The Long Walk

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.
    The guns went back up, then down, then slowly back up to high port.
    The two Little Leaguers were still keeping pace. “Get outta here!” Baker said suddenly, hoarsely. “You don’t want to see this. Scat!”
    They looked with flat curiosity at Baker and kept on. They had looked at Baker as if he was some kind of fish. One of them, a small, bulletheaded kid with a wiffle haircut and dish-sized eyes, blipped the horn bolted to his bike and grinned. He wore braces, and the sun made a savage metal glitter in his mouth.
    The guns came back down. It was like some sort of dance movement, like a ritual. Harkness rode the edge. Read any good books lately? Garraty thought insanely. This time they’re going to shoot you. Just one step too slow—
    Eternity.
    Everything frozen.
    Then the guns went back up to high port.
    Garraty looked at his watch. The second hand swung around once, twice, three times. Harkness caught up to him, passed him by. His face was set and rigid. His eyes looked straight ahead. His pupils were contracted to tiny points. His lips had a faint bluish cast, and his fiery complexion had faded to the color of cream, except for two garish spots of color, one on each cheek. But he was not favoring the bad foot anymore. The cramp had loosened. His stocking foot slapped the road rhythmically. How long can you walk without your shoes? Garraty wondered.
    He felt a loosening in his chest all the same, and heard Baker let out his breath. It was stupid to feel that way. The sooner Harkness stopped walking, the sooner he could stop walking. That was the simple truth. That was logic. But something went deeper, a truer, more frightening logic. Harkness was a part of the group that Garraty was a part of, a segment of his subclan. Part of a magic circle that Garraty belonged to. And if one part of that circle could be broken, any part of it could be broken.
    The Little Leaguers biked along with them for another two miles before losing interest and turning back. It was better, Garraty thought. It didn’t matter if they had looked at Baker as though he were something in a zoo. It was better for them to be cheated of their death. He watched them out of sight.
    Up ahead, Harkness had formed a new one-man vanguard, walking very rapidly, almost running. He looked neither right nor left. Garraty wondered what he was thinking.

Chapter 7
    “I like to think I’m quite an engaging bloke, really. People I meet consider I’m schizophrenic just because I’m completely different offscreen than I am before the cameras . . .”
    —Nicholas Parsons Sale of the Century (British version)
     
     
     
     
    Scramm, 85, did not fascinate Garraty because of his flashing intelligence, because Scramm wasn’t all that bright. He didn’t fascinate Garraty because of his moon face, his crew cut, or his build, which was mooselike. He fascinated Garraty because he was married.
    “Really?” Garraty asked for the third time. He still wasn’t convinced Scramm wasn’t having him on. “You’re really married?”
    “Yeah.” Scramm looked up at the early morning sun with real pleasure. “I dropped out of school when I was fourteen. There was no point to it, not for me. I wasn’t no troublemaker, just not able to make grades. And our history teacher read us an article about how schools are over-populated. So I figured why not let somebody who can learn sit in, and I’ll get down to business. I wanted to marry Cathy anyway.”
    “How old were you?” Garraty asked, more fascinated than ever. They were passing through another small town, and the sidewalks were lined with signs and spectators, but he hardly noticed. Already the