* * *
As the boy read on and the Great Ulysses went from landfall to landfall and trial to trial, Ulysses listened in silence, the tears falling from his eyes, unabashedly. He listened as his namesake faced the metamorphical spells of Circe, the ruthless seduction of the Sirens, and the closely knit perils of Scylla and Charybdis. But when the boy read of how Ulysses’s hungry crew ignored the warnings of the seer, Tiresias, and slaughtered the sacred cattle of the sun god, Helios, prompting Zeus to besiege the hero once again with thunder and swells, Ulysses placed a hand across the pages of the young boy’s book.
—Enough, he said.
The boy looked up in surprise.
—Don’t you want to hear the end?
Ulysses was silent for a moment.
—There is no end, Billy. There is no end of travails for those who have angered the Almighty.
But Billy was shaking his head, once again in kinship.
—That isn’t so, he said. Although the Great Ulysses angered Poseidon and Helios, he didn’t wander without end. When did you set sail from your war in order to return to America?
Doubtful of what it could matter, Ulysses answered.
—On the fourteenth of November, 1945.
Gently pushing Ulysses’s hand aside, the boy turned the page and pointed to a passage.
—Professor Abernathe tells us that the Great Ulysses returned to Ithaca and was reunited with his wife and son after ten long years.
The boy looked up.
—That means that you have almost come to the end of your wanderings, and that you will be reunited with your family in less than two years’ time.
Ulysses shook his head.
—Billy, I don’t even know where they are.
—That’s okay, the boy replied. If you knew where they were, then you wouldn’t have to find them.
Then the boy looked down at his book and nodded his head in satisfaction that this is how it should be.
Was it possible? wondered Ulysses.
It was true that on the field of battle he had offended the teachings of His Lord, Jesus Christ, in every possible way, offended them to such a degree that it was hard to imagine crossing the threshold of a church in good conscience ever again. But all of the men whom he had fought alongside—as well as those he’d fought against—had offended the same teachings, broken the same covenants, and ignored the same commandments. So Ulysses had come to some peace with the sins of the battlefield, recognizing them as the sins of a generation. What Ulysses had not come to peace with, what weighed upon his conscience, was his betrayal of his wife. Theirs was a covenant too, and when he betrayed it, he betrayed it alone.
Even as he was standing in that poorly lit hallway of their old apartment house in full uniform, feeling less like a hero than a fool, he understood that the consequences of what he had done should be irrevocable. That is what had led him back to Union Station and into the life of a vagabond—a life destined to be lived without companionship or purpose.
But maybe the boy was right . . .
Maybe by placing his own sense of shame above the sanctity of their union, by so readily condemning himself to a life of solitude, he had betrayed his wife a second time. Had betrayed his wife and son.
As he was having this thought, the boy had closed his book and begun picking up the silver dollars, dusting them off with the cuff of his sleeve and returning them to their tin.
—Here, said Ulysses, let me help.
He too began picking up the coins, polishing them on his sleeve, and dropping them in the tin.
But when the boy was about to put the last coin away, he suddenly looked over Ulysses’s shoulder as if he’d heard something. Quickly packing away the tin and his big red book, the boy tightened the straps on his knapsack and swung it on his back.
—What is it? asked Ulysses, a little startled by the boy’s sudden movements.
—The train is slowing, he explained, rising to his feet. We must have reached the grade.
It took Ulysses a moment to understand what the boy was talking about.
—No, Billy, he said, following the boy to the door. You don’t have to go. You should stay with me.
—Are you sure, Ulysses?
—I’m sure.
Billy nodded in acceptance, but as he gazed out the door at the brush flashing by, Ulysses could tell that he was taken with a fresh concern.
—What is it, son?
—Do you think that Pastor John was hurt when he jumped from the train?
—No more than he deserved.
Billy looked up at Ulysses.
—But he was a preacher.
—In that man’s heart, said Ulysses, sliding the door shut, there is more treachery than preachery.