, which in the1960s was the Lollipop Swings, which in the 1950s was Laff In TheDark, 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 warmSeptember night after a thunderstorm, when the boardwalk was spongywith water. She wore a yellow cotton dress, with a pink barrette inher hair. Eddie didn't say much. He was so nervous he felt as if histongue were glued to his teeth. They danced to the music of a bigband, Long Legs Delaney and his Everglades Orchestra. He bought hera 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 thoughtof Marguerite, Eddie would see that moment, her waving over hershoulder, her dark hair falling over one eye, and he would feel thesame arterial burst of love. That night he came home and woke his older brother. He told him he'dmet 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 hedid not want to see. He spat it away. Whrrssssssh . He used to think a lot about Marguerite. Not so muchnow. She was like a wound beneath an old bandage, and he had grownmore used to the bandage. Whrrssssssh . What was shingles? Whrrrsssssh . Sixteen minutes to live. No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners andsometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath ariver. The end of Eddie's story was touched by another seemingly innocentstory, months earlier - a cloudy night when a young man arrived atRuby Pier with three of his friends. The young man, whose name was Nicky, had just begun driving and wasstill not comfortable carrying a key chain. So he removed the singlecar key and put it in his jacket pocket, then tied the jacket aroundhis waist. For the next few hours, he and his friends rode all the fastestrides: the Flying Falcon, the Splashdown, Freddy's Free Fall, theGhoster 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 andlaughing, drinking beer from brown paper bags. Nicky reached intohis jacket pocket. He fished around. He cursed. The key was gone. Fourteen minutes until his death. Eddie wiped his brow with ahandkerchief. Out on the ocean, diamonds of sunlight danced on thewater, and Eddie stared at their nimble movement. He had not beenright on his feet since the war. But back at the Stardust Band Shell with Marguerite - there Eddiehad still been graceful. He closed his eyes and allowed himself tosummon the song that brought them together, the one Judy Garlandsang in that movie. It mixed in his head now with the cacophony ofthe 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 hissunlight. She had blonde curls and wore flip-flops and denim cutoffshorts 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 lotthis 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 reachedinto 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 theloops around one another. His hands shook now, so it took longerthan 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 theirfeet are moving. Eddie wiped his brow again, then closed his eyes,slumped into the beach chair, and tried to get the old song backinto his head. A seagull squawked as it flew overhead. Continues... Excerpted from The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom Copyright ©2003 by Mitch Albom. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.