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…”