Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” he says in hushed, reverent tones. “I just want you to know, I’ve been a huge Cowboys fan my entire life.”

“Well it’s my honor to meet you, Specialist Sykes,” Norm rips right back. “I’ve been a huge fan of the United States Army for my entire life!”

The crowd gives up a big round of applause. Hooah, Norm! They are in a large bare room deep inside the stadium’s bowels, a chilly space with concrete walls and cheap all-weather carpet that wicks the cold up through the floor in a palpable draft. Bravo has been brought here for an intimate meet-and-greet with the Cowboys brass and selected guests, perhaps two hundred people have gathered with many family units on display, as is surely right and fitting on this Thanksgiving Day. It’s a class crowd, the men dressed in coats and ties, the women spiff in tailored suits with matching shoes and purses, though some of the hipper, edgier set make a winter fashion statement with skintight leathers and long fur coats. They could be the congregation of the richest church in town, Our Anorexic Lady of the Upscale Honky Bling; the only people of color here are the waitstaff and several gregarious former players, fan favorites from yesteryear who invested wisely and kept their noses clean. Billy and Mango appreciate that best behavior is called for at this top-shelf event, and thanks to Hector’s primo herb they are close to losing it. It is next to impossible not to bust up laughing and if they do no telling where it will end. An elderly priest with a lisp almost sets them off, then a lady whose hair resembles an exploded poodle. They are in that perilous state of stoned paranoia where surely everyone sees they’ve been toking up, which is terrifying and just the funniest thing ever.

“ Be cool, ” they hiss at each other, giggling like deranged asthmatics. Think of something horrible — rectal bleeding, sucking chest wounds, tapeworms dangling from your nose.

“Okay, how do I look?”

“Fucked up.”

They’re whispering out the sides of their mouths.

“How about now?”

“Still fucked up.”

Billy boots Mango with a behind-the-back crossover kick, Mango sends a quick jab to Billy’s ribs, and they furtively cuff each other until Dime gives them a look. It has the feel of a high-speed spinout, the whhheeee-hai! of serious G’s plus awareness that it’s probably going to turn out badly, but when Norm & Co. approach for the big introduction it is time to square up and get straight for real.

Norm. It is Himself in the flesh. So much of life consists of inertia and drift, the brief savory or sour of any particular day tends to blur into the next so that it all becomes one big flavorless wad. There are so few moments you can point to and say, Yes, that was historic, greatness happened that day, and evidently this is supposed to be one of those moments because photographers and video cams follow Norm’s every move. He glows, which isn’t to say he’s a handsome man but rather shimmers with high-wattage celebrity, and therein lies the problem, the brain struggles to match the media version to the actual man who looks taller than the preformed mental image, or maybe broader, older, pinker, younger, the two versions miscongrue in some crucial sense which makes it all a little unreal, and anyway Billy is freaking. He has met the president himself, but if nerves are any measure this is a bigger deal, a greater challenge to his fluid definition of self. Meeting famous people is a touchy business. Will he be enhanced by the coming encounter? Affirmed? Diminished? Yesterday he asked Dime, What do I say to him? Dime snorted. You don’t have to say shit, Billy, Norm’ll do all the talking. Just say yes sir and no sir and laugh when he makes a funny, that’s all you have to do.

Norm works his way down the receiving line. By the time he reaches Billy, the young soldier is feeling faint. “Specialist Lynn,” he says, pausing to give Billy an appraising up and down, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” and Billy can feel himself levitating, borne upward on a froth of white-hot video lights and stinging camera flashes, a kind of fulminating photo-op meringue, and being stoned gives it all a swoopy, slow-motion feel. Norm grips his hand, yow, a real alpha-dog crunch — dude, just hike up your leg and spray the room! Pride, he says, but like a tape played too slow the word warps and fattens in Billy’s ear, ppprrr rRRIIiii ddde. Then courage, coo oOUURRr aaage. Service, sssserr rRRRrvvvi ccce. Ssssac ccrRRRIiii fffice. Hoo ooONNnn orrrr. Deeet errRRRminaaaAA Ation.

“You’re a Texas boy,” Norm says, and there’s a chewiness to his words, a faint thickening of the palate like he’s got those braces that go behind your teeth. “From Stovall, correct? Out there in the oil patch?” He takes note of the medals on Billy’s chest and asserts that he’s especially proud of Billy “as a fellow Texan,” but not surprised, not at all surprised, it’s only natural that a native-born Texan would distinguish himself in military service.

“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.