by Ben Fountain
He has to remember to breathe. He feels calm and agitated all at once, self-awareness teased to such a screaming pitch that his skull might split at any moment, and he moans, it is just too much to hold in. The realtress glances his way and answers with a sympathy moan. The next moment she steps over and puts her arm around his waist, and they stand so joined, Billy saluting, sweating, standing ramrod straight, the realtress singing with her right hand held to her heart and her left clamped to Billy’s hip.
This lady can really belt it out. Tears the size of lug nuts are tumbling down her cheeks but that’s the kind of thing war does to you. Sensations are heightened, time compressed, passions aroused, and while a single dry-hump might seem a slender reed on which to build a lifetime relationship, Billy would like to think this is where the logic leads. He made Faison tremble, he made her come, surely there’s meaning in that. Given all the shifting variables of existence, it’s insane to plan or hope for any one particular thing, yet somehow the world comes to be every day. So if not this, then what? So why not this?
The realtress pulls him closer. He doesn’t sense that it’s a sexual thing at all; it feels too brittle, more like a codependent clinginess or mothering clutch, which he can handle. Part of being a soldier is accepting that your body does not belong to you.
Ore th’ Laaa-ha-annnndddd of the Freeeeeeeeeee—HEEEEEEEEE
Then the pause, the teetering catch at cliff’s edge, followed by the vocal swan dive—
Never do Americans sound so much like a bunch of drunks as when celebrating the end of their national anthem. In the midst of all the boozy clapping and cheering perhaps a dozen middle-aged women converge on Billy. For a second it seems they’ll tear him limb from limb, their eyes are cranking those crazy lights and there is nothing they wouldn’t do for America, torture, nukes, worldwide collateral damage, for the sake of God and country they are down for it all. “Isn’t it wonderful?” the realtress cries as she holds him tight. “Don’t you love it? Doesn’t it make you just so proud?”
Well, right this second he wants to weep, that’s how desperately proud he feels. Does that count? Are we talking the same language here? Proud, sure, he thinks of Shroom and Lake and all the blood-truths of that day and starts brainstorming quantum-theory proofs of proud. Yes ma’am, proud, Bravo has achieved levels of proud that can move mountains and knock the moon out of phase, but why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you make at the bank!
But Billy tries. “I feel full,” he says, and the women cry out and a pillowy sort of scrummage ensues with much hugging and pawing, many cell phone snaps, three or four conversations going at once and more than one woman shedding actual tears. It is a heavy Group Moment and about as much as he can handle, and when it finally tapers off he puts his head down and makes for the lower level because, like Custer’s line of retreat at Little Bighorn, there’s really no place else to go. People smile and greet him as he moves through the crowd. Someone holds out a drink, which he takes; later he’ll realize they were merely waving at him. He comes to the bank of stadium seats and starts down the stairs. Three of his fellow Bravos are hunkered down on the bottom row, a refuge, a small redoubt amid this crowd of dangerously overstimulated civilians.
“Jesus Christ,” Billy says, dropping into a seat.
The other Bravos grunt. Being a hero is exhausting.
“Bears won the toss,” A-bort announces. “Up fifty already, homes.”
Holliday snorts. “You dah man, A. Showin’ some real fine savvy with that call.” He turns to Billy. “Where’s Lodis?”
“Up there.”
“Actin’ a fool?”
“He’s doing all right. Any word about halftime?”
The other Bravos grimly shake their heads. They’re all feeling it, not just the usual performance anxiety but the soldier’s innate dread of cosmic payback. They’ve accomplished two weeks of remarkably glitch-free events, so perhaps the natural or even necessary climax of the Victory Tour—like they’ve been saving up!—will be the mother of all fuckups on national TV.
The Cowboys kick off to the Bears. Touchback. From the twenty-yard line the Bears run off tackle for three, up the middle for two, then a weakside sweep for four, but there’s a flag. Between plays there is nothing much to do except watch bad commercials on the Jumbotron and worry about halftime.
“Do you think we’re being rude?” Mango asks.
Everyone looks at him.
“Sitting down here by ourselves. Not mingling or anything.”
“Rude as fuck,” Day says.
“Let’s put up a sign,” A-bort suggests. “ ‘Dysfunctional Vets, Leave Us Alone.’ ”
They watch a few plays. Mango keeps sighing and squirming around. “Football is boring,” he finally announces. “You guys never noticed? It’s like, start, stop, start, stop, you get about five seconds of plays for every minute of standing around. Shit is dull.”
“You can leave,” Holliday tells him. “Nobody say you got to be here.”
“No, Day, I do got to be here. I gotta be wherever the Army says I gotta be, and right now it’s here.”
The Bears punt. The Cowboys return to the twenty-six. There is a long wait while the chains are moved and the football replaced. The offense and defense trundle onto the field. The offense huddles while the defense mills around, huffing and puffing with their hands on their hips. Goddamn, Billy thinks, Mango’s right. Between plays is sort of like sitting in church, if not for the infernal blaring of the Jumbotron everybody would keel over and fall asleep. One of the Filipino waiters comes by and asks would they care for anything. The Bravos check to make sure Dime isn’t lurking, and since he isn’t they order a round of Jack and Cokes. Billy chugs his accidental cranberry vodka and keeps a fond eye on Faison. The drinks arrive. They help it be not so much like church. The Cowboys advance to the Bears’ forty-two, then lose sixteen yards when Henson takes a sack, and Billy begins to intuit the basic futility of seizing ground you can’t control.
“Please tell me there’s no booze in those drinks,” Dime wharls. The Bravos jump. Dime drops into the seat next to Billy, a pair of binoculars swinging from a strap around his neck.
“Not hardly,” says A-bort. “We were about to complain.”
“C’mon guys, I told you—”
“Yo Dime,” Day breaks in, “Mango says football is boring.”
“What?” Dime instantly rounds on Mango. “What the fuck do you mean football is boring, football is great, football kicks every other sport’s ass, football’s the fucking pinnacle of the sports world. What’re you trying to say, you like soccer? A bunch of fruits running around in little shorts and knee socks? They play for ninety minutes and nobody ever scores, yeah, sounds like a lot of fun, the game of choice for the vegetally comatose? But fine, if you’d rather watch fut-BOLL, Mango, you can just go the fuck back to Meh-hee-co.”
“I’m from Tucson,” Mango answers mildly. “I was actually born there, Sergeant. You know that.”
“You could be from Squirrel Dick, Idaho, for all I care. Football’s strategic, it’s got tactics, it’s a thinking man’s game in addition to being goddamn poetry in motion. But you’re obviously too much of a dumbfuck to appreciate that.”
“That must be it,” Mango says. “I guess you’ve gotta be a genius—”
“Shut UP! You’re hopeless, Montoya, you are a disgrace to the cause. I bet it was sad fucks like you who lost the Alamo.”
Mango giggles. “Sergeant, I think you’re a little confused. It was the—”
“Shut! I don’t wanna hear any more of your gay revisionist crap, so just shut.”
Mango bides a couple of beats. “You know, they say if the Alamo’d had a back door, Texas never
woulda—”
“SHUT!”
The Bravos titter like a bunch of Cub Scouts. The Cowboys punt, but there’s a penalty so they do it again, then everybody stands down for a TV time-out. Dime has the binoculars to his face.
“Which one is she?” he murmurs, understanding this is a private, no, a sacred matter.
“To the left,” Billy says in a low voice, “down around the twenty. Kind of blondish reddish hair.”
Dime swivels left. The cheerleaders are doing a hip-rock fanny-bop routine, a fetching little number to pass the time. Dime watches for a while, then with the binoculars still to his face he extends his hand to Billy.
“Congratulations.”
They shake hands.
“Lady is bangin’.”
“Thanks, Sergeant.”
Dime continues to watch.
“You really mugged down with that?”
“I did. I swear, Sergeant.”
“You don’t have to swear. What’s her name?”
“Faison.”
“Last or first?”
“Uh, first.” Billy realizes he doesn’t know her last.
“Umph. Damn.” Dime chuckles to himself. “Depths and depths in young Billy. Who’da thought.”
When Dime leaves Billy asks if he can borrow the binoculars, and with grand, silent solemnity Dime drapes the lanyard around Billy’s neck as if anointing an Olympic champion. Billy has a fine time with the binoculars. Mostly he keeps them trained on Faison, tracking her dance routines, her strenuous pom-pom shaking, her arm-waving exhortations to the crowd. The binos conjure a strange, delicate clarity from the material world, a kind of dollhouse fineness of texture and detail. So framed, everything Faison does is sort of miraculous. Here, she gives her hair a coltish toss; there, idly cocks her knee, thumps her toe on the turf while conferring with her sister cheerleaders. Billy conceives an almost delirious tenderness for her, along with sweet-sour roilings of nostalgia and loss, a sense of watching her not only from far away but across some long passage of time as well. Which means what, this melancholy, this mournful soul-leakage—that he’s in love? The bitch of it is there’s no time to figure it out. He and Faison need to talk—he needs her number! Along with her e-mail. And her last name would be nice.
“Hey.” Mango is nudging him. “We’re gonna hit the buffet. You comin’?”
Billy says no. He just wants to sit here with the binoculars and watch everything. The game doesn’t interest him at all but the people do, the way the steam, for instance, rises off the players like a cartoon rendering of body odor. Coach Tuttle stalks the sidelines with the addled look of a man who can’t remember where he parked his car. A sense of relaxing omniscience comes over Billy as he studies the fans, a kind of clinical, gorillas-in-the-mist absorption in how they eat, drink, yawn, pick their noses, preen and primp, indulge or rebuff their young. He lingers on all the hot women, of course, and spots no fewer than six people dressed up in turkey costumes. Often he catches people staring into space, their faces slack, unguarded, verging on fretfulness, fogged in by the general bewilderment of life. Oh Americans. Oh my people. Then he swings back to Faison and his vitals turn to mush. She’s not just hot, she’s Maxim and Victoria’s Secret hot, she is world-class and he needs to get a plan together. A woman like her requires means—
“There’s my Texan!”
He looks up. March Hawey is coming at him, sidling down the row. He starts to rise but Hawey palms his shoulder and guides him back down. He sits next to Billy and props his feet on the railing, and Billy immediately conceives a lust for his cowboy boots, a pair of lustrous sea-green ostrich quills with toecaps of silver filigree.
“How you doin’?”
“Really well, sir. And you?”
“All right, except I wish our boys would get their butts in gear.”
Billy laughs. He’s only a little bit nervous, much less than he’d expect sitting next to a man who changed the course of history. Mr. Swift Boat. He wonders if it’s impolite to talk about that, not that he knows much about it one way or the other. Then there’s the question of why he’s even sitting here with Billy.
“Somebody said you’re from Stovall.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yall got some excellent dove hunting out that way. Some kinda weed yall got out there—gussweed? gullweed? Big old tall yellow thing with these long seed pods, all kind a birds on that, doves love that stuff. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Not really, sir.”
“You’re not a hunter?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, we had some great days out there. I’m telling you, man, we slayed ’em.”
Hawey asks if he can “borry” the binoculars. In short order he reveals a whole repertoire of endearing senior tics—nose-snuffling, cuff-shooting, soft glottal pops. He smells of talcum powder and clean starched cotton, and wears a diamond horseshoe ring on his right hand. His wispy gray hair flops across his forehead in boyish Huck Finn bangs.
“You got any money on the game?” He’s twiddling the focus back and forth.
“No, sir. Some of the guys do.”
“You don’t bet?”
“No, sir.”
Hawey cuts him a glance. “Smart man. We work too hard for our money just to throw it away.” He smiles when Billy asks what business he’s in. “Oh, buncha things,” he says, handing the binoculars back. “Energy’s our core business, production and pipeline, we’ve been doing that close to forty years. Do some real estate, a little on the hedge fund side, some arbitrage and whatnot.” He chuckles. “And every once in a while we go raiding, if we see something we like. You interested in business?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. After the Army. But not if it’s going to bore me to death.”
Hawey sits up with a yelp and whacks Billy’s knee. “Man, I sure hear that. Why do it if you aren’t having fun? In my experience the most successful people truly love what they do, and that’s what I tell young people when they ask my advice. If you wanna make money, go find something you enjoy and work like hell at it.”
“That sounds like a good philosophy,” Billy ventures.
“Well, it fits my personality. Luckily I found a line of work I like, and I’ve been fortunate to have some success at it. You know, in a way it’s like a game.” He pauses as the Cowboys go deep. The receiver stretches, snags the ball with his fingertips, then bobbles it out of bounds. “What it boils down to is predicting the future, that’s what business basically is. Seeing what’s coming and getting the jump on everybody else, timing your move just right. It’s like a puzzle with a thousand moving parts.”
Billy nods. This actually sounds interesting. “So how do you do it?” he asks bluntly, thinking, What the hell. “How do you get the jump on all those other guys out there trying to do the same thing?”
Hawey is chuckling again. “Well, fair question.” He sits back and ponders for a moment. “I guess I’d say, independent thinking. And inner peace.”
Billy smiles. He thinks Hawey might be putting him on.
“Inner peace—you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but overall it’s responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we’ve seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I’m not saying we don’t have problems, we’ve got a helluva lot of problems, but that’s where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. Now, look at this stadium, all this, the crowd, the game.” Hawey’s arm sweeps left to right, then he points at the sky and the Goodyear blimp dangling in the early winter gloom. “This is every
thing there is, you know what I’m sayin’? I’m not like that guy who goes around saying greed is good, but it can sure as heck be a force for good. Self-interest is a powerful motivator in human affairs, and to me that’s the beauty of the capitalist system, it makes a virtue out of an innate human flaw. It’s why you’re gonna live better than your parents, and your kids are gonna live better than you, and their kids better than them and so on, because thanks to our system we’re going to keep on finding more ways, easier and better ways, to solve the problems of living and accomplish so many things we never even dreamed of.”
Billy nods. America has never made so much sense to him as at this moment. It is an exceptional country, no doubt. As with the successful launch of a NASA space probe, he can take pleasure in the achievement, even feel some measure of participatory pride, all the while understanding that the mission has absolutely nothing to do with him.
“Now,” Hawey continues, “right now we’re going through a pretty rough patch. Two wars, the economy’s basically in the tank, the whole mood of the country’s down. But we’ll get through it. We shall overcome. Our system’s been proving its resiliency for over two hundred years, and you youngsters, yall have a lot to look forward to. I think it’s going to be an exciting time for you. If I could be your age—how old are you?”
“Nineteen, sir.”
Hawey has opened his mouth to speak, but he pulls up short. He looks at Billy as if puzzled, not profoundly so, just stumped for the moment.
“Nineteen. You sure act older.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Shoot, I feel like I’m talking to a twenty-six-year-old lawyer, just the way you handle yourself.”