Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

THIS IS EVERYTHING THERE IS

SO BILLY DECIDES FIRST chance he gets he’ll give his ball away. It’s mere minutes before kickoff and the teams are on the field doing stretching and calisthenics, and Norm himself is leading Bravo along the main concourse, showing the skin, sprinkling some star power on the instantly smitten masses. All grudges, gripes, and man-on-the-street critiques melt like suet under the heat-lamp glow of his celebrity. Yo, Norm! Norm! We gonna do it today, Norm? Boyz by three, make it happen for me, Norm! It is the parting of the waters as the fans make way in a rippling furl of cell phone flashes, Norm striding through it all with his head held high and that same pleasant smile for everyone. Texas Stadium is his turf, his castle; no, his actual kingdom. A real king is rare these days but here Norm reigns supreme, and Billy sees how little it takes to make the peons happy, just a glimpse, a wave, a few seconds in his presence and they’re stoked on that good strong celebrity dope.

Meanwhile Billy is looking for a certain kind of kid to give his football to. Not one of the money kids, nobody who could be on TV, tanned, smooth skinned, dazzlingly orthodontured, with the long clean limbs and good face that denote the genetic home run. No, he’s looking for a little redneck kid, an undergrown runt with ratty hair and nails chewed down to bloody nubs, about as aware at ten years old as a half-bright dog and basically miserable, but doesn’t know it yet. Billy is looking for himself. Outside the Whataburger booth he spots him, a smallish, twitchy kid with a head too big for his neck, ill dressed for the cold in a thin cotton hoodie and fake falling-apart Reeboks, and why the fock would parents spend hundreds of dollars on Cowboys tickets when their son lacks a proper winter coat? It is infuriating, the psyche of the American consumer.

“Excuse me,” he says, approaching, and the kid quietly freaks—what’d I do? His parents wheel about and what a pair they are, thick, soft, dull, clearly useless as humans and parents. Billy ignores them.

“Young man, what’s your name?”

The boy’s jaw falls off. His tongue is a liverish white.

“Son, tell me your name.”

“Cougar,” the boy manages.

“Cougar. You mean like the animal?”

The boy nods. He can’t quite look Billy in the eye.

“Cougar! Radical name!” A lie; Cougar is a ridiculous name. “Look, Cougar, I’ve got an autographed ball here, bunch of the Cowboys signed it for me down in the locker room. But I’m going back to Iraq and I’ll just lose it there, so I want you to have it. Are you all right with that?”

Cougar risks a quick look at the ball and nods. Clearly he thinks this is the setup for some low humiliation, a wedgie, a firecracker down the back.

“All right, young man. Here you go.”

Billy hands him the ball and walks away with no lingering, no looking back. He is sick of the squishy sentiments of the day and will not let this be yet another Moment. Mango has held up and is waiting for him.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Dunno. Just felt like it.” And on reflection he does feel better, though a strange melancholy fills his new mood. For several moments the two Bravos walk along saying nothing, then Mango gives his ball to a passing kid.

“Like, fuck their autographs,” Billy says. Mango laughs.

“If they win the Super Bowl we just gave away about a thousand bucks.”

“Yeah, well, a thousand bucks says they ain’t winnin’ no Super Bowl.”

Still no word about halftime, other than Norm’s promise to “showcase Bravo to the fullest extent,” which could be as harmless as standing there while your name is called, or as terrifying and onerous as… the mind boggles. Rumor has it that there are multiple bars in the owner’s suite. The lower-ranking Bravos agree among themselves to get stinking drunk, then Billy thinks of Faison and privately amends his side of the bargain to sort of drunk. It was an impulse invitation — come watch the kickoff from my box! Norm has clearly caught a bad case of the Bravo disease, that burrowing spirochete of home-front zeal that inspires strippers to give free lap dances and upper-class matrons to bloodlust. A round of applause greets Bravo as they file into the suite, the polite, pro forma wittering of soft hands taking on real sizzle and pop. Yaaay for Bravo! Hooo-ray for the troops! Mrs. Norm is there to greet them at the door, and if she’s perturbed by the sight of ten largish, panting, booze-breath guests piling into her already crowded suite, she has the good grace not to show it.

So glad you could join us. So many friends eager to meet you. Billy takes it all in at a glance, the blue carpet, the blue furnishings with silver accents, giant flat-screen TVs implanted in every wall, two bars, hot and cold buffets, white-jacketed waiters, then a couple of steps down there’s a second level that replicates the first, and farther on a steep-pitched bank of stadium seats, rows of upholstered chairs stair-stepping down to the glassed-in front and its postcard view of the playing field. The money vibe can be felt at once, a faint hum, a kind of menthol tingling of the lips. Billy wonders if wealth can be caught like a germ, just by virtue of sheer proximity.

Make yourselves at home, Mrs. Norm is murmuring. Help yourselves to refreshments. Say no more, ma’am. Bravo breaks en masse for the free liqs as Dime mouths “just one” with a stern look, but before the soldiers can bar up, Norm climbs onto a chair — he’s got a thing for chairs? — and delivers a little speech about

is the entire Oglesby family for the opportunity on this Thanksgiving Day to

the Bravos for their service. Billy notes how closely his fellow guests listen to Norm’s speech, how keen their facial expressions of faith and resolve. The men look wise, relaxed, in great shape for middle age, possessed of the sure and liquid style that comes of long success. They have good hair. They’ve wrinkled well. The women are slim and toned and internationally tan, their makeup sealed with a Teflon coat of cool. Billy tries to imagine the formula of birth, money, schools, and social savvy that lifts people to such a rarefied station in life. Whatever it is, they make it look easy just standing there, just by being who they are in this special place, being warm and safe and clean, being guests of Norm. Most have a drink or a plate of food in their hands. Evil, Norm is saying. Terror. Mortal threat. A nation at war. His speech describes the direst of circumstances, but at this moment, in this place, the war seems very far away.

“They have to leave us shortly,” Norm is saying, “they’re going to take part in our halftime show, but while they’re here let’s give them a big Texas welcome.” Everyone claps, hoots, cheers, let’s get this party started; the ballers are feeling that good Bravo vibe. Billy is hailed by someone’s craggy-faced granddad.

“Soldier, I’m damn glad to meet you!”

“Thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you too, sir.”

“March Hawey,” the man says, sticking out his hand. The name and face are vaguely familiar to Billy, the kindly rumpled sag of his narrow features, the elfin tweak of his eyes and ears. Billy would hazard March Hawey is one of those celebrity Texans who’s famous mainly for being rich and famous.

“Listen, when the news broke that night — when they started running that video of yall taking care of business? — that was one of the biggest thrills of my life, no lie. It’s hard to put into words just what I was feeling, but it was, I don’t know, just a beautiful moment. Margaret, tell him how I was.”

He turns to his wife, who looks a good twenty years younger, a statuesque six-footer with stiff blond hair and skin taut as a soufflé.

“I thought,” she says, I thot in the tart British accent of Joan Collins trashing a rival on a Dynasty rerun, “he’d lost his mind. I hear him screeeeeming in the media room and I ruuuussshhh downstairs to find him standing on my good George Fourth library table, in, my Gohd, his cow-boy boots, doing this Rocky thing”—she raises her arms and gives a couple of spastic fist-pumps—“ ‘Mahch,’ I’m shouting, ‘Mahch, love, dear, what-EVER,’ ”—wot-EVAH—“ ‘on earth has gotten into you?’ ”

Several couples have joined them. Everyone is smiling, nodding, evidently they are used to such antics from their good friend March.

“It was cathartic,” Hawey says, and Billy carefully repeats the word to himself, cathartic. “Seeing yall John Wayne that deal, it’s like we finally had something to cheer about. I guess the war’d been depressing me all this time and I didn’t even know it, till yall came along. Just a huge morale boost for everybody.”

The other couples vigorously agree. “You’re among friends,” a woman assures Billy. “You won’t find any cut-and-runners here.”

Others chime in with variations on the theme. Margaret Hawey stares at Billy with enormous blue eyes that never blink. He senses that whatever judgment she’s passing on him will be strict, swift, and without appeal.

“Let me ask you something,” Hawey says, leaning into Billy’s space. “Is it gettin’ better?”

“I think so, sir. In certain areas, yeah, definitely. We’re working hard to make it better.”

“I know! I know! Whatever problems we’re having aren’t yalls fault, we’ve got the finest troops in the world! Listen, I supported this war from the beginning, and I’ll tell you what, I like our president, personally I think he’s a good and decent man. I’ve known him since he was a kid — I watched him grow up! He’s a good boy, he wants to do the right thing. I know he went into this with all the best intentions, but that crowd he’s got around him, listen. Some of those folks are good friends of mine, but you’ve gotta admit, they’ve made one royal effing mess outta this war.”

This prompts much head-shaking, many sad mumbles of assent. “It’s been a fight,” Billy says, wondering how he might get a drink.

“I guess you’d know that better than anyone.” Hawey leans in again, closer now, but Billy stands his ground. “Lemme ask you something else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“About the battle. But I don’t wanna get too personal.”

“It’s okay.”

“But it’s just natural for people to wonder when somebody does something as fine and brave as you, I mean, we all saw the video. We know how rough it was out there. And for a fella to just go running through the middle of all that”—Hawey chuckles, shakes his head—“we can’t help wonderin’, weren’t you scared?”

The group shivers with a titillatory chill. Only Margaret is unmoved. She stands there watching Billy with those huge blue eyes that won’t cut him any slack.

“I’m sure I was,” he answers. “I know I was. But it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think. I just did what my training told me to do, like anybody else in the squad would do. I just happened to be the guy in position.” He assumes he’s done, but they’re quiet, still primed for the payoff, so he has to think of something else. “I guess it’s like my sergeant says, as long as you’ve got plenty of ammo, you’ll probably be okay.”

This does it; they throw back their heads and roar. In a way it’s so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they’re happy, they love him, everybody gets along. Sometimes he has to remind himself there’s no dishonor in it. He hasn’t told any lies, he doesn’t exaggerate, yet so often he comes away from these encounters with the sleazy, gamey aftertaste of having lied.

New people join their group, others leave in a vigorous round robin of socializing. Billy is constantly shaking hands and forgetting people’s names. Major Mac and Mr. Jones are talking near the cold buffet; Mr. Jones seems not to realize that the major couldn’t hear a tank go by. Beyond them is the high-powered group of Albert, Dime, Mr. and Mrs. Norm, and several of what seem to be the gathering’s heaviest hitters. Albert is laughing, quite at his ease, and that’s as it should be, Billy reflects. Albert swims with the Hollywood sharks, he can handle this Dallas crowd standing on his head, but it’s Dime who Billy focuses on now, the way he listens, holds himself, slips in a word here and there. “Watch him,” Shroom used to tell Billy. “Watch him and learn. Davey’s spooky. He knows how to see in the dark.” According to Shroom this was Dime’s particular gift, this intuiting ray he brought to the war, but the only way he could develop it was by testing himself, always putting it out there. The insurgents couldn’t kill large numbers of Americans as long as the troops stayed on their bases; the flip side was, the only way the Americans could track down and kill insurgents was by leaving their bases, which made the whole business of patrols and checkpoints and house-to-house searches an exercise in the using up of nerve. But it was a form of war Dime forced them to accept. Bravo dismounted more than any squad in the platoon, in the entire battalion, probably. They could be anywhere, and Dime would order them clear to walk a couple of klicks with the Humvees lagging, following at a crawl. “You won’t know shit sitting inside that damn box,” he’d say. They were gambles, these little forays, they could easily get you killed, but they were Dime’s way of banking knowledge, instinct, experience against the day when everything and everybody would be on the line.

Not that the Bravos liked it. Plenty of days they hated Dime for putting them out on the street. It seemed so pointless, the risk far out of proportion to the possible benefit, but if any Bravo bitched Shroom told him to shut up and do his job. So out they’d go, tromping through markets, humping down side streets, randomly walking into houses to find what they might find. One such day they’re on the street and a small gang of boys approaches, they’re fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, aspiring hustlers with fuzzy mustaches and not much better than rags for clothes. “Mister,” they cry, swaggering up to Bravo, “give me my pocket! Give me my pocket!”

“What the fuck,” Dime says, staring at them.

“I think they want money,” Shroom says, turning to Scottie for confirmation. Scottie was Bravo’s interpreter at the time, so named for his resemblance to the former Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen. Scottie speaks to the boys.

“Yes, they want money. They say they are hungry, they are asking you to give them money.”

“ ‘Give me my pocket’?” Dime laughs.

“Yes! Yes! Mister! Give me my pocket!”

“No, no, no, that’s fucked, that’s not the way you say it. Tell them I’ll teach them how to say it, but we aren’t giving them any money.”

Scottie explains. Yes! the boys cry. Yes! Okay yes!

So there in the street Dime conducts a little English lesson. “Give me money.” Repeat. Give me money. “Give me five dollars.” Give me five dollars. “Give me five dollars, bitch!” Give me five dollars beech! “Thank you!!” Thank you!! “Have a nice day!!!” Haf a naice day!!! The boys are laughing. Dime is laughing. The rest of the Bravos are laughing too, laughing as they scan rooflines and doorways with their weapons raised.

“Thank you!” the boys cry when the lesson is done, and each boy ceremoniously shakes Dime’s hand. “Thank you! Mister! Thank you! Give me money!” And so they’re bellowing as they walk down the street, Give me money! Give me five dollars! Give me five dollars beech!

“Wow,” Shroom says in hushed, trembling tones of New Age feelingness. “Dave, that was just beautiful, man. That was a beautiful thing you did.”

Dime snorts, then lards up his voice with smarm. “Well, you know what they say. Give a man a fish, he eats for today. But teach a man to fish—”

“—and he eats for a lifetime,” Shroom concludes.

Over time Billy came to see this kind of humor as another facet of his education in the realms of global bullshit. Abruptly he feels Shroom’s loss like an awl in the gut, meanwhile noting on a parallel mental track how grief comes and goes, fattens and thins like the moon freestyling across foreign skies.

“I don’t like it,” March Hawey is telling the group. “I think it’s bad psychologically and bad strategically. It’s fine to keep the American public aware and all, but you keep harping on the terror thing twenty-four/seven, after a while you get a negative feedback loop going.”

“But March,” a woman objects, “they want to kill us!”

“Sure they do!” March cuts Billy an amused look. “The world’s a dangerous place, nothing new in that. But you keep putting it in the public’s face, terrR, terrR, terrR, that’s bad for morale, bad for the markets, bad for anybody.”

“Except Cheney,” someone quips, and the group titters.

“Right,” March allows with a slow smile. “Ol’ Dick’s got his own way of doing things. He and I’ve been friends a long time, but I have to say, we haven’t talked in a while.”

A Jack and Coke arrives for Billy. How did they know? Somehow they knew. He nods and sips his drink and makes agreeable-sounding noises as people express their thoughts and feelings about the war. Here at home everyone is so sure about the war. They talk in certainties, imperatives, absolutes, views that seem quite reasonable in the context. A kind of abyss separates the war over here from the war over there, and the trick, as Billy perceives it, is not to stumble when jumping from one to the other.

“I’ll say this for nina leven,” a man confides to him, “it shut the feminists up.”

“Ah.” Billy consults his drink. The feminists?

“You bet,” the man says. “They aren’t so interested in being ‘liberated’ now that we’re under attack. There’s certain things a man can do that a woman just can’t. Combat, for one. A lot of life boils down to physical strength.”

“Maybe we need a war now and then to get our priorities straight,” a second man says.

Clusters of subconversations orbit the main conversation, which is always about the war. Billy meets the man who owns — Coolcrete? Pavestone? One of those backyard leisure surfaces. The man tells Billy that the recent uptick in insurgent attacks is a sign that the tide is turning our way. “It shows they’re desperate,” he says. “We’re hitting them where it hurts.” “Could be,” Billy concedes as an oak log of an arm falls across his shoulders, and their host, Norm himself, is snugging up to him. The group falls silent. Anticipation beams from every smiling face.

“Specialist Lynn.”

“Sir.”

“Is everything satisfactory?”

“Yes, sir. It’s all good.”

People laugh as if he’s said something terribly witty. Norm squeezes the back of his neck, gives his head a couple of shakes. “What an honor,” he tells the group, “what a privilege, having these young heroes with us today.” Billy catches a yeasty whiff of bourbon on Norm’s breath. “They are the pride and joy of our nation, and this one”—he gives Billy another couple of brain-rattling shakes—“this young man, well, let me put it this way. Is anybody surprised that a Texan led the charge at the Al-Ansakar Canal?”

The group answers with a sharp burst of applause. Everyone in the vicinity turns and joins in. Billy is helpless, Norm has him pinned like a specimen to a board and there is nothing to do but stand there and smile like a shit-eater caught in the act. “Look, he’s blushing!” a woman cries, and it must be true, Billy can feel the heat pulsing off his face. Thus misery is taken for wholesome modesty.

“I think we’ve got another Audie Murphy on our hands,” March says, grinning at Billy. “Now there was a great American hero. And a Texan.”

“He’s a hero,” Norm agrees, hugging Billy close. “That’s why he wears the Silver Star. And I have it on good authority he was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but some desk jockey at the Pentagon shot it down.”

A zithering hum of disapproval roils the crowd. Billy hopes none of the Bravos is watching, but there is Dime placidly taking it all in, and Albert is smiling, no, smirking when he catches Billy’s eye, and in this way Billy is given to understand the source of the leak. As soon as he can Billy excuses himself and heads for the nearest bar. Coke, he says. Just a plain regular Coke. After a minute Dime is squeezing in next to him.

“Billy, don’t be flaking.”

Billy lifts his chin. “That was bullshit.”

“What was bullshit?” They speak in barely audible murmurs.

“That. The Medal of Honor shit.”

“Oh, that. Billy, chill. You’re a certified star.”

“Albert—”

“Albert knows what he’s doing.”

“How the fuck did he even know?”

“ ’Cause I told him, dipshit. Any booze in that drink?”

“No.”

“Good, I want you halfway sober for halftime. And no they haven’t told me what we’re supposed to do.”

Billy hunches over his drink. “It’s all bullshit.”

“You’re being awfully touchy, Billy Sue.”

“Why the fuck did you tell him?”

Dime doesn’t even bother answering that. They stay turtled up to the bar. The moment they turn away people will start talking to them.

“You know that old man you were talking to?”

“Well, yeah.”

“March Hawey.”

“I know who he is.”

“Mr. Swift Boat himself. Dude’s famous.”

Billy stares straight ahead. He won’t give Dime the satisfaction of knowing he didn’t know.

“Richer than God, and talk about tied in. So watch yourself around him.”

“Why should I watch myself?”

“Because in case you haven’t noticed this is a highly partisan country we live in, Billy. Those guys are smart, they know who the enemy is. They aren’t fooled by a couple of bullshit war medals.”

Billy glances at his chest, considering his medals in this possibly sinister light.

“I’m not the enemy.”

“Oh hooooo, you don’t think? They decide, not you. They’re the deciders when it comes to who’s a real American, dude.”

Billy takes a sip of his Coke. “I’m not planning on running for president, Sergeant.”

Dime nods, studies the skyline of liquor bottles behind the bar. “You wanna know what my old granddaddy told me once, Billy?”

“What.”

“He said, Son, you want to live a good life, do these three things. Number one, make a lot of money. Number two, pay your taxes. And number three, stay out of politics.”

With that Dime picks up his drink and leaves. Billy tries to enjoy a quiet moment by himself, but his headache comes thundering into the void. He wonders if it’s a migraine — how would he know? A migraine or something worse, something tragic and fatal, a brain tumor, cancer, a massive stroke. Poor fella. So young. Died a virgin. Tragic. In any case the headache is practically bad family history by now, a terrible pain and burden but who would you be without it? Cheers and applause suddenly roll through the suite, and too late he remembers not to turn from the bar.

“They just showed you on the Jumbotron!” a woman exclaims, and for a second Billy despairs — they showed him huckled up to the bar? — then realizes it was a repeat of the American Heroes graphic.

“I think it’s wonderful yall are being honored today,” the woman enthuses.

“Thank you,” says Billy.

“It must be so exciting, traveling around the country!”

“And all at taxpayer expense,” a man — her husband? — adds. He chuckles, which means it’s a joke. Ha ha.

“It’s nice,” Billy says. “It’s been an experience. We’ve met a lot of nice people.”

“What stands out in your mind the most?” the woman asks. She is a bright-eyed, professionally peppy blonde of indeterminate age, blessed with dramatic cheekbones and a smile like silver lamé. Billy would guess she’s a sales whiz of some sort, a high-powered realtress or Mary Kay honcho.

“Well, all the airports for sure,” he says. This gets a laugh from the group, seven or eight people have gathered now. And all the malls, he could add, and the civic centers and hotel rooms and auditoriums and banquet halls that are so much alike across the breadth of the land, a soul-squashing homogeneity designed more for economy and ease of maintenance than anything so various as human sensibilities.

“I really liked Denver,” he goes on, “with all the mountains and everything? That was a beautiful place. I wouldn’t mind going back there and spending some time someday.”

“Weren’t you in Washington?” the realtress prods.

“Oh, yeah. Washington was awesome, definitely.”

“Isn’t the White House so majestic?”

“It is, with all the history and everything. And I guess I never thought about people living there? I know, like why do they call it the White House, duh. But it was amazing, more like you’d expect a really elegant mansion to be.”

The realtress agrees; she and “Stan” have been guests of the Bushes several times and it is truly an awe-inspiring place. Was there a dinner? There wasn’t? That’s a shame because formal state dinners are really quite the production, what with all the pomp, the protocol, the mingling with royalty and heads of state. Maybe next time, Billy says. Then someone asks are we winning and that opens the floor for discussion about the war, and Billy gets passed around like everybody’s favorite bong. Why are they killing their own people? Why do they hate us? Why is it always seventy-two virgins? His brain switches to autopilot and his eye wanders. He spots Lodis over there, babbling about God knows what while his audience listens in polite horror. Then there is Crack hitting on someone’s teenage daughter and doing pretty well from the looks of it, and Sykes staring clench-jawed into empty space, and Albert yukking it up with Mr. and Mrs. Norm. It dawns on Billy that his headache might be purely psychological, the naked ape of his mind asserting itself like the gorilla in that Samsonite commercial.

“… it’s a code of honor that goes back to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, we don’t attack unless we’re attacked first. We aren’t barbarians. We didn’t attack on nina leven. Or at Pearl Harbor, for that matter.”

“No, sir.” Billy reenters the world of conversation.

“But when we are attacked, there’s hell to pay, am I right?”

“I guess you could say that, yes sir.”

“I mean, if someone shoots at you guys, say you’re on patrol and a sniper gets off a couple of rounds, what do you do?”

“We hit him with everything we’ve got, sir.”

The man smiles. “There you go.”

Hey! Hey! Hey! People are shouting for silence, it is the summons for all persons to shut up and attend the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Everyone turns to face the field. The sky has darkened to primer gray, a kind of dull celestial blister capping the stadium’s paper-lantern glow. The light pools and thickens at field level in a lime-tinted aspic sheen. The singer and color guard step out from the home sideline with its legions of players, coaches, refs, medias, and VIPs, along with a circus train’s worth of equipage. They could be an ancient army laying siege somewhere. The color guard presents the flag. The Bravos scattered about the suite snap to attention.

Ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, an echo banging around the bruised hollows of your brain, ohhh-oh as if you’re standing at the mouth of a cave calling tentatively, hopefully into the dark. Ohhh-oh, anybody there? Ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh. That gulpy reggae drop-beat, ohhh-oh, Pavlovian cue for bursting of dopamine bombs and xylophone trills up and down your spine. Then the trapdoor springs beneath your feet

followed by the save, the safety net bottoming out and that wheee of a launch into the higher realms

Thence to the ritual torturing of a difficult song. The singer is a young white woman, raven haired, slight of frame, a C&W warbler with a classic high-plains heartbreak twang. Billy heard somewhere that she is the latest American Idol, and like all the American Idols pint-sized or not she is blessed with a huge barrel vault of a mouth.

WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT

so

PRRRRRROOOOUUUUUDDDDLLLLLYYYYY

Billy holds his salute. He makes it a point to think about Shroom and Lake and the hot red blur of that terrible day, but he’s also, because he’s young and still hopeful for his life, scanning the sideline far below for Faison. He systematically ticks his gaze from one cheerleader to the next, no, no, no, no, a dozen no’s then yes and his head spins like a car on ice, an airy whoosh into sideways acceleration with all the nausea, the panic, the full butthole pucker, it is a roller-coaster ride to oblivion. Then his eyes snap back to their sockets and aim straight for Faison, sturdy little Koosh ball of female plenitude with that slash of amber hair like a lava spill, her right-hand pom-pom held to her heart. She is singing, even from here he can see her mouth moving, and so powerful is the bond between them that he leans several inches in her direction. Dude, she was into you. The singing triggers a soft detonation at his core, molten parts of him are flying everywhere and his ears ring to the tune of blast harmonics that only he can hear, but what is “The Star-Spangled Banner” if not a love song?

He has to remember to breathe. He feels calm and agitated all at once, self-awareness teased to such a screaming pitch that his skull might split at any moment, and he moans, it is just too much to hold in. The realtress glances his way and answers with a sympathy moan. The next moment she steps over and puts her arm around his waist, and they stand so joined, Billy saluting, sweating, standing ramrod straight, the realtress singing with her right hand held to her heart and her left clamped to Billy’s hip.

This lady can really belt it out. Tears the size of lug nuts are tumbling down her cheeks but that’s the kind of thing war does to you. Sensations are heightened, time compressed, passions aroused, and while a single dry-hump might seem a slender reed on which to build a lifetime relationship, Billy would like to think this is where the logic leads. He made Faison tremble, he made her come, surely there’s meaning in that. Given all the shifting variables of existence, it’s insane to plan or hope for any one particular thing, yet somehow the world comes to be every day. So if not this, then what? So why not this?

The realtress pulls him closer. He doesn’t sense that it’s a sexual thing at all; it feels too brittle, more like a codependent clinginess or mothering clutch, which he can handle. Part of being a soldier is accepting that your body does not belong to you.

Ore th’ Laaa-ha-annnndddd of the Freeeeeeeeeee — HEEEEEEEEE

Then the pause, the teetering catch at cliff’s edge, followed by the vocal swan dive—

Never do Americans sound so much like a bunch of drunks as when celebrating the end of their national anthem. In the midst of all the boozy clapping and cheering perhaps a dozen middle-aged women converge on Billy. For a second it seems they’ll tear him limb from limb, their eyes are cranking those crazy lights and there is nothing they wouldn’t do for America, torture, nukes, worldwide collateral damage, for the sake of God and country they are down for it all. “Isn’t it wonderful?” the realtress cries as she holds him tight. “Don’t you love it? Doesn’t it make you just so proud?”

Well, right this second he wants to weep, that’s how desperately proud he feels. Does that count? Are we talking the same language here? Proud, sure, he thinks of Shroom and Lake and all the blood-truths of that day and starts brainstorming quantum-theory proofs of proud. Yes ma’am, proud, Bravo has achieved levels of proud that can move mountains and knock the moon out of phase, but why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you make at the bank!

But Billy tries. “I feel full,” he says, and the women cry out and a pillowy sort of scrummage ensues with much hugging and pawing, many cell phone snaps, three or four conversations going at once and more than one woman shedding actual tears. It is a heavy Group Moment and about as much as he can handle, and when it finally tapers off he puts his head down and makes for the lower level because, like Custer’s line of retreat at Little Bighorn, there’s really no place else to go. People smile and greet him as he moves through the crowd. Someone holds out a drink, which he takes; later he’ll realize they were merely waving at him. He comes to the bank of stadium seats and starts down the stairs. Three of his fellow Bravos are hunkered down on the bottom row, a refuge, a small redoubt amid this crowd of dangerously overstimulated civilians.

“Jesus Christ,” Billy says, dropping into a seat.

The other Bravos grunt. Being a hero is exhausting.

“Bears won the toss,” A-bort announces. “Up fifty already, homes.”

Holliday snorts. “You dah man, A. Showin’ some real fine savvy with that call.” He turns to Billy. “Where’s Lodis?”

“Up there.”

“Actin’ a fool?”

“He’s doing all right. Any word about halftime?”

The other Bravos grimly shake their heads. They’re all feeling it, not just the usual performance anxiety but the soldier’s innate dread of cosmic payback. They’ve accomplished two weeks of remarkably glitch-free events, so perhaps the natural or even necessary climax of the Victory Tour—like they’ve been saving up! — will be the mother of all fuckups on national TV.

The Cowboys kick off to the Bears. Touchback. From the twenty-yard line the Bears run off tackle for three, up the middle for two, then a weakside sweep for four, but there’s a flag. Between plays there is nothing much to do except watch bad commercials on the Jumbotron and worry about halftime.

“Do you think we’re being rude?” Mango asks.

Everyone looks at him.

“Sitting down here by ourselves. Not mingling or anything.”

“Rude as fuck,” Day says.

“Let’s put up a sign,” A-bort suggests. “ ‘Dysfunctional Vets, Leave Us Alone.’ ”

They watch a few plays. Mango keeps sighing and squirming around. “Football is boring,” he finally announces. “You guys never noticed? It’s like, start, stop, start, stop, you get about five seconds of plays for every minute of standing around. Shit is dull.”

“You can leave,” Holliday tells him. “Nobody say you got to be here.”

“No, Day, I do got to be here. I gotta be wherever the Army says I gotta be, and right now it’s here.”

The Bears punt. The Cowboys return to the twenty-six. There is a long wait while the chains are moved and the football replaced. The offense and defense trundle onto the field. The offense huddles while the defense mills around, huffing and puffing with their hands on their hips. Goddamn, Billy thinks, Mango’s right. Between plays is sort of like sitting in church, if not for the infernal blaring of the Jumbotron everybody would keel over and fall asleep. One of the Filipino waiters comes by and asks would they care for anything. The Bravos check to make sure Dime isn’t lurking, and since he isn’t they order a round of Jack and Cokes. Billy chugs his accidental cranberry vodka and keeps a fond eye on Faison. The drinks arrive. They help it be not so much like church. The Cowboys advance to the Bears’ forty-two, then lose sixteen yards when Henson takes a sack, and Billy begins to intuit the basic futility of seizing ground you can’t control.

“Please tell me there’s no booze in those drinks,” Dime wharls. The Bravos jump. Dime drops into the seat next to Billy, a pair of binoculars swinging from a strap around his neck.

“Not hardly,” says A-bort. “We were about to complain.”

“C’mon guys, I told you—”

“Yo Dime,” Day breaks in, “Mango says football is boring.”

“What?” Dime instantly rounds on Mango. “What the fuck do you mean football is boring, football is great, football kicks every other sport’s ass, football’s the fucking pinnacle of the sports world. What’re you trying to say, you like soccer? A bunch of fruits running around in little shorts and knee socks? They play for ninety minutes and nobody ever scores, yeah, sounds like a lot of fun, the game of choice for the vegetally comatose? But fine, if you’d rather watch fut-BOLL, Mango, you can just go the fuck back to Meh-hee-co.”

“I’m from Tucson,” Mango answers mildly. “I was actually born there, Sergeant. You know that.”

“You could be from Squirrel Dick, Idaho, for all I care. Football’s strategic, it’s got tactics, it’s a thinking man’s game in addition to being goddamn poetry in motion. But you’re obviously too much of a dumbfuck to appreciate that.”

“That must be it,” Mango says. “I guess you’ve gotta be a genius—”

“Shut UP! You’re hopeless, Montoya, you are a disgrace to the cause. I bet it was sad fucks like you who lost the Alamo.”

Mango giggles. “Sergeant, I think you’re a little confused. It was the—”

“Shut! I don’t wanna hear any more of your gay revisionist crap, so just shut.”

Mango bides a couple of beats. “You know, they say if the Alamo’d had a back door, Texas never woulda—”

“SHUT!”

The Bravos titter like a bunch of Cub Scouts. The Cowboys punt, but there’s a penalty so they do it again, then everybody stands down for a TV time-out. Dime has the binoculars to his face.

“Which one is she?” he murmurs, understanding this is a private, no, a sacred matter.

“To the left,” Billy says in a low voice, “down around the twenty. Kind of blondish reddish hair.”

Dime swivels left. The cheerleaders are doing a hip-rock fanny-bop routine, a fetching little number to pass the time. Dime watches for a while, then with the binoculars still to his face he extends his hand to Billy.

“Congratulations.”

They shake hands.

“Lady is bangin’.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

Dime continues to watch.

“You really mugged down with that?”

“I did. I swear, Sergeant.”

“You don’t have to swear. What’s her name?”

“Faison.”

“Last or first?”

“Uh, first.” Billy realizes he doesn’t know her last.

“Umph. Damn.” Dime chuckles to himself. “Depths and depths in young Billy. Who’da thought.”

When Dime leaves Billy asks if he can borrow the binoculars, and with grand, silent solemnity Dime drapes the lanyard around Billy’s neck as if anointing an Olympic champion. Billy has a fine time with the binoculars. Mostly he keeps them trained on Faison, tracking her dance routines, her strenuous pom-pom shaking, her arm-waving exhortations to the crowd. The binos conjure a strange, delicate clarity from the material world, a kind of dollhouse fineness of texture and detail. So framed, everything Faison does is sort of miraculous. Here, she gives her hair a coltish toss; there, idly cocks her knee, thumps her toe on the turf while conferring with her sister cheerleaders. Billy conceives an almost delirious tenderness for her, along with sweet-sour roilings of nostalgia and loss, a sense of watching her not only from far away but across some long passage of time as well. Which means what, this melancholy, this mournful soul-leakage — that he’s in love? The bitch of it is there’s no time to figure it out. He and Faison need to talk — he needs her number! Along with her e-mail. And her last name would be nice.

“Hey.” Mango is nudging him. “We’re gonna hit the buffet. You comin’?”

Billy says no. He just wants to sit here with the binoculars and watch everything. The game doesn’t interest him at all but the people do, the way the steam, for instance, rises off the players like a cartoon rendering of body odor. Coach Tuttle stalks the sidelines with the addled look of a man who can’t remember where he parked his car. A sense of relaxing omniscience comes over Billy as he studies the fans, a kind of clinical, gorillas-in-the-mist absorption in how they eat, drink, yawn, pick their noses, preen and primp, indulge or rebuff their young. He lingers on all the hot women, of course, and spots no fewer than six people dressed up in turkey costumes. Often he catches people staring into space, their faces slack, unguarded, verging on fretfulness, fogged in by the general bewilderment of life. Oh Americans. Oh my people. Then he swings back to Faison and his vitals turn to mush. She’s not just hot, she’s Maxim and Victoria’s Secret hot, she is world-class and he needs to get a plan together. A woman like her requires means—

“There’s my Texan!”

He looks up. March Hawey is coming at him, sidling down the row. He starts to rise but Hawey palms his shoulder and guides him back down. He sits next to Billy and props his feet on the railing, and Billy immediately conceives a lust for his cowboy boots, a pair of lustrous sea-green ostrich quills with toecaps of silver filigree.

“How you doin’?”

“Really well, sir. And you?”

“All right, except I wish our boys would get their butts in gear.”

Billy laughs. He’s only a little bit nervous, much less than he’d expect sitting next to a man who changed the course of history. Mr. Swift Boat. He wonders if it’s impolite to talk about that, not that he knows much about it one way or the other. Then there’s the question of why he’s even sitting here with Billy.

“Somebody said you’re from Stovall.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yall got some excellent dove hunting out that way. Some kinda weed yall got out there — gussweed? gullweed? Big old tall yellow thing with these long seed pods, all kind a birds on that, doves love that stuff. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Not really, sir.”

“You’re not a hunter?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, we had some great days out there. I’m telling you, man, we slayed ’em.”

Hawey asks if he can “borry” the binoculars. In short order he reveals a whole repertoire of endearing senior tics — nose-snuffling, cuff-shooting, soft glottal pops. He smells of talcum powder and clean starched cotton, and wears a diamond horseshoe ring on his right hand. His wispy gray hair flops across his forehead in boyish Huck Finn bangs.

“You got any money on the game?” He’s twiddling the focus back and forth.

“No, sir. Some of the guys do.”

“You don’t bet?”

“No, sir.”

Hawey cuts him a glance. “Smart man. We work too hard for our money just to throw it away.” He smiles when Billy asks what business he’s in. “Oh, buncha things,” he says, handing the binoculars back. “Energy’s our core business, production and pipeline, we’ve been doing that close to forty years. Do some real estate, a little on the hedge fund side, some arbitrage and whatnot.” He chuckles. “And every once in a while we go raiding, if we see something we like. You interested in business?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. After the Army. But not if it’s going to bore me to death.”

Hawey sits up with a yelp and whacks Billy’s knee. “Man, I sure hear that. Why do it if you aren’t having fun? In my experience the most successful people truly love what they do, and that’s what I tell young people when they ask my advice. If you wanna make money, go find something you enjoy and work like hell at it.”

“That sounds like a good philosophy,” Billy ventures.

“Well, it fits my personality. Luckily I found a line of work I like, and I’ve been fortunate to have some success at it. You know, in a way it’s like a game.” He pauses as the Cowboys go deep. The receiver stretches, snags the ball with his fingertips, then bobbles it out of bounds. “What it boils down to is predicting the future, that’s what business basically is. Seeing what’s coming and getting the jump on everybody else, timing your move just right. It’s like a puzzle with a thousand moving parts.”

Billy nods. This actually sounds interesting. “So how do you do it?” he asks bluntly, thinking, What the hell. “How do you get the jump on all those other guys out there trying to do the same thing?”

Hawey is chuckling again. “Well, fair question.” He sits back and ponders for a moment. “I guess I’d say, independent thinking. And inner peace.”

Billy smiles. He thinks Hawey might be putting him on.

“Inner peace — you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but overall it’s responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we’ve seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I’m not saying we don’t have problems, we’ve got a helluva lot of problems, but that’s where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. Now, look at this stadium, all this, the crowd, the game.” Hawey’s arm sweeps left to right, then he points at the sky and the Goodyear blimp dangling in the early winter gloom. “This is everything there is, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m not like that guy who goes around saying greed is good, but it can sure as heck be a force for good. Self-interest is a powerful motivator in human affairs, and to me that’s the beauty of the capitalist system, it makes a virtue out of an innate human flaw. It’s why you’re gonna live better than your parents, and your kids are gonna live better than you, and their kids better than them and so on, because thanks to our system we’re going to keep on finding more ways, easier and better ways, to solve the problems of living and accomplish so many things we never even dreamed of.”

Billy nods. America has never made so much sense to him as at this moment. It is an exceptional country, no doubt. As with the successful launch of a NASA space probe, he can take pleasure in the achievement, even feel some measure of participatory pride, all the while understanding that the mission has absolutely nothing to do with him.

“Now,” Hawey continues, “right now we’re going through a pretty rough patch. Two wars, the economy’s basically in the tank, the whole mood of the country’s down. But we’ll get through it. We shall overcome. Our system’s been proving its resiliency for over two hundred years, and you youngsters, yall have a lot to look forward to. I think it’s going to be an exciting time for you. If I could be your age — how old are you?”

“Nineteen, sir.”

Hawey has opened his mouth to speak, but he pulls up short. He looks at Billy as if puzzled, not profoundly so, just stumped for the moment.

“Nineteen. You sure act older.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Shoot, I feel like I’m talking to a twenty-six-year-old lawyer, just the way you handle yourself.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

Hawey turns to the game. It seems he’s lost his train of thought, but a moment later he’s coming back at Billy.

“Is it true they put you up for the Medal of Honor?”

“My CO did, yes sir.”

“What happened with that?”

“I don’t know. Higher tubed it, that’s all they told me.” Billy shrugs. Whatever bitterness he feels is mostly secondhand.

“You know, I was never tested that way. Was too young for World War Two, though I remember it well. Now, Korea…” Hawey clears his throat, lets the thought die a natural death. “You know things most of the rest of us will never know. The experiences you’ve had, you and your buddies…” Again he fails to finish the thought. Billy knows what they mean, these false starts, these snags of the psyche that stop a certain kind of Victory Tour conversation dead in its tracks. The old men struggle, and he can’t help them. There’s nothing he can say. He’s learned it’s best just to act like nothing’s going on.

“Well,” Hawey says with the forced good cheer of a man shaking off bad news, “I’m just proud to be able to spend this time with you. Nineteen years old, hell, I didn’t know my ace from my elbow when I was nineteen.” He wishes his grandsons were here so they could meet Billy and see what a fine role model etc., etc., the laudatory verbiage is all fine and good but Billy would rather be learning something useful and new, or how about a job offer, that would be nice. Come work for me! Let’s get rich! I’ll show you how it’s done! Hawey is still gassing about his grandsons when Faison flashes onto the Jumbotron, a Mount Rushmore — sized Faison leaning into the camera, smiling, tossing her head, shimmying those glorious pom-poms right in Billy’s face and he can’t help it, he sags in his seat and groans. In an instant Hawey sees what’s going on.

“Um-umph, now there’s a healthy girl.” He chuckles and taps Billy’s knee, acknowledging the things a young man needs to stay alive. “Goodness gracious, look out now. Norm’s got some show dogs, don’t he.”