“Dawg,” he says to Billy, “I just wanna go to sleep.”
“Uh huh. How’s your ear?”
“Hurts like a motherfucker.” After a second they both find this extremely funny.
“What’d he do, try to rip it off?”
“He won’t doing nothing except weighing about three hundred pounds. I woulda flipped him ’cept his leg was so fat, couldn’t get my arm around it. I was like, dude, you never heard of diabetes? You might wanna shed a few, lay off the supersize for a while.”
They try to watch the game, but it’s so slow, what’s the point. The fans around them are sheltering under blankets, umbrellas, here and there a plastic trash bag; only the Bravos sit there like stock in a pasture, wide open to the weather. Billy pulls out his cell and stares at Faison’s number. He is tempted to call just to hear her voice message, which sounds more southern than her real-life voice, the vowels rounder, the hard palate hollowed out, the vox equivalent of a Hill Country feather mattress.
“Dawg, I think I’m in love.”
Mango laughs. “It’d be gay if you weren’t. I saw the way you guys were moshing back there on the field. It means something when they do that shit, you know? They don’t touch you unless they dig you.”
Billy stares at his phone.
“You get her digits?”
Billy solemnly nods.
“Well, fuck, she definitely likes you. Kind of sucks it’s coming on the back end of the trip.”
Billy moans with the pleasure and pain of it, these violent oppositional forces that are physically molding him into something new. The Jumbotron plays the American Heroes graphic again, then grinds through the deafening commercial cycle, the same ads always playing in the same maddening order. FORD TRUCKS BUILT TOUGH! TOYOTA! nissan! TOYOTA! nissan! FOR ALL YOUR BANKING NEEEEEEDS DUM-DEE-DEE-DUMMMMM! Then Sykes sings out in his gruesome falsetto, If you can’t make me say ooo! then he pauses to tell the fans fore and aft how much he loves them, how much he loves all Americans everywhere, then he’s singing again—
WhaaaAAAtttt’s love got to do with it, got to do with it,
WhaaaAAAtttt’s love but a secondhand emooooo-shun
Word comes down the row that Dime slipped him a big fat Valium about twenty minutes ago, and now he’s the happiest girl in the whole USA.
Billy startles, nearly drops the cell when it rings. He checks the screen.
“Her?” Mango asks.
Billy shakes his head. He doesn’t recognize the number. The call rings out, followed a minute later by the chirp of a waiting voice message. Billy stares at the phone. He wishes it would tell him what he wants. He dials up the message and listens, then sits back and closes his eyes. What would Shroom do? Shroom would return to the war, definitely, but that was his destiny in this life cycle, he was fulfilling his warrior incarnation and only by seeing it through would he move on to the next stage. “So what stage am I?” Billy asked, joking, sort of, but Shroom didn’t laugh. You won’t know until you work at it, he said. Study, meditate, contemplate, focus. You won’t find out just by drifting through your time. So with his eyes still shut Billy tries to envision himself at the ranch. Very secure and remote, the voice in the phone message said. It’s a good place. We’ll make sure you won’t lack for anything. In the vision Billy is walking down a path. He’s wearing jeans, Timbs, a flannel shirt, and a corduroy jacket. The path leads through some woods, and there’s a river nearby. He can hear the shoosh of rapids, sometimes glimpse the flash of water through the trees, but the vision yaws and stutters until Faison materializes at his side, and then it all unfolds in gorgeous HD, he and Faison living quiet in their secure location, loving each other, screwing eight or nine times a day, cooking meals and watching movies, going for walks with the dogs. There would be dogs. And lots of books, books piled everywhere. He would apply himself to study in the best Shroom tradition, so he’d know that much more when the shit-hammer came down. And when it did — when the time came to make his stand? He’d have Faison, the lawyers, his Silver Star on his side. He could do it. He’d make statements. Ain’t gonna study war no more.
Rrrrraaaahhhhhxxxx-annnnnn, Sykes is screeching at the top of his lungs, you don’t have to, then he turns and starts chattering to the fans in row 8 about how much he loves the Bravos, hell yes he loves his boys like brothers, he’s just a poor white dumbass from Coon Cove, Florida, but at least he’s got the Army, hooah! Down on this end Lodis is slumped in his seat, fast asleep. Dustings of sleet have accumulated on his shoulders and arms as in a comic advertisement for an antidandruff shampoo. A squirt of subcutaneous tissue spills from the cut in his lip. The nice boojee lady in front of them happens to notice the sleeping soldier, such a compelling sight that she turns all the way around for a closer look.
“Ain’t he sweet?” Mango says.
“How can he sleep in this weather?” she cries.
“Technically he’s not asleep, ma’am,” Crack informs her. “He’s passed out.”
The lady laughs. She’s a cool boojee lady. Her husband and friends are chuckling too.
“But it’s just miserable out here,” she protests. “Shouldn’t he at least have a blanket or something? Doesn’t the Army give you coats?”
“Oh, ma’am, don’t worry about him,” Crack assures her. “We’re infantry, that’s kind of like being a dog or a mule, we’re too dumb to mind the weather. He’s fine, believe me, he don’t feel a thing.”
“But he could freeze!”
“No ma’am,” Mango chimes in. “We punch him every once in a while to keep his blood moving. See, like this.” He delivers a sharp whack to Lodis’s bicep. Lodis snarls and throws out his arms, but his eyes never open.
“See?” Mango beams. “He’s fine. He’s happy. He’s like a cockroach, you can’t kill him!”
The lady rustles around in her pack, then kneels backward on her seat and drapes a Snuggie over Lodis, one of those personal lounging blankets with built-in sleeves as advertised on late-night dumb-dumb TV. Before long the Bravos have tucked a homemade sign under Lodis’s chin. HOMELESS VET — WILL SLAY VAMPIRES FOR FOOD. Below that, HAVE A BLESSED DAY. Then a smiley face. The crowd perks up when a Cowboys lineman boosts an enemy fumble and staggers, slips, and slides all the way to the Bears’ three, but then the refs get into it, they convene at the sideline replay machine and discuss, peer, point, and discuss some more, they are a team of Nobel scientists tweaking the breakthrough cure for cancer. At last, a decision is decided. Upon further review… The fumble is revised to an incomplete pass and that does it for the boojees, they start packing up. Mango reminds the nice lady to take her Snuggie. “Oh, I can’t do that,” she says, smiling down at Lodis, so soundly racked with his eyelashes flocked with sleet, that lip chunk dangling like a squashed bug. “He looks so cozy. I want him to keep it. You tell him it’s my gift to him.”
Bravo erupts: Noooo!