The story starts with an elderly gentleman named Eddie who works as the head of maintenance at an amusement park called Ruby aka Salty Pier. Eddie is a face known to regulars at the pier and is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Eddie Maintenance" due to the positioning of the patches on his work uniform. Eddie is able to perform his job (a job he inherited from his dad despite discontentment with life at the pier) despite a crippling leg injury he received as a soldier during World War II. Supposedly, rumors had been spread that Eddie had gotten into an altercation with a man in his platoon during the war - and "nobody knew what happened to the other guy. Nobody asked." This turns out to be foreshadowing to the time and place of the Captain's death, and foreshadowing to his Captain being the cause of his leg injury during the war in the Philippines.