The Long Walk

They took second warning, then sat down together, crosslegged, and began to talk together calmly. And that was pretty goddamned strange, Garraty thought as they passed by, because Scramm and Mike did not seem to be talking in the same language.
    He did not look back. None of them looked back, not even after it was over.
    “Whoever wins better keep his word,” McVries said suddenly. “He just better.”
    No one said anything.

Chapter 13
    “Joanie Greenblum, come on down !”
    —Johnny Olsen The New Price Is Right
     
     
     
     
    Two in the afternoon.
    “You’re cheating, you fuck!” Abraham shouted.
    “I’m not cheating,” Baker said calmly. “That’s a dollar forty you owe me, turkey.”
    “I don’t pay cheaters.” Abraham clutched the dime he had been flipping tightly in his hand.
    “And I usually don’t match dimes with guys that call me that,” Baker said grimly, and then smiled. “But in your case, Abe, I’ll make an exception. You have so many winning ways I just can’t help myself.”
    “Shut up and flip,” Abraham said.
    “Oh please don’t take that tone of voice to me,” Baker said abjectly, rolling his eyes. “I might fall over in a dead faint!” Garraty laughed.
    Abraham snorted and flicked his dime, caught it, and slapped it down on his wrist. “You match me.”
    “Okay.” Baker flipped his dime higher, caught it more deftly and, Garraty was sure, palmed it on edge.
    “You show first this time,” Baker said.
    “Nuh-uh. I showed first last time.”
    “Oh shit, Abe, I showed first three times in a row before that . Maybe you’re the one cheating.”
    Abraham muttered, considered, and then revealed his dime. It was tails, showing the Potomac River framed in laurel leaves.
    Baker raised his hand, peeked under it, and smiled. His dime also showed tails. “That’s a dollar fifty you owe me.”
    “My God you must think I’m dumb!” Abraham hollered. “You think I’m some kind of idiot, right? Go on and admit it! Just taking the rube to the cleaners, right?”
    Baker appeared to consider.
    “Go on, go on!” Abraham bellowed. “I can take it!”
    “Now that you put it to me,” Baker said, “whether or not you’re a rube never entered my mind. That you’re an ijit is pretty well established. As far as taking you to the cleaners”—he put a hand on Abraham’s shoulder—“that, my friend, is a certainty.”
    “Come on,” Abraham said craftily. “Double or nothing for the whole bundle. And this time you show first.”
    Baker considered. He looked at Garraty. “Ray, would you?”
    “Would I what?” Garraty had lost track of the conversation. His left leg had begun to feel decidedly strange.
    “Would you go double or nothing against this here fella?”
    “Why not? After all, he’s too dumb to cheat you .”
    “Garraty, I thought you were my friend,” Abraham said coldly.
    “Okay, dollar fifty, double or nothing,” Baker said, and that was when the monstrous pain bolted up Garraty’s left leg, making all the pain of the last thirty hours seem like a mere whisper in comparison.
    “My leg, my leg, my leg!” he screamed, unable to help himself.
    “Oh, Jesus, Garraty,” Baker had time to say—nothing in his voice but mild surprise, and then they had passed beyond him, it seemed that they were all passing him as he stood here with his left leg turned to clenched and agonizing marble, passing him, leaving him behind.
    “Warning! Warning 47!”
    Don’t panic. If you panic now you’ve had the course.
    He sat down on the pavement, his left leg stuck out woodenly in front of him. He began to massage the big muscles. He tried to knead them. It was like trying to knead ivory.
    “Garraty?” It was McVries. He sounded scared . . . surely that was only an illusion? “What is it? Charley horse?”
    “Yeah, I guess so. Keep going. It’ll be all right.”
    Time. Time was speeding up for him, but everyone else seemed to have slowed to a crawl, to the speed of an instant replay on a close play at first base. McVries was picking up his pace slowly, one heel showing, then the other, a glint from the worn nails, a glimpse of cracked and tissue-thin shoeleather. Barkovitch was passing by slowly, a little grin on his face, a wave of tense quiet came over the crowd slowly, moving outward in both directions from where he had sat down, like great glassy combers headed for the beach. My second warning, Garraty thought, my second warning’s coming up, come on leg,