Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (7 page)

Enjoy your meal,
the men say in parting, with the stern yet coaxing manner of white-glove waiters. “They sure do love you guys,” Albert observes after the group moves on. Crack snorts.

“If they love us so much, how about if their wives—”

“Shut,” Dime woofs, and Crack shuts.

“I mean
everybody
loves you guys, black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight,
everybody
. You guys are equal-opportunity heroes for the twenty-first century. Look, I’m just as cynical as the next fella, but your story has really touched a nerve in this country. What you did in Iraq, you went head-to-head with some very bad guys and you kicked their ass. Even a pacifist twerp like me can appreciate that.”

“I got seven,” Sykes says, which is what he always says. “Seven for sure. But I think it was more.”

“Listen,” Albert says, “what Bravo did that day, that’s a different kind of reality you guys experienced. People like me who’ve never been in combat, thank God, no way we can know what you guys went through, and I think that’s why we’re getting push-back from the studios. Those people, the kind of bubble they live in? It’s a major tragedy in their lives if their Asian manicurist takes the day off. For those people to be passing judgment on the validity of your experience is just wrong, it goes beyond wrong, it’s ethics porn. They aren’t capable of fathoming what you guys did.”

“So tell them,” says Crack.

“Yeah, tell them,” says A-bort, and Bravo strikes up a spontaneous chant,
tell them, tell them, tell them
like a frog chorus or monks at prayer. The nearby Stadium Club patrons smile and chuckle like it’s all a high-spirited college prank. As abruptly as it started, the chanting stops.

“Tell Hilary to tell them,” says Dime.

“I’m trying, hoss. Lotta moving parts to this deal.” Albert’s cell hums and the first thing he says is, “Hilary’s officially interested.” Then: “Sure she is. It’s a very physical role and she’s a very physical actress. Plus she’s a patriot. She really wants to do this.” Pause. “I’m hearing fifteen million.” Pause. “Will there be politics?” Albert rolls his eyes for Bravo’s benefit. “Larry, you know what von Clausewitz said, war is simply politics by other means.” Pause. “No, you illiterate, not
The Art of War
. The German guy, the Prussian.” Silence. “My ass you read
The Art of War
. You might’ve read the CliffsNotes for it. I could believe you read the blurbs.” Albert’s eyes glower down as he listens. Big listen. Mouth twitching, hairy fingers fribbling the tablecloth.

“Tell me this, Larry, how could you make a movie about this war and
not
be political? You want a video game, is that what we’re talking about?”

The Bravos glance at one another. Could do worse, is the general thought.

“Okay look, how about this for politics. My guys are heroes, right? Americans, right? They’re unequivocally on the right side and they also unequivocally kicked ass, now when was the last time
that
happened for this country? There’s your politics, Lar, it’s all about feeling good about America again. Think
Rocky
meets
Platoon
and you’re on the right track.” Pause. Eye roll. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. “Listen, we’re at the Cowboys game right now and I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anything like it. They can’t take a step without getting mobbed, it’s like the Beatles all over again. People respond to these guys in a very visceral way.”

The Bravos look at one another. What’s amazing is a lot of what he says is true.

“Look, talk to Bob. He could use a hit right now, and I’m bringing him one on a goddamn silver platter.” Silence. “Jesus.” Silence again. “Well fuck me, it
is
Thanksgiving. Just trust me when I say Hilary’s interested. You’ll be glad you did.”

“Problems?” Dime asks when Albert clicks off.

“Nah. All normal.” Albert takes a drink of Cowboyrita and winces. “It’s all accountants running the studios these days. Midgets in Maseratis, tiny men in big suits. They have to google themselves every morning just to remember who they are.”

“Didn’t you say Oliver Stone went to Nam?” Sykes asks.

“Yes I did, Kenneth. Did I fail to also mention he’s a lunatic? And he can’t bring the money anyway. Look, if I have to hit the street to make this film that’s what I’ll do, that’s how much I believe in you guys.”

No one knows what this means exactly, but the buffet beckons. When they go back for seconds—only Dime, Albert, and Major Mac stand pat—a long line precedes them, but as soon as people notice Bravo standing there they move aside and urge the soldiers forward. At first Bravo declines, which triggers a merry hue and cry.
Go on!
people insist in mock-scolding tones.
Get on up there, go!
They nod and chuckle as the Bravos pass, heartened by the sight of these fine, strapping American boys with their big broad shoulders and excellent manners and ability to eat everything in sight. Everyone is happy. It is a Moment. A point has been made, assumptions proved, and now they can all go forth and enjoy the day. Billy’s hangover has been shocked into remission by the onslaught of calories, and on this second pass he marvels once more at the gorgeous food, the woody grain of the turkey beneath its golden crust, the lush, moist plaids of the vegetable casseroles, the luxuriant mounds of stuffing, and the six different kinds of mashed and whole potatoes, including an exotic purple variety with the strangely pleasing texture of leavened mildew. Here in the God-blessed realms of mainstream America you eat civilized meals and take civilized dumps, indoors, in peace, on toilets that flush, in the common decent privacy that God intended as opposed to the wide-open vistas of the barbarous desert, nature nipping at your ass like a pit bull puppy. So perhaps, it occurs to Billy, this is the whole point of civilization, the eating of beautiful meals and the taking of decorous dumps, in which case he is for it, having had a bellyful of the other way.

Walking back to the table they start giggling. No reason, they’re just punchy, the food has given them a glucose high, but on arrival Dime tells them to sit the fuck down and shut up and he is not messing around. Something has happened. What happened? Soon they will learn that the powerful producer-director team of Grazer and Howard has relayed its desire to make the Bravo movie, Universal Studios has even verbally committed, but all on condition that the story relocates to World War II. But for now the only thing Bravo knows is that Dime is suddenly OTR, on the rag, while Albert carries on as if everything’s cool, placidly keying in a message on his BlackBerry. “A master of the psyche,” Shroom said of Dime, after the sergeant spent the better part of a morning smoking Billy’s ass for leaving his night-vision goggles in the Humvee overnight. Push-ups, crunches, stress positions with sandbags, then six deadly laps in hundred-degree heat around the FOB’s inner perimeter, roughly the equivalent of four miles. “You’ll never figure him out, so don’t even try,” Shroom advised.

“He’s an asshole,” said Billy.

“Yeah, he is. And that just makes you love him more.”

“Fuck that. I hate the son of a bitch.”

Shroom laughed, but then he could, he and Dime had served together in Afghanistan and he was the only Bravo who Dime never smoked. This exchange took place in the shade of the concealment netting that Shroom rigged up outside his Conex, to which he would repair in his leisure hours to smoke and read and ponder the nature of things from the camo camp chair he bought in Kuwait. It calms Billy to think about him thus arranged, barefoot, shirtless, cigarette in hand, and with a book in his lap,
Slowly Down the Ganges
. He was heavy into the whole ethnobotanical mystic trip and even
looked
like a giant shroom, a fleshy, slope-shouldered, melanin-deficient white man with the basic body type of a manatee, yet he possessed a prodigious blue-collar strength. He could one-hand the SAW like a pistol and ready-up the .50 cal, and forty-pound sacks of HA rice were like beanbags in his grasp. Every other day he shaved his head, a surprisingly delicate orb that seemed a couple of sizes too small for the rest of him. In heat conditions his face lit up in swirling lava-lamp blobs, and he didn’t so much perspire as
secrete,
producing an oily substance that covered his body like a slick of stale pickle juice.

“If people lived on the moon,” Dime liked to say, “they would all look like Shroom.”

It was Shroom who told Billy that Dime’s father was a high-powered judge back in North Carolina. “Dime is money,” he said. “But he doesn’t want people to know. And you know what that means.”

No, Billy said. What does it mean?

“It means that money’s
old
.”

They made the oddest of odd couples, handsome Dime palling around with mooncalf Shroom, and they seemed to know more about each other than would be considered healthy in a normal environment. From time to time Dime would allude to Shroom’s horrific childhood, an apparently epic tale of hard knocks that included a stint in some sort of religious institution for waifs, or, as Dime called it with never a batted eye from Shroom, the Anal Redemptive Baptist Home for Misplaced Boys of Buttfuck, Oklahoma. Billy supposed that’s where Shroom came by his impressive repertoire of Bible verses, in addition to such gnomic pronouncements as “Jesus was not a U-Haul” and “We’re all God’s Pop-Tarts whether we like it or not.” In Shroom World, bricks were “earth biscuits,” trees were “sky shrubs,” and all frontline infantry “meat rabbits,” while media pronouncements on the
progress
of the war were like “being lied to on your tombstone.” Early on, before they’d seen any real action, Billy asked him what being in a firefight was like. Shroom thought for a moment. “It’s not like anything, except maybe being raped by angels.” He’d say “I love you” to every man in the squad before rolling out, say it straight, with no joking or smart-ass lilt and no warbly Christian smarm in it either, just that brisk declaration like he was tightening the seat belts around everyone’s soul. Then other Bravos started saying it but they hedged at first, blatting “I love you man” in the tearful desperate voice of the schmuck in the Budweiser ad, but as the hits piled up and every trip outside the wire became an exercise in the full pucker, nobody was playing anymore.

I’m going down.
Like a slide show, alive, dead, alive, dead, alive, dead. Billy was doing about ten different things at once, unpacking his medical kit, jamming a fresh magazine into his rifle, talking to Shroom, slapping his face, yelling at him to stay awake, trying to track the direction of the incoming rounds and crouching low with absolute fuck-all for cover. The Fox footage shows him firing with one hand and working on Shroom with the other, but he doesn’t remember that. He thinks he must have been cutting Shroom’s ammo rack loose, pulling the release on his IBA to get at his wounds. Is this what they mean by courage? Simply doing all the things you were trained to do, albeit everything at once and very fast. He remembers the whole front of his body being covered in blood and half-wondering if any of it was his, his bloody hands so slick he finally had to tear open the compression bandage with his teeth, and when he turned back to Shroom the big bastard was sitting up! Then going right back down, Billy sliding crabwise to catch him in his lap, and Shroom looked up at him then with his brow furrowed, eyes burning like he had something crucial to say.

“He’s your sergeant,” Shroom said that day outside his Conex. “It’s his job to make your life as miserable as possible.” Then he went on to explain to Billy how Dime’s mastery of the psyche involved intermittent doses of positive reinforcement, intermittent being a more effective behavior-modification tool than a consistent program of same. Whatever. From all his reading Shroom knew lots of useless stuff, but what Billy is thinking here at the Stadium Club is, Thank you for making us feel like shit,
Sergeant
! Thank you for ruining this delicious
meal
! Probably the last non-Army-issued or -contracted-for meal they will get for some time, but no matter, they are scum-sucking shitbag frontline grunts and their task at this moment is to shut up and eat.

Dime snaps, “A-bort, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m texting Lake, Sergeant. Just saying what up.”

Dime can’t very well object to that. He scans the table for other targets, but everyone’s staying low to his plate, shoveling it in. Then Albert starts chuckling.

“Here, take a look at this.” He passes the BlackBerry to Dime.

“Dude’s serious? Can’t be serious.”

“I’m afraid he is.”

Dime turns to Billy. “Dude’s saying our movie’s another
Walking Tall,
but in Iraq.”

“Ah.” Billy has never seen
Walking Tall
. “Was Hilary Swank in that?”

“No, Billy, Hilary Swank was not—Jesus, never mind. Albert, who
are
these people?”

“Twerps,” Albert says. “Nerds, wimps, liars, they’re a bunch of skinny mutts with not much brains chasing a fake rabbit around a track. Content scares them, no, absolutely terrifies them.
‘Is this any good? Ewwww, is it bad? Ewwww, I just can’t tell!’
It’s pathetic, all that money and no taste. You could hit them over the head with another
Chinatown
and they’d say let’s stick a couple of cute little dogs in it.”