James Benn: Billy Boyle

“Kaz!” I bent down and gave the little guy a bear hug as best I could. “Kaz, how are you? God, it’s good to see you!”

“I’ll be fine, Billy, if you don’t squeeze the life out of me,” he said, looking up at me with a sad smile. A red, raised scar split the side of his face. It wasn’t pretty, but at least he was alive. His leg was wrapped in a plaster cast but otherwise he looked to be in one piece.

“Lieutenant Boyle,” Captain Seaton said, “I’d like to personally thank you for what you’ve done. It showed great loyalty and determination. Traits I admire.”

He extended his hand and I knew that buried within what he had said was an apology. A proud guy like he was would never say it straight out, but there it was anyway. I held on to to his hand for a few seconds.

“Thank you, sir. I’m… I’m so sorry, about Daphne.”

“As are we all,” said Diana.

Kaz looked down at the floor. Moisture softened the captain’s eyes, but after a pause, all he said was, “Yes, well, we’re here for a more pleasant duty. Kaz has arranged for a quiet meal back at the Dorchester. We want to hear all about your exploits, how you pulled it off!”

“Great, I’ll tell you everything,” I lied.

We piled into a cab for the short ride to the Dorchester. The wheelchair folded inside the capacious front seat of the taxi next to Diana, and Kaz hobbled into the back, holding on to my arm for support. It winded him, and we had to work at swinging his leg with the heavy plaster cast safely into the car. The captain and I sat on the jump seats. Kaz grimaced as the cab pulled away from the curb and kept his eyes shut during the ride. He was paying a price for meeting me today, and I wondered at the price he’d pay every day for the rest of his life.

We pulled up to the Dorchester and there were more hands to assist, doormen springing up to unfold the wheelchair to bring it to the door and help Kaz out. He gave them all a smile and called them by name. There was tenderness in how they treated him, and I was glad that at least he had a home here.

“By the way,” said Kaz as I wheeled him through the door to his rooms, “I’ve had your few pitiful belongings brought down from that tiny garret. You’ll have the sitting room. I have too much space here as it is.”

“Kaz, I can’t…” I caught a glance from Diana that said, No, don’t dare refuse, he needs you here.

“Hell, it’d be great. Thanks.”

Kaz didn’t reply. He wheeled himself over to the table and changed the subject.

“I should be rid of this cast and up and about in two weeks. Not soon enough, if you ask me.”

“How are you otherwise?” I asked.

“They say I’ll have a permanent scar,” he said, fingering the healing rip on the side of his face. I could see that the stitches had just recently come out. His eyes wandered around the room. There are scars and then there are scars. There was a silence for a while. Then Kaz came back, and brightened up.

“Billy, do you know I’ve been assigned to you? As soon as I’m back on active duty.”

“Assigned to me? What for?”

“Don’t be so modest, Lieutenant,” Captain Seaton said. “You’re among friends here. You and the baron are now Eisenhower’s Office of Special Investigations. A name like that covers a multitude of sins, don’t you think?”

I couldn’t agree more. If they only knew how many. The captain poured champagne and we drank a toast to great multitudes of sin. He poured again, and offered another toast.

“To Daphne.”

We clinked our glasses and said her name, and I half expected her to walk through the bedroom door in a gown, apologizing for being late as she fiddled with an earring. The door never opened. We sat, gleaming silver and shining china before us on the table illuminated by candles.

Here in this room, haunted by memories, surrounded by friends and the promise of a future, a little of the past seemed to drop away. I didn’t feel as terrible as I had before about my part in causing those deaths. Maybe it really was for the best. Maybe I had been used, but in a good cause. Daphne’s killer wasn’t out there still enjoying life. He had paid for his crime. And some other guys might not get knocked off in the real invasion when it came. The guilt was still there, however, whenever I thought of Higgins and Harry and all the others the course of whose lives I’d had a part in altering. It would always be there with me, I knew, like a tune that I couldn’t stop humming even as I grew to hate it. But the people in this room had faces, too, and we were alive and together for now. That, too, went into the equation.

Most of all, Diana was safe and here, with me. I looked over at her and felt a shiver go through my body. It was part joy at being with her and part fear at the thought of losing her. But there was guilt, too, a wrenching guilt that made me ashamed of feeling happy whenever I looked at Kaz and saw the scar that marked his loss. Now that I really had joined in this war, much of the time joy and fear, life and death, decision and responsibility were jumbled together. Things were intense, awful, terrible, and then sort of majestic when it was all over and you forgot the dirt, smoke, and stink, and were grateful you were alive. I had never thought about being grateful for life before: it was just there, like air and water. Now, it felt like I owed it to the dead, even to those who had yet to die in this war, to be grateful for the simple grace of drawing breath.

Captain Seaton poured again, filling our glasses. I watched him and saw lines in his face that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. Maybe it was better for him now, knowing Daphne’s killer was dead. Maybe not. Maybe it was just better for me, I don’t really know, and I wasn’t going to ask.

“I have a toast,” I said, pulling out a tattered paperback from my pocket. “It’s from an old Viking poem, from a place like Nordland. I think it’s about the promise of justice.”

I cleared my throat and read from the page words that had haunted me since I first saw them. I know a hall whose doors face North on the Strand of Corpses far from the sun.

Poison drips from lights in the roof; that building is woven of backs of snakes.

There heavy streams must be waded through by breakers of pledges and murderers.”

I set down the book, the three Vikings with swords drawn still marching in the same direction, toward battle.

“Let them beware,” said Kaz, with a dark look as he raised his glass.

We drank.