Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (21 page)

They nail the next take and everyone cheers, even the camera crew adds its own jaded bray. Norm doles out old-school high-fives. “Hang on to those footballs,” he tells Bravo, “they’re yours to keep. But they’ll look better with some ink on them, don’t you think?” He grins. “Follow me, men.”

XXL

THEY ARE HUGE. THEY
could be a new species, or throwbacks to some lost prehistoric age when humans the size of Clydesdales roamed the earth. TV’s toy-soldier scale doesn’t do them justice, these blown-up versions of the human frame with their beer-keg heads and redwood necks and arms packing softball-sized bulges, plus something not quite right about their faces, their eyes too close or too far apart, a thumb-mashed puttiness to cheekbone and nose. All the parts are there but the whole is out of joint, a hitch of proportion, of cranial size relative to facial scheme, as if by achieving superhero scale the players have outstripped the blueprint of the human face.

“Arncha glad you aren’t that guy’s toilet seat?” A-bort whispers to Billy, nodding toward that pile of human spam known as Nicky Ostrana, the Cowboys’ All-Pro offensive guard. Where else but America could football flourish, America with its millions of fertile acres of corn, soy, and wheat, its lakes of dairy, its year-round gushers of fruits and vegetables, and such meats, that extraordinary pipeline of beef, poultry, seafood, and pork, feedlot gorged, vitamin enriched, and hypodermically immunized, humming factories of high-velocity protein production, all of which culminate after several generations of epic nutrition in this strain of industrial-sized humans? Only America could produce such giants. Billy watches as tight end Tony Blakely pours an entire box of cereal into a mixing bowl, follows that with a half gallon of milk, and serenely falls to with a serving spoon. One. Entire. Box. Any other country would go broke trying to feed these mammoths, who blandly listen as Norm speaks from the center of the room.
Real American heroes . . . freedoms . . . that we might enjoy . . .
“So let’s give them our warmest Cowboys welcome,” Norm exhorts, and the team responds with a round of applause. For all their exalted status, the players are, technically speaking, Norm’s employees, so Billy supposes they have to do what he says.

Norm turns to Coach Tuttle. “George, would you mind if our guests got a few autographs while they’re here?”

Coach answers with a marked lack of enthusiasm, “That would be fine,” all but adding,
Then get the fuck out of my locker room.
He is a large, dour, slope-shouldered man, in size and shape not unlike an old bull walrus. His skin is the same oatmeal shade as his salon-tinted hair, a bushy quiff that he combs straight back for a retro Deep South prison warden look. On their way down to the locker room Josh handed out Sharpies to the Bravos—
still
no Advil, he lashed himself for forgetting—and now the soldiers fan out to gather autographs.

“I wonder if Pat Tillman played with any of these guys,” Dime muses in a bright voice. Several players give him a look, but no one answers. So there’s Dime, staking out his psychic territory, and there’s Sykes and Lodis scurrying off to collect as many signatures as possible, and here is Billy, hanging back. He’s never really seen the point of autographs anyway, and the players’ size is such that he doesn’t even want to look at them directly, much less approach in supplicant mode. He’s not comfortable here. He feels exposed, diminished. If the painful truth be known, he feels less of a man right now than he did five minutes ago. The players seem so much more martial than any Bravo. They are bigger, stronger, thicker, badder, their truck-sized chins could bulldoze small buildings and their thighs bulge like load-bearing beams. Testosterone, these guys are cranking it, and their warrior aura ramps up exponentially as they assemble themselves for the game. As if these human mountains needed more bulk? Elaborate systems of shock and awe are constructed about their bodies, arrays of hip pads, thigh pads, knee pads, then the transformative lift of the shoulder pads, these high-tech concoctions of foams, fabrics, Velcros, and interlocking shells, with girdling skirt extensions to cradle mere mortal ribs. Tape for the hands, tape for the wrists. Roll pads. Elbow pads. Pads for the forearm. The top shelf of each locker displays no fewer than four pairs of brand-new shoes.

All the gear, all this
stuff,
depresses Billy further. Such tedium it involves; the players probably spend more time getting dressed than the most pampered models and actresses, and they show it, they are surly and closed off, thoroughly into their suiting-up ritual. They don’t want to be messed with, which Billy gets; it’s a mental thing, the mental feeding off the physical, getting their heads set to deal some serious hurt because aggression against one’s fellow man is not a casual thing. Dude, been there! Totally feeling it! He recognizes the process, even the hurt-music pounding from the lockers is the same, but starting a conversation along these lines would just seem like sucking up.

Billy gets Kervan McClellan’s autograph because, well, he’s standing right there and it would seem rude not to. He knows it’s Kervan McClellan because his name and number are stenciled in jaunty script across the top of his locker. Billy moves on to the next player, Spellman Taylor, # 94. Tucker Rubel, # 55. DeMarcus Carey, # 61. The players are all business. They take the Sharpie and scrawl their names and most of them don’t even look up. A few manage to nod when Billy thanks them. Indurian Kashkari, # 81. Tommy Budznick, # 78. Then Billy comes to Ed Crisco, # 99, an enormous white guy standing perfectly still while a trainer winches his shoulder pads tight. Crisco holds out his arms and doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, just stares straight ahead like a beast of burden submitting to the harness for yet another day.

Billy opts not to bother Ed Crisco. Two pale, thin, completely hairless children are moving about the room collecting autographs, accompanied by their bravely smiling parents and a team representative for each family group. The kids’ skin gives off a bleached silver glow, the radiance of cirrus at high altitudes. Whatever they have, it must be bad; Billy can’t tell if they are boys or girls, so extreme is their condition.

He continues down the line. Durrell Sisson, # 33. D’Antawn Jeffries, # 42. Octavian Spurgeon, # 8. Octavian speaks as he takes the ball.

“What it do.”

“Solid. Yourself?”

Octavian nods. He is sitting in a chair in front of his locker, and save for his helmet he’s completely suited up for the game. He’s coiled, cool, broad through the shoulders and slim through the hips, with a long, tapering nose and high, almost delicate cheekbones. Elaborate tats crawl up his neck and twine around his arms, and a black do-rag is knotted at the nape of his neck. He scratches the pen across Billy’s ball and hands it back.

“Thanks.”

“No probl’h. Yo, hang ona second.”

Billy turns back. For a second the Cowboy seems at a loss for words.

“Like, you been in Iraq an’ all?”

“Um, yes.”

Again he seems to struggle for words. Billy is tempted to think the Cowboy is punch-drunk from years of taking blows to the head, but his eyes are quick and alert.

“So whas it like?”

“What’s it like? Well, it’s hot. Dry. Dirty. Boring as hell, a lot of the time.”

Octavian speaks in a slushy murmur. “Butchoo, like, ona front line an’ all? You been in some battle?”

“I’ve been in some battles, yes.”

D’Antawn and Durrell step over. They are the same physical type as Octavian, lithe, dark, supremely controlled. A look passes among the players, but Billy can’t read it.

“Huh, fah real doe. But like you ever cap somebody you know of? Like, fire yo’ piece and dey go down, you done that?”

That. It doesn’t occur to Billy that he doesn’t have to answer.

Yes, he says. The players glance at each other. Billy sees it is an intense moment for them.

“So whas it like? You know, like what it feel like?”

Billy swallows. The hard question. That’s where he bleeds, exactly. Someday he’ll have to build a church there, if he survives the war.

“It doesn’t feel like anything. Not while it’s happening.”

“Hunh. Yeah.” A few more players have drifted over. Billy realizes that the entire Cowboys starting secondary has gathered around. “So whatchoo carry?”

“What do I carry? It depends. It depends on the mission and what my assignment is. Most of the time my weapon’s the M4, standard semiautomatic assault rifle. A few times I’ve had the M240, that’s a fully automatic, heavy-volume weapon, lays down nine hundred fifty rounds per minute. Then if you’re riding top on the Humvee you’re gonna be on the .50-cal.”

“M4, what kind a round it take?”

“Five-five-six mil.”

“You carry a side?”

“Beretta nine-millimeter.”

“You ever use dat?”

“Sure.”

“Like, up close?”

Billy nods.

“They issue you knives?” asks Barry Joe Sauls, a white guy old enough to have lost most of his hair.

“Ka-Bars,” Billy says. “But you can carry pretty much any blade you want. A lot of guys get their own knives online.”

“What about AKs,” someone asks, “you carry those?”

“AK’s an insurgent weapon, we aren’t issued those. Though plenty of guys’ve picked them up along the way.”

“They bad?”

“Bad enough. The AK fires a bigger round, so there’s more of a crush factor. You definitely don’t wanna take an AK round.”

“Huh. Aiight.” Octavian glances at his teammates, chews his lip a moment. “So what it do, you know, yo’ M4. When you pop somebody.”

Billy laughs, not that it’s funny. It’s not anything, in fact. He wonders if nothing’s an actual feeling, or just nothing.

“Well, it fucks them up.”

“Like, one pop? Stoppin’ power what I’m gettin’ at.”

“Body shot, no. It’s a high-velocity round and usually passes right through. But they go down, yeah.”

“But they ain’t dead.”

“Maybe not with a body shot. That’s why we aim for the face.”

The players suck in their breath. “Unh,” someone murmurs, as if biting into something juicy and sweet.

“The 240,” says Sauls, “you said that’s fully automatic. What does it do?”

“What does it
do
? Fuck, what can I say. The 240’s pure evil.”

“Yeah?”

“You hit somebody with the 240, it fucking takes them apart.”

Before they can ask him anything else Billy says thanks good luck nice talking to you, and leaves. He is definitely done getting autographs, which more than ever seems like a dumb and pointless exercise. After some furtive casting about he spots Dime at the far end of the room, studying the giant greaseboard on which the team’s depth chart is displayed. “So if it’s not a democracy,” Dime is murmuring as Billy approaches from behind, “and it’s not communist, then what is it?”

“What is what?”

“Nothing. Enjoying yourself, Billy?”

“I guess.” He sidles closer to Dime and lowers his voice. “Some of these guys are crazy, Sergeant. Not right in the head.”

Dime laughs. “And we are?”

Whatever. He notices Dime’s football is bare of autographs.

“Sergeant, can we talk?”

“Yes.” Dime is back to studying the depth chart.

“It’s kind of a personal matter.”

“I’m the best friend you’re ever going to have.”

“Well, what happened is, well, I met a girl. Like, today. A little while ago. One of the cheerleaders, actually.”

A flummery
blat
sprays off Dime’s lips. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah, I mean, no, I mean we all did, I know. But this girl and I, Sergeant, we sort of connected.”

“Billy, don’t be a moron.”

“No, Sergeant, we did. Something happened.”

Dime perks up. “She blow you?”

“Well, no. But we made out.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God.”

“Bullshit! When did this happen?”

Billy briefly describes the encounter, though for the sake of honor and decency he says nothing about Faison’s orgasm.

“You bastard,” Dime says softly. “You aren’t lying, are you.”

“No, Sergeant, I’m not.”

“I can see that.” Dime starts laughing. “You are a motherfucker, Lynn. Though how the hell you talked her into—”