The Long Walk

someone gets a ticket, he gets a little more go-power. It ain’t enough. He’ll dry up just like a leaf on a tree.”
    “And me?” Garraty asked.
    Scramm looked troubled. “Aw, hell . . .”
    “No, go on.”
    “Well, the way I see it, you don’t know why you are walking, either. It’s the same thing. You’re going now because you’re afraid, but . . . that’s not enough. That wears out.” Scramm looked down at the road and rubbed his hands together. “And when it wears out, I guess you’ll buy a ticket like all the rest, Ray.”
    Garraty thought about McVries saying, When I get tired . . . really tired . . . why, I guess I will sit down.
    “You’ll have to walk a long time to walk me down,” Garraty said, but Scramm’s simple assessment of the situation had scared him badly.
    “I,” Scramm said, “am ready to walk a long time.”
    Their feet rose and fell on the asphalt, carrying them forward, around a curve, down into a dip and then over a railroad track that was metal grooves in the road. They passed a closed fried clam shack. Then they were out in the country again.
    “I understand what it is to die, I think,” Pearson said abruptly. “Now I do, anyway. Not death itself, I still can’t comprehend that. But dying. If I stop walking, I’ll come to an end.” He swallowed, and there was a click in his throat. “Just like a record after the last groove.” He looked at Scramm earnestly. “Maybe it’s like you say. Maybe it’s not enough. But . . . I don’t want to die.”
    Scramm looked at him almost scornfully. “You think just knowing about death will keep you from dying?”
    Pearson smiled a funny, sick little smile, like a businessman on a heaving boat trying to keep his dinner down. “Right now that’s about all that’s keeping me going.” And Garraty felt a huge grate-fulness, because his defenses had not been reduced to that. At least, not yet.
    Up ahead, quite suddenly and as if to illustrate the subject they had been discussing, a boy in a black turtleneck sweater suddenly had a convulsion. He fell on the road and began to snap and sunfish and jackknife viciously. His limbs jerked and flopped. There was a funny gargling noise in his throat, aaa-aaa-aaa, a sheeplike sound that was entirely mindless. As Garraty hurried past, one of the fluttering hands bounced against his shoe and he felt a wave of frantic revulsion. The boy’s eyes were rolled up to the whites. There were splotches of foam splattered on his lips and chin. He was being second-warned, but of course he was beyond hearing, and when his two minutes were up they shot him like a dog.
    Not long after that they reached the top of a gentle grade and stared down into the green, unpopu lated country ahead. Garraty was grateful for the cool morning breeze that slipped over his fast-perspiring body.
    “That’s some view,” Scramm said.
    The road could be seen for perhaps twelve miles ahead. It slid down the long slope, ran in flat zigzags through the woods, a blackish-gray charcoal mark across a green swatch of crepe paper. Far ahead it began to climb again, and faded into the rosy-pink haze of early morning light.
    “This might be what they call the Hainesville Woods,” Garraty said, not too sure. “Truckers’ graveyard. Hell in the wintertime.”
    “I never seen nothing like it,” Scramm said reverently. “There isn’t this much green in the whole state of Arizona.”
    “Enjoy it while you can,” Baker said, joining the group. “It’s going to be a scorcher. It’s hot already and it’s only six-thirty in the morning.”
    “Think you’d get used to it, where you come from,” Pearson said, almost resentfully.
    “You don’t get used to it,” Baker said, slinging his light jacket over his arm. “You just learn to live with it.”
    “I’d like to build a house up here,” Scramm said. He sneezed heartily, twice, sounding a little like a bull in heat. “Build it right up here with my own two hands, and look at the view every morning. Me and Cathy. Maybe I will someday, when this is all over.”
    Nobody said anything.
    By 6:45 the ridge was above and behind them, the breeze mostly cut off, and the heat already walked among them. Garraty took off his own jacket, rolled it, and tied it securely about his waist. The road through the woods was no longer deserted. Here and there early risers had parked their cars off the road and stood or sat in clumps, cheering, waving, and holding signs.
    Two girls