He is able to ignore the pain shooting through his body as in his desperate attempt to save her life. In a split second, Eddie drops his cane and dives for the girl. Eddie spots the girl with the pipe cleaner bunny standing on the platform beneath the falling cart. The cart begins to slip and fall two tons of steel come hurtling towards the ground. As soon as Eddie realizes the cable is about to snap, he reverses his command and screams for the attendants not to release the cart, but the frantic crowd drowns out his warnings. However, Eddie does not know that the missing car key is jammed against a cable on Freddy’s Free Fall, where it has been slowly severing the thin metal strands. He calls for two attendants to evacuate the tilting car. Upon seeing the people hanging from the wayward car, Eddie takes charge of the situation.

Eddie makes his way to the ride quickly despite the pain shooting through his leg. One of the cars is precariously tilted and dangling from Freddy’s Free Fall. He twists some pipe cleaners into a rabbit and gives it to the girl, who trots away happily.Įddie is contemplating his 83rd birthday when a commotion interrupts his reverie. A little girl named Amy or Annie, who has walked away from her mother, asks Eddie to make her an animal. A young man has lost his car key somewhere in the park. Over time, he has reluctantly acclimatized to void she left when she died.Ī series of seemingly disconnected events leads up to the accident that will ultimately end Eddie's life. This was where he met his true love, Marguerite, and they danced under the moonlight. However, on his birthday, Eddie remembers one of his beautiful memories of Ruby Pier. The injuries that Eddie sustained during combat in World War II have left him with a checkerboard of scars and poorly healed bones, meaning that he has to walk with a cane. Eddie compares his aging body to the old rides creaking along at the Pier. Nowadays, young people are drawn to the new high-tech theme parks. As he looks around the outdated amusement park, Eddie remembers when Ruby Pier had the mystique of the old carnivals filled with oddities and magic. He spends his days tightening bolts, spreading grease, and fixing the machinery on different rides like “Freddy’s Free Fall.” Eddie once dreamed of doing other things with his life, but he has now accepted his fate as “Eddie the Maintenance Man.”Įddie gives Dominguez (one of his employees) some money to help pay for his upcoming family vacation to Mexico. On his 83rd birthday, Eddie is working at Ruby Pier, the amusement park where he is the head maintenance manager.

The story of Eddie begins hours before the end of his life, even though he does not yet know it. Buy Study Guide Summary: Chapter 1: The End.

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