by Ben Fountain
“Does he watch that all day?” Billy asked. His mother and sisters turned to him with long-suffering eyes. Welcome to our world.
After breakfast Billy took his little nephew out to play. It was a mellow fall morning, the blue sky-dome stretched high and tight with that sweet winesap smell in the air, the honeyed, vaguely melancholy scent of vegetable ferment and illegal leaf burns. Billy figured they were good for ten, maybe fifteen minutes before he, Billy, was bored out of his mind, but half an hour later they were still at it. Based on his highly limited experience with small children, Billy had always regarded the pre-K set as creatures on the level of not-very-interesting pets, thus he was unprepared for the phenomenal variety of his little nephew’s play. Whatever came to hand, the kid devised some form of interaction with it. Flowers, pet and sniff. Dirt, dig. Cyclone fence, rattle and climb, grit links between teeth. Squirrels, harass with feebly launched sticks. “Why?” he kept asking in his sweetly belling voice, its tone as pure as marbles swirled around a crystal pail. Why him wun up the twee? Why him nest up theah? Why him gadder nuts? Why? Why? Why? And Billy answering every question to the best of his ability, as if anything less would disrespect the deep and maybe even divine force that drove his little nephew toward universal knowledge.
What to call it—the spark of God? Survival instinct? The souped-up computer of an apex brain evolved from eons in the R&D of natural selection? You could practically see the neurons firing in the kid’s skull. His body was all spring and torque, a bundle of fast-twitch muscles that exuded faint floral whiffs of ripe pear. So much perfection in such a compact little person—Billy had to tackle him from time to time, wrestle him squealing to the ground just to get that little rascal in his hands, just your basic adorable thirty-month-old with big blue eyes clear as chlorine pools and Huggies poking out of his stretchy-waist jeans. So is this what they meant by the sanctity of life? A soft groan escaped Billy when he thought about that, the war revealed in this fresh and gruesome light. Oh. Ugh. Divine spark, image of God, suffer the little children and all that—there’s real power when words attach to actual things. Made him want to sit right down and weep, as powerful as that. He got it, yes he did, and when he came home for good he’d have to meditate on this, but for now it was best to compartmentalize, as they said, or even better not to mentalize at all.
Patty emerged from the house, shading her eyes against the sun. She took a seat on a lawn chair at the edge of the patio.
“You guys having fun?”
“You bet.” Billy was rolling Brian around as if breading a fish filet, coating his sweater with crunchy brown leaves. “He’s an amazing little guy.”
Patty snuffled a laugh around the cigarette she was lighting. Former hell-raiser, high school dropout, teenage bride; in her midtwenties she seemed to have slowed down enough to start thinking about it all.
“He sure doesn’t lack for energy,” Billy called.
“Briny’s got two speeds, fast and shut off.” Her lips produced a tight funnel of smoke.
“How’s Pete?”
“Fine,” she said, a bit wearily it seemed. Her husband, Pete, worked the oil rigs around Amarillo. “Still crazy.”
“Is that good?”
She just smiled and looked away. In Billy’s memory she was always so lithe and bold; now she was packing saddlebags on her hips and thighs, spare tubes on her upper arms. With the extra weight had come an almost palpable air of apology.
“When do you go back?”
“Saturday.”
“You ready?”
“Well.” Billy gave Brian a last roll, and stood. “I guess I’d just as soon stay here.”
Patty laughed. “That sounds like an honest answer.” Billy walked over and sat on the low patio wall near her chair. Brian remained where Billy left him, lying flat on his back, staring up at the sky. Patty cut her brother a shy look. “How does it feel to be famous?”
Billy shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“All right then, sort of famous. A lot more famous than the rest of us’ll ever be.” She had a taste of her cigarette, tapped off the ash. “You know, you sort of surprised a lot of people around here. I don’t think this was what they were expecting when they put you up in front of that judge.”
“I know I didn’t have the best reputation around here. But I wasn’t the worst fuckup in my grade.”
She laughed.
“Or maybe it’s just . . .”
“What.”
“I just hated school so much, hated everything about it. I’m starting to think that was what was fucked up, a lot more than me? Keeping us locked up all day, treating us like children, making us learn a lot of shit about nothing. I think it made me sort of crazy.”
Patty chuckled, a low gunning of the sinuses. “Well, I guess you showed them. What you did over there—”
Billy hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and looked away.
“—that was something. And we’re all really proud of you, your family. But I guess you already know that.”
Billy tipped his head toward the house. Out here the roar of the TV was an underwater growl. “Not him.”
“No, him too. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
“He’s an asshole,” Billy said, lowering his voice for Brian’s sake.
“That too,” Patty acknowledged pleasantly. “You notice I was never much interested in hanging around the house? Mainly I just feel sorry for him now. But then I don’t have to live with him, do I.” She shrugged, examined her cigarette. “You heard the latest? About the house?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s kind of fucked.” She did that gunning chuckle again, a nervous habit. Billy wished she’d stop. Out in the yard Brian was sweeping his arms and legs back and forth, making leaf angels.
“Mom wants to take a loan out on the house. She says there’s a hundred, hundred ten equity in it, she wants to use that to pay down the medical bills. Kathryn looked into it and she’s like, no way, you can file for bankruptcy and wipe out most of the medical bills, plus you get to keep the house. But if she does the equity loan and then can’t make the payments, she and dad lose the house. And even with the money from the equity loan, they’re still gonna owe a ton of medical bills.”
A ton. Define ton. Billy was afraid to ask. Random neighborhood sounds came their way—a dog barking, a car door slamming somewhere, a stack of two-by-fours clattering to the ground.
“What do you think she should do?”
“No-brainer, dude. File for bankruptcy and keep the house.”
“So why won’t she?”
“Because she’s worried what everybody else might think. And Kat and me are like, who gives a flyer what people think, you can’t gamble the house.” Patty crushed her cigarette against the patio wall. “You know what Idis McArthur told her after church one day?”
“No.”
“She said the reason our family’s had so many problems is because we didn’t pray hard enough.”
“Well, isn’t that special.”
“It’s a sick little town,” Patty agreed.
“Hey”—Kathryn poked her head out the door—“anybody want a beer?”
They did, though until that moment they hadn’t realized. For the rest of the morning his mother and sisters kept asking him what he wanted to do. See a movie? Drive around? Go out to eat? But this was enough, just chilling on a warm Indian-summer day, a sweet abeyance in the golden tone of the light and nothing to do but sit in lawn chairs or sprawl on blankets and let the morning lazily take its course. Two years ago Billy couldn’t have done this, the very notion of family time would have sent him running down the street tearing off his clothes. I am a changed man, Billy solemnly told himself. The person you see before you is not the person you were. Maybe it’s age, he thought, leaning back on his blanket, watching the sun do its stately pinwheel through the trees. Or maybe not so much a function of calendar days as the way Iraq aged you in dog years, and how with t
hat kind of time under your belt you could bide here in the company of your mother and sisters and somewhat hyper little nephew and be, if not exactly calm, then still. Taking it slow and letting it be what it would be. Perhaps this was what came of being a soldier in Iraq, and the farther perspective war brought to things.
He had a beer now and then, nothing major. Ray stayed inside with the TV and that was fine with everybody, though whenever he wanted something, which was often, he’d wheel to the storm door and thump the glass until Denise or Patty or Kathryn rose to serve his needs. Worse than an infant, Kathryn observed, and when Patty pointed out no diapers were involved, Kathryn said, Don’t give him any ideas. A few of the neighbors got word of Billy’s visit and dropped by with cakes and casseroles, as if there’d been a death in the family. Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins from church. Opal George from across the street. The Kruegers. We are so proud. We always knew. So brave, so blessed, so honored. Edwin! I yelled, come quick! Billy Lynn’s on TV and he’s taking out a whole mess of al-Qaedas! Nice people but they did go on, and so fierce about the war! They were transformed at such moments, talking about war—their eyes bugged out, their necks bulged, their voices grew husky with bloodlust. Billy wondered about them then, the piratical appetites in these good Christian folk, or maybe this was just their way of being polite, of showing how much they appreciated him. So he smiled his modest hero’s smile and waited for them to leave so he and his sisters could go back to drinking beer. After her third of the morning—she was keeping pace with Billy—Kathryn pranced out of the house with his Purple Heart pinned over her left breast and the Silver Star pinned over her right, the medals flopping around like stripper’s tassels. Billy and Patty howled, but their mother was not amused. “What? Oh, these?” Kathryn answered in a ditzy coo when Denise asked just what she thought she was doing. “Why, Mother, I’m merely displaying the family jewels.” Denise pronounced the whole thing indecent and ordered Kathryn to return the medals to Billy’s room, but she was still sporting the hardware when Mr. Whaley stopped by, and it was worth virtually any amount of money to see this eminence’s eyes bug out at the sight of Kathryn, not just the medals riding high on her proud perky breasts but the whole tanned, taut, leggy length of her.
Eh-hem. Ah ha. Ha ha. He was Denise’s boss so there was some awkwardness about imbibing in the A.M., but Whalers was a sport and pretended not to notice. Balding, liver-spotted, about forty pounds overweight, with a wardrobe that ran to checked blazers and stay-pressed slacks, he was what passed for money in Stovall, the founder of the moderately prosperous oilfield-services company where Denise had worked as office manager for fifteen years. “Miz Lynn’s the real boss around here,” he liked to tell visitors, laughing affectionately in her direction. “I just try to stay out of the way and let her run the place.” They served him a Diet Coke and moved the chairs into the shade just off the patio. Denise and Patty sat on either side of their guest, while Billy took a perch on the patio wall. Kathryn lolled like a lioness on a nearby beach towel. Brian was somewhere in the house, ostensibly in the care of his chain-smoking grandfather.
“Your mother tells me you’re home just for today,” said Mr. Whaley.
“That’s correct, sir.” It was a challenge, maintaining eye contact while spuming your beer-breath off to the side.
“No rest for the weary, eh.” Mr. Whaley chuckled. “Where’ve they sent you so far?”
Billy rattled off the cities. Washington, Richmond, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Miami, and practically every one, as Sergeant Dime pointed out, happened to lie in an electoral swing state. Though Billy didn’t say this.
Mr. Whaley took a dainty sip of Coke. “What’s your reception been like?”
“People’ve been really nice everywhere we go.”
“I’m not surprised. Listen, the vast majority of Americans strongly support this war.” Whenever Whaley’s gaze happened to land on Kathryn, he practically fainted with the effort of tearing his eyes away. “Nobody wants to go to war, goodness sakes, but people know sometimes it’s necessary. This terror thing, I think the only way to deal with that type of agenda is to go straight to the source and rip it out by the roots. Because that crowd’s not going away by themselves, am I right?”
“They’re extremely committed, a lot of them,” Billy replied. “They don’t back down.”
“There you go. Either we fight them over there or we fight them over here, that’s the way most Americans see it.”
Denise and Patty nodded with bovine agreeableness. Kathryn, meanwhile, had sat up straight and pulled her knees to her chest; she was following the conversation with real attention, looking from Billy to Mr. Whaley as if their talk contained a code she was trying to break. Heroes, Whaley said. Iraq. Freedoms. Gaining freedoms to make our own freedoms more secure. Then he asked about the movie deal, sagely nodding as Billy explained their progress to date.
“You’ll want a lawyer to take a look before you sign anything.”
“Yes sir.”
“I can fix you up with my firm in Fort Worth, if you like.”
“That would be great. I’d sure appreciate that, sir.”
“Son, it’s the least I can do. You’ve made us all proud, not just your family and friends but all of us here, the entire community. You’ve given this whole town a tremendous boost.”
Billy summoned his most modest chuckle. “I don’t know about that, sir.”
“Listen, everybody’s so damn proud of you, pardon my French, if word got out you were home today there’d be cars lined up from here to the airstrip. Oh yes!” he cried in a playfully ferocious voice. “Now, we didn’t know soon enough to get it together this time, but next time you’re home we want to have a parade in your honor. I already spoke with Mayor Bond and he’s on board, he talked with the city council and they’re on board. We want Stovall to honor you in the way you deserve.”
“Thank you, sir. I do appreciate that.”
“No, son, thank you. What you’ve done just says so much about who we are—”
“He has to go back,” Kathryn broke in.
Everyone turned to her.
“To Iraq,” she added, as if this wasn’t entirely clear.
“Yes,” said Mr. Whaley in mournful tones, “your mother told me that.”
“So they’re gonna get another shot at him.”
“Kathryn!” Denise scolded.
“Well it’s true! If it’s supposed to be this great Victory Tour then why can’t he just stay home?”
Mr. Whaley’s voice was gentle. “It’s fine young men like your brother who are going to lead us to victory.”
“Not if they’re dead.”
“Kathryn!” Denise cried again. Billy felt like an innocent bystander in all this. It wasn’t his place to say one way or the other.
“We will pray every day for Billy’s safe return,” said Mr. Whaley, soothing as the doctor with the best bedside manner. “Just as we pray for all our troops, we want them all to come home safely.”
“Oh God, he’s going to pray,” Kathryn snarled to herself, then she screamed, a guttural urrrrrrggggghhhhh like an in-sink disposal backing up. “I’m losing my mind out here,” she cried, and like a sword being drawn from its sheath she rose in one swift motion and stalked toward the house. The rest of the group sat quietly for several moments, waiting for the area turbulence to subside.
“That young lady’s been through a lot,” Mr. Whaley ventured. Denise started to apologize, but he waved her off. “No, no, she’s had to deal with so much in her young life. When’s her next surgery?”
“February,” said Denise, “then one more after that. The doctors say that ought to be the last.”
“She’s made a remarkable recovery, that’s for sure. The past year hasn’t been easy on the Lynns, has it, and with Billy doing all he’s doing overseas, I know that makes it a special sacrifice. And Billy, if it’ll ease your min
d any, I want you to know you’ve got a standing offer to come work for me when you’re done with your military service. All you’ve got to do is say the word.”
Now there was a depressing thought, although Billy could see how it might come to that, assuming best-case scenario he made it home with all his limbs and faculties intact. He’d go to work for Whalers hauling oil-field pipe and blowout protectors all over the wind-scrappled barrens of Central Texas, busting his ass for slightly more than minimum wage and shitty benefits.
“Thank you, sir. I may be taking you up on that.”
“Well, I just want you to know you’ve got options here. I’d be honored to have you on our team.”
Billy had been trying to avoid a certain thought, a realization born of his recent immersion in the swirl of limos, luxury hotels, fawning VIPs; he knew intuitively the thought would bring him down and so it did, mushrooming into awareness despite all best efforts. Mr. Whaley was small-time. He wasn’t rich, he wasn’t particularly successful or smart, he even exuded a sad sort of desperate shabbiness. Mr. Whaley will return to the forefront of Billy’s mind on Thanksgiving Day as he hobs and nobs at the Cowboys game with some of Texas’s wealthiest citizens. The Mr. Whaleys of the world are peons to them, just as Billy is a peon in the world of Mr. Whaley, which in the grand scheme of things means that he, Billy, is somewhere on the level of a one-celled protozoan in a vast river flowing into the untold depths of the sea. He’s been having many such existential spasms lately, random seizures of futility and pointlessness that make him wonder why it matters how he lives his life. Why not wild out, go off on a rape-and-pillage binge as opposed to abiding by the moral code? So far he’s sticking to the code, but he wonders if he does just because it’s easier, requires less in the way of energy and balls. As if the bravest thing he ever did—bravest plus truest to himself—was the ecstatic destruction of pussy boy’s Saab? As if his deed on the banks of the Al-Ansakar Canal was a digression from the main business of his life.
Mr. Whaley left. Kathryn did not appear for lunch. After the meal, Ray and Brian went down for naps, Denise and Patty went to the store, and Billy had a relaxing jack-off session in the friendly confines of his room. Then he repaired to the backyard and laid himself down on a blanket in the sun. He dozed. Dreams came and went like fish drifting through the wheelhouse of an old shipwreck. He stirred, took off his shirt so that the sun would toast his chest acne, and dozed again. He dreamed in paisleys now, big atom-bomb swirls of biomorphic colors that presently resolved into a parade. His parade. He was in it yet watching from slightly above, and he was happy, safe, he’d made it back home. No worries! It was a sunny winter day and everyone was bundled up except for the strippers riding by on floats, blazingly naked but for G-strings and long evening gloves. A high school band stomped by, trombones and trumpets flashing in the sun, then there was Shroom far back in the crowd, his pale onion of a head sticking out of the general mass. His eyes met Billy’s and he laughed, raised a big Bud Light cup in salute. Yo, Shroom! Shroom! Get your ass up here! He kept yelling at Shroom to join him on the float, but Shroom seemed happy where he was, content to be just another face in the crowd. Shroom. Fuck. Get up here, man. The dream contained awareness that Shroom was dead so there was the huge anxiety of an opportunity missed, the parade moving on and Billy’s float being carried with it, this ridiculous paper barge coasting down the river of life and the banks lined with all these thousands of cheering folks who—dear Jesus! terrifying thought!—were they all as dead as Shroom?
