“It was like a movie,” chimes her daughter-in-law, getting into the spirit.
“It was. I had to keep telling myself this is real, these are real American soldiers fighting for our freedom, this is not a movie. Oh God I was just so happy that day, I was relieved more than anything, like we were finally paying them back for nina leven. Now”—she pauses for a much-needed breath—“which one are you?”
Billy politely introduces himself and leaves it at that, and the woman, as if sensing the delicacy of the question, doesn’t press. Instead, she and her daughter-in-law embark on a spoken-word duet of patriotic sentiments, they are 100 percent supporting of Bush the war the troops because defending szszszsz among nations szszszsz owl-kay-duzz szszszsz szszszsz szszszsz, the lady keeps leaning into Billy and tapping his arm, which induces a low-grade somatic trance, thus he’s feeling comfortably numb when the lid of his skull retracts and his brain floats free into the freezing air
No matter their age or station in life, Billy can’t help but regard his fellow Americans as children. They are bold and proud and certain in the way of clever children blessed with too much self-esteem, and no amount of lecturing will enlighten them as to the state of pure sin toward which war inclines. He pities them, scorns them, loves them, hates them, these children. These boys and girls. These toddlers, these infants. Americans are children who must go somewhere else to grow up, and sometimes die.
“Dude, that lady back there,” Crack says when they’re moving again, “the blonde with the little kids? When her husband was taking our picture she was totally grinding her ass up against my rod.”
“Bullshit.”
“No lie! Like instant wood, dude, she was shoving her ass right in there. Five more seconds and I woulda come, I shit you not.”
“He’s lying,” Mango says.
“Swear to God! Then I’m like, hey, give me your e-mail, let’s stay in touch while I’m back in Iraq, and it’s like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Bitch.”
Mango demurs, but Billy thinks it’s probably true — women will do some crazy shit around a uniform. He drops back a couple of paces and checks his cell. Pastor Rick has sent him another Bible text—
Know that the Lord is God!
It is He that made us and we are His.
The guy is relentless, he is a used-car salesman in sheep’s clothing. Billy deletes the text, wondering if it’s bad luck to dis a preacher, even a worthless one. “Aren’t you cold?” a passing woman asks, and Billy smiles and shakes his head, No, ma’am. Truly he’s not, though he doesn’t begrudge the fans their sumptuous fur coats, their puffy parkas, their bear-paw mittens and ninja masks. A lot of men are wearing fur, now there’s fashion for you. Major Mac suddenly falls into step at his side.
“Major McLaurin, sir!”
The major gives him a dopy look. Billy remembers to raise his voice.
“WE WERE WORRIED ABOUT YOU SIR! WE DIDN’T KNOW WHERE YOU’D GONE!”
The major transitions to frown. “Look alive, soldier, I’ve been right here. Get those cobwebs out of your eyes.”
Affirmative and copy that, in the major’s mind he’s been right here and for a grunt that’s all that matters, roger SIR! Billy becomes nervous and awkward, hyper as a setter pup, while the major strides along in brooding contemplation of his shoes. Try, fool, Billy tells himself. Like when’re you gonna get a better shot than this? He needs knowledge that Major Mac might have, knowledge and guidance having to do with death, grief, the fate of the soul, if nothing else he seeks the means for verbalizing such matters without shitting all over their very real power. When people ask does he pray, is he religious or specifically saved or Christian, Billy always says yes, partly because it makes them happy and partly because he feels that’s pretty much the truth, though probably not in the way they’re thinking. What he’d like to say is that he’s lived it, if not the entire breadth and depth of the Christian faith then certainly the central thrust of it. The mystery, the awe, that huge sadness and grief. Oh my people. He felt Shroom’s soul leave his body at the moment of his death, a blinding whoom! like a high-voltage line blowing out, leaving Billy with all circuits fried and a lingering haze like he’d been whacked by a heavyweight who knows how to hit. A kind of concussion, is what it was. Sometimes he thinks his ears are ringing still.
The soul is an actual, tangible thing, Billy knows this now. For two weeks he’s been traveling this great nation of ours in the good-faith belief that sooner or later he’ll meet someone who can explain his experience, or at least break it down and properly frame the issue. There was Pastor Rick, to whom he confided in a moment of weakness, but the pastor turned out to be an egotistical pain in the ass. Dime is too close to it, and anyway Billy needs more of the profile of the stable adult. For a while he thought Albert might be the one, a man of wide experience and impressive education who seems to know so much about so many things and can talk the sun down and up again, but lately Billy despairs. It’s not that Albert lacks compassion — though there is that cool way he looks at you sometimes, like you’re the next bite on his hamburger — but rather the irony with which he views all sides, including his own. Albert is wise to himself, as any man of the world must be, but it’s this ingrown worldliness that limits him in precisely the way that Billy needs him most.
Which leaves Major Mac as the best available candidate, Major Mac the sphinx, the zombie, the rarely speaking and never-taking-a-piss wraith, the guy who seems about 60 percent there about 40 percent of the time. That Major Mac. Thus it’s in a state of extreme frustration that Billy accompanies the senior officer along the concourse. He wants to know what happened that day in Ramallah. Did the major lose men that day? Friends? Did he watch them die? Billy feels a terrible need to connect, heart to heart, man to man, warrior to warrior, he craves that rough and necessary wisdom and yet can barely manage small talk with officers, much less crack the code of the major’s vacancy to access something so personal and real. How is he supposed to break the ice? YO MAJOR, CHECK IT OUT, THEY GOT HEINEKENS ON TAP! He feels his chance slipping away as Josh diverts them down a side corridor to a restricted-access escalator. A pair of beefy, unconfident security men in coats and ties glance at the Bravos’ game credentials and wave them on. “Dude, stairway to heaven!” Sykes cries as the escalator rides them up, yukking like he’s the soul of wit. Standing one deferential step below the major, Billy decides it’s hopeless. He lacks the nerve and he lacks the bullshit, plus there’s the major’s disability and the corresponding sense that certain subjects should not be discussed at roadhouse volume. Death, grief, the fate of the soul, these beg congress in tones of sober thoughtfulness, you can’t scream back and forth about such matters and hope to get anywhere.
So he says nothing, not that the major notices. They step off the escalator onto something called the “Blue Star Level,” and Josh leads them to an elevator marked RESTRICTED — STADIUM CLUB ONLY. He swipes a card through the little access gizmo and everyone boards. Two well-dressed couples join them for the ride up, they are old enough to be any Bravo’s parents but money shaves off a good ten years. No one acknowledges anyone else. The doors close, concentrating the women’s perfume, a shrill citral musk like lemon trees in heat. The elevator has just clunked into gear when necessity rumbles Billy’s bowels, precursing a monstrous anal belch. He clenches with all his might and hangs on. An almost imperceptible tremor runs through the Bravos; several more are stiffening, shifting their feet, opening and closing their fists. Oh God, please God, not here, not now. They grit their teeth and stare straight ahead. What is it about close confines that so reliably excites the fighting man’s lower GI tract?