Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
– John 12:1
Before his death Lazarus had always been cheerful and carefree, fond of laughter and a merry joke. It was because of this brightness and cheerfulness, with not a touch of malice and darkness, that the Master had grown so fond of him. But now Lazarus had grown grave and taciturn, he never jested, himself, nor responded with laughter to other people’s jokes….
– from “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev,
Lazlo shifted uncomfortably in line. Getting through security had, of course, become a pain. He had lost the will to figure out who to blame a long time ago. At this point, Lazlo just wanted to go home. The bag of the person ahead of him moved six inches. He moved six inches, reluctantly dragging his bag behind him.
Corporal Bettany, as he was called by most of his coworkers, had managed to scrounge up some jeans and a sweatshirt that mostly fit. He didn’t much care for the Punisher skull on the back of the hoodie, but it was either that or his ACU jacket, which would be a dead giveaway. He couldn’t do anything about the boots, but so many people wore “tactical foot ware” these days that it didn’t really matter.
Still, there was the bag. As popular as “rucking” had become, most weekend warriors didn’t carry a Molly through the airport. He would have tried to find something else, anything else, even a duffle, if the call had not been urgent. So any minute now he would have to hoist his bag up on the belt and absorb the look of the TSA agent who was organizing the bins.
If he was lucky, it would be a woman, ideally a mother. His sisters seemed to get it. They had seen his face the first time he came back. Lazlo’s smile still reached his cheeks, but it no longer creased the skin around his eyes. He’d show up for a cookout and everyone would act like they were happy to see him, but he inevitably wound up in a corner, picking at his plate. Mary and Martha, each in their way, made space for him. Any woman who had given birth understood immediately and made space for him too.
But there was always that guy, some guy in a Punisher t-shirt, who thought he knew a little bit of the story. This guy had some version of the “I would have served but” story. If they were outside, he’d question Lazlo from behind sunglasses that gave off a faintly blue or orange reflection. If this guy was working a shift at airport security, and therefore be shades-less, he’d avoid eye contact.
The dialogue, however, would always be the same, almost like it was scripted. “Thank you for your service…I would have…Are you coming or going?” It was harder to get to The Question in airport security. Sometimes Lazlo would get flagged for extra screening, and invariably it was because some guy wanted to ask, “What’d you do over there? Did you ever have to … you know …?”
They couldn’t, of course, finish the sentence. It made him want to say, loudly, “What? Kill?” but even more than that, he wanted to tell them it was the wrong question. What they should be asking is if he had ever had to die, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Lazlo had died, but somehow he was now alive. He did not understand how or why, but ever since the incident, he lived knowing the fragile beauty and imminent danger of a world sustained, by skill and effort for sure, but ultimately only by love. It seemed like the few people who really got this were women, particularly those who had given birth to a child.
Corporal Lazlo Bettany could not understand this either, why he felt so connected to people completely unlike himself. There were lots of things he did not understand, much more now than when he was younger. But he did understand home, both as a place and as a state of being. Even though he was not sure if he would fit there anymore, he knew he did not fit anywhere else. He just wanted to get home. The bag in front of him moved six inches.