The long walk Read online

  Barkovitch joined them. Barkovitch was looking at Ewing, too. “Blisters!” He made it sound like Ewing's mother was a whore. “What the hell can you expect from a dumb nigger? Now I ask you.”

  “Move away,” Baker said evenly, “or I'll poke you.”

  “It's against the rules,” Barkovitch said with a smirk. “Keep it in mind, cracker.” But he moved away. It was as if he took a small poison cloud with him.

  Two o'clock became two-thirty. Their shadows got longer. They walked up a long hill, and at the crest Garraty could see low mountains, hazy and blue, in the distance. The encroaching thunderheads to the west were darker now, and the breeze had stiffened, making his flesh goosebump as the sweat dried on him.

  A group of men clustered around a Ford pickup truck with a camper on the back cheered them crazily. The men were all very drunk. They all waved back at the men, even Ewing. They were the first spectators they had seen since the swaggering little boy in the patched overalls.

  Garraty broke open a concentrate tube without reading the label and ate it. It tasted slightly porky. He thought about McVries's hamburger. He thought about a great big chocolate cake with a cherry on the top. He thought about flapjacks. For some crazy reason he wanted a cold flapjack full of apple jelly. The cold lunch his mother always made when he and his father went hunting in November.

  Ewing bought a hole about ten minutes later.

  He was clustered in with a group of boys when he fell below speed for the last time. Maybe he thought the boys would protect him. The soldiers did their job well. The soldiers were experts. They pushed the other boys aside. They dragged Ewing over to the shoulder. Ewing tried to fight, but not much. One of the soldiers pinned Ewing's arms behind him while the other put his carbine up to Ewing's head and shot him. One leg kicked convulsively.

  “He bleeds the same color as anyone else,” McVries said suddenly. It was very loud in the stillness after the single shot. His adam's apple bobbed, and something clicked in his throat.

  Two of them gone now. The odds infinitesimally adjusted in favor of those remaining. There was some subdued talk, and Garraty wondered again what they did with the bodies.

  You wonder too goddam much! he shouted at himself suddenly.

  And realized he was tired.

  PART TWO: GOING DOWN THE ROAD

  CHAPTER 3

  “You will have thirty seconds, and please remember that your answer must be in the form of a question.”

  —Art Fleming. Jeopardy

  It was three o'clock when the first drops of rain fell on the road, big and dark and round. The sky overhead was tattered and black, wild and fascinating. Thunder clapped hands somewhere above the clouds. A blue fork of lightning went to earth somewhere up ahead.

  Garraty had donned his coat shortly after Ewing had gotten his ticket, and now he zipped it and turned up his collar. Harkness, the potential author, had carefully stowed his notebook in a Baggie. Barkovitch had put on a yellow vinyl rainhat. There was something incredible about what it did to his face, but you would have been hard put to say just what. He peered out from beneath it like a truculent lighthouse keeper.

  There was a stupendous crack of thunder. “Here it comes!” Olson cried.

  The rain came pouring down. For a few moments it was so heavy that Garraty found himself totally isolated inside an undulating shower curtain. He was immediately soaked to the skin. His hair became a dripping pelt. He turned his face up into the rain, grinning. He wondered if the soldiers could see them. He wondered if a person might conceivably—

  While he was still wondering, the first vicious onslaught let up a little and he could see again. He looked over his shoulder at Stebbins. Stebbins was walking hunched over, his hands hooked against his belly, and at first Garraty thought he had a cramp. For a moment Garraty was in the grip of a strong panicky feeling. nothing at all like he had felt when Curley and Ewing bought it. He didn't want Stebbins to fold up early anymore.

  Then he saw Stebbins was only protecting the last half of his jelly sandwich. and he faced forward again, feeling relieved. He decided Stebbins must have a pretty stupid mother not to wrap his goddam sandwiches in foil, just in case of rain.

  Thunder cracked stridently, artillery practice in the sky. Garraty felt exhilarated, and some of his tiredness seemed to wash away with the sweat from his body. The rain came again, hard and pelting, and finally let off into a steady drizzle. Overhead, the clouds began to tatter.

  Pearson was now walking beside him. He hitched up his pants. He was wearing jeans that were too big for him and he hitched up his pants often. He wore horn-rimmed glasses with lenses like the bottoms of Coke bottles, and now he whipped them off and began to clean them on the tail of his shirt. He goggled in that myopic, defenseless way that people with very poor eyesight have when their glasses are off. “Enjoy your shower, Garraty?”

  Garraty nodded. Up ahead, McVries was urinating. He was walking backward while he did it, spraying the shoulder considerately away from the others.

  Garraty looked up at the soldiers. They were wet, too, of course, but if they were uncomfortable, they didn't show it. Their faces were perfectly wooden. I wonder what it feels like, he thought, just to shoot someone down. I wonder if it makes them feel powerful. He remembered the girl with the sign, kissing her, feeling her ass. Feeling her smooth underpants under her pedal pushers. That had made him feel powerful.

  “That guy back there sure doesn't say much, does he?” Baker said suddenly. He jerked a thumb at Stebbins. Stebbins's purple pants were almost black now that they were soaked through.

  “No. No, he doesn't.”

  McVries pulled a warning for slowing down too much to zip up his fly. They pulled even with him, and Baker repeated what he had said about Stebbins.

  “He's a loner, so what?” McVries said, and shrugged. “I think—”

  “Hey,” Olson broke in. It was the first thing he had said in some time, and he sounded queer. “My legs feel funny.”

  Garraty looked at Olson closely and saw the seedling panic in his eyes already. The look of bravado was gone. “How funny?” he asked.

  “Like the muscles are all turning... baggy.”

  “Relax,” McVries said. “It happened to me a couple of hours ago. It passes off.”

  Relief showed in Olson's eyes. “Does it?”

  “Yeah, sure it does.”

  Olson didn't say anything, but his lips moved. Garraty thought for a moment he was praying, but then he realized he was just counting his paces.

  Two shots rang out suddenly. There was a cry, then a third shot.

  They looked and saw a boy in a blue sweater and dirty white clamdiggers lying facedown in a puddle of water. One of his shoes had come off. Garraty saw he had been wearing white athletic socks. Hint 12 recommended them.

  Garraty stepped over him, not looking too closely for holes. The word came back that this boy had died of slowing down. Not blisters or a charley horse, he had just slowed down once too often and got a ticket.

  Garraty didn't know his name or number. He thought the word would come back on that, but it never did. Maybe nobody knew. Maybe he had been a loner like Stebbins.

  Now they were twenty-five miles into the Long Walk. The scenery blended into a continuous mural of woods and fields, broken by an occasional house or a crossroadswhere waving, cheering people stood in spite of the dying drizzle. One old lady stood frozenly beneath a black umbrella, neither waving nor speaking nor smiling. She watched them go by with gimlet eyes. There was not a sign of life or movement about her except for the wind-twitched hem of her black dress. On the middle finger of her right hand she wore a large ring with a purple stone. There was a tarnished cameo at her throat.

  They crossed a railroad track that had been abandoned long ago - the rails were rusty and witch-grass was growing in the cinders between the ties. Somebody stumbled and fell and was warned and got up and went on walking with a bleeding knee.

  It was only nineteen miles
to Caribou, but dark would come before that. No rest for the wicked, Garraty thought, and that struck him funny. He laughed.

  McVries looked at him closely. “Getting tired?”

  “No,” Garraty said. “I've been tired for quite a while now.” He looked at McVries with something like animosity. “You mean you're not?”

  McVries said, “Just go on dancing with me like this forever, Garraty, and I'll never tire. We'll scrape our shoes on the stars and hang upside down from the moon.”

  He blew Garraty a kiss and walked away.

  Garraty looked after him. He didn't know what to make of McVries.

  By quarter of four the sky had cleared and there was a rainbow in the west, where the sun was sitting below gold-edged clouds. Slanting rays of the late afternoon sunlight colored the newly turned fields they were passing, making the furrows sharp and black where they contoured around the long, sloping hills.

  The sound of the halftrack was quiet, almost soothing. Garraty let his head drop forward and semi-dozed as he walked. Somewhere up ahead was Freeport. Not tonight or tomorrow, though. Lot of steps. Long way to go. He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers. The whole Walk seemed nothing but one looming question mark. He told himself that a thing like this must have some deep meaning. Surely it was so. A thing like this must provide an answer to every question; it was just a matter of keeping your foot on the throttle. Now if he could only—

  He put his foot down in a puddle of water and started fully awake again. Pearson looked at him quizzically and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You know that guy that fell down and cut himself when we were crossing the tracks?”

  “Yeah. It was Zuck, wasn't it?”

  “Yeah. I just heard he's still bleeding.”

  “How far to Caribou, Maniac?” somebody asked him. Garraty looked around. It was Barkovitch. He had tucked his rainhat into his back pocket where it flapped obscenely.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “You live here, don't you?”

  “It's about seventeen miles,” McVries told him. “Now go peddle your papers, little man.”

  Barkovitch put on his insulted look and moved away.

  “He's some hot ticket,” Garraty said.

  “Don't let him get under your skin,” McVries replied. “Just concentrate on walking him into the ground.”

  “Okay, coach.”

  McVries patted Garraty on the shoulder. “You're going to win this one for the Gipper, my boy.”

  “It seems like we've been walking forever, doesn't it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Garraty licked his lips, wanting to express himself and not knowing just how. “Did you ever hear that bit about a drowning man's life passing before his eyes?”

  “I think I read it once. Or heard someone say it in a movie.”

  “Have you ever thought that might happen to us? On the Walk?”

  McVries pretended to shudder. “Christ, I hope not.”

  Garraty was silent for a moment and then said, “Do you think . . never mind. The hell with it.”

  “No, go on. Do I think what?”

  “Do you think we could live the rest of our lives on this road? That's what I meant. The part we would have had if we hadn't... you know.”

  McVries fumbled in his pocket and came up with a package of Mellow cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  “I don't.”

  “Neither do I,” McVries said, and then put a cigarette into his mouth. He found a book of matches with a tomato sauce recipe on it. He lit the cigarette, drew smoke in, and coughed it out. Garraty thought of Hint 10: Save your wind. If you smoke ordinarily, try not to smoke on the Long Walk.

  “I thought I'd learn,” McVries said defiantly.

  “It's crap, isn't it?” Garraty said sadly.

  McVries looked at him, surprised, and then threw the cigarette away. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it is.”

  The rainbow was gone by four o'clock. Davidson, 8, dropped back with them. He was a good-looking boy except for the rash of acne on his forehead. “That guy Zuck's really hurting,” Davidson said. He had had a packsack the last time Garraty saw him, but he noticed that at some point Davidson had cast it away.

  “Still bleeding?” McVries asked.

  “Like a stuck pig.” Davidson shook his head. “It's funny the way things turn out, isn't it? You fall down any other time, you get a little scrape. He needs stitches.” He pointed to the road. “Look at that.”

  Garraty looked and saw tiny dark spots on the drying hardtop. “Blood?”

  “It ain't molasses,” Davidson said grimly.

  “Is he scared?” Olson asked in a dry voice.

  “He says he doesn't give a damn,” Davidson said. “But I'm scared.” His eyes were wide and gray. “I'm scared for all of us.”

  They kept on walking. Baker pointed out another Garraty sign.

  “Hot shit,” Garraty said without looking up. He was following the trail of Zuck's blood, like Dan's bone tracking a wounded Indian. It weaved slowly back and forth across the white line.

  “McVries,” Olson said. His voice had gotten softer in the last couple of hours. Garraty had decided he liked Olson in spite of Olson's brass-balls outer face. He didn't like to see Olson getting scared, but there could be no doubt that he was.

  “What?” McVries said.

  “It isn't going away. That baggy feeling I told you about. It isn't going away.”

  McVries didn't say anything. The scar on his face looked very white in the light of the setting sun.

  “It feels like my legs could just collapse. Like a bad foundation. That won't happen, will it? Will it?” Olson's voice had gotten a little shrill.

  McVries didn't say anything.

  “Could I have a cigarette?” Olson asked. His voice was low again.

  “Yeah. You can keep the pack.”

  Olson lit one of the Mellows with practiced ease, cupping the match, and thumbed his nose at one of the soldiers watching him from the halftrack. “They've been giving me the old hairy eyeball for the last hour or so. They've got a sixth sense about it.” He raised his voice again. “You like it, don't you, fellas? You like it, right? That goddam right, is it?”

  Several of the Walkers looked around at him and then looked away quickly. Garraty wanted to look away too. There was hysteria in Olson's voice. The soldiers looked at Olson impassively. Garraty wondered if the word would go back on Olson pretty quick, and couldn't repress a shudder.

  By four-thirty they had covered thirty miles. The sun was half-gone, and it had turned blood red on the horizon. The thunderheads had moved east, and overhead the sky was a darkening blue. Garraty thought about his hypothetical drowning man again. Not so hypothetical at that. The coming night was like water that would soon cover them.

  A feeling of panic rose in his gullet. He was suddenly and terribly sure that he was looking at the last daylight in his life. He wanted it to stretch out. He wanted it to last. He wanted the dusk to go on for hours.

  “Warning! Warning 100! Your third warning, 100!”

  Zuck looked around. There was a dazed, uncomprehending look in his eyes. His right pants leg was caked with dried blood. And then, suddenly, he began to sprint. He weaved through the Walkers like a broken-field runner carrying a foot-ball. He ran with that same dazed expression on his face.

  The halftrack picked up speed. Zuck heard it coming and ran faster. It was a queer, shambling, limping run. The wound on his knee broke open again, and as he burst into the open ahead of the main pack, Garraty could see the drops of fresh blood splashing and flying from the cuff of his pants. Zuck ran up the next rise, and for a moment he was starkly silhouetted against the red sky, a galvanic black shape, frozen for a moment in midstride like a scarecrow in full flight. Then he was gone and the halftrack followed. The two soldiers that had dropped off it trudged along with the boys, their faces empty.

  Nobody said a word. They only listened. There was no sound for a lon
g time. An incredibly, unbelievably long time. Only a bird, and a few early May crickets, and somewhere behind them, the drone of a plane.

  Then there was a single sharp report, a pause, then a second.

  “Making sure,” someone said sickly.

  When they got up over the rise they saw the halftrack sitting on the shoulder half a mile away. Blue smoke was coming from its dual exhaust pipes. Of Zuck there was no sign. No sign at all.

  “Where's the Major?” someone screamed. The voice was on the raw edge of panic. It belonged to a bulletheaded boy named Gribble, number 48. “I want to see the Major, goddammit! Where is he?”

  The soldiers walking along the verge of the road did not answer. No one answered.

  “Is he making another speech?” Gribble stormed. “Is that what he's doing? Well, he's a murderer! That's what he is, a murderer! I... I'll tell him! You think I won't? I'll tell him to his face! I'll tell him right to his face!” In his excitement he had fallen below the pace, almost stopping, and the soldiers became interested for the first time.

  “Warning! Warning 48!”

  Gribble faltered to a stop, and then his legs picked up speed. He looked down at his feet as he walked. Soon they were up to where the halftrack waited. It began to crawl along beside them again.

  At about 4:45, Garraty had supper - a tube of processed tuna fish, a few Snappy Crackers with cheese spread, and a lot of water. He had to force himself to stop there. You could get a canteen anytime, but there would be no fresh concentrates until tomorrow morning at nine o'clock... and he might want a midnight snack. Hell, he might need a midnight snack.

  “It may be a matter of life and death,” Baker said, “but it sure isn't hurtin' your appetite any.”

  “Can't afford to let it,” Garraty answered. “I don't like the idea of fainting about two o'clock tomorrow morning.”

  Now there was a genuinely unpleasant thought. You wouldn't know anything, probably. Wouldn't feel anything. You'd just wake up in eternity.