But now he worked the two rocks furiously, juggling them faster, impressing the guard. Then he stopped, held the rocks out, and said, “Get me another one.”
Crazy Three grunted.
“Three rocks, see?” Eddie held up three fingers. “Three.”
By now, Morton and Smitty were sitting up. The Captain was moving closer.
“Where are we going here?” Smitty mumbled.
“If I can get one more rock …” Eddie mumbled back.
Crazy Three opened the bamboo door and did what Eddie’d hoped he would do: He yelled for the others. Crazy One appeared with a fat rock and Crazy Two followed him in. Crazy Three thrust the rock at Eddie and yelled something. Then he stepped back, grinned at the others, and motioned for them to sit, as if to say, “Watch this.”
Eddie tossed the rocks into a rhythmic weave. Each one was as big as his palm. He sang a carnival tune. “Da, da-da-da daaaaa …” The guards laughed. Eddie laughed. The Captain laughed. Forced laughter, buying time.
“Get closer,” Eddie sang, pretending the words were part of the melody. Morton and Smitty slid gently in, feigning interest.
The guards were enjoying the diversion. Their posture slackened. Eddie tried to swallow his breathing. Just a little longer. He threw one rock high into the air, then juggled the lower two, then caught the third, then did it again.
“Ahhh,” Crazy Three said, despite himself.
“You like that?” Eddie said. He was juggling faster now. He kept tossing one rock high and watching his captors’ eyes as they followed it into the air. He sang, “Da, da-da-da daaa,” then, “When I count to three,” then, “Da, da-da-da daaaa …” then, “Captain, the guy on the lefffft …”
Crazy Two frowned suspiciously, but Eddie smiled the way the jugglers back at Ruby Pier smiled when they were losing the audience. “Lookie here, lookie here, lookie here!” Eddie cooed. “Greatest show on earth, buddy boy!”
Eddie went faster, then counted, “One … two …” then tossed a rock much higher than before. The Crazies watched it rise.
“Now!” Eddie yelled. In mid-juggle he grabbed a rock and, like the good baseball pitcher he had always been, whipped it hard into the face of Crazy Two, breaking his nose. Eddie caught the second rock and threw it, left-handed, square into the chin of Crazy One, who fell back as the Captain jumped him, grabbing his bayonet. Crazy Three, momentarily frozen, reached for his pistol and fired wildly as Morton and Smitty tackled his legs. The door burst open and Crazy Four ran in, and Eddie threw the last rock at him and missed his head by inches, but as he ducked, the Captain was waiting against the wall with the bayonet, which he drove through Crazy Four’s rib cage so hard the two of them tumbled through the door. Eddie, powered by adrenaline, leaped on Crazy Two and pounded his face harder than he had ever pounded anyone back on Pitkin Avenue. He grabbed a loose rock and slammed it against his skull, again and again, until he looked at his hands and saw a hideous purplish goo that he realized was blood and skin and coal ash, mixed together—then he heard a gunshot and grabbed his head, smearing the goo on his temples. He looked up and saw Smitty standing over him, holding an enemy pistol. Crazy Two’s body went slack. He was bleeding from the chest.
“For Rabozzo,” Smitty mumbled.
Within minutes, all four guards were dead.
The prisoners, thin and barefoot and covered in blood, were running now for the steep hill. Eddie had expected gunfire, more guards to fight, but there was no one. The other huts were empty. In fact, the entire camp was empty. Eddie wondered how long it had been just the four Crazies and them.
“The rest probably took off when they heard the bombing,” the Captain whispered. “We’re the last group left.”
The oil barrels were pitched at the first rise of the hill. Less than 100 yards away was the entrance to the coal mine. There was a supply hut nearby and Morton made sure it was empty, then ran inside; he emerged with an armful of grenades, rifles, and two primitive-looking flamethrowers. “Let’s burn it down,” he said.
Today Is Eddie’s Birthday
The cake reads “Good luck! Fight hard!” and on the side, along the vanilla-frosted edge, someone has added the words, “Come home soon,” in blue squiggly letters, but the “o-o-n” is squeezed together, so it reads more like “son” or “Come home son.”
Eddie’s mother has already cleaned and pressed the clothes he will wear the next day. She’s hung them on a hanger on his bedroom closet doorknob and put his one pair of dress shoes beneath them.
Eddie is in the kitchen, fooling with his young Romanian cousins, his hands behind his back as they try to punch his stomach. One points out the kitchen window at the Parisian Carousel, which is lit for the evening customers.
“Horses!” the child exclaims.
The front door opens and Eddie hears a voice that makes his heart jump, even now. He wonders if this is a weakness he shouldn’t be taking off to war.
“Hiya, Eddie,” Marguerite says.
And there she is, in the kitchen doorway, looking wonderful, and Eddie feels that familiar tickle in his chest. She brushes a bit of rainwater from her hair and smiles. She has a small box in her hands.
“I brought you something. For your birthday, and, well … for your leaving, too.”
She smiles again. Eddie wants to hug her so badly, he thinks he’ll burst. He doesn’t care what is in the box. He only wants to remember her holding it out for him. As always, with Marguerite, Eddie mostly wants to freeze time.
“This is swell,” he says.
She laughs. “You haven’t opened it yet.”
“Listen.” He moves closer. “Do you—“
“Eddie!” someone yells from the other room. “Come on and blow out the candles.”
“Yeah! Were hungry!”
“Oh, Sal, shush!”
“Well, we are.”
There is cake and beer and milk and cigars and a toast to Eddie’s success, and there is a moment where his mother begins to cry and she hugs her other son, Joe, who is staying stateside on account of his flat feet.
Later that night, Eddie walks Marguerite along the promenade. He knows the names of every ticket taker and food vendor and they all wish him luck. Some of the older women get teary-eyed, and Eddie figures they have sons of their own, already gone.
He and Marguerite buy saltwater taffy, molasses and teaberry and root beer flavors. They pick out pieces from the small white bag, playfully fighting each other’s fingers. At the penny arcade, Eddie pulls on a plaster hand and the arrow goes past “clammy” and “harmless” and “mild,” all the way to “hot stuff.”
“You’re really strong,” Marguerite says.
“Hot stuff,” Eddie says, making a muscle.
At the end of the night, they stand on the boardwalk in a fashion they have seen in the movies, holding hands, leaning against the railing. Out on the sand, an old ragpicker has built a small fire from sticks and torn towels and is huddling by it, settled in for the night.
“You don’t have to ask me to wait,” Marguerite says suddenly.
Eddie swallows.
“I don’t?”
She shakes her head. Eddie smiles. Saved from a question that has caught in his throat all night, he feels as if a string has just shot from his heart and looped around her shoulders, pulling her close, making her his. He loves her more in this moment than he thought he could ever love anyone.
A drop of rain hits Eddie’s forehead. Then another. He looks up at the gathering clouds.
“Hey, Hot Stuff?” Marguerite says. She smiles but then her face droops and she blinks back water, although Eddie cannot tell if it is raindrops or tears.
“Don’t get killed, OK?” she says.
A freed soldier is often furious. The days and nights he lost, the torture and humiliation he suffered—it all demands a fierce revenge, a balancing of the accounts.