Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

A limo would come for him at 0700, courtesy of some well-to-do patriot who either wished to remain anonymous or whose name Billy forgot. A limo. For him. Whatever. He slept poorly and woke hungover, his mouth fouled with a reechy copper scum out of all proportion to the wine he’d consumed. He knew this taste, knew what it meant — fear, loathing, and bad karma beyond the wire — but he still had enough sass for one last jack-off in the friendly confines, a comical momentousness attending the act as if this farewell shot was the historical equal of Troy Aikman’s final game at Texas Stadium. Folks, he’s at the forty! The thirty! He may go all the way! The twenty! The ten! The five! And… touchdown! Thus refreshed, he showered and shaved, got his kit together, made his bed, and placed his duffel by the front door. Then there was nothing left to do but face the family.

“Ya gonna miss me?” he crowed cheerfully as he entered the kitchen, but the women just stared at him, stricken. They were miserable. So was he, but if he showed it they would be more miserable yet. The kitchen windows seemed to have been laminated during the night, nothing in them but smooth unadulterated gray. Gusts of wind thumped the house like a bellows; hard little pellets of rain popped and rattled across the roof. The season’s first winter storm was pushing across the plains, the same front that would deliver snow and freezing rain by Thanksgiving Day.

“Where do you go next?” Patty asked. Billy’s sisters drank coffee and watched him eat. Denise was upright and mobile, a one-woman strike force for small kitchen tasks.

“Fort Riley, they’ve got a rally scheduled there. Then Ardmore. For, you know.” He glanced at their mother. “Then Dallas. I think.”

“The big game!” Kathryn mooed. “You gonna meet Beyoncé?”

“You know as much as me.”

“You will, dude, for sure. So don’t blow it. This’ll probably be your only chance to sweep her off her feet.”

“No doubt.”

“So, listen, start by telling her how nice she looks.”

“Kathryn, it’s Beyoncé. She doesn’t need me to tell her she’s hot.”

“Dude, women can never get enough of that stuff! What you wanna do is come at her like, ‘Bey, yo, you crushin’ it, girl, lookin’ all funky-fresh and fly, your hair so jump and everything, what say we hang after the game?’ Patty, wouldn’t it be so cool to have Beyoncé for a sister-in-law?”

“Very cool.”

“Guys, come on. I’m a grunt. She’s not going to have the time of day for me.”

“Bull hockey! A handsome young stud like yourself, a hero ? She’s gonna be all over your junk!”

“Isn’t she dating that Jay-Z guy?” Patty asked.

Denise began to cry. She was wiping down counters and started weeping, the same way she might hum any old tune that happened into her head. Kathryn clicked her tongue as if angry, vexed. Patty’s eyes pinked up but she held it together. Just get through it, Billy told himself. Once he was in the car he’d be okay, but there was a lump in his throat the size of a charcoal briquette. This was worse than when he shipped out the first time, which surprised him; it should be easier the second time around. But it seemed like he had more to lose now, though what that was he couldn’t say. So there was that, whatever it was, plus this time he knew the nature of the gig he was going back to.

“Now, where is Ray,” Denise said vaguely, as if talking to herself might help. “Maybe one of us should…”

Kathryn and Patty glanced at each other, then looked to Billy. He shrugged. Ray’s presence did not seem essential to their happiness this morning. As if in answer to the logical follow-up, Brian padded into the kitchen in his footie pajamas, his cheeks plump and rosy with the fullness of sleep. He climbed into his mother’s lap and snuggled close, clinging like a baby koala bear in the bush.

You want some juice?

No.

Cereal?

No.

You just want to sit with Mommy for a while.

Yes.

His presence had the effect of settling everyone down. He stared and stared at Billy, not so much out of curiosity, it seemed, as in witness, as if channeling some ancient gravity. Billy’s beret in particular seemed to hold his attention. As long as he didn’t start with the whys they would be okay, Billy thought. Denise poured more coffee for him. Kathryn cleared away his plate. The clock on the microwave was two minutes faster than the stove clock, which was in turn a minute faster than the wall clock, and every time you looked at one you had to look at the others in a never-ending quest for congruity. It was awful, watching those clocks. One by one they sequenced to 7:00 and beyond, then Kathryn was hissing “shit” under her breath. From the kitchen they could look through the dining room and out the front window, where a black Lincoln Town Car was pulling into the driveway.

A small melee erupted. Kathryn took off down the hall for the front door. Denise turned to the sink and just bawled. Somehow Brian ended up in Billy’s arms, so he was right there in the middle when Billy hugged his weeping mother, Billy purposely blurring his senses as he leaned in because it was just too much, the crying, the bleakness, the whole tragic vibe, but at least Brian was there to muffle some of the shock. “Bye, Mom,” Billy whispered, then he was moving down the hall with Brian in his arms, Patty following so close she kept clipping his heels. Out in the driveway Kathryn was helping the driver load Billy’s gear in the trunk.

“Take care of yourself,” Patty said on the porch. She was a teary, phlegmy spongeball of hiccups and sobs. “Don’t do anything crazy. Just get your butt home.”

Billy took a last sniff of his nephew’s head, rich with notes of spring grass and warm homemade bread, and handed him back to Patty. A scumbled three-way hug ensued.

“You tell him,” Billy murmured to his sister in the clutch, “if I’m not around you tell him, I said don’t ever join the Army.”

Kathryn was waiting at the car. She was crying, and laughing at herself for crying, outdone by the sheer unmitigated suck of it all. Later he would recall the scrabbling action in her hug, as if she were sliding down a cliff face and clawing for purchase. She shut the door behind him and stepped back, then tossed off a windmilling cartoon salute. Billy could not have been more spent if he’d just run a marathon. It felt like organ failure, like his face was melting, but the car was backing down the driveway and the worst was over. Kathryn waved from the yard as the Town Car pulled away. Patty was waving from the porch with Brian slung to her hip, and behind them, thinned out by the glare of the storm door, Ray was watching from his chair. Billy cursed to himself and leaned back in his seat. The Town Car gathered speed. So his father made an appearance, what was he supposed to do with that?

“You want some music?” the driver asked. He was a heavyset black man, pushing sixty. A thick lip of flesh spilled over his suit collar.

Billy said no thanks. They went several blocks before the driver spoke again. “Hard on the families,” he said in a lilting preacher’s voice. “But something wrong if it weren’t, I guess.” He glanced at Billy in the rearview. “Sure you don’t want some music?”

Billy said he was sure.

BILLY IS THINKING IF you took every person he’s ever known in his life and added up the sum total of their wealth, this presumably grand number would still pale in comparison to the stupendous net worth of Norman Oglesby, or “Norm” as he’s known to the media, friends, colleagues, legions of Cowboys fans, and the even mightier legions of Cowboys haters who for whatever reason — his smug, kiss-my-ass arrogance, say, or his flaunting of the whole America’s Team shtick, or his willingness to whore out the Cowboys brand to everything from toasters to tulip bulbs — despise the man’s guts even as they’re forced to admit his genius for turning serious bucks. Norm. The Normster. Nahm. He figures prominently in the fantasy lives of fans everywhere, the antagonist in endless imagined arguments and the medium for all manner of secret wish fulfillment. For days Sykes has been rehearsing his big moment with fuck Norm this and fuck Norm that, gon’ give my boy Norm boocoo shit for dealing Tresbnoski, like, hey, what the fuck, Norm! You trade your all-world linebacker for steroids on a stick? But when it’s Sykes’s turn to meet the Cowboys owner, he rolls over and does a shameless bitch flop.