Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (17 page)

Would any of you say you’re religious?

“Each of us in our own way.” Dime.

Have you become more so in your time over there?

“Well, you can’t see some of the things we’ve seen and not think about the big questions. Life, death, what it all might mean.”

We keep hearing they’re going to make a movie about you. What’s up with that?

“Yeah, right, the movie. Let me just say, we call Iraq the abnormal normal, ’cause over there the weirdest stuff is just everyday life. But based on what we know of Hollywood so far, that might be the one place that out-abnormals Iraq.”

Laughs. Big laugh. Albert shoots them the high sign without looking up from the BlackBerry.
Please, God,
Billy prays,
do not let it be Swank.
Then a reporter asks what “inspired” Bravo to do what it did that fateful day at the Al-Ansakar Canal. Everyone looks to Dime, and Dime looks to Billy, and all eyes follow Dime’s.

“Specialist Lynn was the first to recognize what was happening out there, and he was the first to react. So I think he’s the appropriate one to answer your question.”

Oh for the fuck of shit. Billy’s not ready for this, plus he’s having a hard time with
inspired
. Inspired? This seems like a prissy way to put it, but he tries, he’s anxious to answer properly, to correctly or even approximately describe the experience of the battle, which was, in short, everything. The world happened that day, and he’s beginning to understand he will spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out.

Everyone’s staring, waiting. He starts talking just before the silence gets weird. “Well, ah”—he clears his throat—“to tell you the honest truth, I don’t remember all that much about it. It’s like I saw Shroo— Sergeant Breem, and, ah, just seeing him there, basically at the mercy of the insurgents, I don’t know, it was pretty clear we had to do something. We all know what they do to their prisoners, you can go into any street market over there and buy these videos of what they do. So I guess that was on my mind, in the back of my mind, not like I clearly had a conscious thought about it. There wasn’t much time to think about anything, really. I guess my training just kicked in.”

He feels like he talked too long, but at least it’s done. People are nodding, their faces seem sympathetic, so maybe he didn’t sound too much like an idiot. But they are coming at him again.

You were the first person to reach Sergeant Breem?

“Yes. Yes sir.” Billy feels his pulse starting to shred.

What did you do when you got to him?

“Returned fire and rendered aid.”

He was still alive when you got to him?

“He was still alive.”

The insurgents who were dragging him away, where were they?

“Well.” He glances to the side, coughs. “On the ground.”

They were dead?

“That was my impression.”

The medias laugh. Billy hadn’t meant to be funny, but he sort of sees the humor in it.

You shot them?

“Well, I had engaged those targets in route. There were several exchanges of fire. They basically dropped Sergeant Breem so they could engage, and we exchanged fire.”

So you shot them.

A rank nausea is spreading out from his armpits. “I can’t say that for sure. There was a lot of fire coming from a lot of different directions. It was a pretty crazy time.” Billy pauses, gathers himself; the words take so much effort. “I mean, look, it’s fine with me if I did shoot them—”

He means to say more, but the room erupts in thunderous applause. Billy is stunned, then worried that they have missed the point, then he’s sure they’ve missed the point but is too unconfident of his communication skills to try to force a clarification down their throats. They’re happy, so he will leave it at that. The flash cameras are really going now, and like so much of his nineteen years’ experience of life it has become mainly something to get through, then the applause dies down and he’s asked if he’ll be thinking of his friend Sergeant Breem during the playing of the national anthem today, and he says
yes
just to keep it upbeat and on track,
Yes, I sure will,
which sounds obscene to his ears, and he wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As if to talk of such things properly we need a mode of speech near the equal of prayer, otherwise just
shut,
shut your yap and sit on it, silence being truer to the experience than the star-spangled spasm, the bittersweet sob, the redeeming hug, or whatever this fucking
closure
is that everybody’s always talking about. They want it to be easy and it’s just not going to be.

“I’m sure we’ll all be thinking of him,” he adds, a final dollop on this big steaming turd of sentiment. Bitch of it is, he
will
be thinking of Shroom. And he loves the national anthem as much as anybody.

Who’s going to win today?

“Cowboys!” yells Sykes, and the cheerleaders shout their approval, and with his maestro’s feel for the ripeness of things, Norm stands and brings the press conference to a close.

DRY-HUMPING FOR THE LORD

THE FRONT PAGE OF
tomorrow’s
Dallas Morning News
will feature an enormous close-in photo of A-bort amid the post-press-conference scrum, a trio of cheerleaders cowled about him as he addresses a quiver of microphones. “Cowboys Host American Heroes” the caption header will read, then: “Specialist Brandon Hebert of Bravo Squad being interviewed yesterday at Texas Stadium. Spc. Hebert and Bravo visited Dallas on the final leg of their national victory tour. Cowboys lost, 31–7.”

Billy will notice several things about this news item, first and foremost being the screwup of A-bort’s name, which will result in his being known forever afterward as “Brandon” to his fellow Bravos. Or rather,
Bran
-dunn, always pronounced with a teacher’s-aide’s sort of pissy severity, as in
Bran
-dunn will be on the .50 cal this time out.
Bran
-dunn will go in first after Crack breaches the door.
Bran
-dunn grazed some wiring in the new shower stalls and got the living shit shocked out of him. Next, Billy will notice that while A-bort is turned quarter-profile to the camera, facing the unseen people with the microphones, the three cheerleaders are smiling directly at the camera, which has the effect of reducing A-bort to a prop. And, third, how happy he looks. He’s twenty-two, which makes him ancient in Billy’s eyes; not until he sees A-bort’s ecstatic smile in the photo, his headlong, boyish pleasure in the moment, will Billy appreciate that his squad mate is basically just a kid, a guy who reads the Harry Potter books over and over and once sent a “letter” home to his dog, which was a rag he’d kept stuffed under his arm for several days.

It will make Billy anxious, this photo. He’ll see too much trust in A-bort’s face, too much heedless good faith in the presumed blessings of being born American at a certain point in time, but at the moment of its taking Billy has his own hands full. It must be that every cheerleader has been given a specific charge, for as soon as the Bravos step off the stage each soldier is received by exactly three girls, a moment that packs the force, if not the content, of divine intercession. Billy is shy about actually touching them but they spoon right in with sisterly nonchalance. Their pancake makeup disappoints him a little, but he decides he doesn’t mind because they’re
just so pretty
and genuinely nice, and
toned,
good God, their bodies firm as steel-belted radials.
Such an honor to meet you! Welcome to Texas Stadium! We’re so proud and thrilled to have you with us today!
Oh mother of all fuck even a man with a pounding migraine feels restored among these girls, no, these women, these
creatures
with their thickets of fragrant hair and palmable little butts and Alpine crevasses of dizzying cleavage into which a man could fall, never to be seen or heard from again.

And that would be all right, just to disappear down there, vanished by a kind of reverse-rapture action into chasms of sheltering female flesh. Such tender feelings their bodies evoke in him, an almost irresistible instinct to root and nuzzle, to say
I love you. I need you. Marry me.
Candace’s boobs, incidentally, are fake, not that it matters a damn, those are regular warheads punching out from her chest, whereas Alicia and Lexis sport the more pliable slope of the real. By any measure they are all three stunning women with their sharp little noses and blinding white teeth and such tiny tiny isthmuses of biscuit-brown waists that it’s all he can do not to grab them, just to try those sylphy flexures out for size.

“You havin’ a good day so far?” Candace asks.

“Outstanding,” Billy says. “I hope I didn’t talk too much up there.”

“What?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No way!”

“You were super,” Lexis assures him. “Everybody was incredibly moved by your words.”

“Well, it just felt weird. Usually I don’t talk that much.”

“You were excellent,” she says firmly. “Believe me. You were very concise and to the point.”

“And it’s not like you were putting yourself forward,” Alicia observes. “They kept asking you questions, what’re you gonna do?”

“Personally I thought it was kind of rude, some of the stuff they were asking,” says Lexis.

“You have to be so careful around the media,” Candace says.

Photographers and TV cameramen eddy through the crowd, along with reporters, team executives, and persons of no discernible purpose. Billy spots Mr. Jones sharking around the fringes, armed and presumably dangerous, or at least a pain in the ass to have to think about. It turns out that the cheerleaders have their own photographer, a balding, raw-faced little jockey of a man who dashes about barking “Hold!” before each shot, showing no more sensibility for the splendors of his subjects than a peeler at a meat-packing plant. Hold!—
snnnizzzck
. Hold!—
snnnizzzck,
the shutter spasming like an old man’s sphincter giving way. In between photo ops the girls tell Billy about the USO tour they did last spring, with stops in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, and points beyond, plus a volunteers-only foray into Ramadi, where their Black Hawk helicopter could have taken fire.

“I don’t see how yall do it,” says Alicia. “That’s some hard living over there, boy, just how dry it is, all that wind and sand. And those people, the Iraqis, their houses? All those dirt huts, they’re like something Jesus might’ve lived in.”

“Your service is just so much more meaningful to us now,” Lexis tells him. “We have a lot more appreciation for the job you’re doing.”

“The food was pretty good,” says Candace, “the
chow
. We only had to eat MREs a couple of times.”

“A
lot
of carbs,” adds Lexis.

“I swear, ever since we got back? I cry whenever I hear the national anthem,” Alicia admits.

Billy was hoping to meet his strawberry-blond cheerleader but knows he should be grateful for what he has right here, three beautiful and voluptuous Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. They are so sweet, so utterly gorgeous. They smell so good. They cry out and give him high-fives on discovering he’s a Texan just like them. Their wonderful breasts keep noodging up against his arms, setting off sensory bells and whistles like a run of bonus points in a video game. Whenever any of the medias approach, the girls hook their thumbs into their hot pants and stand there cock-hipped and saucy as if daring the press to give their Billy a hard time. And the medias, the men, they cannot deal straightforwardly but throw out smirks, sidelong looks, ironical tones of voice.
Yeah, yeah, we see you, hoss,
they as much as say to Billy.
Rock star and everything, ain’t you the shit.
Viewing himself through the medias’ eyes, Billy understands how close the cheerleaders come to rendering him absurd, the pimp excess of not just one or two but
three
beautiful girls. He’s fully aware it’s all fake, and surely they know he knows, so is this put-on scorn their way of manning up to him?

He begins to resent the situation. The reporters waft a few pro forma questions his way. Did he play sports in high school? Is he a Cowboys fan? What does it mean to be home for Thanksgiving this year?

“Well, technically,” Billy points out, “I’m not at home. I’m here.”

They don’t even have to take notes, just hoover up his words with sleek little recording gadgets that look like protein bars. Merely by standing there they manage to be incredibly annoying, a middle-aged bunch of mostly big-assed white guys dressed in boring-as-hell business casual, such a sad-fuck sampling of civilian bio-matter that for a moment Billy is actually glad for the war, hell yes, so much better to be out there shooting guns and blowing shit up than shuffling around like scenery on a bad sitcom. God knows the war sucks, but he sees no great appeal in these tepid peacetime lives.

Through the crowd he spots his cheerleader, who’s been assigned—gah!—to Sykes. The proceedings are definitely getting on his nerves. She catches him looking and sends back a seemingly warm and genuine smile, then tips her head in concern or puzzlement. His abs contract as if from a body blow.

When the medias finally leave he turns to Lexis and asks, “Do you have to be single to be a cheerleader?”

She gives a curt laugh; a look passes among the cheerleaders. Oh Christ, they think he’s hitting on them.

“Well, no,” she says, very crisp and businesslike, “you don’t, and we’ve always got some married girls on the squad. Me and Candace and Al, we aren’t married, but we’ve all got steady boyfriends.”

Billy’s head is bobbing in manic agreeableness, uh huh, uh huh,
of course
you do! “I was just, you know, um, curious.”

The girls exchange another look.
Sure you were.
He is trying to figure out how to nicely say it’s not you particular three I’m interested in, but before this formulation is revealed to him he’s summoned by Josh. Showtime. The medias want a photo op, Norm and the Bravos together. A space is cleared in front of the stage, chairs pushed back, bodies herded. One of Norm’s small grandsons darts past playing tag with the cheerleaders, the sturdy little stub of his erect penis straining against his pants. As everyone takes their places a reporter asks Norm about his plans for a possible new stadium. An
oh-ho
sort of razzing rises from the medias.

“Well, obviously we’re playing in an aging facility,” Norm answers. “But Texas Stadium has been a wonderful home for the Cowboys. I don’t see that changing any time soon.”

“But,” the reporter prompts, drawing laughs. Norm smiles. He’s happy to play the straight man in this routine.

“But for the long-term health of the organization, I think it’s something we’ll have to look at.”

“Some of the Irving city council think you already are. They’re saying that’s why you cut the stadium maintenance budget by seventeen percent.”

“No, not at all. We just did our review in the normal course of business and found a few places where some fat could be trimmed. We have every intention of maintaining Texas Stadium as a first-class facility.”

“Any chance you’ll move the team back to Dallas?”

Norm merely smiles for the cameras, which click away like parakeets cracking seeds. A few of the medias keep on about the stadium, but Norm ignores them. Billy begins to get a sense of the dynamic here, a power equation along the lines of the CEO of a giant corporation vis-à-vis the urinal puck he so thoughtfully studies as it’s drenched with his mighty personal stream. It is Norm’s job to maximize the value of the Cowboys brand, and it is the job of the medias to soak up every drop, dab, and dribble of PR he sends their way. As sentient human beings endowed with reason and free will, they naturally resent such treatment; perhaps this explains their sourpuss attitude, the karmic dampness that breathes off them like the towel hamper at a gym. Tomorrow he’ll read the newspaper and wonder why this, too, isn’t part of the story: that the press, however grudgingly, gathered as instructed to record in its stenographic capacity Norm’s presentation of Bravo Squad, a blatantly formulaic marketing event that enlightened no one, revealed nothing, and served no tangible purpose other than to big-up awareness of the Cowboys brand.

The bullshit part of it, isn’t that part of the story too? But not a word, not a murmur, not a peep from the press about how thoroughly they’ve been used, and no hint of their personal feelings toward Norm, which, as Billy infers from the body language, consist in roughly equal measure of resentment and fear. If he so wished, Norm could probably get any one of them fired. Could probably get them killed, if he wished. Not that he would. Probably. Billy spots Mr. Jones nearby, discussing the line with several other suits. Cowboys by four? ’Boys by three? They chuckle like men comparing the talents of a carnally shared woman, and Billy would like to go over there and beat their faces in. He doesn’t know why he’s so offended, but he is, maybe it’s Mr. Jones’s gun that sets him off, something about the presumption of it, the ignorance, the sheer fucking
ego
of carrying around an instrument of deadly force. Like you
know
? You wanna see what deadly force can do? Bravo can show you, Bravo does deadly like you wouldn’t believe, the kind that will break your mind and make you wish you’d never spilled out of your mother’s crack.