by Ben Fountain
Whhhhiiiirrrr, stop. Whhhhiiiirrrr, stop. What was he doing? Ray paused at the flowers growing along the fence, a stand of powder-blue puffballs on tall, skinny stems. Something blue mist, they were called—Billy had asked his mother that morning, after he and Brian counted seventeen monarch butterflies feeding on the blooms. All day the monarchs had been wobbling through the yard on their way south, pausing to snack on the something-blue-mist before continuing on their way to Mexico. Ray lit another cigarette and sat there smoking, watching the monarchs flutter around. Billy had never seen his father do such a thing, spend any amount of time in contemplation of nature. This was a man whose chief relation to the natural world was that of a carnivore toward his steak, but with him sitting there quietly observing the butterflies, Billy sensed, if not an opening, then some potential or possibility that threw him back on himself. It made him a little desperate, this feeling. If the opportunity came along, would he know what to do? If there could be some minor good between them and they lacked the skills to make it happen, well that would be a damn shame and maybe even tragic, given that this might be their final day together. Then the door banged open, boom, not so loud this time, and here came Brian trotting across the patio.
“Hey, Billy,” he chirped, so sweetly matter-of-fact that Billy had to smile. Brian jogged across the yard to Ray and climbed onto the back of the old man’s wheelchair. Ray smiled and wheeled the chair about, and they went rattling across the yard. “Make it jump!” Brian cried. Ray pulled back the joystick, then rammed it forward; the chair bucked, its front rising an inch off the ground. The thing did maybe three miles per hour, max, and Ray somehow juiced a wheelie out of it. Brian squealed and called for more, and off they went on a wide loop, popping and bucking, Ray gaming the chair for all it had while Brian hung on the back and laughed himself silly. Their loop gradually brought them around to Billy, and thinking about it later he will recall that he was smiling not just out of a general sense of pleasure, but in a specifically feeling way toward his father. In these later reflections, Billy will realize he’d been thinking he and Ray might have a Moment, and what he got instead was one of the great silent fuck-offs of all time. How exactly Ray did this Billy will never figure out, though it seemed to happen mostly in the eyes, in the cool, dismissive edge to their sidelong cut, that briefest of glances as the wheelchair tractored by. Some vast rejection was rendered in that moment, but Billy couldn’t describe it any better than as his father’s way of saying, This isn’t for you. You aren’t part of it, you don’t belong. Ray was keeping the Moment all to himself; he could make Brian love him whenever he wanted and none of the rest of them even deserved his effort.
All of which went to prove the point, that without a strategy you were a big fat target dangling out there, chum in the shark tank of family dynamics. At dinner that night Bill O’Reilly raged on the TV, Denise and the girls bickered about the home equity loan, Brian was tired and started acting like a little shit, the roast was overdone, Ray wouldn’t stop smoking, and Denise broke down crying because she wanted everything perfect and of course it couldn’t be. Mom, Billy said, laughing, putting his arms around her, plumbing reserves of serenity he didn’t know he had, Mom, don’t worry about it. I’m happy. I’m home. Everything’s cool. What was amazing was this actually seemed to help. His mother calmed down. Brian fell asleep in the high chair. Patty and Kathryn got the giggles and opened another bottle of wine, and Billy felt so much older than nineteen, as if blessed with wisdom beyond his years. Had the war done this? All that ever got talked about was how war was supposed to fuck you up, true enough but maybe not the whole truth. He tumbled into bed that night buzzed on chocolate cake and wine, closing his eyes with the satisfaction that disaster had been averted, something crucial salvaged. There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.
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.
WE ARE ALL AMERICANS HERE
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.
“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, ppprrrrRRIIiiiddde. Then courage, coooOUURRraaage. Service, sssserrrRRRrvvviccce. SsssacccrRRRIiiifffice. HooooONNnnorrrr. DeeeterrRRRminaaaAAAtion.
“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.