by Ben Fountain
Billy always thanks people for these sentiments, though he has no idea what they mean. Right now he’s thinking maybe if he pukes he’ll feel better. He tells Mango he’s going for a piss, and Mango glances around to see if Dime’s watching, then murmurs, “Wanna get some beers?”
Hell yeah.
They take the steps two at a time. A few people call out greetings from the stands, and Billy waves but won’t look up. He’s working hard. He’s climbing for his life, in fact, fighting the pull of all that huge hollow empty stadium space, which is trying to suck him backward like an undertow. In the past two weeks he’s found himself unnerved by immensities—water towers, skyscrapers, suspension bridges and the like. Just driving by the Washington Monument made him weak in the knees, the way that structure drew a high-pitched keening from all the soulless sky around it. So Billy keeps his head down and concentrates on moving forward, and once they reach the concourse he feels better. They find the head—he pees, forgoes the puke—then buy beers at Papa John’s. Technically they aren’t supposed to drink while in uniform, but what’s the Army gonna do, send us to Iraq? The Bravos do, however, ask for their beers in Coca-Cola cups, but before taking a drink Billy hands his to Mango and rips off fifty push-ups right there on the concourse. He can’t stand how soft he’s gotten. For the past two weeks it’s been all planes and cars and hotel rooms, no time for working out, no way to stay sharp. The pussification of Bravo, that’s what the past two weeks have been, so now they’ll return to the war all stale and crusty with a corresponding falloff of effectiveness.
His head is pounding when he stands, but the rest of him feels better. “Push-ups, beer chaser,” Mango says.
“You got it.”
“Think they water the beer down?”
“Dude, just taste it.”
“They say they don’t but you can tell they do. It’s just not the same.”
Billy nods. “But we’re still drinking.”
“We’re still drinking.”
They stand against the wall and drink their beers, content for the moment to watch the crowd moving past. With all the varieties on display it’s like a migration scene from a nature documentary, all shapes, ages, sizes, colors, and income indicators, although well-fed Anglo is the dominant demographic. Having served on their behalf as a frontline soldier, Billy finds himself constantly wondering about them. What are they thinking? What do they want? Do they know they’re alive? As if prolonged and intimate exposure to death is what’s required to fully inhabit one’s present life.
“What do you think they’re thinking about?”
Mango hesitates, then smiles his long-lipped coyote smile. “Heavy stuff. You know, like God. Philosophy. The meaning of life.” They laugh. “Nah, dawg, just look at ’em. They’re thinking about the game, whether their boys gonna cover the spread or not. Where they’re sitting, is it gonna rain on their ass. What they’re gonna eat, how long is it till next payday. Shit like that.”
Billy nods. That sounds about right. He doesn’t blame them for such pedestrian thoughts, and yet, and yet . . . the war makes him wish for a little more than the loose jaw and dull stare of the well-fed ruminant. Oh my people, my fellow Americans! See the world with prophet’s eyes! Virtually everyone is wearing Cowboys gear of one kind or another, parkas and caps stamped with the blue star logo, oversized jerseys, hoodies, scarves of silver and blue, dangly earrings or other forms of team bling, some have little Cowboys helmets painted on their cheeks. Billy finds this touching, how earnestly they show devotion to their team. The women display more aptitude for game-day style than the men, who lumber around with Cowboys jerseys hanging past their coattails and their pants bagged around the heels of their boots, a fatal foreshortening of vertical line that makes them look like a bunch of hulking twelve-year-olds.
Oh my people. The soldiers finish their beers with the air of a job well done, and going back to their seats Billy aims his gaze firmly on the aisle steps and away from all that nullity clawing at his face. It freaks him, the monstrous void of it dangling there, the vast empty center creates a vacuum of sorts and all the gravity seems to flow in a reverse-flush action toward that huge gaping blowhole at the top. Billy reaches his seat in an actual sweat. Some of the Bravos are texting, others staring at the field, still others chewing gum or spitting dip into cups. Then Mango gets careless and rips a seismic burp that might as well scream Beer!, and Dime swings about like a shark smelling blood.
“Where’s Major Mac?” Billy alertly asks. A crude diversion, but it works. Dime frowns, looks left and right.
“Where’s Major Mac?” he woofs at the squad. Bravo does a collective bobble-head waggle, then bursts out laughing. Braaaah! Major Mac has disappeared!
“Billy! Mango! Go find Major Mac.”
Up the stairs again, Billy hunching his shoulders against all that horrible space. The stadium is huge. It is deformed. It is a deformation of the human mind. They head straight to Papa John’s and buy two more beers. This time a small crowd gathers as Billy does his push-ups; they count off and give him a cheer when he’s done. “Do it again!” someone cries, but Billy hoists his beer in salute, and drinks. He and Mango start walking.
“This should be easy.”
“Right. Only, what, like eighty thousand people here?”
“If you were Major Mac, where would you go, and when would you go there?”
“Dude, maybe he’s back at the mother ship.”
They laugh. Major Mac rarely speaks, hardly ever eats or drinks, and has never been seen to relieve himself, prompting speculation among the Bravos that their PA escort might be a new kind of human being, one that consumes and voids through the pores of his skin. Thanks to mysterious back channels Sergeant Dime discovered that on the major’s very first day at the war he was blown up not just once but twice, resulting in profound but as-yet-to-be-determined hearing loss. For now he’s been parked in public affairs while the Army figures out what to do with him. The major is a chiseled, cleft-chinned, iron-spined specimen, he looks every inch the ideal Joe, which might explain why he’s hung on this long, because in truth the man is deaf as a post, not to mention prone to spells of extreme dissociation. As in, checked out. Stroked. Spaced. Peed on the fire and called in the dogs, everybody gone. Dime calls it the major’s thousand-yard Prozac stare.
The search for Major Mac is one of the million pointless tasks that make the Army what it is, but Billy is happier doing this than sitting on his ass, plus he feels all right with Mango at his side, not just for the street cred of having a Latino best buddy but for the calm, companionable vibe his friend exudes. Mango is rock-steady in both war and peace. Tough as hell, never complains, can carry major pounds on a stocky five-foot-eight-inch frame and has photographic recall of stats and timeline-oriented facts, such as, for instance, he can rattle off the names of not just the U.S. presidents but the vice presidents as well, which tends to put a quick stop to any illegal-alien talk. The one time Billy ever saw his buddy break down wasn’t in a firefight, nor any of the times they were mortared, rocketed, sniped at, or roadside-bombed, not even the time he was blown out of the Humvee’s turret and asked, “Is anything sticking out of my head?” Rock-steady, except for the day a car bomb blew up Third Platoon’s checkpoint, and Bravo was tasked to pull security in the aftermath. A bad day by any standard, but it was only when they fanned out to search for the correct number of severed limbs that Mango sank to his knees in a blubbering heap.
But now they’re walking, and how fine it would be if they could out-walk the war by sheer force of will. Billy checks his cell and there’s a text from Kathryn, his sister with the divot in her cheek. Where r u she wants to know, and he texts stadium. Then it’s mom worried ur cold and he answers kid is smokin, and she sends back the smile sign. He and Mango grunt whenever a good-looking female passes, though everyone’s so bundled up there’s only so much you can see.
“Can you believe those girls last night?”
“Ridiculous,”
Billy agrees. “Everybody says Dallas has the best strip clubs.”
“No shit. Like sensory overload, dawg, where do they all come from? That place we were, not the last place, the one before that, the one with the cage dancers—”
“Vegas Starz.”
“—Vegas Starz, I’m like, damn, girl, why you workin’ here? Any one a those girls could be models, I mean like real models, not just stripper hos.”
Mango seems truly distressed, as if confronted by a tragedy in progress, one he could prevent.
“Dunno,” Billy says, “maybe talent is cheap. Too many hot girls out there.”
“You know that ain’t right.”
Billy laughs, but he’s struck by a broader notion about young lively bodies and the human meat market and supposedly inexorable laws of supply and demand. Society may not need you, strictly speaking, but some sort of use can usually be found.
“Maybe they’re there because they wanna be,” Billy says, but he’s just talking now. “So they can meet fine young men such as ourselves.”
Mango laughs. “That must be it. It’s not the money, dawg. They were really into us.”
Which is what Sykes said on returning from his private dance in back. She was really into me. It wasn’t about the money. Still in shock from Shroom’s funeral that afternoon, Bravo changed into civvies at the hotel and emerged forthwith to get extremely drunk, and at one point or another in the course of the evening they all got blown. She was into me became the big joke of the night, but today the memory just makes Billy depressed. It is its own hangover, a scum around his psyche like a bathtub ring, and he decides blow jobs suck, just by themselves. Well, sometimes they’re all right. Okay, usually they’re awesome as far as they go, but lately he feels the definite need for something more in his life. It’s not so much that he’s nineteen and still technically a virgin as it is this famished feeling deep in his chest, this liposucked void where his best part should be. He needs a woman. No, he needs a girlfriend, he needs someone to mash into body and soul and he’s been waiting for it to happen these entire two weeks, the girlfriend, the mashing, two weeks he’s been traveling this great nation of ours so you would think that after all the miles and cities and positive press coverage, all the love and goodwill, all those smiling cheering crowds, he would have found someone by now.
So either America’s fucked up, or he is. Billy walks the concourse with his aching heart and awareness that time is running out. They report to Fort Hood at 2200 tonight, tomorrow will be PACK YOUR SHIT day, and the day after will commence their twenty-seven hours of flying time and the resumption of their combat tour. It seems to Billy a flat-out miracle that any of them are still alive. So they’ve lost Shroom and Lake, only two a numbers man might say, but given that each Bravo has missed death by a margin of inches, the casualty rate could just as easily be 100 percent. The freaking randomness is what wears on you, the difference between life, death, and horrible injury sometimes as slight as stooping to tie your bootlace on the way to chow, choosing the third shitter in line instead of the fourth, turning your head to the left instead of the right. Random. How that shit does twist your mind. Billy sensed the true mindfucking potential of it on their first trip outside the wire, when Shroom advised him to place his feet one in front of the other instead of side by side, that way if an IED blew low through the Humvee Billy might lose only one foot instead of two. After a couple of weeks of aligning his feet just so, tucking his hands inside his body armor, always wearing eye pro and all the rest, he went to Shroom and asked how do you keep from going crazy? Shroom nodded like this was an eminently reasonable question to ask, then told him of an Inuit shaman he’d read about somewhere, how this man could supposedly look at you and know to the day when you were going to die. He wouldn’t tell you, though; he considered that impolite, an intrusion into matters that were none of his business. But talk about freaky, huh? Shroom chuckled. Looking that old man in the eye and knowing he knows.
“I don’t ever wanna meet that guy,” Billy said, but Shroom’s point was made. If a bullet’s going to get you, it’s already been fired.
Billy realizes that Mango hasn’t spoken for the past five minutes, so he knows his friend is also thinking about the war. He’s tempted to raise the subject, but really, what can you say short of everything? As if once you opened your mouth would you even be able to stop, though in the end it all amounts to one and the same thing, how the hell are they going to get through eleven more months of it.
“You’ve been lucky so far, right?”
This was Kathryn, talking to Billy over backyard beers.
I guess I have, he answered.
“So keep on being lucky.”
Sometimes it feels as easy as that, just remembering to be lucky. Billy thinks about this as he eyes the fast food outlets that line the stadium concourse, your Taco Bells, your Subways, your Pizza Huts and Papa John’s, clouds of hot meaty gases waft from these places and surely it speaks to the genius of American cooking that they all smell pretty much the same. It dawns on him that Texas Stadium is basically a shithole. It’s cold, gritty, drafty, dirty, in general possessed of all the charm of an industrial warehouse where people pee in the corners. Urine, the faint reek of it, pervades the place.
“Fierce,” Mango says in hushed tones of wonder.
“What?”
“All these thousands of gringos, and not a single Major Mac.”
Billy snorts. “You know we’re never gonna find that mofo. He’s a grown man anyway, like why are we even looking for him.”
“He knows where he is.”
“You would think.”
They look at each other and laugh.
“Let’s go back,” Billy says.
“Let’s go back,” Mango agrees.
First they stop at Sbarro and get a couple of slices of pizza, then stand there munching off paper plates, content for the moment not to be recognized. Being a Bravo means inhabiting a state of semi-celebrity that occasionally flattens you with praise and adulation. At staged rallies, for instance, or appearances at malls, or whenever TV or radio is present, you are apt at some point to be lovingly mobbed by everyday Americans eager to show their gratitude, then other times it’s like you’re invisible, people just see right through you, nothing registers. Billy and Mango stand there eating scalding hot pizza and know that their fame is not their own. Mainly it’s another thing to laugh about, this huge floating hologram of context and cue that leads everyone around by the nose, Bravo included, but Bravo can laugh and feel somewhat superior because they know they’re being used. Of course they do, manipulation is their air and element, for what is a soldier’s job but to be the pawn of higher?
Wear this, say that, go there, shoot them, then of course there’s the final and ultimate, be killed. Every Bravo is a PhD in the art and science of duress. Billy and Mango finish their pizza and start walking. With some food in their bellies they’re feeling stoked, and on a whim they wander into Cowboys Select, the highest-end of all the on-site establishments offering Cowboys apparel and brand merchandise for sale. The dizzying scent of fine leathers meets them at the door, along with a brightly lit Texas Lottery machine. Flat-screen TVs mounted in the walls are playing a highlights reel from the Aikman years. Billy and Mango are a little bit punchy coming in, they’re primed for an ironic retail experience, and in seconds the place has them laughing out loud. It’s not just the racks and racks of upscale clothing, the fine jewelry, the framed and certified collector memorabilia, no, you had to admire the determination, the sheer marketing balls of stamping the Cowboys brand on chess sets, toaster ovens, high-capacity ice makers, personal oxygen bars, and laser-guided pool cues. Dude, check it out! An entire line of Cowboys kitchenware. The two Bravos grow so rowdy that other customers start to give them some space. As far as Billy and Mango are concerned, the store is a museum, these are all things to look at but nothing a Bravo could buy, and the humiliation of it makes them a little wild. His ’n’ hers cotton te
rry-cloth robes, like, four hundred dollars. Authentic game jerseys, a hundred fifty-nine ninety-five. Cashmere pullovers, cut-crystal Christmas ornaments, Tony Lama limited-edition boots. As their shame and sense of insult mount the two Bravos become rough with each other. Dude, check it out, sick bomber jacket. Only six hundred seventy-nine bucks, dawg.
Is it leather?
The fuck you mean, hell yeah it’s leather!
’Cause, dawg, I don’t think so. I think that’s pleather.
The fuck it’s pleather!
Unh-unh, dumbshit. It’s just you’re so fucking ghetto you don’t know from pleather—
Suddenly they’re grappling, they’ve hooked arms in a fierce shoulder clench and lumber about like a couple of barroom drunks, grunting, cursing each other and butting heads, laughing so hard they can hardly stand up. Their berets go flying as they tear at their ears. It hurts and they laugh harder, they’re gasping now, bitch, shitbag, cum-slut, faggot, Mango jabs at Billy with stinging uppercuts, Billy crams a fist into Mango’s armpit and off they go on a left-tilting axis, pottery wheel and pot rolling loose across the floor. Can I help you! someone is shouting, jumping in and out of the way. Gentlemen! Fellas, guys, can I help you? Whoa there!
Billy and Mango separate, come up flushed and laughing. The salesman—store manager? a middle-aged white guy with thinning hair—he, too, is laughing, but it’s clearly a situation for him, what with two obvious lunatics on his hands. Everyone else, staff, customers—the few who haven’t fled—is standing well back.
“Is this leather?” Billy asks, lifting a sleeve from the rack of bomber jackets. “ ’Cause moron here’s trying to tell me it’s pleather.”
“Oh no sir,” says the manager, “that’s genuine leather.” He’s chuckling, he knows they’re putting him on, but in the manner of straight men since the beginning of time whose job it is to bring order to a sick and comical world, he launches into a fruity description of this full-grain aniline lamb’s-leather jacket, the special tanning and dyeing processes and so forth, not to mention the coat’s superior construction qualities. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, the Bravos hear him out with the rapt expressions of cavemen watching popcorn pop.