Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (3 page)

He was two weeks away from graduating. After several meetings and much official jerking around, the school board decreed that Billy would receive his diploma, but only by mail. He would not get to “walk,” i.e., do the traditional senior passage across the stage to receive his diploma. “You will not walk,” the chairman of the school board announced in the darkest, direst tones of churchly reproach, and Billy thought his throat would burst from holding in the laughs. Like he gave a flying fuck! Ooooo, I don’t get to walk? Ooooo, my life is over! The lawyer who cut the deal with the school board had to work rather harder to keep him out of jail. The demo job on the Saab wasn’t so much the problem as chasing p. boy across the parking lot. With the crowbar. “I wasn’t gonna hurt him,” Billy confessed to the lawyer. “I just wanted to see him run.” In fact Billy had been laughing so hard that he could barely stand up, much less manage anything like a credible chase.

The DA agreed to drop the felony charge down to criminal mischief if Billy joined the Army, which seemed as good a place as any to be sloughed off, better than jail and being raped every night by guys with names like Preacher and Hawg. Thus he came to be a soldier at the age of eighteen, a private in the infantry, the lowest of the low.

So how’s your sister? Shroom asked when the story was done.

She’s better, Billy said. They say she’s gonna be okay.

You’re still a fucking delinquent, Dime said, but after that they didn’t ride him so hard.

IT IS MOSTLY IN YOUR HEAD
BUT WE HAVE CURES FOR THAT

BILLY HOPES JOSH BRINGS
some Advil soon. The five Jack and Cokes made his hangover worse, but now that he’s stopped drinking it hurts worse still. Dime and Albert are standing in the aisle and Dime is telling him about Shroom’s funeral yesterday, how what should have been the most solemn service ever, a tribute to the spirituality of the man with readings from the Tao, Allen Ginsberg’s “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” and prayers from an elder of the local Crow tribe, had instead turned into a freak show of Christian wingnuts, a little group standing outside the church with signs like
GOD HATES YOU 2 THESS. 1:8
and
U.S. SOLDIERS ARE GOING TO HELL,
screaming chants about abortion and dead babies and God’s curse on America.

Crazy, Albert says. Disgusting. Outrageous.

“Hey, Albert,” Crack calls, “make sure you get that in the movie.”

Albert shakes his head. “Nobody would believe it.”

The Goodyear Blimp is making labored passes overhead, bucking like a clipper ship in a storm. The Jumbotron is airing a video tribute to the late, great “Bullet” Bob Hayes, and displayed along the rim of the upper loge are the names and numbers of the Cowboys “Ring of Honor.” Staubach. Meredith. Dorsett. Lilly. This is the undeniable big-time, there is no greater sports event in the world today and Bravo is smack in the frothy middle of it. In two days they will redeploy for Iraq and the remaining eleven months of their extended tour, but for now they are deep within the sheltering womb of all things American—football, Thanksgiving, television, about eight different kinds of police and security personnel, plus three hundred million well-wishing fellow citizens. Or, as one trembly old guy in Cleveland put it, “Yew ARE America.”

Billy always thanks people for these sentiments, though he has no idea what they mean. Right now he’s thinking maybe if he pukes he’ll feel better. He tells Mango he’s going for a piss, and Mango glances around to see if Dime’s watching, then murmurs, “Wanna get some beers?”

Hell yeah.

They take the steps two at a time. A few people call out greetings from the stands, and Billy waves but won’t look up. He’s working hard. He’s climbing for his life, in fact, fighting the pull of all that huge hollow empty stadium space, which is trying to suck him backward like an undertow. In the past two weeks he’s found himself unnerved by immensities—water towers, skyscrapers, suspension bridges and the like. Just driving by the Washington Monument made him weak in the knees, the way that structure drew a high-pitched keening from all the soulless sky around it. So Billy keeps his head down and concentrates on moving forward, and once they reach the concourse he feels better. They find the head—he pees, forgoes the puke—then buy beers at Papa John’s. Technically they aren’t supposed to drink while in uniform, but what’s the Army gonna do,
send us to Iraq
? The Bravos do, however, ask for their beers in Coca-Cola cups, but before taking a drink Billy hands his to Mango and rips off fifty push-ups right there on the concourse. He can’t stand how soft he’s gotten. For the past two weeks it’s been all planes and cars and hotel rooms, no time for working out, no way to stay sharp. The pussification of Bravo, that’s what the past two weeks have been, so now they’ll return to the war all stale and crusty with a corresponding falloff of effectiveness.

His head is pounding when he stands, but the rest of him feels better. “Push-ups, beer chaser,” Mango says.

“You got it.”

“Think they water the beer down?”

“Dude, just taste it.”

“They say they don’t but you can tell they do. It’s just not the same.”

Billy nods. “But we’re still drinking.”

“We’re still drinking.”

They stand against the wall and drink their beers, content for the moment to watch the crowd moving past. With all the varieties on display it’s like a migration scene from a nature documentary, all shapes, ages, sizes, colors, and income indicators, although well-fed Anglo is the dominant demographic. Having served on their behalf as a frontline soldier, Billy finds himself constantly wondering about them. What are they thinking? What do they want? Do they know they’re alive? As if prolonged and intimate exposure to death is what’s required to fully inhabit one’s present life.

“What do you think they’re thinking about?”

Mango hesitates, then smiles his long-lipped coyote smile. “Heavy stuff. You know, like God. Philosophy. The meaning of life.” They laugh. “Nah, dawg, just look at ’em. They’re thinking about the game, whether their boys gonna cover the spread or not. Where they’re sitting, is it gonna rain on their ass. What they’re gonna eat, how long is it till next payday. Shit like that.”

Billy nods. That sounds about right. He doesn’t blame them for such pedestrian thoughts, and yet, and yet . . . the war makes him wish for a little more than the loose jaw and dull stare of the well-fed ruminant. Oh my people, my fellow Americans! See the world with prophet’s eyes! Virtually everyone is wearing Cowboys gear of one kind or another, parkas and caps stamped with the blue star logo, oversized jerseys, hoodies, scarves of silver and blue, dangly earrings or other forms of team bling, some have little Cowboys helmets painted on their cheeks. Billy finds this touching, how earnestly they show devotion to their team. The women display more aptitude for game-day style than the men, who lumber around with Cowboys jerseys hanging past their coattails and their pants bagged around the heels of their boots, a fatal foreshortening of vertical line that makes them look like a bunch of hulking twelve-year-olds.

Oh my people. The soldiers finish their beers with the air of a job well done, and going back to their seats Billy aims his gaze firmly on the aisle steps and away from all that nullity clawing at his face. It freaks him, the monstrous void of it dangling there, the vast empty center creates a vacuum of sorts and all the gravity seems to flow in a reverse-flush action toward that huge gaping blowhole at the top. Billy reaches his seat in an actual sweat. Some of the Bravos are texting, others staring at the field, still others chewing gum or spitting dip into cups. Then Mango gets careless and rips a seismic burp that might as well scream
Beer!,
and Dime swings about like a shark smelling blood.

“Where’s Major Mac?” Billy alertly asks. A crude diversion, but it works. Dime frowns, looks left and right.

“Where’s Major Mac?” he woofs at the squad. Bravo does a collective bobble-head waggle, then bursts out laughing. Braaaah! Major Mac has disappeared!

“Billy! Mango! Go find Major Mac.”

Up the stairs again, Billy hunching his shoulders against all that horrible space. The stadium is huge. It is deformed. It is a deformation of the human mind. They head straight to Papa John’s and buy two more beers. This time a small crowd gathers as Billy does his push-ups; they count off and give him a cheer when he’s done. “Do it again!” someone cries, but Billy hoists his beer in salute, and drinks. He and Mango start walking.

“This should be easy.”

“Right. Only, what, like eighty thousand people here?”

“If you were Major Mac, where would you go, and when would you go there?”

“Dude, maybe he’s back at the mother ship.”

They laugh. Major Mac rarely speaks, hardly ever eats or drinks, and has never been seen to relieve himself, prompting speculation among the Bravos that their PA escort might be a new kind of human being, one that consumes and voids through the pores of his skin. Thanks to mysterious back channels Sergeant Dime discovered that on the major’s very first day at the war he was blown up not just once but twice, resulting in profound but as-yet-to-be-determined hearing loss. For now he’s been parked in public affairs while the Army figures out what to do with him. The major is a chiseled, cleft-chinned, iron-spined specimen, he looks every inch the ideal Joe, which might explain why he’s hung on this long, because in truth the man is deaf as a post, not to mention prone to spells of extreme dissociation. As in, checked out. Stroked. Spaced. Peed on the fire and called in the dogs, everybody gone. Dime calls it the major’s thousand-yard Prozac stare.

The search for Major Mac is one of the million pointless tasks that make the Army what it is, but Billy is happier doing this than sitting on his ass, plus he feels all right with Mango at his side, not just for the street cred of having a Latino best buddy but for the calm, companionable vibe his friend exudes. Mango is rock-steady in both war and peace. Tough as hell, never complains, can carry major pounds on a stocky five-foot-eight-inch frame and has photographic recall of stats and timeline-oriented facts, such as, for instance, he can rattle off the names of not just the U.S. presidents but the
vice
presidents as well, which tends to put a quick stop to any illegal-alien talk. The one time Billy ever saw his buddy break down wasn’t in a firefight, nor any of the times they were mortared, rocketed, sniped at, or roadside-bombed, not even the time he was blown out of the Humvee’s turret and asked, “Is anything sticking out of my head?” Rock-steady, except for the day a car bomb blew up Third Platoon’s checkpoint, and Bravo was tasked to pull security in the aftermath. A bad day by any standard, but it was only when they fanned out to search for the correct number of severed limbs that Mango sank to his knees in a blubbering heap.

But now they’re walking, and how fine it would be if they could out-walk the war by sheer force of will. Billy checks his cell and there’s a text from Kathryn, his sister with the divot in her cheek.
Where r u
she wants to know, and he texts
stadium
. Then it’s
mom worried ur cold
and he answers
kid is smokin,
and she sends back the smile sign. He and Mango grunt whenever a good-looking female passes, though everyone’s so bundled up there’s only so much you can see.

“Can you believe those girls last night?”

“Ridiculous,” Billy agrees. “Everybody says Dallas has the best strip clubs.”

“No shit. Like sensory overload, dawg, where do they all come from? That place we were, not the last place, the one before that, the one with the cage dancers—”

“Vegas Starz.”

“—Vegas Starz, I’m like, damn, girl, why you workin’ here? Any one a those girls could be models, I mean like real models, not just stripper hos.”

Mango seems truly distressed, as if confronted by a tragedy in progress, one he could prevent.

“Dunno,” Billy says, “maybe talent is cheap. Too many hot girls out there.”

“You know that ain’t right.”

Billy laughs, but he’s struck by a broader notion about young lively bodies and the human meat market and supposedly inexorable laws of supply and demand. Society may not need you, strictly speaking, but some sort of use can usually be found.

“Maybe they’re there because they wanna be,” Billy says, but he’s just talking now. “So they can meet fine young men such as ourselves.”

Mango laughs. “That must be it. It’s not the money, dawg. They were really into us.”

Which is what Sykes said on returning from his private dance in back.
She was really into me. It wasn’t about the money.
Still in shock from Shroom’s funeral that afternoon, Bravo changed into civvies at the hotel and emerged forthwith to get extremely drunk, and at one point or another in the course of the evening they all got blown.
She was into me
became the big joke of the night, but today the memory just makes Billy depressed. It is its own hangover, a scum around his psyche like a bathtub ring, and he decides blow jobs suck, just by themselves. Well, sometimes they’re all right. Okay, usually they’re awesome as far as they go, but lately he feels the definite need for something more in his life. It’s not so much that he’s nineteen and still technically a virgin as it is this famished feeling deep in his chest, this liposucked void where his best part should be. He needs a woman. No, he needs a
girlfriend,
he needs someone to mash into body and soul and he’s been waiting for it to happen these entire two weeks, the girlfriend, the mashing,
two weeks
he’s been traveling this great nation of ours so you would think that after all the miles and cities and positive press coverage, all the love and goodwill, all those smiling cheering crowds, he would have found someone by now.