“Vietnam?” Dime asks.
“Just missed it. Got out in ’63 and damn glad I did. I knew guys who didn’t come back from there.”
“Lotta those,” says Dime.
“You ain’t kidding. I just want you fellas to know how much we appreciate the job you’re doing over there. If it watten for yall God knows what’d be going down here, I guess we’d all be praying to Allah and wearing towels on our heads.”
“You got anything for a headache?” Billy asks. “Advil? Aleve?”
“Tons of the stuff,” Ennis replies. “You hurtin’? Listen, son, I’d love to help you out, but I can’t, legal liability and all that. Every single item that goes through those windows”—he points to the dispensary counter—“gets recorded and tallied. You wouldn’t think it, but even just a couple of little pills could lose me my job.”
“That’s okay,” Billy says. “I don’t want you to lose your job.”
Ennis apologizes again. At the door to the locker room Dime asks him to autograph his ball. Ennis rears back. He’s chuckling but his eyes are wary.
“Why you want that? I’m just an old equipment hand, nobody cares about my autograph.”
“As far as I’m concerned you run the team,” Dime answers, so Ennis laughs and takes the Sharpie and signs his name to Dime’s ball, and this will be the only autograph that Dime collects today. Back in the locker room the players have almost finished suiting up. The air is a pungent casserole of plastics, b.o., farts, melon-woody colognes, and the rancid-licorice reek of petroleum liniments. Norm stands on a chair in the center of the room and calls Bravo to him, then instructs the team to circle around. Bravo has heard its quota of speeches today but here comes another, what can you do. The players dutifully approach, and as they assemble here in the middle of the room Billy tries to imagine the vast systems that support these athletes. They are among the best-cared-for creatures in the history of the planet, beneficiaries of the best nutrition, the latest technologies, the finest medical care, they live at the very pinnacle of American innovation and abundance, which inspires an extraordinary thought — send them to fight the war! Send them just as they are this moment, well rested, suited up, psyched for brutal combat, send the entire NFL! Attack with all our bears and raiders, our ferocious redskins, our jets, eagles, falcons, chiefs, patriots, cowboys — how could a bunch of skinny hajjis in man-skirts and sandals stand a chance against these all-Americans? Resistance is futile, oh Arab foes. Surrender now and save yourself a world of hurt, for our mighty football players cannot be stopped, they are so huge, so strong, so fearsomely ripped that mere bombs and bullets bounce off their bones of steel. Submit, lest our awesome NFL show you straight to the flaming gates of hell!
“Now, I just want to say,” Norm begins, but there’s some chatter at the back, and someone’s boom box is burbling Ludacris. “SHADDUP!!!!!” Coach Tuttle bellows, and for a moment they could all be back in eighth-grade gym.
“Well,” Norm resumes, “I hope everyone’s had a chance to visit with the very special guests we have with us today, the soldiers of Bravo squad. I’m sure by now everybody is familiar with their story — under fire, pinned down, large numbers of their colleagues killed or wounded, but these young men, the young soldiers of Bravo, they would, not, quit. There on the banks of the Al-Ansakar Canal they were faced with the biggest challenge of their lives, and thanks to God’s help they rose to the challenge, and they’ve made our entire country proud. I had the privilege of speaking with President Bush not long ago, and he…”
The players have tuned out. Billy can see it in their eyes, that flatness, the rheostatic dialing down of brains in sleep mode. Having stood in formation for countless hours, he knows the look when he sees it.
“… so maybe our challenges are different. Maybe the challenges we face aren’t as dramatic as theirs, but they’re the tests God has put in our path to mold us into the people He wants us to be. Now, I know we’ve hit a rough patch in our season. We’re struggling. Things haven’t gone exactly to plan, but it’s what we do when we’re down, after we’ve taken the hit, that determines who we are. So do we say forget it, just pack it in…”
A cloud of chemical wrath seems to rise off the players. A Norm lecture is just an everyday pain in the ass, but to be shown up by Bravo? Contrasted? Compared? This stirs the bloody reservoirs of sibling rivalry. Why can’t you be more like him? Not that Bravo wants anything to do with this, but it’s too late to opt out of Norm’s Sunday school lesson.
“… and so I challenge you, all of you, every individual on this team, from Vinny and Drew right down to Bobby”—a gurgling cry rises from somewhere behind the players, Bobby himself; Bravo met him earlier, the Cowboys’ famous, mildly retarded ball boy—“to rise to the challenge, to overcome. To be as brave and determined in facing the challenge as these young soldiers were facing theirs. It starts today, gentlemen. No time like the present. So let’s go out there and kick some Bear butt!”
“Yeah!” someone cries, and the players erupt, more oomph in the cheer than Billy would expect. Then again, they are professionals. To lead them in prayer Norm calls on Pastor Dan, a pleasantly weathered man dressed in the same shiny track suit as the coaches. Dear God, prays the reverend in a melodic southern voice, all crushed-velvet vowels and chunky consonants, please help us play to the best of our abilities. To conduct ourselves on the field in a way that fulfills your word and honors our faith. Guide us, lead us, protect us… With his eyes shut tight Billy is thinking of Shroom’s comment that the Christian Bible is mostly a compilation of old Sumerian legends, not something he particularly needed to know at the time but which has afforded some solace during these past two weeks of practically nonstop public prayer. America loves to pray, God knows. America prays and prays and prays, it is the land of unchained prayer, and all this ceremonial praying is hard on Billy. He tries, but nothing comes. You close your eyes and bow your head and at the first thee or thine it’s like the signal cuts out, not so much as a stray spritz of static comes through. The thought that others might be having the same problem doesn’t much help, but awareness that something came before — Sumerians, Hittites, Turkmen, an entire UN of ancient civilizations — that the thee-thine formula might not be the last word? — for some reason he finds comfort in this.
So who were the Sumerians?
“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Shroom said, strapping on his IBA. “But not right now.”
Not now and not ever, as it turned out. Shroom swore off video games and rarely watched TV. Instead he read. All the time. “I am constructing my personality,” he said of his reading. Even for whacking off he had an authoritative text, the ancient Egyptians this time, who believed—no lie! I swear! — that the first, the original, the nameless primeval god who created the universe did so through an act of masturbation, in effect bringing the cosmos into being by virtue of sheer ejaculatory force.
A-men, says Pastor Dan. Tooooooh min-UUUUUUTTTTTES, hollers an assistant coach, and in these final moments of preparation Billy finds himself invited, no, summoned, he’ll think later, by a nod and lowdown flick of the wrist to Octavian Spurgeon’s locker. Octavian, Barry Joe, a few others, they stand there with a stillness that suggests momentous events. Billy wishes he wasn’t holding his dorky souvenir ball.
“Lissen, we wanna know…” Octavian’s voice is barely a murmur. “We, like, we wanna do somethin’ like you. Extreme, you know, cap some Muslim freaks, you think they let us do that? Like we ride wit yall for a week, couple weeks, help out. Help yalls bust some raghead ass, we up for that.”