I’m a good soldier, he tells himself, aren’t I a good soldier? So what does it mean when a good soldier feels this bad?
Don’t be scared, Shroom said. Because you’re going to be scared. So when you start to get scared, don’t be scared. Billy has thought about this a lot, not just the Zen teaser of it but what exactly does it mean to be scared out of your mind. Shroom, again: Fear is the mother of all emotion. Before love, hate, spite, grief, rage, and all the rest, there was fear, and fear gave birth to them all, and as every combat soldier knows there are as many incarnations and species of fear as the Eskimo language has words for snow. Spend any amount of time in the realms of deadly force and you will witness certain of its fraught and terrible forms. Billy has seen men shrieking with the burden of it, others can’t stop cursing, still others lose their powers of speech altogether. Loss of sphincter or bladder control, classic. Giggling, weeping, trembling, numbing out, classic. One day he saw an officer roll under his Humvee during a rocket attack, then flatly refuse to come out when it was over. Or Captain Tripp, a pretty good man in the clutch, but when they’re really getting whacked his brow flaps up and down like a loose tarp in a high wind. His soldiers might feel embarrassed for him, but no one actually thinks the worse of him for it, for this is pure motor reflex, the body rebels. Certain combat-stress reactions are coded in the genes just as surely as cowlicks or flat feet, while for a golden few fear seems not to register at all. Sergeant Dime, for example, an awesome soldier who Billy has seen walking around calmly eating Skittles while mortars rained down mere meters away. Or a man will be fearless one day and freak the next, as fickle and spooky as that, as pointless, as dumb. Works on your mind, all that. The randomness. He gets so tired of living with the daily beat-down of it, not just the normal animal fear of pain and death but the uniquely human fear of fear itself like a CD stuck on skip-repeat, an ever-narrowing self-referential loop that may well be a form of madness. Thus all our other emotions evolved as coping mechanisms for the purpose of possibly keeping us sane? And so you start to sense the humanity even in feelings of hate. Sometimes your body feels dead with weariness of it, other times it’s like a migraine you think you can reason with, you bend your mind to the pain, analyze it, break it down into ions and atoms, go deeper and deeper into the theory of it until the pain dissolves in a flatus of logic, and yet after all that your head still hurts.
So these are Billy’s thoughts while he makes small talk about the war. He tries to keep it low-key, but people steer the conversation toward drama and passion. They just assume if you’re a Bravo you’re here to talk about the war, because, well, if Barry Bonds were here they’d talk about baseball. Don’t you think… Wouldn’t you agree… You have to admit… Here at home the war is a problem to be solved with correct thinking and proper resource allocation, while the drama and passion arise from the terrorists’ goal of taking over the world. Ire way of life. Ire values. Ire Christian values. Billy can feel his head emptying out.
“Excuse me,” a Cowboys executive interrupts, “our soldier’s looking a little dry there. How about a refill?”
Billy rattles the ice in his cup. “Thank you, sir. Another Coke would be nice.”
“Come on. Excuse us, folks.” The executive rudders him by the elbow toward the bar, a take-charge guy. It is apparently the Cowboys’ corporate culture that all executives must resemble sales managers at a Ford dealership, and this one — he introduces himself, Bill Jones — fits the mold. Plain, balding, full in the face, with a second-trimester heft to his middle, yet he radiates a vibe that Billy feels at once, a good working tool of controlled aggression. A rubbery impatience seems to flow through all his movements.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Jones laughs. “You looked like you could use a change of scenery back there.”
Billy smiles, shrugs. “They’re nice people.”
Mr. Jones laughs again, rather more harshly this time. “Yes indeed, they certainly are. And they’re thrilled to meet you fellas. You’re an impressive group.”
“Thank you.” Billy notices a bulge in the vicinity of Mr. Jones’s armpit. He’s packing. Billy resists a brief but powerful urge to smash Mr. Jones’s esophagus into the back of his neck and disarm him, just for safety’s sake.
“You won’t find many dissenters in this group. They’re strong for the war, strong for America. And not at all shy about speaking their minds.”
“Yes sir.”
“Listen, I’m as political as anybody, but I’d rather talk about football any day than politics. How about you?”
“Sir, I’d rather talk about just about anything than politics.”
Mr. Jones gives a quick hard laugh. Billy seems to be saying all the right things, but he won’t let himself relax.
“You’re the one from Texas?”
“Yes sir.”
“You a Cowboys fan?”
“All my life.” Billy puts some oomph in it, just for flattery’s sake.
“That’s what I like to hear. We’ll try to give you a win today. Harold,” he says to the black bartender, “how about an ice-cold Coke for our young friend. Anything in it?” He turns a raffish eye to Billy.
“A little splash of Jack Daniel’s would be nice. Though technically I’m not supposed to.”
“No worries, we’ll keep it on the down-low. Anything else I can get for you?”
Billy wonders why he’s going to so much trouble for him. “Well, to be honest, sir, I’ve got kind of a headache. Some Advil or something would be nice.”
“Hang on.” Mr. Jones pulls out his cell and taps faster than one would believe from such blunt fingers, which boast not one but two Super Bowl rings. Billy tries not to gawk at these bulbous crustaceans of the jeweler’s art. He accepts his drink and turns to face the room. From deep within the crowd Mango shoots him a look of stunned hilarity, then the sightline quickly shuts and that seems like part of the gag. The crowd is thickest around Norm, a bee swarm of hovering bodies, and Billy decides this is a learning opportunity, a chance to see a master schmoozer up close. Norm’s skill at working a room is legendary. Charisma, charm, command presence, he brings all these to bear in the smile and personal word he has for each and every guest, he is the indisputable pivot point and center of the room and Billy can see the skill with which he manages things, and yet, and yet… He is so on, is Norm. He is working so hard. He has all the right moves but betrays a salesman’s stress in the doing, or that of a mediocre actor who hits his points but seems cramped by a too-tight collar, a twist in his underwear. Norm is confident, absolutely, he is the king of self-esteem, but this is the confidence of self-help tapes and motivational mantras, confidence learned as one learns a foreign language, and so the accent lingers in his body language, a faint arthritic creak in every smile and gesture.