Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

by Ben Fountain

  All the gear, all this stuff, depresses Billy further. Such tedium it involves; the players probably spend more time getting dressed than the most pampered models and actresses, and they show it, they are surly and closed off, thoroughly into their suiting-up ritual. They don’t want to be messed with, which Billy gets; it’s a mental thing, the mental feeding off the physical, getting their heads set to deal some serious hurt because aggression against one’s fellow man is not a casual thing. Dude, been there! Totally feeling it! He recognizes the process, even the hurt-music pounding from the lockers is the same, but starting a conversation along these lines would just seem like sucking up.

  Billy gets Kervan McClellan’s autograph because, well, he’s standing right there and it would seem rude not to. He knows it’s Kervan McClellan because his name and number are stenciled in jaunty script across the top of his locker. Billy moves on to the next player, Spellman Taylor, # 94. Tucker Rubel, # 55. DeMarcus Carey, # 61. The players are all business. They take the Sharpie and scrawl their names and most of them don’t even look up. A few manage to nod when Billy thanks them. Indurian Kashkari, # 81. Tommy Budznick, # 78. Then Billy comes to Ed Crisco, # 99, an enormous white guy standing perfectly still while a trainer winches his shoulder pads tight. Crisco holds out his arms and doesn’t speak, doesn’t blink, just stares straight ahead like a beast of burden submitting to the harness for yet another day.

  Billy opts not to bother Ed Crisco. Two pale, thin, completely hairless children are moving about the room collecting autographs, accompanied by their bravely smiling parents and a team representative for each family group. The kids’ skin gives off a bleached silver glow, the radiance of cirrus at high altitudes. Whatever they have, it must be bad; Billy can’t tell if they are boys or girls, so extreme is their condition.

  He continues down the line. Durrell Sisson, # 33. D’Antawn Jeffries, # 42. Octavian Spurgeon, # 8. Octavian speaks as he takes the ball.

  “What it do.”

  “Solid. Yourself?”

  Octavian nods. He is sitting in a chair in front of his locker, and save for his helmet he’s completely suited up for the game. He’s coiled, cool, broad through the shoulders and slim through the hips, with a long, tapering nose and high, almost delicate cheekbones. Elaborate tats crawl up his neck and twine around his arms, and a black do-rag is knotted at the nape of his neck. He scratches the pen across Billy’s ball and hands it back.

  “Thanks.”

  “No probl’h. Yo, hang ona second.”

  Billy turns back. For a second the Cowboy seems at a loss for words.

  “Like, you been in Iraq an’ all?”

  “Um, yes.”

  Again he seems to struggle for words. Billy is tempted to think the Cowboy is punch-drunk from years of taking blows to the head, but his eyes are quick and alert.

  “So whas it like?”

  “What’s it like? Well, it’s hot. Dry. Dirty. Boring as hell, a lot of the time.”

  Octavian speaks in a slushy murmur. “Butchoo, like, ona front line an’ all? You been in some battle?”

  “I’ve been in some battles, yes.”

  D’Antawn and Durrell step over. They are the same physical type as Octavian, lithe, dark, supremely controlled. A look passes among the players, but Billy can’t read it.

  “Huh, fah real doe. But like you ever cap somebody you know of? Like, fire yo’ piece and dey go down, you done that?”

  That. It doesn’t occur to Billy that he doesn’t have to answer.

  Yes, he says. The players glance at each other. Billy sees it is an intense moment for them.

  “So whas it like? You know, like what it feel like?”

  Billy swallows. The hard question. That’s where he bleeds, exactly. Someday he’ll have to build a church there, if he survives the war.

  “It doesn’t feel like anything. Not while it’s happening.”

  “Hunh. Yeah.” A few more players have drifted over. Billy realizes that the entire Cowboys starting secondary has gathered around. “So whatchoo carry?”

  “What do I carry? It depends. It depends on the mission and what my assignment is. Most of the time my weapon’s the M4, standard semiautomatic assault rifle. A few times I’ve had the M240, that’s a fully automatic, heavy-volume weapon, lays down nine hundred fifty rounds per minute. Then if you’re riding top on the Humvee you’re gonna be on the .50-cal.”

  “M4, what kind a round it take?”

  “Five-five-six mil.”

  “You carry a side?”

  “Beretta nine-millimeter.”

  “You ever use dat?”

  “Sure.”

  “Like, up close?”

  Billy nods.

  “They issue you knives?” asks Barry Joe Sauls, a white guy old enough to have lost most of his hair.

  “Ka-Bars,” Billy says. “But you can carry pretty much any blade you want. A lot of guys get their own knives online.”

  “What about AKs,” someone asks, “you carry those?”

  “AK’s an insurgent weapon, we aren’t issued those. Though plenty of guys’ve picked them up along the way.”

  “They bad?”

  “Bad enough. The AK fires a bigger round, so there’s more of a crush factor. You definitely don’t wanna take an AK round.”

  “Huh. Aiight.” Octavian glances at his teammates, chews his lip a moment. “So what it do, you know, yo’ M4. When you pop somebody.”

  Billy laughs, not that it’s funny. It’s not anything, in fact. He wonders if nothing’s an actual feeling, or just nothing.

  “Well, it fucks them up.”

  “Like, one pop? Stoppin’ power what I’m gettin’ at.”

  “Body shot, no. It’s a high-velocity round and usually passes right through. But they go down, yeah.”

  “But they ain’t dead.”

  “Maybe not with a body shot. That’s why we aim for the face.”

  The players suck in their breath. “Unh,” someone murmurs, as if biting into something juicy and sweet.

  “The 240,” says Sauls, “you said that’s fully automatic. What does it do?”

  “What does it do? Fuck, what can I say. The 240’s pure evil.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You hit somebody with the 240, it fucking takes them apart.”

  Before they can ask him anything else Billy says thanks good luck nice talking to you, and leaves. He is definitely done getting autographs, which more than ever seems like a dumb and pointless exercise. After some furtive casting about he spots Dime at the far end of the room, studying the giant greaseboard on which the team’s depth chart is displayed. “So if it’s not a democracy,” Dime is murmuring as Billy approaches from behind, “and it’s not communist, then what is it?”

  “What is what?”

  “Nothing. Enjoying yourself, Billy?”

  “I guess.” He sidles closer to Dime and lowers his voice. “Some of these guys are crazy, Sergeant. Not right in the head.”

  Dime laughs. “And we are?”

  Whatever. He notices Dime’s football is bare of autographs.

  “Sergeant, can we talk?”

  “Yes.” Dime is back to studying the depth chart.

  “It’s kind of a personal matter.”

  “I’m the best friend you’re ever going to have.”

  “Well, what happened is, well, I met a girl. Like, today. A little while ago. One of the cheerleaders, actually.”

  A flummery blat sprays off Dime’s lips. “Congratulations.”

  “Yeah, I mean, no, I mean we all did, I know. But this girl and I, Sergeant, we sort of connected.”

  “Billy, don’t be a moron.”

  “No, Sergeant, we did. Something happened.”

  Dime perks up. “She blow you?”

  “Well, no. But we made out.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Swear to God.”

  “Bullshit! When did this happen?”

  Billy briefly describes the encounter,
though for the sake of honor and decency he says nothing about Faison’s orgasm.

  “You bastard,” Dime says softly. “You aren’t lying, are you.”

  “No, Sergeant, I’m not.”

  “I can see that.” Dime starts laughing. “You are a motherfucker, Lynn. Though how the hell you talked her into—”

  “Actually I let her do most of the talking.”

  “Brilliant. Smart man. I think you’re gonna get laid a lot in your life, Billy.”

  “Thanks. But what I wanted to ask you . . . well, the reason I wanted to talk . . .”

  Dime eyes him patiently.

  “Well, I don’t wanna lose her, Sergeant. How do I keep from losing her?”

  “What? Jesus Christ, lose what, Billy, how long were you with her, ten minutes? You guys mugged down, great, excellent, I’m really happy for you, but I don’t think you’ve got anything to lose. She was being nice, all right? You’re a hero, she was doing something nice for the troops. And we’re on post as of twenty-two hundred tonight, so I don’t know when you think you’re gonna see her again. Tell you what, see if you can get her e-mail, maybe that way yall can e-fuck once we’re back in Iraq.”

  Billy feels sick. Of course Dime is right, it is absurd to hope for any kind of future with Faison, but then he thinks about how tenderly she cupped his cheek, how knowingly her hips absorbed his thrusts. Her wide-mouthed kisses. Her tearful eyes. Her bone-crushing climax. Not to be a shallow bastard, but how much realer does it get?

  One of the equipment managers notices them standing there and asks would they like a tour of the equipment room. We’d love it, Dime says. Ennis, the man says, holding out his hand. He is a wiry sixty-year-old with a starter paunch and the tumbleweed twang of the native Texan. “We sure are proud to have you boys with us today,” he says, leading them past the dispensary counter to a side door. “Everybody treating you right?”

  “Everyone’s been excellent.”

  “Glad to hear it. We sure try to take care of our special guests.” Inside the door they’re hit with a stiff blast of plastic and leather smells.

  “Whoa. How do you not get high in here?”

  “Listen, open up on a Tuesday morning when it’s been locked up for a day, man, you will get high.”

  The equipment room is the size and dimensions of a small airplane hangar, with row upon farther receding row of cabinets, shelves, scaffoldings for bins and crates, steam tables, work benches, stepladders on wheels, and every fixture from carpet to doorknobs coordinated in team colors of blue and silver-gray, a very narrow palette. “Now, you can’t field a world-class football team without a world-class equipment operation,” Ennis declaims, and Billy suspects they’re at the top of a well-honed tourist spiel. “Football is an equipment-centric sport, and when you’re talking about the four or five tons of materials we deal with here, inventory and organization are a must. You gotta have it to find it, right? And you gotta find it to use it, the best gear in the world won’t do you any good if it’s pulling down dust in a closet somewhere. And we’re talking over six hundred categories of items here.”

  “That sounds like a lot,” says Billy.

  “It is, young man, you should see our travel list. It takes a team of detail-oriented individuals to work an operation like this. Zero tolerance for error, that’s our standard.” They pause at the neatly racked jerseys in home and away colors. Ennis points out the spandex panels to ensure tight fit, the extra-long tails with spandex hems, the moisture-wicking qualities of the space-age fabric. Billy pulls out number 78 and holds it up by the hanger; they share a chuckle over its impossible size, enough fabric to clothe an average family of four. Then it’s on to the shoes, an entire section of wall shelved floor to ceiling with shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, and nothing but more shoes.

  “Wow,” says Dime. “Look at all the shoes.”

  “Impressive, hunh. And we’ll use ’em. We burn through close to three thousand pair a season, and that number goes up every year. Listen, at training camp? I’ve seen it so hot out there the shoes just fall apart, and these are top-quality product, not your Wal-Mart knockoffs.” Each player, Ennis continues, requires three kinds of Astroturf treads, one for dry, one for damp, and one for wet conditions, plus a molded-form shoe with fixed cleats for grass, plus another grass shoe with interchangeable cleats, four kinds of cleat styles for all different weathers. Then to the shoulder pads stacked on steam tables, stack upon stack and row upon row like bones in an Old World catacomb. Twelve styles, which is to say a style for each position, four sizes per style plus flak-jacket extensions plus infinite customizations possible. Now, your helmet. Most important piece of gear we have. The helmet is a world unto itself, a high-tech engineering marvel born of the latest in orthopedic and impact science. Outer shell made up of cutting-edge polymers, resins, and epoxies that can take a hit like this, WHAM, both soldiers jump back as Ennis slams the helmet to the floor with astounding violence. See, look here. Nothing. Impressive, hunh. Not quite your Kevlars, but then again my guys aren’t dodging bullets. Inside, just as important, you can build an individual-type matrix of jaw pads, foam inserts, and air bladders to ensure perfect fit and maximum protection. Here, air pumps to inflate the bladders, there’s your nipples right there along the edge of the shell. Even then we get concussions, lots of ’em. Those guys can hit. Here you’ve got your face masks, fifteen different styles, chin straps in six distinct configurations, mouth guards in a multiplicity of styles and colors. Quarterback helmets come equipped with wireless radio for instant coach-to-QB communication. Every week we strip off the helmet decals and put on new ones, clean the shells with SOS pads, polish them up with Future floor wax.

  Lotta work, you bet. Chewing gum, we provide five flavors for the guys, you’re looking at twenty twenty-five-hundred-count boxes right there. Velcro strips and tags here, to keep your gear snug and tight, you don’t wanna be giving the enemy any handles to grab. Hip, thigh, and knee pads sorted by style, size, and thickness. Tact gloves for receivers, padded gloves for linemen. Orthopedic insoles, all sizes. Baseball caps. Knit caps. Electric drills for changing out cleats. Talcum powder. Sunscreen. Smelling salts. Twenty-two different kinds of medical tapes. Gels, creams, ointments, antibacterials, and antifungals. Coolers. Cartons of powdered Gatorade. Whoa ho, fellas, there’s more. For cold-weather conditions such as we face today, skullcaps, thermal underwear, mittens, muffs, chemical hand warmers, cold-weather cream, thermal socks, heating units for the benches. Water-repellent thermal overcoats, specially designed to fit over shoulder pads. Rain ponchos, same design. We go through seven hundred towels per game, double that for wet or extra-warm conditions.

  “Where do you keep the steroids?” Dime asks.

  “Unh-unh, that’s a dirty word around here. Now, game balls. As the home team we’re responsible for providing thirty-six brand-new balls for the game, plus an additional twelve balls that get delivered directly from the manufacturer to the refs, which they’ll mark ‘K’ for exclusive use in the kicking game.” Farther along, practice jerseys and shorts here, sweatshirts and pants there. A quick look into the industrially scaled laundry room, then on to the coaches’ gear. Notebooks, clipboards, small and large greaseboards, Magic Markers, grease pens, headphones, bullhorns. A shoebox-sized bin filled with shiny silver whistles, another full of Casio stopwatches. Wireless communication and video in there, always locked down, for obvious reasons. When we’re on the road it takes two semis to haul all our gear, we’re talking nine, ten thousand pounds of equipment.

  By the end even Dime seems a little dazed. It is simply too much, these mind-numbing quantities of niche-specific goods and everything labeled, sorted, sized, collated, stowed, and stacked, a testament to the human genius for logistics and inventory control. Billy’s headache is worse, from breathing all the fumes, he guesses, and as they backtrack the length of the equipment room he feels a tightness in his chest, a stunting of breath as if his lungs have been short-sheeted somehow. Allergies, may
be; or maybe a heart attack? The thought arrives on the wings of a mental shrug; he’s too caught up in the mysteries of the equipment room to waste much time fretting over his health. How does it all come to be, that’s what he wants to know, not just the how but the why of all this stuff. Only in America, apparently. Only America could take such a product-intensive sport and grow it into the civic necessity it is today.

  He’s not sure what he’s just seen in here, but it seems to have made him sick.

  “You know,” Ennis shyly confides, “I did a couple years in the Army, back in the day. But pretty much ever-body did. We had a draft, you know.”

  “Vietnam?” Dime asks.

  “Just missed it. Got out in ’63 and damn glad I did. I knew guys who didn’t come back from there.”

  “Lotta those,” says Dime.

  “You ain’t kidding. I just want you fellas to know how much we appreciate the job you’re doing over there. If it watten for yall God knows what’d be going down here, I guess we’d all be praying to Allah and wearing towels on our heads.”

  “You got anything for a headache?” Billy asks. “Advil? Aleve?”

  “Tons of the stuff,” Ennis replies. “You hurtin’? Listen, son, I’d love to help you out, but I can’t, legal liability and all that. Every single item that goes through those windows”—he points to the dispensary counter—“gets recorded and tallied. You wouldn’t think it, but even just a couple of little pills could lose me my job.”

  “That’s okay,” Billy says. “I don’t want you to lose your job.”

  Ennis apologizes again. At the door to the locker room Dime asks him to autograph his ball. Ennis rears back. He’s chuckling but his eyes are wary.

  “Why you want that? I’m just an old equipment hand, nobody cares about my autograph.”