Two Boys
Brian Doyle
One was born in a city of eight million, the other in a city of six million. They were born a year apart. One was relatively short and a superb athlete, the other notably tall and a terrible athlete. One was the oldest of his large family and the other the seventeenth of his vast family. One loved his father, with whom he lived, and the other idolized and was terrified of his father, whom he rarely saw. As young men, one occasionally had a few too many beers, and the other steadily had way too much liquor. One was middle class and the other was richer than rich. One married one woman and the other married six. One had two daughters and the other had nearly thirty children; even he was not sure of the total number. Both were soft-spoken. Both were gentle in demeanor and rarely lost their tempers. One was right-handed and the other left-handed. Both were interested in finance and economics. One earned his college degree and the other did not finish college. Both went to work after their undergraduate years. One got a job with a large existing enterprise and the other began his own entrepreneurial enterprise. Both were devout in the religions in which they had been raised. One was humorous and witty and laughed easily and the other was somber and shy and laughed only in moments of triumph. Both would be linked forever, eventually, by one haunted beautiful crystalline blue morning, but it is another morning that I wish to visit with you.
It might well have happened; both young men were actually in the same city one day, many years ago now.
This second morning is also astoundingly clear and crisp and lustrous, on Fifth Avenue, in New York City. It is September, one of those absolutely glorious mornings when summer’s humidity has retreated, and yesterday’s rain cleared off all smog, and there’s enough summer heat left to suggest that people happily peel off their jackets and sweaters; which is why a small woman on the corner wearing a burqa is especially noticeable; she must be sweltering in there, as an empathetic woman says to a cab driver. The woman in the burqa is holding a child, perhaps age two. The tall man next to her might be her husband; he is wearing a turban and flowing robes and he is clearly solicitous of her and the child. He cranes his head, staring at the street signs. Any number of men and women bustle past the couple with the child, not paying much attention; this is New York City, and it’s not like people in burqas and hijabs are that unusual, and people who are not sure of their directions here are as common as pennies, and if you stopped to help every rube and yokel gaping at the signs you would never get to work or the game or the pub or home. They’ll figure it out. This is why God made cops and ministers and Salvation Army ladies.
The tall man in the turban is growing anxious, though; he and his wife and child are due at a hospital uptown, for surgery on their child, and while he knows that Fifth is roughly in the center of Manhattan, he is not sure of the best way north; should they try the subway, or pay for a taxi? But just then a man walking briskly past them turns and says can I help? And the tall man explains the situation haltingly, and the helpful man, smiling, says me personally, I’d take a taxi, and he turns and gestures deftly, like the sure-handed basketball player he used to be, and a taxi slides up as if by his express command. There you go, says the helpful man, prayers on your baby, and the couple with the child thank him, and fold themselves into the taxi, and ride up to the hospital, where American surgeons repair the child, and the helpful man strolls away south toward his job in the financial district.
Twenty years later the tall man in the turban, now hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, commands the murder of the helpful man and thousands of other men and women and children, on September 11, sending agents of his entrepreneurial enterprise to fly airplanes into the towers. Nine years after that, the tall man, now hiding in a house in Pakistan, is murdered in his turn, with a bullet between the eyes, and another in his chest, to be sure he is dead and will issue no more murderous commands So now both boys are dead, mourned by their children, and their wives sleep alone; but for all the infamy of the second man, whose name will echo darkly in this world for centuries to come, it is the first man whose epitaph sings sweeter; for when people think of him, and say his name, they smile, indeed they cannot help but smile, because my friend Tommy Crotty was gentle and funny and wry and generous and cheerful and attentive, and he loved to laugh; but when people think of the second man, and say his name, their faces turn grim, and their hearts sink, because Osama bin Laden was a murderer, and he laughed only in moments of triumph, as when he heard that children of all ages had been roasted by the fires he set in the towers. So it is that the first boy will be remembered with affection, and the second boy only with sadness, when rage cools; so it is that the first boy, Thomas the son of Thomas, became a great man, to be so widely loved, but the second man, Osama the son of Mohammed, became merely another of history’s endless thugs, remembered only for the scale of his crimes, not the width of his heart. Poor boy, to be great only in blood spilled by your command, and not in love and laughter spilling from you like the sun rising over the city on a crisp September day.
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland — “the finest spiritual magazine in America,” says Annie Dillard — and the author of many books of essays and fiction, notably the novels Mink River, The Plover, and Martin Marten.
