The Long Walk

Pearson replied.
    “Then for God’s sake, don’t tip them!” McVries said angrily. “You bunch of dummies! Christ!”
    For the next ten minutes none of them said anything sensible. They aped conversation and watched Percy watching the soldiers, watching and mentally gauging the short distance to the thick woods.
    “He hasn’t got the guts,” Pearson muttered finally, and before any of them could answer, Percy began walking, slowly and unhurriedly, toward the woods. Two steps, then three. One more, two at the most, and he would be there. His jeans-clad legs moved unhurriedly. His sun-bleached blond hair ruffled just a little in a light puff of breeze. He might have been an Explorer Scout out for a day of bird-watching.
    There were no warnings. Percy had forfeited his right to them when his right foot passed over the verge of the shoulder. Percy had left the road, and the soldiers had known all along. Old Percy What’s-His-Name hadn’t been fooling anybody. There was one sharp, clean report, and Garraty jerked his eyes from Percy to the soldier standing on the back deck of the halftrack. The soldier was a sculpture in clean, angular lines, the rifle nestled into the hollow of his shoulder, his head half-cocked along the barrel.
    Then his head swiveled back to Percy again. Percy was the real show, wasn’t he? Percy was standing with both his feet on the weedy border of the pine forest now. He was as frozen and as sculpted as the man who had shot him. The two of them together would have been a subject for Michelangelo, Garraty thought. Percy stood utterly still under a blue springtime sky. One hand was pressed to his chest, like a poet about to speak. His eyes were wide, and somehow ecstatic.
    A bright seepage of blood ran through his fingers, shining in the sunlight. Old Percy What’s-Your-Name. Hey Percy, your mother ’s calling. Hey Percy, does your mother know you’re out? Hey Percy, what kind of silly sissy name is that, Percy, Percy, aren’t you cute? Percy transformed into a bright, sunlit Adonis counterpointed by the savage, dun-colored huntsman. And one, two, three coin-shaped splatters of blood fell on Percy’s travel-dusty black shoes, and all of it happened in a space of only three seconds. Garraty did not take even two full steps and he was not warned, and oh Percy, what is your mother going to say? Do you, tell me, do you really have the nerve to die?
    Percy did. He pitched forward, struck a small, crooked sapling, rolled through a half-turn, and landed face-up to the sky. The grace, the frozen symmetry, they were gone now. Percy was just dead.
    “Let this ground be seeded with salt,” McVries said suddenly, very rapidly. “So that no stalk of corn or stalk of wheat shall ever grow. Cursed be the children of this ground and cursed be their loins. Also cursed be their hams and hocks. Hail Mary full of grace, let us blow this goddam place.”
    McVries began to laugh.
    “Shut up,” Abraham said hoarsely. “Stop talking like that.”
    “All the world is God,” McVries said, and giggled hysterically. “We’re walking on the Lord, and back there the flies are crawling on the Lord, in fact the flies are also the Lord, so blessed be the fruit of thy womb Percy. Amen, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Our father, which art in tinfoil, hallow’d be thy name.”
    “I’ll hit you!” Abraham warned. His face was very pale. “I will, Pete!”
    “A praaayin’ man!” McVries gibed, and he giggled again. “Oh my suds and body! Oh my sainted hat !”
    “I’ll hit you if you don’t shut up!” Abraham bellowed.
    “Don’t,” Garraty said, frightened. “Please don’t fight. Let’s . . . be nice.”
    “Want a party favor?” Baker asked crazily.
    “Who asked you, you goddam redneck?”
    “He was awful young to be on this hike,” Baker said sadly. “If he was fourteen, I’ll smile ’n’ kiss a pig.”
    “Mother spoiled him,” Abraham said in a trembling voice. “You could tell.” He looked around at Garraty and Pearson pleadingly. “You could tell, couldn’t you?”
    “She won’t spoil him anymore,” McVries said.
    Olson suddenly began babbling at the soldiers again. The one who had shot Percy was now sitting down and eating a sandwich. They walked past eight o’clock. They passed a sunny gas station where a mechanic in greasy coveralls was hosing off the tarmac.
    “Wish he’d spray us with some of that,” Scramm said. “I’m as hot as a poker.”
    “We’re all