Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain Read Free Book Online

The Bravos assume postures of masculine nonchalance. Mainly they’re trying not to stare at themselves on the screen, but so pumped with the moment is Sykes that he starts mouthing off and flashing gangsta signs. To a man Bravo tells him to shut the fuck up, but after a moment the screen cuts to a flags-waving, bombs-bursting cartoon graphic against a background of starry outer space, and from within these inky depths enormous white letters suddenly zoom to the fore
    AMERICA’S TEAM PROUDLY HONORS AMERICAN HEROES
    which disappears, clearing the way for a second wave
    THE DALLAS COWBOYS
    WELCOME HEROS OF AL-ANSAKAR CANAL!!!!!!!
    STAFF SGT. DAVID DIME
    STAFF SGT. KELLUM HOLLIDAY
    SPC. LODIS BECKWITH
    SPC. BRIAN HEBERT
    SPC. ROBERT EARL KOCH
    SPC. WILLIAM LYNN
    SPC. MARCELLINO MONTOYA
    SPC. KENNETH SYKES
    As if drawing down energy through the stadium’s blowhole, the applause slowly gathers volume and heft. People moving in the aisle stop and turn their way. The fans behind Bravo come to their feet, the prompt for a slow-motion standing ovation that rolls through their section in a gravity-defying backward wave. Soon the Jumbotron cuts to a hyperactive ad for Chevy trucks, but too late, people are already heading Bravo’s way and there is just no help for it and no escape. Billy rises and assumes the stance for such occasions, back straight, weight balanced center-mass, a reserved yet courteous expression on his youthful face. He came to the style more or less by instinct, this tense, stoic vein of male Americanism defined by multiple generations of movie and TV actors, which conveniently furnishes him a way of being without having to think about it too much. You say a few words, you smile occasionally. You let your eyes seem a little tired. You are unfailingly modest and gentle with women, firm of handshake and eye contact with men. Billy knows he looks good doing this. He must, because people totally eat it up, in fact they go a little out of their heads. They do! They mash in close, push and shove, grab at his arms and talk too loud, and sometimes they break wind, so propulsive is their stress. After two solid weeks of public events Billy continues to be amazed at the public response, the raw wavering voices and frenzied speech patterns, the gibberish spilled from the mouths of seemingly well-adjusted citizens. We appreciate, they say, their voices throbbing like a lover’s. Sometimes they come right out and say it, We love you . We are so grateful. We cherish and bless. We pray, hope, honor-respect-love-and-revere and they do, in the act of speaking they experience the mighty words, these verbal arabesques that spark and snap in Billy’s ears like bugs impacting an electric bug zapper

    No one spits, no one calls him baby-killer. On the contrary, people could not be more supportive or kindlier disposed, yet Billy finds these encounters weird and frightening all the same. There’s something harsh in his fellow Americans, avid, ecstatic, a burning that comes of the deepest need. That’s his sense of it, they all need something from him, this pack of half-rich lawyers, dentists, soccer moms, and corporate VPs, they’re all gnashing for a piece of a barely grown grunt making $14,800 a year. For these adult, affluent people he is mere petty cash in their personal accounting, yet they lose it when they enter his personal space. They tremble. They breathe in fitful, stinky huffs. Their eyes skitz and quiver with the force of the moment, because here, finally, up close and personal, is the war made flesh, an actual point of contact after all the months and years of reading about the war, watching the war on TV, hearing the war flogged and flacked on talk radio. It’s been hard times in America—how did we get this way? So scared all the time, and so shamed at being scared through the long dark nights of worry and dread, days of rumor and doubt, years of drift and slowly ossifying angst. You listened and read and watched