Mitch Albom - The Five People You Meet in Heaven

The Blue Man paused. His skin, which seemed to be soaked in blue fluid, folded in small fatty layers around his belt. Eddie couldn’t help staring.

“I was not always a freak, Edward,” he said. “But back then, medicine was rather primitive. I went to a chemist, seeking something for my nerves. He gave me a bottle of silver nitrate and told me to mix it with water and take it every night. Silver nitrate. It was later considered poison. But it was all I had, and when it failed to work, I could only assume I was not ingesting enough. So I took more. I swallowed two gulps and sometimes three, with no water.

“Soon, people were looking at me strangely. My skin was turning the color of ash.

“I was ashamed and agitated. I swallowed even more silver nitrate, until my skin went from gray to blue, a side effect of the poison.”

The Blue Man paused. His voice dropped. “The factory dismissed me. The foreman said I scared the other workers. Without work, how would I eat? Where would I live?

“I found a saloon, a dark place where I could hide beneath a hat and coat. One night, a group of carnival men were in the back. They smoked cigars. They laughed. One of them, a rather small fellow with a wooden leg, kept looking at me. Finally, he approached.

“By the end of the night, I had agreed to join their carnival. And my life as a commodity had begun.”

Eddie noticed the resigned look on the Blue Man’s face. He had often wondered where the sideshow cast came from. He assumed there was a sad story behind every one of them.

“The carnivals gave me my names, Edward. Sometimes I was the Blue Man of the North Pole, or the Blue Man of Algeria, or the Blue Man of New Zealand. I had never been to any of these places, of course, but it was pleasant to be considered exotic, if only on a painted sign. The ‘show’ was simple. I would sit on the stage, half undressed, as people walked past and the barker told them how pathetic I was. For this, I was able to put a few coins in my pocket. The manager once called me the ‘best freak’ in his stable, and, sad as it sounds, I took pride in that. When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished.

“One winter, I came to this pier. Ruby Pier. They were starting a sideshow called The Curious Citizens. I liked the idea of being in one place, escaping the bumpy horse carts of carnival life.

“This became my home. I lived in a room above a sausage shop. I played cards at night with the other sideshow workers, with the tinsmiths, sometimes even with your father. In the early mornings, if I wore long shirts and draped my head in a towel, I could walk along this beach without scaring people. It may not sound like much, but for me, it was a freedom I had rarely known.”

He stopped. He looked at Eddie.

“Do you understand? Why we’re here? This is not your heaven. It’s mine.”

Take one story, viewed from two different angles. Take a rainy Sunday morning in July, in the late 1920s, when Eddie and his friends are tossing a baseball Eddie got for his birthday nearly a year ago. Take a moment when that ball flies over Eddie’s head and out into the street. Eddie, wearing tawny pants and a wool cap, chases after it, and runs in front of an automobile, a Ford Model A. The car screeches, veers, and just misses him. He shivers, exhales, gets the ball, and races back to his friends. The game soon ends and the children run to the arcade to play the Erie Digger machine, with its claw-like mechanism that picks up small toys.

Now take that same story from a different angle. A man is behind the wheel of a Ford Model A, which he has borrowed from a friend to practice his driving. The road is wet from the morning rain. Suddenly, a baseball bounces across the street, and a boy comes racing after it. The driver slams on the brakes and yanks the wheel. The car skids, the tires screech.

The man somehow regains control, and the Model A rolls on. The child has disappeared in the rearview mirror, but the man’s body is still affected, thinking of how close he came to tragedy. The jolt of adrenaline has forced his heart to pump furiously and this heart is not a strong one and the pumping leaves him drained. The man feels dizzy and his head drops momentarily. His automobile nearly collides with another. The second driver honks, the man veers again, spinning the wheel, pushing on the brake pedal. He skids along an avenue then turns down an alley. His vehicle rolls until it collides with the rear of a parked truck. There is a small crashing noise. The headlights shatter. The impact smacks the man into the steering wheel. His forehead bleeds. He steps from the Model A, sees the damage, then collapses onto the wet pavement. His arm throbs. His chest hurts. It is Sunday morning. The alley is empty. He remains there, unnoticed, slumped against the side of the car. The blood from his coronary arteries no longer flows to his heart. An hour passes. A policeman finds him. A medical examiner pronounces him dead. The cause of death is listed as “heart attack.” There are no known relatives.

Take one story, viewed from two different angles. It is the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily, at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue, where one worker calls another worker over to marvel at the blue skin of the newest arrival.

“You see?” the Blue Man whispered, having finished the story from his point of view. “Little boy?”

Eddie felt a shiver.

“Oh no,” he whispered.

He is eight years old. He sits on the edge of a plaid couch, his arms crossed in anger. His mother is at his feet, tying his shoes. His father is at the mirror, fixing his tie.

“I don’t WANT to go,” Eddie says.

“I know,” his mother says, not looking up, “but we have to. Sometimes you have to do things when sad things happen.”

“But it’s my BIRTHDAY.”

Eddie looks mournfully across the room at the erector set in the corner, a pile of toy metal girders and three small rubber wheels. Eddie had been making a truck. He is good at putting things together. He had hoped to show it to his friends at a birthday party. Instead, they have to go someplace and get dressed up. It isn’t fair, he thinks.

His brother, Joe, dressed in wool pants and a bow tie, enters with a baseball glove on his left hand. He slaps it hard. He makes a face at Eddie.

“Those were my old shoes,” Joe says. “My new ones are better.”

Eddie winces. He hates having to wear Joe’s old things.

“Stop wiggling,” his mother says.

“They HURT!” Eddie whines.

“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.

“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.”