"Enough!" his father yells. He glares at Eddie. Eddie goes silent.
At the cemetery, Eddie barely recognizes the pier people. The men
who normally wear gold lame and red turbans are now in black suits,
like his father. The women seem to be wearing the same black, dress;
some cover their faces in veils.
Eddie watches a man shovel dirt into a hole. The man says
something about ashes. Eddie holds his mothers hand and squints at
the sun. He is supposed to be sad, he knows, but he is secretly counting
numbers, starting from 1, hoping that by the time he reaches 1000 he
will have his birthday back.
The First Lesson
PLEASE, MISTER.. ." EDDIE PLEADED. "I DIDN'T know. Believe
me... God help me, I didn't know."
The Blue Man nodded. "You couldn't know. You were too young."
Eddie stepped back. He squared his body as if bracing for a fight.
"But now I gotta pay," he said.
"To pay?"
"For my sin. That's why I'm here, right? Justice?"
The Blue Man smiled. "No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you
something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you."
Eddie was skeptical. His fists stayed clenched.
"What?" he said.
"That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you
can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a
breeze from the wind."
Eddie shook his head. "We were throwing a ball. It was my stupidity,
running out there like that. Why should you have to die on account of
me? It ain't fair."
The Blue Man held out his hand. "Fairness," he said, "does not govern
life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young."