Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (36 page)

“Thank you sir. I will, sir. Out.”

Dime pivots and lofts the phone in a high, soft arc toward Mr. Jones. “Come on Billy,” he says, and without another word he’s exited the room and goes booming down the corridor at a brisk pace. Billy has to jog to catch up.

“Sergeant, where we going?”

“Back to our seats.”

“What happened? I mean, shouldn’t we . . .”

“It’s okay, Billy. It’s cool.”

“It is?”

Dime nods.

“He said we didn’t . . .  ?”

“Not in so many words.” For several paces Dime is silent. “Billy, did you know General Ruthven is from Youngstown, Ohio?”

“Uh, no, actually.”

“I didn’t either, till just now.” For a moment Dime seems lost in thought. “It’s just over the state line from Pennsylvania.”

Billy begins to think maybe his sergeant has lost it. “Near Pittsburgh,” Dime continues. “He’s a big Steelers fan. The
Steelers,
Billy, yo? Which just by definition means he hates the Cowboys’ guts.”

“Hey guys!” someone calls, and they turn. It’s Josh, trotting after them. “Where’re you going?”

“Back to our seats,” Billy answers.

Josh slows for a moment, glances over his shoulder, then gathers speed. “Wait up, I’ll come with you.” He has a sheaf of manila packets under one arm, and with the other he’s reaching into his coat pocket. Something white flashes in his palm.

“Billy,” he calls, holding out a small plastic bottle. “I got your Advil.”

THE PROUD GOOD-BYE

WHY MAKE A MOVIE
anyway? It seems pointless to go to all that trouble when the original is floating out there for all to see, easily available online by searching “Al-Ansakar Canal,” “Bravo snuff movie,” “America’s throbbing cock of justice,” or any one of a couple of dozen similar phrases that summon forth the Fox News footage, three minutes and forty-three seconds of high-intensity warfare as seen through a stumbling you-are-there point of view, the battle sounds backgrounded by a slur of heavy breathing and the bleeped expletives of the daring camera crew. It’s so real it looks fake—too showy, too hyped up and cinematic, a B-movie’s defiant or defensive flirtation with the referential limits of kitsch. Would a more polished product serve better, one wonders—throw in some story arc, a good dose of character development, artful lighting, and multiple camera angles, plus a soundtrack to tee up the emotive cues. Nothing looks so real as a fake, apparently, though ever since seeing the footage for himself Billy has puzzled over the fact that it doesn’t look like any battle he was ever in. Therefore you have the real that looks fake twice over, the real that looks so real it looks fake and the real that looks nothing like the real and thus fake, so maybe you do need all of Hollywood’s craft and guile to bring it back to the real.

Then again, everybody always says how much like a movie the Fox footage is. Like
Rambo,
they say.
First Blood
. Like
Independence Day
. Or, as one of their new neighbors in row 6 says, a perky, chatty, twentysomething blonde who’s shown up with her husband and another young couple, “It was just like nina leven all over again. I sat down and cut on the news and got the weirdest feeling I was watching a movie on cable.”

“You guys rock,” says her husband, a handsome, strapping fellow in a Patagonia parka and heirloom-quality cowboy boots. “It felt damn good to see us finally getting some payback.”

The other young husband and wife echo the sentiment. They aren’t much older than Billy, these two young couples who’ve migrated down from the upper deck for a sampling of the money seats at garbage time. They remind Billy of certain kids he went to high school with, the sons and daughters of the small-town country-club elite who were firmly embedded in the college track, and now here they are in their midtwenties, duly credentialed and married, starting out their grown-up lives on schedule. The young couples are eager to meet the Texas Bravo, but for a moment they don’t know what to make of him in the flesh. “You’re just a kid!” one of the wives cries, breaking the ice, then they’re introducing themselves and thanking him for his service, the two young wives breathy and fond, the husbands racking his arm with welcome-to-the-frat handshakes.

“Awesome,” they say, “outstanding,” “an honor to meet you” and so forth, their words sloshing around Billy’s brain like soft ice cubes

Billy resumes the aisle seat. Sleet pounds down around them like a spray of fine-grained fertilizer pellets. “No deal?” Mango asks, and Billy shakes his head.

“So what’s that about?”

Lodis and A-bort are leaning in, they want the story too.

“Norm’s just a cheap bastard, I guess. What can I say.”

“We thought Day was shitting us when he told us the deal. Fifty-five hundred—”

“—shit’s
cold,
” A-bort breaks in, “all the coin he’s got running through his pockets, and that’s the best he can do for us? Dude’s got millions.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s got millions,” Mango points out. “He’s careful with his money.”

“I be careful with my money, I had some,” says Lodis, his splotch of lip quivering like a big juicy booger, or a nib of entrails dangling from a gut wound. Josh comes down the row calling their names and handing out manila packets. Inside his packet each soldier finds an assortment of Dallas Cowboys swag: headbands, wristbands, a combination key chain/bottle opener, a set of decals, the cheerleader calendar for the upcoming year, a glossy eight-by-ten photo of the Bravo shaking hands with Norm, signed and personalized by the great man himself, along with several eight-by-tens of the Bravo posing with his trio of cheerleaders in the post-press-conference scrum, signed and personalized by each of the girls. The Bravos sort of shrug once they’ve gone through their packets. Outright derision is beneath them. Billy’s cell buzzes and it’s a text from Faison.

Meet after game?

Yes,
he answers, love blanketing his heart like a slab of melting cheddar.
Where u be?
he adds, then waits, phone in hand, while the ranch fantasy does a number on his head. Maybe, he thinks, pondering the possibilities. She was into him. She
got off
on him. He and Faison shacked up at the ranch doesn’t seem much more extreme than anything else that’s happened lately. He scrolls through his call list to the unknown number, intending to see what kind of vibe might come of staring at it, but an incoming call beats him to it. He clicks on.

“Billy.”

“Hey, Albert.”

“Where are you guys?”

“Back at our seats.”

“Is Dime there?”

“Yeah, he’s here.”

“He won’t pick up. Tell him to pick up for me.”

Billy yells down the row and says Albert wants to talk. Dime shakes his head.

“He says not right now.” For a moment they’re silent. “So did the general . . .”

“You’re good, Billy. He’s not going to make you guys do anything.”

“What’d Norm say?”

Albert hesitates. “Well, it’s kind of tough on him. Like he said, he’s
addicted
to winning.” Albert allows himself the softest of snarky laughs. “It’s okay. He’s one of those people who could probably use some humility in his life.”

“He’s pissed,” Billy concludes.

“Just a little.”

“Are you?”

“Pissed? No, Billy, I can honestly say I’m not. I love you guys way too much for that.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks.”

Albert chuckles. “Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

“So what happens now?”

“Well, I’m in the main suite right now, Norm’s back there in his hideaway. Maybe he’ll come out with another offer at some point. We’ll just have to see.”

“Okay. Uh, Albert, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Billy.”

“When you ducked out of Vietnam, I mean, you know, when you got your deferment and everything, how did it feel?”

Albert gives a little yip, the way a coyote might as it dodges a sprung trap. “How did it
feel
?”

“I mean, like, was it hard. Did it feel like you were doing the right thing. How do you feel about it now, I guess is what I’m asking.”

“Well, it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, Billy. I won’t say I’m hugely proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. It was a very fucked-up time. A lot of us really struggled about what we had to do.”

“You think it was more fucked up then than it is now?”

“Huh. Well. Good question.” Albert ponders. “You could probably make a pretty good argument that for the past forty years it never stopped being fucked up. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking, I guess. About why people do the things they do.”

“Billy, you are a philosopher.”

“Hell no, I’m just a grunt.”

Albert laughs. “How about both. All right, guy, hang loose. And tell Dime to call me.”

Billy says he will and clicks off. He dry-swallows two more Advil; the first three made no appreciable dent in his armor-plated headache. Mango asks for some, and Billy ends up passing the bottle down the row, never to return. A steady flow of fans is heading up the stairs for the exits, while a smaller contingent makes its way down, looking to squat in the premium seats for as long as the game lasts. A group of five or six guys piles into row 6, friends of the young marrieds it seems; they arrive with much laughing and razzing and immediately pull out pint bottles of Wild Turkey. “Bro!” one of them caws at Lodis. “Get some stitches in them dizzles!” They have the clean-cut, mainstream, Anglo looks that Billy imagines must be soothing to bosses and clients, suitable for careers in banking, business, law, wherever it is the money lives. The guy sitting in front of Crack turns all the way around.

“Dude, what happened to your
eye
?”

“It’s always like this,” Crack answers. “But, dude, what happened to your
face
?”

Brrraaaaahhhh,
even the guy’s own friends send up a howl. “Hey, these are the Bravos,” one of the young husbands says. “Don’t mess with these guys.”

“The
whos
?” cries Crack’s new friend. “The
what-hoes
? Oh yeah yeah yeah I heard of you guys, yeah, goddamn, you’re famous. Hey, tell me something, what do you think about that whole don’t-ask-don’t-tell deal?”

“Stop it, Travis!” one of the young wives scolds. “You’re being a jerk.”

“I am not either being a jerk, I really wanna know! This guy’s a soldier, I’m just curious what he thinks about gays in the military.”

“I think more of them than gays not in the military,” Crack says. “At least they’ve got the balls to join.”

The rowdies send up another howl. “I hear you, dude, hear you,” Travis says, laughing. “Serving your country and all that, very cool and everything. But I don’t know, it just seems kind of wack to me, say you’re in your foxhole at night and some queer comes on to you, what’re you supposed to do? Guys blowing each other in foxholes, that just doesn’t sound right to me. Like maybe it’s got something to do with why we’re getting our butts kicked over there, you know?”

“Tell you what,” Crack says, “why don’t you join up and find out. You can get in a foxhole with me and see what happens.”

Travis smiles. “You’d like that, dude?”

Billy wishes Crack would just smack the fool and be done with it, but his fellow Bravo merely stares the guy down. Perhaps one melee is enough for this Thanksgiving Day. Billy checks his cell. Nothing from Faison. Yet. He indulges in another episode of the ranch fantasy, but now while he and Faison are having sex ten times a day he’s also thinking about Bravo back at FOB Viper, getting slammed every time they go outside the wire. So he puts that inside the fantasy, how much he’d miss his fellow Bravos, he would
mourn
them even as they live and breathe. They are his boys, his brothers. Bravos would die for one another. They are the truest friends he will ever have, and he’d expire from grief and guilt at not being there with them.

So it seems the war is fucked and his fantasy no less so. He sends another text to Faison.
Wd like to see u and say g-by after game.
She responds almost immediately,
Yes!,
but when he asks where and when, nothing. Dime makes his way down the row and kneels in the aisle by Billy’s seat.

“What’d Albert say?”

“Well, he’s not mad at us.”

“No, Billy, what’d he say about Ruthven.”