Inside the factory, the machinery hummed and clanked. All about, splashes of workers in blue overalls. Billy hadn’t worn the factory uniform in over a decade. His supersized navy sweatshirt and navy elasticated pants allowed him to blend in about as well as he could. A fellow long-timer, Bald Art, rushed at Billy, and within moments everyone had gathered around, pumping his arm and clapping the meat of his shoulders. Welcome back, Big Billy. Good to see you. Let us know if you need anything. You all right, Big Billy? He thanked them, overcome by the fresh outpouring, then hurried to his station, his teeth biting hard on his sucked-in lips.
He took up position behind the production line, his right temple throbbing and his stomach rumbling. Tantalizing smells wafted from the canteen, pulling at his insides like calves to the trough. He had again skipped his usual breakfast of fried eggs and meats with buttered toast. Instead, he’d eaten porridge with fresh, sweet strawberries. Already, though, his diet felt more killing than his weight.
He trained his attention on the conveyor belt and the novelty toys coming toward him, a parade of palm-sized, handmade wooden dolls and soldiers. Throwbacks to a time when more things bore the mark of their maker. Billy’s job required him to quality-check the toys and place his inspector’s sticker on each product before ferrying it on up the belt to packaging. He knew no one thought much of what he did—even his children had long tired of the freebies—but he’d always taken pleasure in the toys, delighted by the patient, painstaking skill it took to make them, and by the joy they could bring. Now, though, there was too much memory tied up in them.
When Michael was a boy, Billy often brought home the seconds, those defective soldiers deemed not good enough for sale because of gouges, broken rifles, or missing parts. He and Michael had imagined tall stories about the damaged toys. The infantryman, for one, who had a grenade explode in his hands. He went on to become a superstar drummer. There was the lieutenant, too, with only one leg, courtesy of a land mine. He had become a world-class tap dancer.
There was also that time Michael’s face had lit up beneath his dark curls on receiving the soldier with a defective eye. “This blind fella, he’s a secret government agent, and his hearing is so advanced, he can tell when people are lying.”
“Excellent,” Billy said. “What’ll we name him?”
“Billy the Blind and Brilliant!” Michael said, making Billy beam like a lighthouse.
Another of Michael’s favorite seconds was the cavalry soldier with a missing ear. Michael attributed the loss to a mortar attack. After the maimed, deaf soldier recovered, he went on to become a celebrated horse-racing commentator. Michael, lending his voice to the soldier, would fast-talk into the TV remote control or anything else he could pretend was a microphone. His voice galloped in time to the horses, commentating on the entire imagined race.
The boy went so far as to make the thudding sound of the horses’ hooves, banging a shoe on his free hand against the floor. Tireless, fired up, Michael recounted the hard-fought hurtle of the invisible steeds and jockeys with great color. Billy smiled, remembering. All that time ago, and he could still hear his and Michael’s ecstatic bursts each and every time a horse beat out all the others to win.
John and Anna, and later Ivor, showed no interest in the seconds or in playing with their father at such great lengths. It was a bond only Billy and Michael shared. Billy studied one such second now, his first catch of the day. The soldier, his chin strap missing from his camouflage hat, stood arrow-straight in his khaki uniform, his bayonet aimed toward the sky. Billy had prided himself on having a keen eye and catching these tiny omissions. Now the torment of what he should have seen in his own son crawled in his head like maggots.
Billy’s grip tightened around the seconds soldier. He heard Michael talking in a rush, recounting how the soldier had used a pen to perform a life-saving tracheal surgery on one of his comrades. The soldier-turned-surgeon then ripped off his chin strap to hold the makeshift tracheal tube in place during his comrade’s transfer from the battlefield to the hospital. His heroism later earned this soldier with no chin strap Ireland’s highest military honor, the Medal for Gallantry.
Billy’s hand hesitated above the empty black bin reserved for the seconds and their ultimate disposal at the dump. It looked like a dark hole. After two decades of doing the task day in and day out, he found he couldn’t throw away the damaged toy. With the toe of his shoe, he pushed the bin beneath the conveyor belt and out of sight. He slipped the seconds soldier into his trousers pocket.
*
Around noon, the factory’s owner, Tony, arrived in front of Billy. “Good to have you back, Big Billy.” He was wearing the same exaggerated look of sympathy he’d sported at Michael’s funeral.
“Thank you,” Billy said, also playing his part.
“How’s the family?”
“Tricia?” Billy said pointedly. “She and the children are about as well as they can be, thank you.”
“We don’t know what we can bear until we have to, isn’t that what they say?”
Billy didn’t try to fill the silence.
“Well, I better let you get back to it,” Tony said. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do? I mean that, now.”