The long walk Read online

  “I'm all done with that stuff,” Garraty said. “I got a girl up ahead. I'm going to be a good boy from now on.”

  “Sinless in thought, word, and deed,” McVries said sententiously.

  Garraty shrugged. “See it any way you like,” he said.

  “Chances are a hundred to one against you ever having a chance to do more than wave to her again,” McVries said flatly.

  “Seventy-three to one now.”

  “Still pretty high.”

  But Garraty's good humor was solid. “I feel like I could walk forever,” he said blandly. A couple of the Walkers around him grimaced.

  They passed an all-night gas station and the attendant came out to wave. Just about everyone waved back. The attendant was calling encouragement to Wayne, 94, in particular.

  “Garraty,” McVries said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I couldn't tell all the guys that bought it. Could you?”

  'No.”

  “Barkovitch?”

  “No. Up ahead. In front of Scramm. See him?”

  McVries looked. “Oh. Yeah, I think I do.”

  “Stebbins is still back there, too.”

  “Not surprised. Funny guy, isn't he?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was silence between them. McVries sighed deeply, then unshouldered his knapsack and pulled out some macaroons. He offered one to Garraty, who took one. “I wish this was over,” he said. “One way or the other.”

  They ate their macaroons in silence.

  “We must be halfway to Oldtown, huh?” McVries said. “Eighty down, eighty to go?”

  “I guess so,” Garraty said.

  “Won't get there until tonight, then.”

  The mention of night made Garraty's flesh crawl. “No,” he said. Then, abruptly: “How'd you get that scar, Pete?”

  McVries's hand went involuntarily to his cheek and the scar. “It's a long story,” he said briefly.

  Garraty took a closer look at him. His hair was rumpled and clotty with dust and sweat. His clothes were limp and wrinkled. His face was pallid and his eyes were deeply circled in their bloodshot orbs.

  “You look like shit,” he said, and suddenly burst out laughing.

  McVries grinned. “You don't exactly look like a deodorant ad yourself, Ray.”

  They both laughed then, long and hysterically, clutching each other and trying to keep walking at the same time. It was as good a way as any to put an end to the night once and for all. It went on until Garraty and McVries were both warned. They stopped laughing and talking then, and settled into the day's business.

  Thinking, Garraty thought. That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them. It was enough to make you wonder what Socrates had thought about right after he had tossed off his hemlock cocktail.

  At a little past five o'clock they passed their first clump of bona fide spectators, four little boys sitting cross-legged like Indians outside a pup tent in a dewy field. One was still wrapped up in his sleeping bag, as solemn as an Eskimo. Their hands went back and forth like timed metronomes. None of them smiled.

  Shortly afterward, the road forked into another, larger road. This one was a smooth, wide expanse of asphalt, three lanes wide. They passed a truck-stop restaurant, and everyone whistled and waved at the three young waitresses sitting on the steps, just to show them they were still starchy. The only one who sounded halfway serious was Collie Parker.

  “Friday night,” Collie yelled loudly. “Keep it in mind. You and me, Friday night.”

  Garraty thought they were all acting a little immature, but he waved politely and the waitresses seemed not to mind. The Walkers spread out across the wider road as more of them came fully awake to the May 2nd morning sunshine. Garraty caught sight of Barkovitch again and wondered if Barkovitch wasn't really one of the smart ones. With no friends you had no grief.

  A few minutes later the word came back, and this time the word was a knock-knock joke. Bruce Pastor, the boy just in front of Garraty, turned around to Garraty and said, “Knock, knock, Garraty.”

  “Who's there?”

  “Major.”

  “Major who?”

  “Major buggers his mother before breakfast,” Bruce Pastor said, and laughed uproariously. Garraty chuckled and passed it back to McVries, who passed it to Olson. When the joke came back the second time, the Major was buggering his grandmother before breakfast. The third time he was buggering Sheila, the Bedlington terrier that appeared with him in so many of his press releases.

  Garraty was still laughing over that one when he noticed that McVries's laughter had tapered off and disappeared. He was staring with an odd fixity at the wooden-faced soldiers atop the halftrack. They were staring back impassively.

  “You think that's funny?” he yelled suddenly. The sound of his shout cut cleanly through the laughter and silenced it. McVries's face was dark with suffused blood. The scar stood out in dead white contrast, like a slashed exclamation mark, and for one fear-filled moment Garraty thought he was having a stroke.

  “Major buggers himself, that's what I think!” McVries cried hoarsely. “You guys, you probably bugger each other. Pretty funny, huh? Pretty funny, you bunch of motherfuckers, right? Pretty goddam FUNNY, am I right?”

  Other Walkers stared uneasily at McVries and then eased away.

  McVries suddenly ran at the halftrack. Two of the three soldiers raised their guns to high port, ready, but McVries halted, halted dead, and raised his fists at them, shaking them above his head like a mad conductor.

  “Come on down here! Put down those rifles and come on down here! I'll show you what's funny!”

  “Warning,” one of them said in a perfectly neutral voice. “Warning 61. Second warning.”

  Oh my God, Garraty thought numbly. He's going to get it and he's so close... so close to them... he'll fly through the air just like Freaky D'Allessio. McVries broke into a run, caught up with the halftrack, stopped, and spat on the side of it. The spittle cut a clean streak through the dust on the side of the halftrack.

  “Come on!” Mc Vries screamed. “Come on down here! One at a time or all at once, I don't give a shit!”

  “Warning! Third Warning, 61, final warning.”

  “Fuck your warnings!”

  Suddenly, unaware he was going to do it, Garraty turned and ran back, drawing his own warning. He only heard it with some back part of his mind. The soldiers were drawing down on McVries now. Garraty grabbed McVries's arm. “Come on—”

  “Get out of here, Ray, I'm gonna fight them!”

  Garraty put out his hands and gave McVries a hard, flat shove. “You're going to get shot, you asshole.”

  Stebbins passed them by.

  McVries looked at Garraty, seeming to recognize him for the first time. A second later Garraty drew his own third warning, and he knew McVries could only be seconds away from his ticket.

  “Go to hell,” McVries said in a dead, washed-out voice. He began to walk again.

  Garraty walked with him. “I thought you were going to buy it, that's all,” he said.

  “But I didn't, thanks to the musketeer,” McVries said sullenly. His hand went to the scar. “Fuck, we're all going to buy it.”

  “Somebody wins. It might be one of us.”

  “It's a fake,” McVries said, his voice trembling. “There's no winner, no Prize. They take the last guy out behind a barn somewhere and shoot him too.”

  “Don't be so fucking stupid!” Garraty yelled at him furiously. “You don't have the slightest idea what you're sa—”

  “Everyone loses,” McVries said. His eyes peered out of the dark cave of his sockets like baleful animals. They were walking by themselves. The other Walkers were keeping away, at least for the time being. McVries had shown red, and s
o had Garraty, in a way - he had gone against his own best interest when he ran back to McVries. In all probability he had kept McVries from being number twenty-eight.

  “Everyone loses,” McVries repeated. “You better believe it.”

  They walked over a railroad track. They walked under a cement bridge. On the other side they passed a boarded-up Dairy Queen with a sign that read: WILL REOPEN FOR SEASON JUNE 5.

  Olson drew a warning.

  Garraty felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. It was Stebbins. He looked no better or worse than he had the night before. “Your friend there is jerked at the Major,” he said.

  McVries showed no sign of hearing.

  “I guess so, yeah,” Garraty said. “I myself have passed the point where I'd want to invite him home for tea.”

  “Look behind us.”

  Garraty did. A second halftrack had rolled up, and as he looked, a third fell in behind it, coming in off a side road.

  “The Major's coming,” Stebbins said, “and everybody will cheer.” He smiled, and his smile was oddly lizardlike. “They don't really hate him yet. Not yet. They just think they do. They think they've been through hell. But wait until tonight. Wait until tomorrow.”

  Garraty looked at Stebbins uneasily. “What if they hiss and boo and throw canteens at him, or something?”

  “Are you going to hiss and boo and throw your canteen?”

  “No.”

  “Neither will anyone else. You'll see.”

  “Stebbins?”

  Stebbins raised his eyebrows.

  “You think you'll win, don't you?”

  “Yes,” Stebbins said calmly. “I'm quite sure of it.” And he dropped back to his usual position.

  At 5:25 Yannick bought his ticket. And at 5:30 AM, just as Stebbins had predicted, the Major came.

  There was a winding, growling roar as his jeep bounced over the crest of the hill behind them. Then it was roaring past them, along the shoulder. The Major was standing at full attention. As before, he was holding a stiff, eyes-right salute. A funny chill of pride went through Garraty's chest.

  Not all of them cheered. Collie Parker spat on the ground. Barkovitch thumbed his nose. And McVries only looked, his lips moving soundlessly. Olson appeared not to notice at all as the Major went by; he was back to looking at his feet.

  Garraty cheered. So did Percy What's-His-Name and Harkness, who wanted to write a book, and Wyman and Art Baker and Abraham and Sledge, who had just picked up his second warning.

  Then the Major was gone, moving fast. Garraty felt a little ashamed of himself. He had, after all, wasted energy.

  A short time later the road took them past a used car lot where they were given a twenty-one-horn salute. An amplified voice roaring out over double rows of fluttering plastic pennants told the Walkers — and the spectators — that no one out-traded McLaren's Dodge. Garraty found it all a little disheartening.

  “You feel any better?” he asked McVries hesitantly.

  “Sure,” McVries said. “Great. I'm just going to walk along and watch them drop all around me. What fun it is. I just did all the division in my head - math was my good subject in school - and I figure we should be able to make at least three hundred and twenty miles at the rate we're going. That's not even a record distance.”

  “Why don't you just go and have it on someplace else if you're going to talk like that, Pete,” Baker said. He sounded strained for the first time.

  “Sorry, Mum,” McVries said sullenly, but he shut up.

  The day brightened. Garraty unzipped his fatigue jacket. He slung it over his shoulder. The road was level here. It was dotted with houses, small businesses, and occasional farms. The pines that had lined the road last night had given way to Dairy Queens and gas stations and little crackerbox ranchos. A great many of the ranchos were FOR SALE. In two of the windows Garraty saw the familiar signs: MY SON GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE SQUADS.

  “Where's the ocean?” Collie Parker asked Garraty. “Looks like I was back in Illynoy.”

  “Just keep walking,” Garraty said. He was thinking of Jan and Freeport again. Freeport was on the ocean. “It's there. About a hundred and eight miles south.”

  “Shit,” said Collie Parker. “What a dipshit state this is.”

  Parker was a big-muscled blond in a polo shirt. He had an insolent look in his eye that not even a night on the road had been able to knock out. “Goddam trees everyplace! Is there a city in the whole damn place?”

  “We're funny, up here,” Garraty said. “We think it's fun to breathe real air instead of smog.”

  “Ain't no smog in Joliet, you fucking hick,” Collie Parker said furiously. “What are you laying on me?”

  “No smog but a lot of hot air,” Garraty said. He was angry.

  “If we was home, I'd twist your balls for that.”

  “Now boys,” McVries said. He had recovered and was his old sardonic self again. “Why don't you settle this like gentlemen? First one to get his head blown off has to buy the other one a beer.”

  “I hate beer,” Garraty said automatically.

  Parker cackled. “You fucking bumpkin,” he said, and walked away.

  “He's buggy,” McVries said. “Everybody's buggy this morning. Even me. And it's a beautiful day. Don't you agree, Olson?”

  Olson said nothing.

  “Olson's got bugs, too,” McVries confided to Garraty. “Olson! Hey, Hank!”

  “Why don't you leave him alone?” Baker asked.

  “Hey Hank!” McVries shouted, ignoring Baker. “Wanna go for a walk?”

  “Go to hell,” Olson muttered.

  “What?” McVries cried merrily, cupping a hand to his ear. “Wha choo say?”

  “Hell! Hell!” Olson screamed. “Go to hell!”

  “Is that what you said.” McVries nodded wisely.

  Olson went back to looking at his feet, and McVries tired of baiting him, if that was what he was doing.

  Garraty thought about what Parker had said. Parker was a bastard. Parker was a big drugstore cowboy and Saturday night tough guy. Parker was a leather jacket hero. What did he know about Maine? He had lived in Maine all his life, in a little town called Porterville, just west of Freeport. Population 970 and not so much as a blinker light and just what's so damn special about Joliet, Illynoy anyway?

  Garraty's father used to say Porterville was the only town in the county with more graveyards than people. But it was a clean place. The unemployment was high, the cars were rusty, and there was plenty of screwing around going on, but it was a clean place. The only action was Wednesday Bingo at the grange hall (last game a coverall for a twenty-pound turkey and a twenty-dollar bill), but it was clean. And it was quiet. What was wrong with that?

  He looked at Collie Parker's back resentfully. You missed out, buddy, that's all. You take Joliet and your candy-store ratpack and your mills and you jam them. Jam them crossways, if they'll fit. He thought about Jan again. He needed her. I love you, Jan, he thought. He wasn't dumb, and he knew she had become more to him than she actually was. She had turned into a life-symbol. A shield against the sudden death that came from the halftrack. More and more he wanted her because she symbolized the time when he could have a piece of ass - his own.

  It was quarter of six in the morning now. He stared at a clump of cheering housewives bundled together near an intersection, small nerve-center of some unknown village. One of them was wearing tight slacks and a tighter sweater. Her face was plain. She wore three gold bracelets on her right wrist that clinked as she waved. Garraty could hear them clink. He waved back, not really thinking about it. He was thinking about Jan, who had come up from Connecticut, who had seemed so smooth and self-confident, with her long blond hair and her flat shoes. She almost always wore flats because she was so tall. He met her at school. It went slow, but finally it clicked. God, had it clicked.

  “... Garraty?”

  “Huh?”

  It was Harkness. He looked concerned. “I got a cramp in my f
oot, man. I don't know if I can walk on it.” Harkness's eyes seemed to be pleading for Garraty to do something.

  Garraty didn't know what to say. Jan's voice, her laughter, the tawny caramel-colored sweater and her cranberry-red slacks, the time they took his little brother's sled and ended up making out in a snowbank (before she put snow down the back of his parka)... those things were life. Harkness was death. By now Garraty could smell it.

  “I can't help you,” Garraty said. “You have to do it yourself.”

  Harkness looked at him in panicked consternation, and then his face turned grim and he nodded. He stopped, kneeled, and fumbled off his loafer.

  “Warning! Warning 49!”

  He was massaging his foot now. Garraty had turned around and was walking backwards to watch him. Two small boys in Little League shirts with their baseball gloves hung from their bicycle handlebars were also watching him from the side of the road, their mouths hung open.

  “Warning! Second warning, 49!”

  Harkness got up and began to limp onward in his stocking foot, his good leg already trying to buckle with the extra weight it was bearing. He dropped his shoe, grabbed for it, got two fingers on it, juggled it, and lost it. He stopped to pick it up and got his third warning.

  Harkness's normally florid face was now fire-engine red. His mouth hung open in a wet, sloppy O. Garraty found himself rooting for Harkness. Come on, he thought, come on, catch up. Harkness, you can.

  Harkness limped faster. The Little League boys began to pedal along, watching him. Garraty turned around frontward, not wanting to watch Harkness anymore. He stared straight ahead, trying to remember just how it had felt to kiss Jan, to touch her swelling breast.

  A Shell station came slowly up on the right. There was a dusty, fender-dented pickup parked on the tarmac, and two men in red-and-black-checked hunting shirts sitting on the tailgate, drinking beer. There was a mailbox at the end of a rutted dirt driveway, its lid hanging open like a mouth. A dog was barking hoarsely and endlessly somewhere just out of sight.

  The carbines came slowly down from high port and found Harkness.

  There was a long, terrible moment of silence, and then they went back up again to high port, all according to the rules, according to the book. Then they came down again. Garraty could hear Harkness's hurried, wet breathing.