Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

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 where 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?