The Long Walk

part of the smile for the grandmother, who was waving back and chewing—well, gumming, was closer to the truth—what looked like an egg salad sandwich.
    “The hell I would. Sit there and eat while a bunch of starving—”
    “Hardly starving, Ray. It just feels that way.”
    “ Hungry, then—”
    “Mind over matter,” McVries incanted. “Mind over matter, my young friend.” The incantation had become a seamy imitation of W.C. Fields.
    “To hell with you. You just don’t want to admit it. Those people, they’re animals. They want to see someone’s brains on the road, that’s why they turn out. They’d just as soon see yours.”
    “That isn’t the point,” McVries said calmly. “Didn’t you say you went to see the Long Walk when you were younger?”
    “Yes, when I didn’t know any better!”
    “Well, that makes it okay, doesn’t it?” McVries uttered a short, ugly-sounding laugh. “Sure they’re animals. You think you just found out a new principle? Sometimes I wonder just how naive you really are. The French lords and ladies used to screw after the guillotinings. The old Romans used to stuff each other during the gladiatorial matches. That’s entertainment, Garraty. It’s nothing new.” He laughed again. Garraty stared at him, fascinated.
    “Go on,” someone said. “You’re at second base, McVries. Want to try for third?”
    Garraty didn’t have to turn. It was Stebbins, of course. Stebbins the lean Buddha. His feet carried him along automatically, but he was dimly aware that they felt swollen and slippery, as if they were filling with pus.
    “Death is great for the appetites,” McVries said. “How about those two girls and Gribble? They wanted to see what screwing a dead man felt like. Now for Something Completely New and Different. I don’t know if Gribble got much out of it, but they sure as shit did. It’s the same with anybody. It doesn’t matter if they’re eating or drinking or sitting on their cans. They like it better, they feel it and taste it better because they’re watching dead men.
    “But even that’s not the real point of this little expedition, Garraty. The point is, they’re the smart ones. They’re not getting thrown to the lions. They’re not staggering along and hoping they won’t have to take a shit with two warnings against them. You’re dumb, Garraty. You and me and Pearson and Barkovitch and Stebbins, we’re all dumb. Scramm’s dumb because he thinks he understands and he doesn’t. Olson’s dumb because he understood too much too late. They’re animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?”
    He paused, badly out of breath.
    “There,” he said. “You went and got me going. Sermonette No. 342 in a series of six thousand, et cetera, et cetera. Probably cut my lifespan by five hours or more.”
    “Then why are you doing it?” Garraty asked him. “If you know that much, and if you’re that sure, why are you doing it?”
    “The same reason we’re all doing it,” Stebbins said. He smiled gently, almost lovingly. His lips were a little sun-parched; otherwise, his face was still unlined and seemingly invincible. “We want to die, that’s why we’re doing it. Why else, Garraty? Why else?”

Chapter 8
    “Three-six-nine, the goose drank wine
The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line
The line broke
The monkey got choked
And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat . . . ”
    — Children’s rhyme
     
     
     
     
    Ray Garraty cinched the concentrate belt tightly around his waist and firmly told himself he would eat absolutely nothing until nine-thirty at least. He could tell it was going to be a hard resolution to keep. His stomach gnawed and growled. All around him Walkers were compulsively celebrating the end of the first twenty-four hours on the road.
    Scramm grinned at Garraty through a mouthful of cheese spread and said something pleasant but untranslatable. Baker had his vial of olives—real olives—and was popping them into his mouth with machine-gun regularity. Pearson was jamming crackers mounded high with tuna spread into his mouth, and McVries was slowly eating chicken spread. His eyes were half-lidded, and he might have been in extreme pain or at the pinnacle of pleasure.
    Two more of them had gone down between eight-thirty and nine; one of them had been the Wayne that the gas jockey had been cheering for a ways back. But they had come ninety-nine miles with just thirty-six gone.