Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

by Ben Fountain

  “Awesome,” they say, “outstanding,” “an honor to meet you” and so forth, their words sloshing around Billy’s brain like soft ice cubes

  Billy resumes the aisle seat. Sleet pounds down around them like a spray of fine-grained fertilizer pellets. “No deal?” Mango asks, and Billy shakes his head.

  “So what’s that about?”

  Lodis and A-bort are leaning in, they want the story too.

  “Norm’s just a cheap bastard, I guess. What can I say.”

  “We thought Day was shitting us when he told us the deal. Fifty-five hundred—”

  “—shit’s cold,” A-bort breaks in, “all the coin he’s got running through his pockets, and that’s the best he can do for us? Dude’s got millions.”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s got millions,” Mango points out. “He’s careful with his money.”

  “I be careful with my money, I had some,” says Lodis, his splotch of lip quivering like a big juicy booger, or a nib of entrails dangling from a gut wound. Josh comes down the row calling their names and handing out manila packets. Inside his packet each soldier finds an assortment of Dallas Cowboys swag: headbands, wristbands, a combination key chain/bottle opener, a set of decals, the cheerleader calendar for the upcoming year, a glossy eight-by-ten photo of the Bravo shaking hands with Norm, signed and personalized by the great man himself, along with several eight-by-tens of the Bravo posing with his trio of cheerleaders in the post-press-conference scrum, signed and personalized by each of the girls. The Bravos sort of shrug once they’ve gone through their packets. Outright derision is beneath them. Billy’s cell buzzes and it’s a text from Faison.

  Meet after game?

  Yes, he answers, love blanketing his heart like a slab of melting cheddar. Where u be? he adds, then waits, phone in hand, while the ranch fantasy does a number on his head. Maybe, he thinks, pondering the possibilities. She was into him. She got off on him. He and Faison shacked up at the ranch doesn’t seem much more extreme than anything else that’s happened lately. He scrolls through his call list to the unknown number, intending to see what kind of vibe might come of staring at it, but an incoming call beats him to it. He clicks on.

  “Billy.”

  “Hey, Albert.”

  “Where are you guys?”

  “Back at our seats.”

  “Is Dime there?”

  “Yeah, he’s here.”

  “He won’t pick up. Tell him to pick up for me.”

  Billy yells down the row and says Albert wants to talk. Dime shakes his head.

  “He says not right now.” For a moment they’re silent. “So did the general . . .”

  “You’re good, Billy. He’s not going to make you guys do anything.”

  “What’d Norm say?”

  Albert hesitates. “Well, it’s kind of tough on him. Like he said, he’s addicted to winning.” Albert allows himself the softest of snarky laughs. “It’s okay. He’s one of those people who could probably use some humility in his life.”

  “He’s pissed,” Billy concludes.

  “Just a little.”

  “Are you?”

  “Pissed? No, Billy, I can honestly say I’m not. I love you guys way too much for that.”

  “Oh. Well. Thanks.”

  Albert chuckles. “Oh, well, you’re welcome.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Well, I’m in the main suite right now, Norm’s back there in his hideaway. Maybe he’ll come out with another offer at some point. We’ll just have to see.”

  “Okay. Uh, Albert, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, Billy.”

  “When you ducked out of Vietnam, I mean, you know, when you got your deferment and everything, how did it feel?”

  Albert gives a little yip, the way a coyote might as it dodges a sprung trap. “How did it feel?”

  “I mean, like, was it hard. Did it feel like you were doing the right thing. How do you feel about it now, I guess is what I’m asking.”

  “Well, it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, Billy. I won’t say I’m hugely proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. It was a very fucked-up time. A lot of us really struggled about what we had to do.”

  “You think it was more fucked up then than it is now?”

  “Huh. Well. Good question.” Albert ponders. “You could probably make a pretty good argument that for the past forty years it never stopped being fucked up. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking, I guess. About why people do the things they do.”

  “Billy, you are a philosopher.”

  “Hell no, I’m just a grunt.”

  Albert laughs. “How about both. All right, guy, hang loose. And tell Dime to call me.”

  Billy says he will and clicks off. He dry-swallows two more Advil; the first three made no appreciable dent in his armor-plated headache. Mango asks for some, and Billy ends up passing the bottle down the row, never to return. A steady flow of fans is heading up the stairs for the exits, while a smaller contingent makes its way down, looking to squat in the premium seats for as long as the game lasts. A group of five or six guys piles into row 6, friends of the young marrieds it seems; they arrive with much laughing and razzing and immediately pull out pint bottles of Wild Turkey. “Bro!” one of them caws at Lodis. “Get some stitches in them dizzles!” They have the clean-cut, mainstream, Anglo looks that Billy imagines must be soothing to bosses and clients, suitable for careers in banking, business, law, wherever it is the money lives. The guy sitting in front of Crack turns all the way around.

  “Dude, what happened to your eye?”

  “It’s always like this,” Crack answers. “But, dude, what happened to your face?”

  Brrraaaaahhhh, even the guy’s own friends send up a howl. “Hey, these are the Bravos,” one of the young husbands says. “Don’t mess with these guys.”

  “The whos?” cries Crack’s new friend. “The what-hoes? Oh yeah yeah yeah I heard of you guys, yeah, goddamn, you’re famous. Hey, tell me something, what do you think about that whole don’t-ask-don’t-tell deal?”

  “Stop it, Travis!” one of the young wives scolds. “You’re being a jerk.”

  “I am not either being a jerk, I really wanna know! This guy’s a soldier, I’m just curious what he thinks about gays in the military.”

  “I think more of them than gays not in the military,” Crack says. “At least they’ve got the balls to join.”

  The rowdies send up another howl. “I hear you, dude, hear you,” Travis says, laughing. “Serving your country and all that, very cool and everything. But I don’t know, it just seems kind of wack to me, say you’re in your foxhole at night and some queer comes on to you, what’re you supposed to do? Guys blowing each other in foxholes, that just doesn’t sound right to me. Like maybe it’s got something to do with why we’re getting our butts kicked over there, you know?”

  “Tell you what,” Crack says, “why don’t you join up and find out. You can get in a foxhole with me and see what happens.”

  Travis smiles. “You’d like that, dude?”

  Billy wishes Crack would just smack the fool and be done with it, but his fellow Bravo merely stares the guy down. Perhaps one melee is enough for this Thanksgiving Day. Billy checks his cell. Nothing from Faison. Yet. He indulges in another episode of the ranch fantasy, but now while he and Faison are having sex ten times a day he’s also thinking about Bravo back at FOB Viper, getting slammed every time they go outside the wire. So he puts that inside the fantasy, how much he’d miss his fellow Bravos, he would mourn them even as they live and breathe. They are his boys, his brothers. Bravos would die for one another. They are the truest friends he will ever have, and he’d expire from grief and guilt at not being there with them.

  So it seems the war is fucked and his fantasy no less so. He sends another text to Faison. Wd like to see u and say g-by after game. She responds almost immediately, Yes!, but when he asks w
here and when, nothing. Dime makes his way down the row and kneels in the aisle by Billy’s seat.

  “What’d Albert say?”

  “Well, he’s not mad at us.”

  “No, Billy, what’d he say about Ruthven.”

  “Oh. He said it’s cool. Ruthven did just what you said he’d do.”

  Dime smiles. “We need to send that man some flowers!”

  “Albert said Norm might come back with a better offer—”

  “Fuck that, we’re not doing a deal with that guy, not for any amount of money. Not for a million bucks apiece.”

  Billy and Mango look at each other. “A million bucks—” Mango attempts, but Dime cuts him off.

  “Look at it this way, say we do the deal and Norm makes his big-shit Bravo movie, gets everybody all pumped for the war again. What happens then? I think what happens is they’ll keep stop-lossing our ass until we’re dead or too damn old to carry a pack. Well, fuck that. I got no use for a deal like that.”

  Dime turns and bounds up the aisle. The Bears score to make it 31–7, and the game has officially become a rout. One of the rowdies in row 6 drops his bottle, and the sound of shattering glass sends his buddies into hysterics. “Assholes,” Mango mutters, and Billy agrees. They’re too drunk, too loud, too pleased with themselves—-more people who could use some humility in their lives?

  Billy’s cell chirps, signaling a new text. He checks the screen.

  “Faison?” Mango asks hopefully.

  “Sister.” Billy waits for Mango to turn away before he opens it.

  CALL HIM.

  They r ready.

  They r waiting 4 u.

  Oh Jesus. Oh Shroom. What would Shroom do? What would he do if he was Billy, that is the better question, one that turns on the most intimate, pressing issues of soul, self-definition, one’s ultimate purpose in life. The two-minute-warning gun fires, which means, great, he has about 120 seconds to figure out what he’s doing here on planet Earth. Oh Shroom, Shroom, the Mighty Shroom of Doom who foretold his own death on the battlefield, how would he counsel Billy here at the Victory Tour’s end? He needs Shroom to make sense of the situation, to calm the neural scramble of Billy’s brain, but now the Jumbotron is playing the American Heroes graphic and the rowdies in row 6 send up a big whoop and holler, clapping, stomping their feet, the young marrieds try to shush their friends but there is just no stopping the fun.

  “Brav-ohhhh!”

  “Hay-yull yeah!”

  “Woooo-hooooo!”

  “Army of one, dudes!”

  “See?” says Travis, twisting around to grin at Crack. “We’re all kick-ass patriots here, we totally support the troops.”

  “Hell yeah,” yells one of his buddies.

  “Hell yeah,” Travis woofs. “Listen, don’t-ask-don’t-tell, I’m totally down with that. I don’t give a shit if you guys are gay or bi or tranny or screw lesbian monkeys for all I care, you’re studs in my book. You guys are real American heroes.”

  He raises his arm for a high-five, but Crack just stares, lets him dangle. “No?” Travis flashes a smile. “No? Whatever, it’s cool. I still support the troops.” He laughs and turns away, reaching under his seat for his bottle. When he sits up, Crack leans forward and methodically, almost tenderly it seems, locks his arms around Travis’s neck and proceeds to choke him out. All soldiers learn this in basic training, how a forearm applied to the carotid artery cuts off blood flow to the brain, rendering your victim unconscious in seconds. Travis flops a bit, but it’s not much of a struggle. He grabs at Crack’s arms, kicks at the seat in front of him, then Crack squeezes a little harder and Travis goes limp. Several of the rowdies start to rise, but Crack warns them off with a grunt.

  “What’s he doing?” hisses one of the young wives. “Tell him to stop it. Somebody please tell him to stop.”

  But Crack just smiles. “I could break this asshole’s neck,” he announces, and shifts his hold, applies some experimental torque. Travis gives a spastic kick; his friends can only watch. They seem to understand he’s beyond their help.

  “Crack,” says Day, “enough. Turn the motherfucker loose.”

  Crack giggles. “I’m just having a little fun.” There’s a masturbatory aspect in the way he twists Travis one way and then the other, squeezing, relenting, squeezing, relenting, probing the physiological point of no return. Travis’s face is dark red, shading to purple. A full-on carotid choke results in death in a matter of minutes.

  “Damn, Crack,” Mango murmurs. “Don’t kill the son of a bitch.”

  “Stop him,” pleads one of the wives. “Say something to him.”

  Billy thinks he might be sick to his stomach, but part of him wants Crack to go ahead and do it, just to show the entire world how fucked the situation is. But finally Crack relents; it’s as if he loses interest, the way he turns Travis loose with a casual slap to the head, and Travis sags into his seat like a broken crash dummy. In short order the rowdies decide it’s time to leave. They brace up their woozy friend and file out of the row, careful to avoid eye contact with the Bravos. “You guys are crazy,” one of them mutters as he sidles past, and Sykes shouts Hell yes we’re out of our motherfucking minds!, and adds a burbling Valium laugh that in fact sounds pretty batty.

  Dime returns in time to watch the rowdies hurry up the aisle. He rubs his chin and regards his suspiciously silent squad.

  “Something I need to know about?”

  The Bravos manage a weak brah. “Mofo kept mouthing off,” Day says. “So Crack give him some, uh, training guidance.”

  Crack shrugs, forces up a smile. He seems chastened and at the same time deeply satisfied. “I didn’t hurt him, Sergeant,” he says in all modesty. “Just messed with his head a little.”

  Down on the field, the final two minutes of play have resumed. Dime looks at his watch, looks at the scoreboard, then has a moment’s communion with the storming sky. “Gentlemen,” he says, turning back to Bravo, “I think our work here is done. Let’s blow.”

  The squad sends up a lazy or possibly sarcastic cheer. Josh says they’re supposed to meet their limo at the west-side limo lane, and he will show them the way. For the final time Bravo trudges up the aisle steps, Billy fighting the tug of all that horrible stadium space. As soon as they reach the concourse he pulls out his cell and texts Faison—

  Can u meet west side limo lane? Look for white hummer limo

  Bravo falls into line and follows Josh through the concourse. Sykes and Lodis have managed to hang on to their autographed footballs all this time, while the rest of the Bravos have only their swag packets, precious mainly for the cheerleader calendar and those trophy-cleavage photos. It’s going to be a long, lonesome eleven months in Iraq, long and lonesome being best-case scenario. On this final walk through the stadium no one stops to thank the Bravos for their service, to harry them for autographs or cell phone snaps. Cowboys nation is in full retreat; cold, wet, tired, whipped, they are bent on getting home as fast as possible, the hell with geostrategy and defending freedoms.

  Oh my people. When they come in sight of the gate Josh leads them over to the side of the concourse, out of the traffic flow. “We’re supposed to wait here,” he tells Bravo. “Some people are coming down to see you off.”

  Who?

  Josh laughs. “I don’t know!”

  The Bravos look at one another. Whatever. Presently there’s a surge of bodies into the already packed concourse, and from this Bravo infers that the game has ended. The fans move in a toilsome mass toward the exit, and in their numbers and necessarily shambling step they seem to take on allegorical weight, as if their gloom, their air of bedraggled wretchedness, is meant to conjure up the ghost of every tribe that ever bestirred itself to leave one place and journey toward another in hopes of a life of lesser evil. Billy thinks, in other words, that they look like refugees. His cell buzzes, and he turns to the wall before daring to look. It is a two-word text from Faison.

  Coming. Wait.

 
His eyes close, and his head tips forward and clunks the wall, his silent thank-you released as a pent-up breath. Then he’s nervous. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He’s got no training for this, no drill, nothing to fall back on. He can visualize himself and Faison at the ranch, but the transition, the getting there, his mind won’t grant him that. Maybe if he actually rams his head against the wall? Suddenly Albert and Mr. Jones appear, popping out of the crowd in a cartoon sort of spurt.

  “Hah,” Dime screeches in his Will Ferrell voice. “Like a dog returning to his vomit, here he is!”

  Albert grins, he seems perfectly cool with the greeting, though he’s careful to keep some distance between himself and Dime. Albert, Albert, Albert, the Bravos woof, making a kind of song.

  “What about our deal?” Sykes cries.

  “Guys, I tried. Believe me, I tried like hell, and I’m going to keep on trying, you can count on that. If there was ever a story that’s made for the movies, it’s you guys’, and I’m fully committed to making that happen.”

  “But dude—”

  “I know, I know, it’s a huge disappointment, I really wanted to nail this thing while you were here. What can I say? We gave it our best shot, but it’s not over, hell no. I’m gonna keep working this deal till it happens, I promise you that.”

  Monklike murmurings rise from the Bravos, thankyouthankyouthankyou. A car is waiting to take Albert to the airport; he’s flying back to L.A. tonight. Even though his option extends for an entire two years, this feels like the end of something, with all the nostalgia and melancholy natural to endings. Albert says he’ll walk out to their limo with them; evidently Mr. Jones is coming too, perhaps to ensure Bravo departs without further insult to the Cowboys brand. They join the weary masses moving toward the exit. A kind of drone, a bottom-register vibraphonic hum emanates from somewhere up ahead, from the threshold, Billy realizes as they draw near. It is the ongoing moan of successions of fans as they step onto the plaza, a windswept barrens of icy concrete with nothing between here and the Arctic Circle but thousands of miles of recumbent plains. The Bravos curse, lower their heads, jam hands in pockets. The sleet gouges micro-divots in their faces and necks. Josh calls the soldiers to him and does a head count, then leads them across the plaza toward the limo lane, limos lined into the murk as far as the eye can see, and, oh Lord, just among these dozen in plain sight Billy counts four in the snow-white Hummer style.