“March Hawey.”
“I know who he is.”
“Mr. Swift Boat himself. Dude’s famous.”
Billy stares straight ahead. He won’t give Dime the satisfaction of knowing he didn’t know.
“Richer than God, and talk about tied in. So watch yourself around him.”
“Why should I watch myself?”
“Because in case you haven’t noticed this is a highly partisan country we live in, Billy. Those guys are smart, they know who the enemy is. They aren’t fooled by a couple of bullshit war medals.”
Billy glances at his chest, considering his medals in this possibly sinister light.
“I’m not the enemy.”
“Oh hooooo, you don’t think? They decide, not you. They’re the deciders when it comes to who’s a real American, dude.”
Billy takes a sip of his Coke. “I’m not planning on running for president, Sergeant.”
Dime nods, studies the skyline of liquor bottles behind the bar. “You wanna know what my old granddaddy told me once, Billy?”
“What.”
“He said, Son, you want to live a good life, do these three things. Number one, make a lot of money. Number two, pay your taxes. And number three, stay out of politics.”
With that Dime picks up his drink and leaves. Billy tries to enjoy a quiet moment by himself, but his headache comes thundering into the void. He wonders if it’s a migraine — how would he know? A migraine or something worse, something tragic and fatal, a brain tumor, cancer, a massive stroke. Poor fella. So young. Died a virgin. Tragic. In any case the headache is practically bad family history by now, a terrible pain and burden but who would you be without it? Cheers and applause suddenly roll through the suite, and too late he remembers not to turn from the bar.
“They just showed you on the Jumbotron!” a woman exclaims, and for a second Billy despairs — they showed him huckled up to the bar? — then realizes it was a repeat of the American Heroes graphic.
“I think it’s wonderful yall are being honored today,” the woman enthuses.
“Thank you,” says Billy.
“It must be so exciting, traveling around the country!”
“And all at taxpayer expense,” a man — her husband? — adds. He chuckles, which means it’s a joke. Ha ha.
“It’s nice,” Billy says. “It’s been an experience. We’ve met a lot of nice people.”
“What stands out in your mind the most?” the woman asks. She is a bright-eyed, professionally peppy blonde of indeterminate age, blessed with dramatic cheekbones and a smile like silver lamé. Billy would guess she’s a sales whiz of some sort, a high-powered realtress or Mary Kay honcho.
“Well, all the airports for sure,” he says. This gets a laugh from the group, seven or eight people have gathered now. And all the malls, he could add, and the civic centers and hotel rooms and auditoriums and banquet halls that are so much alike across the breadth of the land, a soul-squashing homogeneity designed more for economy and ease of maintenance than anything so various as human sensibilities.
“I really liked Denver,” he goes on, “with all the mountains and everything? That was a beautiful place. I wouldn’t mind going back there and spending some time someday.”
“Weren’t you in Washington?” the realtress prods.
“Oh, yeah. Washington was awesome, definitely.”
“Isn’t the White House so majestic?”
“It is, with all the history and everything. And I guess I never thought about people living there? I know, like why do they call it the White House, duh. But it was amazing, more like you’d expect a really elegant mansion to be.”
The realtress agrees; she and “Stan” have been guests of the Bushes several times and it is truly an awe-inspiring place. Was there a dinner? There wasn’t? That’s a shame because formal state dinners are really quite the production, what with all the pomp, the protocol, the mingling with royalty and heads of state. Maybe next time, Billy says. Then someone asks are we winning and that opens the floor for discussion about the war, and Billy gets passed around like everybody’s favorite bong. Why are they killing their own people? Why do they hate us? Why is it always seventy-two virgins? His brain switches to autopilot and his eye wanders. He spots Lodis over there, babbling about God knows what while his audience listens in polite horror. Then there is Crack hitting on someone’s teenage daughter and doing pretty well from the looks of it, and Sykes staring clench-jawed into empty space, and Albert yukking it up with Mr. and Mrs. Norm. It dawns on Billy that his headache might be purely psychological, the naked ape of his mind asserting itself like the gorilla in that Samsonite commercial.
“… it’s a code of honor that goes back to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, we don’t attack unless we’re attacked first. We aren’t barbarians. We didn’t attack on nina leven. Or at Pearl Harbor, for that matter.”
“No, sir.” Billy reenters the world of conversation.
“But when we are attacked, there’s hell to pay, am I right?”
“I guess you could say that, yes sir.”
“I mean, if someone shoots at you guys, say you’re on patrol and a sniper gets off a couple of rounds, what do you do?”
“We hit him with everything we’ve got, sir.”
The man smiles. “There you go.”
Hey! Hey! Hey! People are shouting for silence, it is the summons for all persons to shut up and attend the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Everyone turns to face the field. The sky has darkened to primer gray, a kind of dull celestial blister capping the stadium’s paper-lantern glow. The light pools and thickens at field level in a lime-tinted aspic sheen. The singer and color guard step out from the home sideline with its legions of players, coaches, refs, medias, and VIPs, along with a circus train’s worth of equipage. They could be an ancient army laying siege somewhere. The color guard presents the flag. The Bravos scattered about the suite snap to attention.
Ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, an echo banging around the bruised hollows of your brain, ohhh-oh as if you’re standing at the mouth of a cave calling tentatively, hopefully into the dark. Ohhh-oh, anybody there? Ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh, ohhh-oh. That gulpy reggae drop-beat, ohhh-oh, Pavlovian cue for bursting of dopamine bombs and xylophone trills up and down your spine. Then the trapdoor springs beneath your feet
followed by the save, the safety net bottoming out and that wheee of a launch into the higher realms
Thence to the ritual torturing of a difficult song. The singer is a young white woman, raven haired, slight of frame, a C&W warbler with a classic high-plains heartbreak twang. Billy heard somewhere that she is the latest American Idol, and like all the American Idols pint-sized or not she is blessed with a huge barrel vault of a mouth.
WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT
so
PRRRRRROOOOUUUUUDDDDLLLLLYYYYY
Billy holds his salute. He makes it a point to think about Shroom and Lake and the hot red blur of that terrible day, but he’s also, because he’s young and still hopeful for his life, scanning the sideline far below for Faison. He systematically ticks his gaze from one cheerleader to the next, no, no, no, no, a dozen no’s then yes and his head spins like a car on ice, an airy whoosh into sideways acceleration with all the nausea, the panic, the full butthole pucker, it is a roller-coaster ride to oblivion. Then his eyes snap back to their sockets and aim straight for Faison, sturdy little Koosh ball of female plenitude with that slash of amber hair like a lava spill, her right-hand pom-pom held to her heart. She is singing, even from here he can see her mouth moving, and so powerful is the bond between them that he leans several inches in her direction. Dude, she was into you. The singing triggers a soft detonation at his core, molten parts of him are flying everywhere and his ears ring to the tune of blast harmonics that only he can hear, but what is “The Star-Spangled Banner” if not a love song?