“Excuse me, young man, but would you mind terribly much if I died here?”
It was an odd day, a strange day, a bad day. A Tuesday. I turned around to see who had made this absurd statement with a tired customer service smile plastered on my face and thoughts of my troubles in my head. Just what I needed. The car wouldn’t start this morning. My daughter’s dentist had just informed me that she would require braces. My feet hurt. Why do I get all the crazies.
Before me sat, in a wheel chair, probably the oldest woman I’d seen come to the park. You don’t see the octogenarian set visiting amusement parks, even one as nationally famous as the one I was working for. If they come at all, it is with children and grand children and (as often as not) great grand children surrounding them. This lady was quite alone.
I must have paused for longer than I intended, or had a puzzled look on my face, because she repeated “Son, I’d like to die here, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
My lord, she was serious. I couldn’t figure out what would make someone ask that question, it seemed so patently absurd. Was she toying with me? Did she have some burning desire to ride the Titan Coaster, knowing her frail body would not survive? Was it a joke?
“Ma’am, I heard the question, but I don’t understand.” I said, not quite sure how to proceed.
“Well,” she said, “do you have time for a story?”
I really didn’t, but I was also mildly curious. The clock on the wall said 11:39, it was too early for lunch, but I told myself that I had a customer in need, and corporate policy is to give the customers what they want, with a smile, and to avoid whenever possible answering in the negative, so I put up the “back in 30 minutes” sign and said “Why don’t we walk and you can tell me.”
I stepped behind the chair and began to push, and she started in on her story.
“It was 67 years ago that I met my Harold. There was a dance held in the town hall, and all the young ladies were encouraged to go, to dance with our servicemen newly returned from over seas. I wasn’t comfortable, it felt as if the responsibility for expressing the gratitude of the nation was entirely on our shoulders, and it just wasn’t fair. In those days, though, you didn’t rock the boat. You did what was asked of you, and so I went. I was just 18, my birthday just the week before.
“The boys were everything we’d feared. Years away from home, hearth and any women makes men brutish and crude, and although I didn’t begrudge them some time to readjust, I was not comfortable. One particularly aggressive soldier made a rude suggestion, and Harold stepped up and made him apologize. He’d seen me across the room, looking completely out of place, and had come to talk to me. I think to protect me.
“We talked for most of the dance, not realizing the time until my father arrived to pick me up. As we were bidding a quick goodbye, Harold asked me if I’d like to go with him to the new amusement park. ‘A date?’ I’d asked coyly. ‘Why not?’ he’d replied. I told him I would love to, and was whisked away by Father to the waiting car.
“Our first date, then, was right here in your park. This was before you were born, the year the park opened. It wasn’t nearly as big as it is today, just the one park and the one hotel for out of town guests surrounded by acre upon acre of empty swamp land. We walked and talked, we ate the treats and rode the rides, and the whole time I felt like I was floating on a cloud.
“June of the following year, we were married, and it was the most wonderful marriage I could ever have had. Of course we disagreed occasionally, married couples always do, but whenever we did, we’d come back to the park to walk and talk and remember and make up.
“We were married for 50 years, and we must have come to the park 300 times. Not always to make up, of course. We came to celebrate our birthdays. We came to console ourselves when we learned we could not have children. We came when the park opened new attractions. We came when the world just got to be too much to take. This park was our special place, and we used it as frequently as needed to celebrate the good times and help the bad ones pass quickly.
“When you built the EarthView ride, it became our favorite. By that time, we were both in our 40s, and no longer had interest in the faster rides, but EarthView was just our speed, as I’m sure you’re aware, with its 24 minute slow journey through the ages, culminating in a slow, peaceful two minute journey across the Sunset room, with the barest hint of sun’s last glow on one rim of the dome overhead, and the beginnings of stars on the other side.
“Harold always said that in all the world, that two minutes was the most at peace he ever felt. We’d hold hands and just watch the sky, projected on the dome, and no matter what we were there for, or what we’d been discussing, for those two minutes we’d be silent and just watch. And then soon the end of our time in the Sunset room would come, and our trip back down to the end of the ride, and we’d shake off the melancholy at having to leave and begin our conversation anew.
“18 years ago, my Harold got sick, and for a year I watched him get slowly weaker. There was nothing they could do. But he never complained, and we’d come to the park as often as we could and ride the EarthView. When we arrived, Harold was my dying husband, and when we left he was again, but while we were on the ride, and particularly while we were in the Sunset room, he was my young soldier, newly returned from the war and sweeping me off of my feet.
“One day, when we were in the room, Harold broke the silence, and told me that there was one star, brighter than the rest, that he’d always had a fondness for. I knew just the one he was talking about. He said that it was his star, and that after he was gone, if I ever needed him, I should ride the ride and look at his star, and he’d be watching me from the top of the dome.
“Well, after Harold died, I couldn’t bring myself to come back to the park. There were too many memories, too much pain to be alone in the place where my love and I had spent so much time together, and so in the last 17 years, I have not been back once.
“Two months ago I found out that I was dying. This isn’t the tragedy it might seem, I’ve had a full life, and without my Harold, the last 17 years haven’t been terribly good ones. We had no children, and most of our friends have long since passed, and so I am ready to die.
“But the thing is, my Harold is still up there, in that star. I know he is. He’s waiting for me, waiting until I join him, so we can go on to heaven together. I know that’s silly, but even if it is, I want my last sight of this life to be that star in that sky on that dome that we together loved so well. That room and that star are everything that gave my life meaning and joy.
“I woke up this morning, and I know it’s the day. Don’t ask me how I know, it’s just a feeling in my bones, but I know there won’t be another morning for me. So I ask you, would it be too much trouble if I died here?”
My mind was reeling. I looked up and realized we’d walked clear to the other side of the grounds, and I hadn’t realized it. I had no idea how much time had gone by. Suddenly my troubles, the car, the braces, my feet, just didn’t seem as important. And without realizing where I’d been pushing her, we’d come to the entrance gate of the park nearest EarthView.
This was crazy. How was I going to explain this. I put an 85 year old woman onto a ride she had no business being on, and when she came back down, she was dead. That was going to look real good on my next performance review. And yet somehow, I couldn’t let her be denied.
Since it was Tuesday, the park closed early at 5pm (we close one park early each night for maintenance), so I took her inside and bought her lunch. It was 4:30 (where had the time gone?), but during our walk neither of us had eaten, so it was still lunch time. She didn’t eat much, whatever was killing her had clearly taken her appetite, but she chatted on politely as I ate, telling me more little details of Harold and their life together.
When we were done, the paying customers were filing out of the park. I pushed her in her chair over to the entrance to EarthView. The ride operators, just leaving the building, gave me an odd look as I opened the door and pushed her inside. But it was quitting time, if one of the customer service people wanted to show someone around after hours, it was none of their concern, and very soon they were out of sight and gone for the evening.
She got quiet as we made our way down the hallway into the ride-boarding room. The ride was still, now, having been shut down for the night. None of the music, none of the animatronics, none of the display lights were on. I pushed her over to the nearest car, bent down and lifted her little body out of her chair. She can’t have weighed more than 70 pounds, and I set her down easily in the car of the ride. Her deathbed. She looked at me gratefully as I climbed the ladder into the control room and gave me a last little wave as I disappeared inside.
I made sure to boot up all of the displays and the music and everything that makes the ride what it is before starting the car moving. I watched her progress through the ride on the closed circuit cameras, normally used to keep watch on teenagers who might try to climb out of the car mid ride and touch the displays. She looked peaceful. She looked happy.
For almost 20 minutes I watched her, occasionally catching a glint of a tear running down her face, and at last the car she was in reached the Sunset room. I waited about a minute, until she was dead center in the room, and then cut the forward motion and left her sitting in the silent stillness, watching the sky overhead.
She sat quietly for what must have been 10 minutes, and then suddenly she beamed a smile of pure joy and spoke a single word, obvious to me even though I had no microphones on in the room and could not hear it: Harold. Then she died. She just slumped down in her car and died. I started to turn my attention back to the controls, ready to bring her body back down and figure out what to do next, when out of the corner of my eye, one of the stars, the brightest I could see on the camera, twinkled. Clearly, brightly, in a way that it never had before in all the rides I’d taken on this ride during my time at the park. Twinkled, brightened, and then like the life of the woman who’d shared her story with me, the light faded and went out.
[Don’t ask me what brought me to write this story. I’m not even sure from what tortured corner of my soul it came. I had an urge to write with no specific story or topic in mind, and this is what emerged. In hindsight, it occurs to me that I have in the past thought that the final room at the acme of the “Spaceship Earth” ride in Epcot Center would be a very peaceful place to draw one’s last breath. But I sure didn’t know that’s what I was going to write, when I started writing. Oh the interesting things that come out of my mind when I’m exhausted but (due to a touch of “nervous flyer” syndrome) unable to sleep.
I'm not even sure why I decided to lightly fictionalize the place. Probably so that if I ever publish a book of my short fiction, I won't have copyright or trademark issues. – Liam]Copyright © May 4, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net
