The Long Walk

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, bo?”
    “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, Illy-noy 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 foot, 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