Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Read Free Page A

anyway. Guff and bullshit are more their working style, but the spell of introspective dread concludes with the appearance of a large, carefully rendered homemade sign affixed to a roadside utility pole. STOP ANAL RAPE IN IRAQ! the sign reads, below which someone has scrawled, heavens to betsey . Bravo howls.

A PRIVATE IN THE INFANTRY
    THEY ARRIVE TWO HOURS before kickoff and no one seems to know what to do with them, so they’re parked in their seats for the time being, forty-yard line, home side, seventh row. Sykes and Lodis immediately start debating the retail value of such totally sick seats and how much they would bring on eBay, $400, $600, up and up they go, their analysis based on nothing more than air and wishful thinking. It’s a fuckwit conversation and Billy tries not to listen. He’s got the aisle seat with Mango on his left, and they talk a little bit about last night and how awesome it is to be here instead of spitting sand out their ears at FOB Viper. Hebert known as A-bort is sitting to Mango’s left, then Holliday known as Day, then Lodis a.k.a. Cum Load, Pant Load, or just plain Load, then Sykes who will never be anything other than Sucks, then Koch as in coke which makes him Crack and Crack kills!, especially when he squats and shows a slice of his ass, then Sergeant Dime, then Albert’s empty seat, then that infinite enigma known as Major Mac. Everyone says it’s cold, but Billy doesn’t feel it. The forecast calls for sleet and freezing rain by late afternoon, and through the stadium’s open dome they can watch the weather going to hell, the cloud deck bristling like a giant Brillo pad. The half-empty stands—it’s early yet—give off the low hum of a floor buffer or oscillating fan.
    “Load!” barks Sergeant Dime. “How long is a football field?”
    Lodis snorts; too easy . At least ten times a day he has to prove that certitude is the hallmark of the true moron.
    “A hunrud yards, Sergeant.”
    “Wrong, dumbshit. Billy, how long is a football field?”
    “A hundred twenty yards,” Billy answers, trying to keep it low-key, but Dime leads the rest of Bravo in whooping applause.
    Hooah, Billy, get some. He’s leery of this roll Dime’s on for singling him out for favors and praise and doing it in so frontal a manner, as if daring the other Bravos to call him on it. It’s like a punishment, whose Billy hasn’t figured out, but instructional aggression is a specialty of Dime’s. NO he’s bellowing now at Sykes, who’s begging permission to place a couple of small bets. Ever since he maxed out his credit cards on porn, Dime has had him on a vicious budget.
    “Sergeant, just fifty bucks.”
    “No.”
    “I’ve been saving up—”
    “No.”
    “I’ll send every penny to my wife—”
    “Damn right you will, but you aren’t betting.”
    “Please, Sergeant—”
    “Sucks, have you not had your morning glass of shut up?” With that Dime is stepping over the seat below and sidling down the vacant row at Bravo’s front. “Gentlemen, what it do?” he says on reaching the end of the row.
    “Just chillin’,” says Mango.
    “You get any chiller, we’re gonna put you on a stick and sell mango Blow Pops. Lodis still says the football field’s a hundred yards long.”
    “Is!” Lodis calls from down the row. “Since when anybody count the end zone, yo.”
    “Sergeant,” Sykes wails, “just please this once—”
    “Shut!” Dime barks, the stalk of his neck twisting around as if he means to pop his head off by self-induced torque, then his eyes alight on Billy and there it is, The Look, the fixed fire of Dime’s gaze bearing down on Billy’s humble self. This has happened a lot lately and it’s freaking Billy out, the concentrated calm of Dime’s gray eyes with that sense of mad energy swirling at the edges, like finding yourself at the center of a hurricane.
    “Billy.”
    “Sergeant.”
    “Your thoughts on the Hilary Swank deal.”
    “I don’t know, Sergeant. It