by Ben Fountain
Owwwwww!!!
“Gotcha, dawg. You’re flaking on me.”
“Damn, Sergeant!”
“If this was Iraq, you’d be dead.”
“If this was Iraq there wouldn’t be chicks in leather pants. Jesus, Sergeant.” Billy straightens his clothes, gingerly touches his chest. While he was absorbed in thought, Sergeant Dime snuck up behind him, clotheslined his throat, and gave his left nipple a ferocious twist.
“I think you ripped my titty off, Sergeant.”
Dime laughs. He asks for a Sprite at the bar. He is a Sprite man, always Sprite, diet if you got it.
“Sergeant Dime, what is leverage?”
Dime blows a little of his Sprite. “What, Lynn, you been reading Forbes behind my back? Where did you hear about leverage?”
“That guy over there”—Billy tips his chin at Mr. Jones—“he said leverage is the key to Norm’s success.”
“He said that, huh.” Dime studies Mr. Jones. “Leverage, Billy, that’s a fancy way of saying other people’s money. As in, borrowing. Debt. Credit. Hock. Using other people’s money to make money for yourself.”
“I don’t like debt,” Billy says. “Owing money makes me nervous.”
“Historically that is the sane position.” Dime bites down on a chunk of ice, scrunch. “But I’m not sure sanity counts for much anymore.”
“What about Norm?”
“What about him?”
“Are you saying he’s not sane?”
“I’m not sure he even exists.”
Billy laughs, but Dime does not crack a smile.
“I do know one thing, though.”
“What, Sergeant?”
“He’s got a big old boner for Albert.”
Billy opts for silence.
“I guess once you’ve conquered the NFL there’s nothing left to do but take on Hollywood. He’s all over Albert about the movie biz.”
“What’s Albert doing?”
“He’s cool, dawg. He’s working it.”
“For our movie?”
“Better be. We’re the ones who got him here.”
They fall silent. Mr. Jones has joined a group of well-dressed guests. Even when he laughs, Mr. Jones’s eyes stay sharp, his body alert. Young and strong as he is, even with his military training, Billy thinks he would have a hard time taking Mr. Jones in a fight.
“See that guy over there, the one I was talking about? He’s packing.”
Dime is not impressed. “I thought everybody packed in Texas.”
“Yeah, but here? It’s bullshit.” Billy is surprised by the intensity of his disgust. “Only a dick would pack at a game, like, what, there’s only about a million cops here? Maybe he thinks he’s gonna take out all the terrorists by himself.”
Dime turns to Billy and laughs. Then he stiffens, wheels to Billy’s front and stands so close that their noses almost touch. Billy holds his breath but it is too late.
“You motherfucker, you’re still drinking.”
“A little, Sergeant.”
“Did I give permission for further consumption of alcohol?”
“No, Sergeant.”
Dime glances at the cup in Billy’s hand. “Do you have a problem?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“We’re back in the shit in two days, have you forgotten that?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“You better get your shit wired to a T, and I mean fast.”
“I am, Sergeant Dime. I will.”
“You think the beebs are going to give us a pass just because we’ve been the big shit over here?”
“No, Sergeant Dime.”
“Hell no, they’re gonna be gunning for us. And if I can’t count on you . . .” Dime steps back. He seems suddenly aggrieved. “Billy, I’m gonna need you. You gotta help me keep the rest of these clowns alive. So don’t be flaking on me.”
And fast as that, Dime breaks his heart. He is the kind of man for whom you’d rather die than disappoint.
“I’m fine, Sergeant. I’m good. Really.”
“Really?”
“I am, Sergeant. Don’t worry about me.”
“All right. Drink some water. Don’t get wasted on me.”
So Billy is drinking water when A-bort and Crack approach, grinning like cheetahs with bits of flesh and bone stuck between their teeth.
“What?”
“Norm’s old lady.”
“Yeah?”
“We wanna do her. Two on one.”
“Shut up. Dude, she’s like, fifty-five.”
“I don’t care how old she is,” says A-bort, “check her out. That bitch is tight.”
“I always wanted to bone a rich bitch right up the ass,” Crack offers.
“That’s just rude,” Billy says, with feeling; his puritanical recoil puzzles even him. “You guys are disgusting. We’re her guests and you’re showing disrespect.”
Mango has joined them. “Ain’t disrespect if it ain’t never gonna happen. It’s just werds. They ain’t gonna tap that lady.”
“Watch,” Crack promises. “Five to one I do her, hundred bucks.”
“Bullshit,” Billy says, still on his choirboy streak.
“I’ll take that,” says Mango.
“Me too,” says A-bort.
“What,” Crack says, “like you mean if I nail her, or you too?”
But before they can clear this up a Cowboys executive joins them, and it’s like a video splice, one second the Bravos are the sludgiest sort of street-corner pervs, and the next they are the nation’s very spine and marrow, yes, near to holy they are, angelic warriors of America’s crusader dreams. The executive sets a stack of Time magazines on the bar and asks for their autographs, there, on the cover, and again on p. 30 where the story starts, “Showdown at Al-Ansakar Canal”: “The tiny hamlet of Ad-Wariz on the Al-Ansakar Canal is a backwater even by Iraqi standards, a loose collection of mud-wattle huts and subsistence farms. But for two brutal hours on the morning of October 23, this remote village became the epicenter of America’s war on terror.”
There follow six pages of copy and photos, plus a 3-D schematic with arrows and labels that bears no relation to any battle that Billy can recall. It is not even a Bravo on the cover but Sergeant Daiker from Third Platoon, a dramatically blurred close-up of his clenched and fearsome face. “It seems this particular group of insurgents wished to die,” Colonel Travers told Time, “and our men were more than willing to oblige them.” True on both counts, but not until the very end did they offer themselves up, a little kamikaze band of eight or ten bursting from the reeds at a dead sprint, screaming, firing on full automatic, one last rocks-off martyrs’ gallop straight to the gates of the Muslim paradise. All your soldier life you dream of such a moment and every Joe with a weapon got a piece of it, a perfect storm of massing fire and how those beebs blew apart, hair, teeth, eyes, hands, tender melon heads, exploding soup-stews of shattered chests, sights not to be believed and never forgotten and your mind simply will not leave it alone. Oh my people. Mercy was not a selection, period. Only later did the concept of mercy even occur to Billy, and then only in the context of its absence in that place, a foreclosing of options that reached so far back in history that quite possibly mercy had not been an option there since before all those on the battlefield were born.
The Bravos sign. They’ve signed dozens of Times over the past two weeks, and some have turned up on eBay, but whatever. The executive gathers up the magazines with the gingerly air of a lawyer who’s just pulled a fast one.
“Destiny’s Child here yet?” Crack asks him.
“Not in the loop on that one, fella.”
“We were hoping we could hang with them a little.”
The executive laughs. “You friends of theirs?”
This seems a bit fresh. He might be laughing at them.
“We’re fans,” Mango says steadily.
“Son, I’d be worried if you weren’t. Tell you what, I’ll go find out.”
Will the cheerleaders be there?
“Yes, there will be cheerleaders.”
Yaaaaaaahhhhhh-woof! What about those lap dances?
“No lap dances in front of the press, guys.”
What are we supposed to do at halftime?
“I don’t have those specifics yet. I do know Trisha has some kind of role for you.”
Who the fuck’s Trisha?
“Guys, come on, Mr. Oglesby’s daughter. You just met her. She’s been planning the halftime show for the past six months.”
Tell her we can sing!
“I’m sure you guys are great singers, but we’ve got Destiny’s Child for that.”
Yeah, we wanna meet—
“I know I know I know, but guys, it’s Destiny’s Child. Getting you in there might be a little above my pay grade.”
You dah man, Jash.
“I’ll ask. But I can’t guarantee anything.”
More laughs, a smattering of wolf cheers. Bravo is pumped. They stand around long enough to realize they are waiting for something, for Norm it turns out, at last he arrives with his cloud of an entourage that includes a photographer, a video guy, several family members, and a big chunk of the Cowboys’ upper management.
“Ready?” Norm asks, beaming at the Bravos. “I expect you guys are pros at this by now.” He scoops one of his grandsons into his arms and off they go through the stadium labyrinth, as intricate as the guts of a battleship. Billy’s head is pounding, but Josh, so alert and duteous in other matters, has forgotten his Advil again. The ache forms a kind of aura or envelope around his head, with localized boreholes of quite specific pain, as if a nail gun is firing spikes into his skull.
Outside the media room Norm hands off his grandson and waits by the door while the Bravos form up. “Great,” he is murmuring, “super,” “fantastic,” “outstanding,” a gaseous blather of free-form superlatives aimed at no one in particular. It is a little embarrassing to see him this way, like watching the fattest kid at a birthday party circling the cake, clearly wishing he could have it all to himself. In any case Norm is first through the door and his entry cues a cataclysmic shriek, from the cheerleaders Billy sees when he crosses the threshold, a pom-pom waving, boot-stamping, thunderclap howl that jumps abruptly to a 4/4 dogtrot chant, a cheer!, and well why not, it’s their job:
American soldiers strong and true,
The best in the world at what they do,
Thanks for keeping us safe and strong
Against all those who’d do us harm!
Billy takes a seat onstage with the feeling that the war has attained new heights of lunacy. Norm is urging the medias to stand up! up!, a mostly male crowd of forty or fifty reporters who don’t seem terribly thrilled to be stage-managed, yet they stand, they clap, they break into grudging smiles, they are lifted by the moment in spite of themselves, and Norm gestures toward Bravo and raises his arms as if to say, Look at what I brought for you!
He is said to be a marketing genius, is Norm, and sitting there amid the flaming hairball of media lights Billy has the weirdest feeling that none of them exists except in Norman Oglesby’s mind. Norm is beaming, clapping, gesturing toward the Bravos. His blue eyes glitter with a special, no, a holy light, he is so completely certain of the Cowboys brand that God is surely on his side. What higher calling could there be? What greater good in life? Any profit to the team is truly God’s work, and all creation must bend to His will.
The room is a hothouse of plastic and epoxy smells, the burnt-dust fug of large electronics. “U-S-A!” a cheerleader yells, and the rest take up the chant, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” and Norm is chanting and clapping, rocking with the beat. So many cheerleaders, enough to line three walls of the room—the sheer volume of exposed female flesh sends Bravo into a mild state of shock. Photographers crab-walk close and flash off in Bravo’s face, singeing eyes and probably cauterizing pieces of brain. Camera crews are bunched at both sides of the stage, a two-foot-high riser with the fudgy give of plywood underfoot. The stage is backed by an incurving bulkhead of sorts, a fabric screen stamped with the Cowboys star and Nike swoosh logo. It’s actually kind of a crummy room, more like a union hall or underfunded rec center: fluorescent lights, that horrible all-weather carpet everywhere, steel-tube chairs with hard plastic shells. Norm takes the last seat at the table and bellies up to the microphone.
“I,” he begins, but has to pause for the handful of cheerleaders who simply can’t shut up. He smiles, looks down at his hands, and chuckles at their zeal, which draws a responsive chuckle from the medias.
“I,” he resumes, and waits out the last shrieks as the cheerleaders finally get a grip on themselves, “I”—another pause, this time for effect—“and the entire Cowboys organization”—kai-boiz, Billy mouths to himself, scratching an itch on his inner ear—“are pleased, privileged, and extremely honored to have with us today the outstanding young men of Bravo squad, these true American heroes here to my left. If you want to talk about a group that knows how to suit up and show up, here they are. They are the best our nation has to offer, and our best is absolutely the best in the world, as they proved on the battlefields of Iraq.”
The cheerleaders cry out, their orgasmic shriek quickly morphing into the lockstep U-S-A! chant. Have they been told to interrupt, Billy wonders, or do they just know to do it on their own? The role of cheerleader being secondary by definition, yet cheerleaders themselves exhibitionists by nature, he starts to sense the conflict at the core of every boy and girl who ever fanned the fires of team spirit, the private anguish of always cheering for others when you’re the one busting it body and soul. Nobody cheers for the cheerleaders! And how that must hurt, the goad for many a deafening scream of crazed enthusiasm. Norm is chuckling, shaking his head as if to say, Those girls. Off to the side, the Cowboys brass are chuckling too.
“I’m sure,” Norm resumes, “everyone is familiar by now with the Bravos’ exploits, how they were the first to come to the aid of the ambushed supply convoy, they went straight into the battle with no backup, no air support, outnumbered against an enemy who’d been preparing this attack for days. They didn’t think twice about the odds stacked against them, they even suspected it was a trap, and yet they went right in without hesitating—”
Several of the cheerleaders cry out, but Norm holds up his hand. He will not be interrupted now.
“Fortunately for us, a Fox News crew was embedded with the group that arrived shortly thereafter, so it’s possible for us to see for ourselves what these fine young men did that day. And I have to say, I have never”—Norm’s voice grows husky, he hunches close to the microphone—“I have never, been prouder, to be an American, than when I saw, that, footage. And if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so at your earliest opportunity . . .”
Billy’s mind wanders. Now that he’s settled down somewhat he can give the cheerleaders his first considered look, and he had no idea there are so many of them, they are a life-sized sampler of rapturous female flesh with all colors on display, all flavors of sculpted tummy and supple thigh, scooped waist, contoured flare and furl of hip, and such breasts, oh Lord, such volumes of majestically fulsome boob overflowing the famous tail-knotted half shirt, yes, at any moment an avalanche could burst forth and bury them all, only a few scant inches of besieged cloth save Bravo from utter annihilation.
“It’s my personal feeling,” Norm is saying, “that the war on terror may be as pure a fight between good and evil as we’re likely to see in our lifetime. Some even say it is a challenge put forth by God as a test of our national mettle. Are we worthy of our freedoms? Do we have the resolve to d
efend our values, our way of life?”
Billy makes a few of the cheerleaders for strippers—they have the tough slizzard look of the club pro—but most of them could be college girls with their fresh good looks, their pert noses and smooth necks, their scrubbed, unsullied air of wholesome voluptuousness. Don’t stare, Billy tells himself; don’t be a creep. Albert and Major Mac are sitting together in the back row, and he tries to imagine what they might talk about. This seems funny. From time to time Albert looks up from his BlackBerry to check on Bravo, his eyes keen, not without affection, much like a rich man watching his prize Thoroughbred taking a jog around the track.
“To all those who argue this war is a mistake, I’d like to point out that we’ve removed from power one of history’s most ruthless and belligerent tyrants. A man who cold-bloodedly murdered thousands of his own people. Who built palaces for his personal pleasure while schools decayed and his country’s health care system collapsed. Who maintained one of the world’s most expensive armies while he allowed his nation’s infrastructure to crumble. Who channeled resources to his cronies and political allies, allowing them to siphon off much of the country’s wealth for their own personal gain. So I would ask all those who oppose the war, would the world be a better place today with Saddam Hussein in power? Because what is America for, if not to fight this kind of tyranny, to promote freedom and democracy and give the peoples of the world a chance to determine their own fate? This has always been America’s mission, and it’s what makes us the greatest nation on earth.”
Billy wonders if Norm will run for office someday. He’s as polished a public speaker as any of the politicians Bravo has encountered over the past two weeks. He has the presence, the werds, plus he’s mastered the wounded, vaguely petulant tone that is the style of political speech these days. If there’s a grating artificiality in the performance—Norm’s awareness of himself as performer, sneaking peeks at a mental mirror off to the side—it’s no worse than any other fixture of the public realm. Billy has noticed that audiences don’t seem to mind anyway. All the fakeness just rolls right off them, maybe because the nonstop sales job of American life has instilled in them exceptionally high thresholds for sham, puff, spin, bullshit, and outright lies, in other words for advertising in all its forms. Billy himself never noticed how fake it all is until he’d done time in a combat zone.