Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

by Ben Fountain

  “Everybody knows Texans make the best fighters,” Norm continues, and he’s smiling, it’s not exactly a joke but more a teasing form of Texas boosterism. “Audie Murphy, the heroes of the Alamo, you’re part of a famous tradition now, did you know that?”

  “I never thought of it that way, sir.” Billy must have said the right thing because a warm swell of laughter rises from the crowd, yes, people are watching, their faces rim the bubble of media lights with a fish-eye arcuation and ovoid bulge. Adrenaline sings in his head like a power saw. Norm is talking. Norm is making an entire little speech. He stands an inch or so taller than Billy, a fit, stout-necked sixty-five-year-old with peach-tinted hair and a trapezoidal head, wide at the bottom, then narrowing through the temples to the ironed-down plateau of hair on top. His eyes are a ghostly cold-fission blue, but it’s the proving ground of his face that awes and fascinates, the famously nipped, tucked, tweaked, jacked, exfoliated mug that for years has been a staple of state and local news, Norm’s very public saga of cosmetic self-improvement. The result thus far is compelling and garish, like a sales lot for reconditioned carnival rides. His mouth seems winched a couple of screws too tight. The vaguely Asiatic folds at the corners of his eyes speak of seductive and even feminine sensitivities, as if modeled on a sexy illustration of the Pocahontas myth. His complexion is the ruddled, well-scrubbed pink of an old ketchup stain. For all that work the sum effect is neither good nor bad, just expensive, and Billy will later reflect that you could get pretty much the same result by plastering your face with thousand-dollar bills.

  “You have given America back its pride,” Norm is saying, information that takes the form of tiny bubbles effervescing in Billy’s brain. America? Really? The whole damn place? But people are clapping and Billy lacks the nerve to argue, then he’s being introduced to Mrs. Norm, a well-maintained lady of a certain age with a poufed-out cloud of dark hair. She’s pretty. Her dark violet eyes don’t quite focus. She smiles but it’s purely social, gives nothing of herself, and Billy decides she’s either medicated or ruthlessly conserving energy. If it’s a snob thing he’s just fine with that, for what woman is more entitled to the rights and privileges of flaming bitchdom than the First Lady of the Dallas Cowboys? In fact her bitchiness makes him a little bit hard—Dude, he’s thinking, DOWN, she’s old enough to be your mom—but now the rest of the clan is coming at him, Norm’s children, the husbands and wives of the children, then the teeming gaggle of grandkids, every one of them blessed with the Oglesby quadrilateral head, and once they’ve had their turn the receiving line collapses into a genteel rave. People are pumped; proximity to Bravo jazzes them full of fizzing good spirits, even these, the high-profile and the well-to-do, they go a little out of their heads around Bravo. Is it because they smell blood? Strangers make free with Billy’s young body, kneading his arms and shoulders, clutching his wrists, clapping a manly hand to his back. They gush. They swear allegiance and undying gratitude. A regal older lady asks how old he is, “You look so young!” she cries, and at his answer she tosses her head and turns away in disbelief. Little boys in coats and ties ask for his autograph. Someone hands him a Coke in a plastic cup. Before the Victory Tour he hated big parties with all their nervous chitchat and stressful shifting around, but it’s not so bad when people actually want to talk to you.

  “You were at the White House,” one man queries him.

  “That’s right.”

  “You met George and Laura?” the man’s wife says hopefully.

  “Well, we met the president and Cheney.”

  “That must have been such a thrill!”

  “It was,” Billy says agreeably.

  “What did yall talk about?”

  Billy laughs. “I don’t remember!” And it’s true, he doesn’t. There was a certain amount of joking around, good-natured guy stuff. Lots of smiles, lots of stage-managed posing for pictures. At some point Billy realized he was expecting the president to act, well, embarrassed? Ashamed? For how fucked up everything obviously was. But the commander in chief seemed well pleased with the state of things.

  “You know,” the woman says, leaning close like she’s divulging privileged information, “we sort of claim George and Laura as our own. They’re moving back to Dallas when their time in Washington is up.”

  “Ah.”

  “We were at the White House a couple of weeks ago,” the man says, “they had a state dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla. Listen, those royals are just the finest people, no pretensions whatsoever. You can talk to Prince Charles about anything.”

  Billy nods. There’s a silence. Just in time he asks, “What did you talk about?”

  “Hunting,” the man answers. “He’s a bird man like me. Grouse and pheasant, mostly.”

  Several tanned, glamorous couples have engaged Major Mac in intense conversation. The major nods, frowns, purses his lips—he does an expert mime of undivided attention. Dime and Albert have been absorbed into Norm’s entourage, and Billy finds it reassuring, this proof that Dime’s stuff is so strong that it flies even at these lofty altitudes. Americans, he says to himself, gazing around the room. We are all Americans here—it’s like suddenly becoming aware of your tongue inside your mouth, an issue where there was none before. But they are different, these Americans. They are the ballers. They dress well, they practice the most advanced hygienes, they are conversant in the world of complex investments and fairly hum with the pleasures of good living—gourmet meals, fine wines, skill at games and sports, a working knowledge of the capitals of Europe. If they aren’t quite as flawlessly handsome as models or movie actors, they certainly possess the vitality and style of, say, the people in a Viagra advertisement. Special time with Bravo is just one of the multitude of pleasures available to them, and thinking about it makes Billy somewhat bitter. It’s not that he’s jealous so much as profoundly terrified. Dread of returning to Iraq equals the direst poverty, and that’s how he feels right now, poor, like a shabby homeless kid suddenly thrust into the company of millionaires. Mortal fear is the ghetto of the human soul, to be free of it something like the psychic equivalent of inheriting a hundred million dollars. This is what he truly envies of these people, the luxury of terror as a talking point, and at this moment he feels so sorry for himself that he could break right down and cry.

  I’m a good soldier, he tells himself, aren’t I a good soldier? So what does it mean when a good soldier feels this bad?

  Don’t be scared, Shroom said. Because you’re going to be scared. So when you start to get scared, don’t be scared. Billy has thought about this a lot, not just the Zen teaser of it but what exactly does it mean to be scared out of your mind. Shroom, again: Fear is the mother of all emotion. Before love, hate, spite, grief, rage, and all the rest, there was fear, and fear gave birth to them all, and as every combat soldier knows there are as many incarnations and species of fear as the Eskimo language has words for snow. Spend any amount of time in the realms of deadly force and you will witness certain of its fraught and terrible forms. Billy has seen men shrieking with the burden of it, others can’t stop cursing, still others lose their powers of speech altogether. Loss of sphincter or bladder control, classic. Giggling, weeping, trembling, numbing out, classic. One day he saw an officer roll under his Humvee during a rocket attack, then flatly refuse to come out when it was over. Or Captain Tripp, a pretty good man in the clutch, but when they’re really getting whacked his brow flaps up and down like a loose tarp in a high wind. His soldiers might feel embarrassed for him, but no one actually thinks the worse of him for it, for this is pure motor reflex, the body rebels. Certain combat-stress reactions are coded in the genes just as surely as cowlicks or flat feet, while for a golden few fear seems not to register at all. Sergeant Dime, for example, an awesome soldier who Billy has seen walking around calmly eating Skittles while mortars rained down mere meters away. Or a man will be fearless one day and freak the next, as fickle and spooky as that, as pointless, as dumb. Works on your mind, all
that. The randomness. He gets so tired of living with the daily beat-down of it, not just the normal animal fear of pain and death but the uniquely human fear of fear itself like a CD stuck on skip-repeat, an ever-narrowing self-referential loop that may well be a form of madness. Thus all our other emotions evolved as coping mechanisms for the purpose of possibly keeping us sane? And so you start to sense the humanity even in feelings of hate. Sometimes your body feels dead with weariness of it, other times it’s like a migraine you think you can reason with, you bend your mind to the pain, analyze it, break it down into ions and atoms, go deeper and deeper into the theory of it until the pain dissolves in a flatus of logic, and yet after all that your head still hurts.

  So these are Billy’s thoughts while he makes small talk about the war. He tries to keep it low-key, but people steer the conversation toward drama and passion. They just assume if you’re a Bravo you’re here to talk about the war, because, well, if Barry Bonds were here they’d talk about baseball. Don’t you think . . . Wouldn’t you agree . . . You have to admit . . . Here at home the war is a problem to be solved with correct thinking and proper resource allocation, while the drama and passion arise from the terrorists’ goal of taking over the world. Ire way of life. Ire values. Ire Christian values. Billy can feel his head emptying out.

  “Excuse me,” a Cowboys executive interrupts, “our soldier’s looking a little dry there. How about a refill?”

  Billy rattles the ice in his cup. “Thank you, sir. Another Coke would be nice.”

  “Come on. Excuse us, folks.” The executive rudders him by the elbow toward the bar, a take-charge guy. It is apparently the Cowboys’ corporate culture that all executives must resemble sales managers at a Ford dealership, and this one—he introduces himself, Bill Jones—fits the mold. Plain, balding, full in the face, with a second-trimester heft to his middle, yet he radiates a vibe that Billy feels at once, a good working tool of controlled aggression. A rubbery impatience seems to flow through all his movements.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Mr. Jones laughs. “You looked like you could use a change of scenery back there.”

  Billy smiles, shrugs. “They’re nice people.”

  Mr. Jones laughs again, rather more harshly this time. “Yes indeed, they certainly are. And they’re thrilled to meet you fellas. You’re an impressive group.”

  “Thank you.” Billy notices a bulge in the vicinity of Mr. Jones’s armpit. He’s packing. Billy resists a brief but powerful urge to smash Mr. Jones’s esophagus into the back of his neck and disarm him, just for safety’s sake.

  “You won’t find many dissenters in this group. They’re strong for the war, strong for America. And not at all shy about speaking their minds.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Listen, I’m as political as anybody, but I’d rather talk about football any day than politics. How about you?”

  “Sir, I’d rather talk about just about anything than politics.”

  Mr. Jones gives a quick hard laugh. Billy seems to be saying all the right things, but he won’t let himself relax.

  “You’re the one from Texas?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You a Cowboys fan?”

  “All my life.” Billy puts some oomph in it, just for flattery’s sake.

  “That’s what I like to hear. We’ll try to give you a win today. Harold,” he says to the black bartender, “how about an ice-cold Coke for our young friend. Anything in it?” He turns a raffish eye to Billy.

  “A little splash of Jack Daniel’s would be nice. Though technically I’m not supposed to.”

  “No worries, we’ll keep it on the down-low. Anything else I can get for you?”

  Billy wonders why he’s going to so much trouble for him. “Well, to be honest, sir, I’ve got kind of a headache. Some Advil or something would be nice.”

  “Hang on.” Mr. Jones pulls out his cell and taps faster than one would believe from such blunt fingers, which boast not one but two Super Bowl rings. Billy tries not to gawk at these bulbous crustaceans of the jeweler’s art. He accepts his drink and turns to face the room. From deep within the crowd Mango shoots him a look of stunned hilarity, then the sightline quickly shuts and that seems like part of the gag. The crowd is thickest around Norm, a bee swarm of hovering bodies, and Billy decides this is a learning opportunity, a chance to see a master schmoozer up close. Norm’s skill at working a room is legendary. Charisma, charm, command presence, he brings all these to bear in the smile and personal word he has for each and every guest, he is the indisputable pivot point and center of the room and Billy can see the skill with which he manages things, and yet, and yet . . . He is so on, is Norm. He is working so hard. He has all the right moves but betrays a salesman’s stress in the doing, or that of a mediocre actor who hits his points but seems cramped by a too-tight collar, a twist in his underwear. Norm is confident, absolutely, he is the king of self-esteem, but this is the confidence of self-help tapes and motivational mantras, confidence learned as one learns a foreign language, and so the accent lingers in his body language, a faint arthritic creak in every smile and gesture.

  Painful to watch, and lacking in essential dignity—is this why he’s always getting dissed? Tales abound of weird encounters—Norm mooned en masse on South Beach in Miami, mooned again from the infield at Churchill Downs, roughed up by a gang of frisky young hedge-fund managers in the men’s room of “21” in New York City. And yet he is the owner, so it must be working for him on some level. Billy runs his gaze over the rest of the Oglesby clan and they are working every bit as hard as Norm, they are keys jangling on the same live wire, all spark and flash and brassy salesmanship, and Billy tries to imagine living at such a pitch, always on, always playing to the wider stage, channeling all your best energies into the public realm.

  Jesus Christ, it looks like a hell of a lot of work. More than sympathy Billy feels respect for them, for the discipline it must take to get up every day and carry the entire Cowboys nation on their backs.

  Mr. Jones clicks off and turns to Billy. “Some Aleve’s coming down for you right now.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Billy tries not to look at the holster bulge. “And thank you for all this.” He waves his cup at the crowd. “This is really nice.”

  “Well, we appreciate you fine young men being with us today. It’s an honor to be your host.”

  “You know what I’d like to know,” Billy blurts, suddenly bold or careless with that fresh hit of bourbon in his gut, “is how you do it? I mean, business. All this. How do you make it happen?” He falters, racks his brain for intelligent-sounding business vocabulary. “I mean, okay, like where do you start, where does the money come from for, well, the stadium? The land and construction and everything, then paying the players, the coaches, I mean we’re talking about some serious cash outlay here, am I right?”

  Mr. Jones laughs, not unkindly. “Pro football’s a capital-intensive business, that’s true,” he says in a patient, teaching-a-retard voice. “The key is leverage relative to cash flow, whether you can generate enough of a revenue stream to service your debt and still cover your current obligations. So it’s a fair question. In a way it’s the question. You’ve definitely put your finger on it.”

  Billy nods as if he knew all along. “Uh huh, but just from a tactical standpoint”—whoa, nice—“say when Mr. Oglesby decided he wanted to buy the Cowboys, what did he do? I mean, I know he didn’t just whip out his credit card and say, Hm, I think I’ll buy the Cowboys today.”

  “No”—Mr. Jones smiles—“it wasn’t quite like that. But let me tell you, leverage is a beautiful thing. In the right hands it can literally move mountains, and Norman Oglesby, well, let’s just say my boss is a genius when it comes to structuring deals. I’ve never known anybody with his feel for numbers, and he’s the best negotiator I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched him take on a roomful of New York investment bankers and come away with the deal he wanted, and l
et me tell you, those are some big boys. They’re used to getting what they want, but not on that day.”

  Holy shit, Billy thinks, we’re talking business. He is having an actual adult business conversation with a high-ranking Cowboys executive, an extraordinary Moment in his life even though he knows he’s barely or not even hanging on and Mr. Jones is totally humoring him. But still. He’s here. They’re talking. “Debt ratio,” Mr. Jones is saying,

  Mr. Jones’s cell phone chirps. He checks the screen, flashes a smile at Billy, and steps away. Billy gets a refresher shot for his Coke and stands off to the side of the bar, thinking. Life in the Army has been a crash course in the scale of the world, which is such that he finds himself in a constant state of wonder as to how things come to be. Stadiums, for example. Airports. The interstate highway system. Wars. He wants to know how is it paid for, where do the billions come from? He imagines a shadowy, math-based parallel world that exists not just beside but amid the physical world, a transparent interlay of Matrix-style numbers through which flesh-and-blood humans move like fish through kelp. This is where the money lives, an integer-based realm of code and logic, geometric modules of cause and effect. The realm of markets, contracts, transactions, elegant vectors of fiber-optic agency whereby mind-boggling sums of mysterious wealth shoot around the world on beams of light. It seems the airiest thing there is and yet the realest, but how you enter that world he has no idea except by passage through that other foreign country called college, and that ain’t happening. He will not return to the classroom, ever, the mere thought inflames a whole host of piss-offs and associated grudges that go all the way back to kindergarten, not to mention the sheer soul-sucking boredom of those years. If there is real knowledge to be had in the Texas public schools he never found it, and only lately has he started to feel the loss, the huge criminal act of his state-sanctioned ignorance as he struggles to understand the wider world. How it works, who gains, who loses, who decides. It is not a casual thing, this knowledge. In a way it might be everything. A young man needs to know where he stands in the world, not just as a matter of basic human dignity but as determinants in the ways and means of survival, and what you might hope to gain by application of honest effort—