Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (11 page)

Eh-hem. Ah ha. Ha ha. He was Denise’s boss so there was some awkwardness about imbibing in the
A.M
., but Whalers was a sport and pretended not to notice. Balding, liver-spotted, about forty pounds overweight, with a wardrobe that ran to checked blazers and stay-pressed slacks, he was what passed for money in Stovall, the founder of the moderately prosperous oilfield-services company where Denise had worked as office manager for fifteen years. “Miz Lynn’s the real boss around here,” he liked to tell visitors, laughing affectionately in her direction. “I just try to stay out of the way and let her run the place.” They served him a Diet Coke and moved the chairs into the shade just off the patio. Denise and Patty sat on either side of their guest, while Billy took a perch on the patio wall. Kathryn lolled like a lioness on a nearby beach towel. Brian was somewhere in the house, ostensibly in the care of his chain-smoking grandfather.

“Your mother tells me you’re home just for today,” said Mr. Whaley.

“That’s correct, sir.” It was a challenge, maintaining eye contact while spuming your beer-breath off to the side.

“No rest for the weary, eh.” Mr. Whaley chuckled. “Where’ve they sent you so far?”

Billy rattled off the cities. Washington, Richmond, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Miami, and practically every one, as Sergeant Dime pointed out, happened to lie in an electoral swing state. Though Billy didn’t say this.

Mr. Whaley took a dainty sip of Coke. “What’s your reception been like?”

“People’ve been really nice everywhere we go.”

“I’m not surprised. Listen, the vast majority of Americans strongly support this war.” Whenever Whaley’s gaze happened to land on Kathryn, he practically fainted with the effort of tearing his eyes away. “Nobody wants to go to war, goodness sakes, but people know sometimes it’s necessary. This terror thing, I think the only way to deal with that type of agenda is to go straight to the source and rip it out by the roots. Because that crowd’s not going away by themselves, am I right?”

“They’re extremely committed, a lot of them,” Billy replied. “They don’t back down.”

“There you go. Either we fight them over there or we fight them over here, that’s the way most Americans see it.”

Denise and Patty nodded with bovine agreeableness. Kathryn, meanwhile, had sat up straight and pulled her knees to her chest; she was following the conversation with real attention, looking from Billy to Mr. Whaley as if their talk contained a code she was trying to break.
Heroes,
Whaley said.
Iraq
.
Freedoms. Gaining freedoms to make our own freedoms more secure
. Then he asked about the movie deal, sagely nodding as Billy explained their progress to date.

“You’ll want a lawyer to take a look before you sign anything.”

“Yes sir.”

“I can fix you up with my firm in Fort Worth, if you like.”

“That would be great. I’d sure appreciate that, sir.”

“Son, it’s the least I can do. You’ve made us all proud, not just your family and friends but all of us here, the entire community. You’ve given this whole town a tremendous boost.”

Billy summoned his most modest chuckle. “I don’t know about that, sir.”

“Listen, everybody’s so damn proud of you, pardon my French, if word got out you were home today there’d be cars lined up from here to the airstrip. Oh yes!” he cried in a playfully ferocious voice. “Now, we didn’t know soon enough to get it together this time, but next time you’re home we want to have a parade in your honor. I already spoke with Mayor Bond and he’s on board, he talked with the city council and they’re on board. We want Stovall to honor you in the way you deserve.”

“Thank you, sir. I do appreciate that.”

“No, son, thank
you
. What you’ve done just says so much about who we are—”

“He has to go back,” Kathryn broke in.

Everyone turned to her.

“To Iraq,” she added, as if this wasn’t entirely clear.

“Yes,” said Mr. Whaley in mournful tones, “your mother told me that.”

“So they’re gonna get another shot at him.”

“Kathryn!” Denise scolded.

“Well it’s true! If it’s supposed to be this great
Victory Tour
then why can’t he just stay home?”

Mr. Whaley’s voice was gentle. “It’s fine young men like your brother who are going to lead us to victory.”

“Not if they’re dead.”

“
Kathryn!
” Denise cried again. Billy felt like an innocent bystander in all this. It wasn’t his place to say one way or the other.

“We will pray every day for Billy’s safe return,” said Mr. Whaley, soothing as the doctor with the best bedside manner. “Just as we pray for all our troops, we want them all to come home safely.”

“Oh God, he’s going to
pray,
” Kathryn snarled to herself, then she screamed, a guttural
urrrrrrggggghhhhh
like an in-sink disposal backing up. “I’m losing my
mind
out here,” she cried, and like a sword being drawn from its sheath she rose in one swift motion and stalked toward the house. The rest of the group sat quietly for several moments, waiting for the area turbulence to subside.

“That young lady’s been through a lot,” Mr. Whaley ventured. Denise started to apologize, but he waved her off. “No, no, she’s had to deal with so much in her young life. When’s her next surgery?”

“February,” said Denise, “then one more after that. The doctors say that ought to be the last.”

“She’s made a remarkable recovery, that’s for sure. The past year hasn’t been easy on the Lynns, has it, and with Billy doing all he’s doing overseas, I know that makes it a special sacrifice. And Billy, if it’ll ease your mind any, I want you to know you’ve got a standing offer to come work for me when you’re done with your military service. All you’ve got to do is say the word.”

Now there was a depressing thought, although Billy could see how it might come to that, assuming best-case scenario he made it home with all his limbs and faculties intact. He’d go to work for Whalers hauling oil-field pipe and blowout protectors all over the wind-scrappled barrens of Central Texas, busting his ass for slightly more than minimum wage and shitty benefits.

“Thank you, sir. I may be taking you up on that.”

“Well, I just want you to know you’ve got options here. I’d be honored to have you on our team.”

Billy had been trying to avoid a certain thought, a realization born of his recent immersion in the swirl of limos, luxury hotels, fawning VIPs; he knew intuitively the thought would bring him down and so it did, mushrooming into awareness despite all best efforts. Mr. Whaley was small-time. He wasn’t rich, he wasn’t particularly successful or smart, he even exuded a sad sort of desperate shabbiness. Mr. Whaley will return to the forefront of Billy’s mind on Thanksgiving Day as he hobs and nobs at the Cowboys game with some of Texas’s wealthiest citizens. The Mr. Whaleys of the world are peons to them, just as Billy is a peon in the world of Mr. Whaley, which in the grand scheme of things means that he, Billy, is somewhere on the level of a one-celled protozoan in a vast river flowing into the untold depths of the sea. He’s been having many such existential spasms lately, random seizures of futility and pointlessness that make him wonder why it matters how he lives his life. Why not wild out, go off on a rape-and-pillage binge as opposed to abiding by the moral code? So far he’s sticking to the code, but he wonders if he does just because it’s easier, requires less in the way of energy and balls. As if the bravest thing he ever did—bravest plus truest to himself—was the ecstatic destruction of pussy boy’s Saab? As if his deed on the banks of the Al-Ansakar Canal was a digression from the main business of his life.

Mr. Whaley left. Kathryn did not appear for lunch. After the meal, Ray and Brian went down for naps, Denise and Patty went to the store, and Billy had a relaxing jack-off session in the friendly confines of his room. Then he repaired to the backyard and laid himself down on a blanket in the sun. He dozed. Dreams came and went like fish drifting through the wheelhouse of an old shipwreck. He stirred, took off his shirt so that the sun would toast his chest acne, and dozed again. He dreamed in paisleys now, big atom-bomb swirls of biomorphic colors that presently resolved into a parade. His parade. He was in it yet watching from slightly above, and he was happy, safe, he’d made it back home. No worries! It was a sunny winter day and everyone was bundled up except for the strippers riding by on floats, blazingly naked but for G-strings and long evening gloves. A high school band stomped by, trombones and trumpets flashing in the sun, then there was Shroom far back in the crowd, his pale onion of a head sticking out of the general mass. His eyes met Billy’s and he laughed, raised a big Bud Light cup in salute. Yo, Shroom! Shroom! Get your ass up here! He kept yelling at Shroom to join him on the float, but Shroom seemed happy where he was, content to be just another face in the crowd. Shroom. Fuck. Get up here, man. The dream contained awareness that Shroom was dead so there was the huge anxiety of an opportunity missed, the parade moving on and Billy’s float being carried with it, this ridiculous paper barge coasting down the river of life and the banks lined with all these thousands of cheering folks who—dear Jesus! terrifying thought!—were they all as dead as Shroom?

His sleep broke with that throb of panic, a desperate lunge into waking. Someone was leaning over him, breathing in his face. He tipped open one eye to find Kathryn staring down at him through big Angelina Jolie–style sunglasses.

“You better be careful over there,” she murmured darkly. “If anything happens to you, I’m going to kill myself.”

Hunfh. He opened both eyes, lifted his head. His sister was stretched out beside him on a beach towel, propped on an elbow with her frontage facing him. She was also, he couldn’t help noticing, wearing a bikini, the sight of which cracked his lungs even if she was his sister. Despite the divot in her cheek she was undeniably hot: long, tan legs, an amply palmable rack, tummy flat and golden-brown as the most perfect pancake.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m the reason you’re over there.”

“Oh, right.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop back. “Your bad, getting whacked by that Mercedes. Getting dumped by whatsisface, yeah, thanks. Thanks for getting me in the shit, Kat.”

She snickered, a breathy whiffling like wind through a microphone. “Yeah, but anyway. Sorry, dawg.”

“Not a problem,” he mumbled, sounding sleepier than he was. Though if he kept his eyes shut sleep would come. Kathryn rustled about, doing female preening sorts of things.

“Mom’s pissed at me,” she said.

“Imagine that.”

“Whalers, gimme a break, a fucking
parade
. Those guys are talking about a
parade,
and you might
die
.”

Billy had to laugh. It was refreshing, having someone put it right out there. Living at home as she had for the past sixteen months, enduring all she’d endured by way of health and family troubles and getting dumped by p. boy, Kathryn had undergone drastic and interesting changes. For one thing, her trials had burned off all her baby fat, her tendency to pudge toward the rounder, gentler line of wholesome Christian voluptuousness. Now she sported the lean, rangy frame of a girl bartender in some kick-ass honky-tonk, if such places even existed anymore. A glossy track of keloid tissue looped over her shoulder and down her back like the dangling tail of a coil of rope. Her face was “eighty-seven percent” recovered, she told him, utterly deadpan as she emphasized that “eighty-
seven
percent” like a dimwit sportscaster flogging statistics. She loved that her orthopedic surgeon’s name was Dr. Stiffenbach, whom she endowed with a jaw-breaking German accent. “High ham Dock-terr Shhhtiffen-bock, jah! You vill do dese exercises for your healdth, jah!” She called Billy’s commander in chief “idiot-head,” as in “What was it like meeting idiot-head?” which had provoked scolding shushes from their mother. “Well he is!” Kathryn protested. “He’s got the brains of a cicada!” Billy’s sweet, beautiful, studious, supremely square sister who’d always been so reverent toward authority, who thought only good clean all-American thoughts and never cursed or denigrated anyone, she’d become a punchy hell on wheels.

She reached into the cooler by her side and brought out two Tecate beers. “You miss drinking over there?” she asked, handing one to Billy.

“At first. But after a while, not so much.” He popped the top and savored that happiest of fizzy sounds. “There’s days, though, you’d give about anything for one.”

“No shit. Listen, I think drinking’s way underrated in our society, like for its therapeutic values? Lets you bust out from time to time, take a little vacation from yourself. It’s hard living in your own head twenty-four/seven.”

“You sort of go insane.”

“Explains a lot, eh, all those preachers getting caught doing hookers. I just hope I never have a drinking problem, then I’d have to quit.”