Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Someone, somebody’s people —Hanks’s? Grazer’s? Swank’s? — said it didn’t matter shit, or actually what they said was nickels out of a monkey’s butt, that the Bravo story is true, that truth is a nonfactor in the pricing of the deal. Which offended the soldiers, but Albert told them to shake it off. “They’re assholes,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Except the assholes always seem to be the ones with the money. At the moment Albert is standing off to the side, briary hair clawing the wind as he takes a call. Equidistant on Bravo’s other side, Norm is having his own cell session.

“Maybe they’re talking to each other,” says A-bort.

Dime just shakes his head and hunkers down against the cold. He’s slumping. He’s bored. His energy is low. Major Mac has wandered over to the sideline, where he stands gazing up at the goalpost as if signs and wonders are being revealed.

“Tole my moms I’ma buy her a car,” Lodis says. “Hunred thousand, Momma, go on up to the lot and pick it out! She pick it out and now she sittin’ at home, wonderin’ where the money at.”

“Look,” Crack says to the squad, “Norm’s loaded, right? Pretty much a billionaire, right? So all he’s gotta do to get the movie going is basically write a check.”

“Write us a check,” says Day. “Our story, yo.”

“True that. And like as soon as fucking possible.”

“Don’ forget Wesley Snipes gonna play me!”

“Your momma gonna play you.”

“Fuck that, she’s not ugly enough. Urkel plays him.”

“Richard Simmons. Dark him up.”

“No, that black midget dude, the wrestler. Master Blaster.”

“So why won’t he write the check?” Crack whines, appealing to Dime. “Like, just write it, bitch, don’t you wanna support the troops? How do you get a guy like that to put it out there?”

Well, Billy thinks but doesn’t say, we could walk over there, pick him up, turn him upside down, and just shake him until all the money falls out. Dime is unresponsive through all of this. It’s a classic Dime funk, not unheard-of when he’s bored or his blood sugar dips, but he’s funking right at the moment Billy needs his counsel most, namely, what to do with the miracle that’s just blown up his life. Thoughts of Faison crank his brain the way he’s heard crack does, a power-ball straight to the neural pleasure zones, and while it’s not the full-system freak-out of the hard-core fiend he is definitely feeling things he cannot control. Dude, she was into you. Fuck that, she GOT OFF on you . It occurs to him to wonder was it even real. It’s too perfect, just exactly the sort of delusion a desperate soldier would dream up, your normal, frustrated ADD grunt whose inner life is mostly overcooked sex fantasies anyway. But then self-doubt has always been there for Billy, self-doubt and its cousin the berating voice, these faithful companions have always been on call to help him through the critical junctures of his life, and yet, and yet… his lower back hurts like hell. Her scent lingers on his hands and chest. Strands of reddish-gold hair glint on his sleeves like signals from a distant mountain range. So if he’s not delusional and not on crack, what is he supposed to do? To make it real, that is. To make it stick. He needs to consult with his sergeant as soon as possible, because time is of the essence.

“Boys, things are looking up,” says Sykes. Half a dozen cheerleaders, none of them Faison, are heading this way, plus Josh with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He walks up to Bravo, unslings the duffel, and dumps a bunch of footballs at their feet.

“What’s this?”

“These are your balls,” says Josh.

Our balls.

“Yeah, they want you guys holding footballs when we do the shoot.”

A couple of Bravos grunt, but nobody says anything. They eye the footballs, nudge them with their toes, gaze off into the distance as if none of this has anything to do with them. Billy waits for an opening to speak with Dime alone. The cheerleaders sheep together nearby, shoulders hunched, legs pressed together for warmth, pom-poms clutched to their chests like giant muffs. Bravo shoots longing looks that way, but no one quite musters the courage to walk over there.

“Yo, Josh, any word on halftime?”

“Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

“You’re gonna look out for us, right, Josh? Don’t make us do anything lame.”

“Or hard.”

“Or hard, right. We don’t wanna look like a bunch of morons on TV.”

“No worries, guys,” Josh assures them. “I think it’s going to be just fine.”

An especially chill gust shuts everyone up for a moment. “Why we gotta wait out here in the cole ?” Lodis wails.

“The network said their guys would be here,” says Josh.

“Well they ain’t!”

“Hang loose. I’m sure they’ll be here in a minute.”

“Put Norm on they ass.”

Everyone turns and looks at Norm.

“Who he talking to?” Day asks. Josh furrows his brow, as if the answer will come with sufficient concentration, or the pretense thereof.

“I’m not sure, actually.”

“Whyn’t you go find out, yo.”

Josh staggers a little. “I can’t do that!”

Day gives him a sour, pitying look. “Whatchoo sayin’, you can’t walk?”

“Well of course I can walk.”

“Then cruise on by, thas all I’m sayin’. He talkin’ about makin’ our movie or what, all we wanna know. Think you can handle that?”

“I’m not sure that’s exactly ethical.”

Day snorts. He’s not above using his cool as a bullying tool when it comes to finicky white-boy sensibilities.

“Look, you see the man standin’ right there. He in public, right? This confidential, he go inside, slip off someplace private.”

“Uh, maybe. But I’m not sure what it would accomplish anyway.”

“Come on, man, intel! Knowledge power, every motherfucker know that! Just walk on by like you got business over there, ain’t no thing. Your job be looking out for us, right? It’s cool, just walking by. He ain’t markin’ you nohow.”

The other Bravos join in, mainly for something to do; they cajole and browbeat so relentlessly that at last Josh consents. With actorly nonchalance he saunters past Norm, loops around the entourage, greets the cheerleaders, then swings back toward Norm, in whose vicinity he casually kneels to tie his shoe. The Bravos follow every move. A hundred thousand bucks. By the time he returns they’re climbing out of their skins.

“He’s getting the injury report.”

Awww fuck. They’re dying out here. Billy scoops up a football and flips it at Dime. “Hit me!” he barks, and without waiting to see if Dime actually catches the ball Billy sprints off with an agonal aaagggghhhh, legs churning through all the arterial muck of the day’s heavy intake of food and alcohol. Three, four steps and his legs start to get it, his arms gear into the rhythm of the stride. He jukes through random people standing along the sideline, breaks left across the end zone and looks back. The ball — shit! — is right on him, tightly spinning like a drill bit’s business end and in that split second he sees everything, speed-loft-trim computes to ETA while his eye travels the ball’s trajectory back to the source, the big bang of Dime’s arm and the suddenly animate genius of his snarling face, like a Viking leaping ashore with ax in hand.

He’s unloaded a real bullet, too. The ball sings like silk tearing along a seam and Billy knows there will be no mercy in it, but he does just like the pros, eyes it all the way in and folds his stomach around the blow, a smothering oooooph —