This is a story about a man named Eddie...
and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.
You might think it strange...
to start a story with an ending.
But all endings are also beginnings...
We just don't know it at the time.
You lose this?
I suppose I should come down there...
and give it back to you, huh?
That's what I thought.
You love this balloon?
Then hold tight to it.
- Thanks, Eddie Maintenance. - Just Eddie.
But your shirt says, 'Eddie Main-te-nance.'
Well, Eddie is my name.
Maintenance is my job. And this is just a shirt.
Well...
go catch up with your father.
Years ago, people thought of Ruby Pier...
as a magical and mysterious place.
Once, even Eddie felt that way.
What are we gonna fix today, pop?
I don't know, Eddie. Whatever's broke.
Where ya been?
Hey, Gracie. How's tricks?
Okay.
Hiya, Eddie.
Watch the kid for me, will ya?
Sure... How long you gonna be?
Not long.
C'mon, Eddie. You want to fix something for me?
Is it fixed yet?
It's good, Pop.
Where's your brother?
I don't know.
Well, find him.
What is it with you two?
He was supposed to be here by now.
What the hell happened to you?
These guys... they took my jacket...
What are you waitin' for? What are you waiting for?
Take care of it!
Hey, pretty sharp!
Not again!
Look at you!
Look at ya... you're bleeding.
You get 'em, then?
What are you talking about?
Did you put him up to this?
I asked you... did you get 'em?
Good boy.
Honestly. This fighting has to stop!
You wanna grow up to be an engineer?
Do you? How you gonna be an engineer...
if your hands are all busted up, huh?
Eddie's too dumb to be an engineer.
- Hey, careful! - Knock it off!
You, too.
This war in Europe keeps up...
you'll be lucky to get a crappy job like mine... 61
Eddie... Eddie, are you there?
Yeah, Dom.
Hey, Eddie, we need the keys to gate 16...
I'm on my way.
The last hour of Eddie's life was spent like all the others.
Had Eddie known he was gonna die, he might have done something different.
But how many of us ever know?
Eddie Maintenance?
Just Eddie.
Eddie... can you...
Come on, kiddo. I ain't got all day.
Can you make me an animal?
- Where's your mother? - She's over there eating.
- Without you? - With her boyfriend.
That's the piece that makes it work... watch... here...
there, like that...
- and then... - It's a rabbit!
Yeah, rabbit.
Thank you!
Go show your mother what you got.
Eddie rode every ride at Ruby Pier...
once a week to be certain they were safe.
He'd done it for so long...
he could almost 'hear' trouble coming...
in the spits and sputters of the engines and the brakes.
Children liked Eddie.
Teenagers gave him headaches.
Often he thought this was no way for a man to grow old.
But this was his life, 'Eddie Maintenance' they called him...
and a maintenance man he was.
Can I go now, Pop?
- Is it fixed? - It's fixed.
Take that!
You're dead.
Practicing to kill, are ya, lad?
Hello, Mr. Shea.
You got any spare change you ain't put in that toy gun there?
That was my last nickel.
Have you seen your father, then?
We were in the war together.
Here's the thing about the war.
You don't think. You just shoot and you shoot...
and then you pray you come home.
It's the thinking that gets you killed.
Eddie! Eddie! The skeeball's broken.
Come on, Eddie, come on, come on!
It's just the lever here. There ya go, boys.
Juggle.
Yeah! Juggle, Eddie! Come on!
Alright, alright... you got the magic ball.
How does he do it, folks?
Greatest show on earth...
watch him, buddy boys, and you will be amazed...
Excuse me...
Excuse me.
What?
My friends and I were looking for some of those lemon fizzes.
Yeah, right over there by the carousel.
But that stand's closed already.
But I can fix that...
So, do you have a key for all the food stands?
I got a key for everything.
Well, to be honest, they're my Pop's keys...
He's the maintenance... he fixes stuff here.
I'm just helping him out...
to save up enough money for engineering school.
After the army, of course.
- You enlisted? - Last week.
I gotta do my part.
Well... I better get back.
My friend's will think I swam off into the ocean or something.
A souvenir.
I don't know your name.
Marguerite.
I'm Eddie.
Thanks for the fizz, Eddie.
It's the birthday boy!
Happy birthday, boss!
C'mon, Eddie. Live it up. You only get a birthday, what?
Once a year?
Sounds about right.
How old are you now?
Old.
Man, I hope I live to be as old as you.
Why?
Dom...
put the tools in the right spot.
Them labels are there for a reason.
Hey, don't forget, I'm off next week.
Me and Maria going to Miami for our anniversary.
- You ever been to Miami? - Me?
I never been anywhere I wasn't shipped to with a rifle.
Here...
Naw... I can't.
Buy your wife something nice.
You sure?
Thanks, man.
Marguerite you want to do the honors?
- Who's this from? - I don't know...
You made me love you
All the time you knew it I guess you always knew it
You made happy
You look swell tonight.
Thank you.
Eddie.
Are you afraid?
- I'd be afraid. - You ain't the fightin' type.
Look at it this way. I get to see some faraway places, right?
I always wanted to do that.
I've never been more than five miles from here.
Me, neither... But that's gonna change.
Really?
I ain't spending the rest of my life at Ruby Pier.
Marguerite...
You don't have to ask me.
I don't? 177
- Ask you what? - To wait.
Just don't die, ok?
I ain't gonna die.
I ain't gonna die...
Eddie! Eddie!
I see it! I see it! Get up there!
Alright everybody, stay calm... stay calm!
Who's up there with ya?
Willie!
Okay, tell Willie to release the safety bars...
green button, rear panel... you got it?
Then send down that cart!
Everybody just stay calm...
Hydraulics, gears...
- cables... - Rear panel, safety box...
It's the cable...
This will all be over in a few minutes...
Don't release the cart... it's gonna fall...
it's gonna fall!
Get back, all of ya's! Get back! Back!
It's gonna fall! Get back!
Back! Move!
All of ya's, get back... move!
Get back, it's gonna fall!
This is a story about a man named Eddie.
But the end of his life was only the beginning.
Eddie saw nothing of his final moment on earth...
He felt no pain from his death.
All he felt was lightness, and calm...
as if every hurt he had ever suffered...
had been washed away.
And then he woke up.
How about him, ladies and gentlemen?
Have you ever seen a more horrible sight?
Look well upon this savage! He is not of the human race!
From the farthest corners of the earth...
we bring you this tragic soul for your examination...
Hello, Edward.
I have been waiting for you.
Eddie had seen this man before in his life.
He didn't know why he was seeing him again.
Your body feels like a child's, no?
You were a child when you knew me...
that's why.
You start here with the same feelings you had on earth.
You can't talk when you first arrive.
God's little lesson, I suppose.
Helps you listen.
Tell me something. The 'Bullwhip'.
Is it still the fastest roller coaster on earth?
I figured as much.
Nothing changes here.
And there is no peering down from the clouds, I'm afraid.
Yes.
You died.
An accident.
How long ago?
A minute. An hour.
A thousand years.
Where are you?
Where do you think?
Heaven.
There are five people you meet in heaven, Edward.
Each one of us was in your life for a reason.
People think of heaven as a Garden Of Eden...
mountains, rivers.
But what is scenery without solace?
When I died, my life is lluminated by five others.
And then I came here to wait for you.
To tell you my story. Which becomes part of yours.
Did you ever dance here?
I never danced with a woman.
I was a nervous boy, and a nervous man.
Everything scared me.
What the hell's wrong with you?
You were born with two left feet!
A chemist, for my problem, gave me silver nitrate.
You know this?
Yes. A poison, today.
But we were not so smart back then.
I drank it and when it didn't work, I drank more.
It turned my skin this color.
A side effect.
Permanent, I'm afraid.
My life as a man was over.
My life as a freak had begun.
I had many names.
Algeria. Tanzania.
I had never been to any of those places.
It made me feel... exotic.
One summer, I came here. Ruby Pier.
The ocean. The sand.
I could walk in the mornings, before the customers arrived.
I can feel the sea breeze. Like a normal man.
I was happy here until the day I died.
You see, Edward. This is not your heaven.
It's mine.
What?
What...
killed...
you?
You did.
You see the boy?
See the man in the car?
It was only my second time.
I so loved it, behind the wheel of an automobile.
Like a normal man.
Watch it... look out!
What I almost did. That little boy.
My blood was rushing.
My heart was not strong.
And it surrendered.
The police wrote 'heart attack' on the official papers.
No one saw. No one knew.
No one pays much notice to a freak, even when he dies.
People just... go on with their lives...
You see now why you are here...little boy?
God help me, Mister. I didn't mean it...
You dying... I didn't know!
But how could you know? You were only a child.
So now I gotta pay, right?
- Pay? - For my sin?
That's what I'm here for, right? Justice?
No, no, no, no. You are here so I can teach you something.
Each one of your five people...
has one such thing to show you, to illuminate.
By the end, what you did not understand in life, you will.
But why do I have to wear Joe's shoes?
- Quiet! - Stop wiggling!
But it's my birthday! I don't want to go.
Well, sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do.
I remember this... we had to go to a funeral...
But it's my birthday!
What did I say?
I said be quiet!
Ma?
Come on, son.
I did not attract a big crowd that day.
But it's not fair!
It was my own stupidity, running out there like that.
I should have been the one killed...
not you!
Fairness does not govern life and death.
If it did, no good man would ever die young.
During my time on earth...
people died instead of me, too.
There are no random acts. We are all connected.
- Good comes from it. - Good?
What good came from this? You died.
Well...
you lived.
But I barely knew you. We were strangers.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
I am leaving now, Edward.
Wait...
The little girl at the pier?
I tried to save her... I felt her hands...
I musta pulled her... I can't remember after that...
Did I save her? Was the last thing I did a failure, too?
I cannot answer that.
Then... my life was a waste...
No life is a waste.
There will be others.
Can I ask you...
where are you going?
I'm not.
Couldn't sleep.
Me, neither.
When you think they'll open us up again?
I don't know. Ask the police.
I still can't believe it, you know? 352
I always thought he was too stubborn to die.
There was a second heaven for Eddie...
although heaven was not the word he would have chosen.
His body felt older now, stronger.
And he ran with the hard, measured steps of a soldier.
Smallpox!
Smallpox! Typhoid!
Tetanus!
Yellow Fever!
You know, I never did find out what the hell Yellow Fever was.
All them shots, for all those diseases, and I still died here...
anyhow, healthy as a horse. Doesn't seem right, does it?
Coulda saved my arm all them pokey needles.
Who are you?
How do you like them apples?
Come on. That was funny.
Come on down!
Come on up!
Ah, you don't wanna look down.
It'll only make ya dizzy.
They explain the rules to you, soldier?
- I'm dead... - You got that right.
You're my second person?
Got that right, too.
Left you your helmet. And your old rifle.
Not that they're much use to ya here.
Captain?
Affirmative.
Betcha didn't expect me, huh?
War changes men
It fills them with fear, with courage, with a sense of adventure
Hey Goldilocks...
it'll take you a lot longer than that...
to get as pretty as me, you know that!
Eddie had wanted to see a world beyond Ruby Pier,
and for a while he did.
Dog Zero Six, this is Able Zero Six, over.
Dog Zero Six, if you copy, break squelch, twice, over.
C'mon, Rabozzo, ya stickpin. Pick it up!
It's hot.
And I got all this extra stuff to carry.
Ah, I'm sorry Daisy, you got a little stain on your dress, there?
I can't...
You can't? What do you mean, you can't?
What are you going to just sit there?
- Get up! Hey, get up! - Hold on, Morton, hold on.
Before you go killing anybody. I got a better idea.
Give me your pack, Rabozzo.
Come on.
I'll race you to the Captain. I'll carry his pack...
Ioser's gotta carry it till dark.
Okay, Goldilocks. You're on.
You sure you can do that, Eddie?
You ever run up a roller coaster with a sledgehammer?
Come on, Rabozzo, go.
Say your prayers, buddy boy.
- What the hell you grunts doing? - It's a race, Cap!
A race! That's open ground!
On three. One... two...
Look at Eddie go.
Open up!
Come on, Eddie!
Captain?
It is you.
But you look...
Like the last time you saw me?
See, time ain't what you think it is, kid.
Either is dying.
Aw, you're right.
No reason to spit up here.
No reason to smoke.
Old habits, I guess.
Look, Captain... sir.
No reason for that either, but much obliged.
Captain, there's some kinda mistake going on.
I mean. I don't belong here.
I lived a nothin' life, see? I never went nowhere.
I never accomplished anything worth note.
Couldn't find a job?
No. No, I had a job.
A dumb job. I fixed the rides at this amusement park.
Ruby Pier.
That's the place you always used to tell us about, right?
We were all gonna go there when the war was done.
'Free rides with the prettiest ladies in the tunnel of love.'
That's right.
You ever seen them boys again?
Morton? Smitty?
Morton... Smitty...
Throw the pineapple!
Throw it, Johnny, come on!
Johnny! The grenade!
Eddie learned the quiet prayers of war.
He learned to go days without rest...
and nights without sleep.
He learned how to take a prisoner...
but not how to become one.
And then one night, in the Philippines...
he learned that, too.
- Who's that? - Shut it, kid.
Aw, you bastards...
Eddie?
You heard him, kid. Shut it.
They're gonna kill us.
I never saw none of them boys after the war.
Well, people lose touch...
- So. - What?
You went back to that park, you took that job. Then what?
Then nothing. I never left.
I meant to. But I...
things never worked out.
Money. My leg.
I never really got the war out of my head.
Maybe you weren't supposed to.
One more sip for me, okay champ?
Do that for me...
Good. That's it.
What is it?
In this rat hole? Could be anything.
He can't keep his food down.
What food?
I'm freezing...
Oh God...
Easy, buddy boy... easy.
Where is everybody?
They're losing this war...
How desperate do they gotta be using us to do this?
I figure some go awol every night.
Rats off a sinking ship.
- How much longer? - Not much.
I seen them digging ditches up the way.
Now the oil barrels.
So?
The oil's for burning the evidence.
They're digging our graves.
He's sick...
He's sick, you son of a bitch!
For God's sake, Eddie.
No!
I used to pray every night during the war.
I'd take Marguerite's picture...
and I'd make these deals with God, see.
I'd say...
I'll give you one more week as a soldier...
if you give me one more week with her.
I'll give you one more month in this life...
if you give me one month in that one.
Used to?
I stopped the night they shot Rabozzo.
All I could think about after that was getting out.
I was gonna take care of myself, if I made it...
in one piece.
That never happened, of course.
You know, it's the damndest thing.
I'm dead.
But I feel... I feel healthy.
Strong as I ever was.
You still juggle?
Captain...
I think we got a chance here.
What're you talking about?
- I can juggle. - What?
I can juggle. Them rocks.
Hey!
Hey you! Over here!
I can juggle...
Juggle?
Yeah, here. Lemme try.
Lemme try. I can do it.
What's going on?
Okay?
Huh, you like that? Yeah, see?
Okay, give me one more.
- Motto. - Motto?
Yeah, one more.
One more... I can do it.
Yeah, motto. I'll juggle them for you.
Alright...
Yeah, he's good...
Good...
Good, huh? Pretty good, huh?
Good! Boy can juggle!
- Motto... - Motto?
Yeah, four!
Four?
Four rocks, yeah, I can do it.
I'll get whosever closest to the door...
Morton?
Just give me an opening.
Yeah, right here... right here. 537
They're giving us rocks.
Okay... it's okay... okay.
Just having some fun...
Juggle... juggle.
You really this good?
I used to pitch, Captain.
Look at this, huh?
Isn't he something else, ladies and gents?
You get the one on the left, alright!
Smitty, you get the one on the right...
- Okay, ready for four? - Four!
- You guys ready for four? - Four!
- Four? - Four!
On my count, guys...
One!
Two!
Three...
Four!
For Rabozzo.
It was war, Eddie. 576
I never stopped thinking about it...
my whole life... these dreams...
Every soldier has dreams.
We coulda just run.
We didn't have to destroy the whole place.
What did you see? In those dreams? 565
Hey, Eddie, what you doing?
Yeah, burn it down, Eddie!
Burn the whole place down!
Fire in the hole!
Eddie! Come on!
Let's go! Let's go!
Eddie, what are you doing? Are you coming?
Is somebody in there?
Eddie, Eddie, we gotta go... come on!
There's somebody in there!
Come on, we gotta go, let's go now!
I think there's somebody in there!
Eddie... Movin' out! Let's go!
You'll die in there! Come out!
Eddie! There's nobody in there, let's go!
Come on, we gotta go, now!
Come out! I won't shoot you...
I'm a soldier... I'm a soldier...
You remember how you got out of there?
That bullet got you good.
Lost a lot of blood.
Those planes firing.
I never saw it coming...
Everything changed after that.
I couldn't run no more.
Couldn't play baseball.
I used to swim the ocean like a fish...
You didn't stop walking.
No, I just stopped... moving.
I sorta sat down in my life.
I ever tell you I come from a military family?
My father was a soldier...
his father, and his father, too.
At the dinner table it was 'yes, sir, no sir.'
All I did was take orders. 598
Then along comes a war, and all of a sudden, I'm giving orders.
Kids are looking at me for answers.
They thought I could keep 'em alive.
You did too, didn't ya?
I couldn't, of course.
I took orders like everyone else.
But I thought...
if I couldn't keep you alive...
at least I could keep you together. 623
In the middle of big war, you grab at them little ideas.
We're going home together.
That's right.
Going home together...
meant a lot, Captain.
I hope so.
Why do you say that?
'Cause I was the one who shot you.