Chapter 6 Summary

"The Second Person Eddie Meets in Heaven." Eddie finds himself in a godforsaken terrain in a rainstorm, and he comes upon a rifle stuck in the ground topped with a helmet and with his own dog tags hanging from it. Eddie is saving money to go to engineering school, since he likes building things. Then, he enlists in the army over his mother's objections. His father is indifferent. One day after he enlists, he is practicing shooting in one of the arcades on the Pier when Mickey Shea comes up to him and forcefully says to Eddie: "War is not a game. If there's a shot to be made, you make it, you hear? No guilt. No hesitation....You want to come home again, you just fire, you don't think." (p. 59, l. 25, ff.)

Readers are now back to the present with Eddie in...