“They have to leave us shortly,” Norm is saying, “they’re going to take part in our halftime show, but while they’re here let’s give them a big Texas welcome.” Everyone claps, hoots, cheers, let’s get this party started; the ballers are feeling that good Bravo vibe. Billy is hailed by someone’s craggy-faced granddad.
“Soldier, I’m damn glad to meet you!”
“Thank you, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you too, sir.”
“March Hawey,” the man says, sticking out his hand. The name and face are vaguely familiar to Billy, the kindly rumpled sag of his narrow features, the elfin tweak of his eyes and ears. Billy would hazard March Hawey is one of those celebrity Texans who’s famous mainly for being rich and famous.
“Listen, when the news broke that night — when they started running that video of yall taking care of business? — that was one of the biggest thrills of my life, no lie. It’s hard to put into words just what I was feeling, but it was, I don’t know, just a beautiful moment. Margaret, tell him how I was.”
He turns to his wife, who looks a good twenty years younger, a statuesque six-footer with stiff blond hair and skin taut as a soufflé.
“I thought,” she says, I thot in the tart British accent of Joan Collins trashing a rival on a Dynasty rerun, “he’d lost his mind. I hear him screeeeeming in the media room and I ruuuussshhh downstairs to find him standing on my good George Fourth library table, in, my Gohd, his cow-boy boots, doing this Rocky thing”—she raises her arms and gives a couple of spastic fist-pumps—“ ‘Mahch,’ I’m shouting, ‘Mahch, love, dear, what-EVER,’ ”—wot-EVAH—“ ‘on earth has gotten into you?’ ”
Several couples have joined them. Everyone is smiling, nodding, evidently they are used to such antics from their good friend March.
“It was cathartic,” Hawey says, and Billy carefully repeats the word to himself, cathartic. “Seeing yall John Wayne that deal, it’s like we finally had something to cheer about. I guess the war’d been depressing me all this time and I didn’t even know it, till yall came along. Just a huge morale boost for everybody.”
The other couples vigorously agree. “You’re among friends,” a woman assures Billy. “You won’t find any cut-and-runners here.”
Others chime in with variations on the theme. Margaret Hawey stares at Billy with enormous blue eyes that never blink. He senses that whatever judgment she’s passing on him will be strict, swift, and without appeal.
“Let me ask you something,” Hawey says, leaning into Billy’s space. “Is it gettin’ better?”
“I think so, sir. In certain areas, yeah, definitely. We’re working hard to make it better.”
“I know! I know! Whatever problems we’re having aren’t yalls fault, we’ve got the finest troops in the world! Listen, I supported this war from the beginning, and I’ll tell you what, I like our president, personally I think he’s a good and decent man. I’ve known him since he was a kid — I watched him grow up! He’s a good boy, he wants to do the right thing. I know he went into this with all the best intentions, but that crowd he’s got around him, listen. Some of those folks are good friends of mine, but you’ve gotta admit, they’ve made one royal effing mess outta this war.”
This prompts much head-shaking, many sad mumbles of assent. “It’s been a fight,” Billy says, wondering how he might get a drink.
“I guess you’d know that better than anyone.” Hawey leans in again, closer now, but Billy stands his ground. “Lemme ask you something else.”
“Yes, sir.”
“About the battle. But I don’t wanna get too personal.”
“It’s okay.”
“But it’s just natural for people to wonder when somebody does something as fine and brave as you, I mean, we all saw the video. We know how rough it was out there. And for a fella to just go running through the middle of all that”—Hawey chuckles, shakes his head—“we can’t help wonderin’, weren’t you scared?”
The group shivers with a titillatory chill. Only Margaret is unmoved. She stands there watching Billy with those huge blue eyes that won’t cut him any slack.
“I’m sure I was,” he answers. “I know I was. But it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think. I just did what my training told me to do, like anybody else in the squad would do. I just happened to be the guy in position.” He assumes he’s done, but they’re quiet, still primed for the payoff, so he has to think of something else. “I guess it’s like my sergeant says, as long as you’ve got plenty of ammo, you’ll probably be okay.”
This does it; they throw back their heads and roar. In a way it’s so easy, all he has to do is say what they want to hear and they’re happy, they love him, everybody gets along. Sometimes he has to remind himself there’s no dishonor in it. He hasn’t told any lies, he doesn’t exaggerate, yet so often he comes away from these encounters with the sleazy, gamey aftertaste of having lied.
New people join their group, others leave in a vigorous round robin of socializing. Billy is constantly shaking hands and forgetting people’s names. Major Mac and Mr. Jones are talking near the cold buffet; Mr. Jones seems not to realize that the major couldn’t hear a tank go by. Beyond them is the high-powered group of Albert, Dime, Mr. and Mrs. Norm, and several of what seem to be the gathering’s heaviest hitters. Albert is laughing, quite at his ease, and that’s as it should be, Billy reflects. Albert swims with the Hollywood sharks, he can handle this Dallas crowd standing on his head, but it’s Dime who Billy focuses on now, the way he listens, holds himself, slips in a word here and there. “Watch him,” Shroom used to tell Billy. “Watch him and learn. Davey’s spooky. He knows how to see in the dark.” According to Shroom this was Dime’s particular gift, this intuiting ray he brought to the war, but the only way he could develop it was by testing himself, always putting it out there. The insurgents couldn’t kill large numbers of Americans as long as the troops stayed on their bases; the flip side was, the only way the Americans could track down and kill insurgents was by leaving their bases, which made the whole business of patrols and checkpoints and house-to-house searches an exercise in the using up of nerve. But it was a form of war Dime forced them to accept. Bravo dismounted more than any squad in the platoon, in the entire battalion, probably. They could be anywhere, and Dime would order them clear to walk a couple of klicks with the Humvees lagging, following at a crawl. “You won’t know shit sitting inside that damn box,” he’d say. They were gambles, these little forays, they could easily get you killed, but they were Dime’s way of banking knowledge, instinct, experience against the day when everything and everybody would be on the line.
Not that the Bravos liked it. Plenty of days they hated Dime for putting them out on the street. It seemed so pointless, the risk far out of proportion to the possible benefit, but if any Bravo bitched Shroom told him to shut up and do his job. So out they’d go, tromping through markets, humping down side streets, randomly walking into houses to find what they might find. One such day they’re on the street and a small gang of boys approaches, they’re fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, aspiring hustlers with fuzzy mustaches and not much better than rags for clothes. “Mister,” they cry, swaggering up to Bravo, “give me my pocket! Give me my pocket!”