by Stephen King
“My foot hurts, that’s all. But Barkovitch . . . he keeps rubbing his leg. I think he’s got a pulled muscle.”
“Why do you hate him so much? Why not Collie Parker? Or Olson? Or all of us?”
“Because Barkovitch knows what he’s doing.”
“He plays to win, do you mean?”
“You don’t know what I mean, Ray.”
“I wonder if you do yourself,” Garraty said. “Sure he’s a bastard. Maybe it takes a bastard to win.”
“Good guys finish last?”
“How the hell should I know?”
They passed a clapboard one-room schoolhouse. The children stood out in the play yard and waved. Several boys stood atop the jungle gym like sentries, and Garraty was reminded of the men in the lumberyard a ways back.
“Garraty!” One of them yelled. “Ray Garraty! Gar-ra-tee!” A small boy with a tousled head of hair jumped up and down on the top level of the jungle gym, waving with both arms. Garraty waved back halfheartedly. The boy flipped over, hung upside down by the backs of his legs, and continued to wave. Garraty was a little relieved when he and the schoolyard were out of sight. That last had been a little too strenuous to bear thinking about for long.
Pearson joined them. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Save your strength,” McVries said.
“Feeble, man. That is feeble.”
“What have you been thinking about?” Garraty asked.
“How tough it’s going to be for the second-to-last guy.”
“Why so tough?” McVries asked.
“Well . . .” Pearson rubbed his eyes, then squinted at a pine tree that had been struck by lightning some time in the past. “You know, to walk down everybody, absolutely everybody but that last guy. There ought to be a runner-up Prize, that’s what I think.”
“What?” McVries asked flatly.
“I dunno.”
“How about his life?” Garraty asked.
“Who’d walk for that?”
“Nobody, before the Walk started, maybe. But right now I’d be happy enough with just that, the hell with the Prize, the hell with having my every heart’s desire. How about you?”
Pearson thought about it for a long time. “I just don’t see the sense of it,” he said at last, apologetically.
“You tell him, Pete,” Garraty said.
“Tell him what? He’s right. The whole banana or no banana at all.”
“You’re crazy,” Garraty said, but without much conviction. He was very hot and very tired, and there were the remotest beginnings of a headache in back of his eyes. Maybe this is how sunstroke starts, he thought. Maybe that would be the best way, too. Just go down in a dreamy, slow-motion half-knowingness, and wake up dead.
“Sure,” McVries said amiably. “We’re all crazy or we wouldn’t be here. I thought we’d thrashed that out a long time ago. We want to die, Ray. Haven’t you got that through your sick, thick head yet? Look at Olson. A skull on top of a stick. Tell me he doesn’t want to die. You can’t. Second place? It’s bad enough that even one of us has got to get gypped out of what he really wants.”
“I don’t know about all that fucking psycho-history,” Pearson said finally. “I just don’t think anyone should get to cop out second.”
Garraty burst out laughing. “You’re nuts,” he said.
McVries also laughed. “Now you’re starting to see it my way. Get a little more sun, stew your brain a little more, and we’ll make a real believer out of you.”
The Walk went on.
The sun seemed neatly poised on the roof of the world. The mercury reached seventy-nine degrees (one of the boys had a pocket thermometer) and eighty trembled in its grasp for a few broiling minutes. Eighty, Garraty thought. Eighty. Not that hot. In July the mercury would go ten degrees higher. Eighty. Just the right temperature to sit in the backyard under an elm tree eating a chicken salad on lettuce. Mighty. Just the ticket for belly-flopping into the nearest piece of the Royal River, oh Jesus, wouldn’t that feel good. The water was warm on the top, but down by your feet it was cold and you could feel the current pull at you just a little and there were suckers by the rocks, but you could pick ’em off if you weren’t a pussy. All that water, bathing your skin, your hair, your crotch. His hot flesh trembled as he thought about it. Eighty. Just right for shucking down to your swim trunks and laying up in the canvas hammock in the backyard with a good book. And maybe drowse off. Once he had pulled Jan into the hammock with him and they had lain there together, swinging and necking until his cock felt like a long hot stone against his lower belly. She hadn’t seemed to mind. Eighty. Christ in a Chevrolet, eighty degrees.
Eighty. Eightyeightyeighty. Make it nonsense, make it gone.
“I’d never been so hod id by whole life,” Scramm said through his plugged nose. His broad face was red and dripping sweat. He had stripped off his shirt and bared his shaggy torso. Sweat was running all over him like small creeks in spring flow.
“You better put your shirt back on,” Baker said. “You’ll catch a chill when the sun starts to go down. Then you’ll really be in trouble.”
“This goddab code,” Scramm said. “I’be burd ing ub.”
“It’ll rain,” Baker said. His eyes searched the empty sky. “It has to rain.”
“It doesn’t have to do a goddam thing,” Collie Parker said. “I never seen such a fucked-up state.”
“If you don’t like it, why don’t you go on home?” Garraty asked, and giggled foolishly.
“Stuff it up your ass.”
Garraty forced himself to drink just a little from his canteen. He didn’t want water cramps. That would be a hell of a way to buy out. He’d had them once, and once had been enough. He had been helping their next-door neighbors, the Elwells, get in their hay. It was explosively hot in the loft of the Elwells’ barn, and they had been throwing up the big seventy-pound bales in a fireman’s relay. Garraty had made the tactical mistake of drinking three dipperfuls of the ice-cold water Mrs. Elwell had brought out. There had been sudden blinding pain in this chest and belly and head, he had slipped on some loose hay and had fallen bonelessly out of the loft and into the truck. Mr. Elwell held him around the middle with his work-callused hands while he threw up over the side, weak with pain and shame. They had sent him home, a boy who had flunked one of his first manhood tests, hay-rash on his arms and chaff in his hair. He had walked home, and the sun had beaten down on the back of his sunburned neck like a ten-pound hammer.
He shivered convulsively, and his body broke out momentarily in heat-bumps. The headache thumped sickishly behind his eyes . . . how easy it would be to let go of the rope.
He looked over at Olson. Olson was there. His tongue was turning blackish. His face was dirty. His eyes stared blindly. I’m not like him. Dear God, not like him. Please, I don’t want to go out like Olson.
“This’ll take the starch out,” Baker said gloomily. “We won’t make it into New Hampshire. I’d bet money on it.”
“Two years ago they had sleet,” Abraham said. “They made it over the border. Four of ’em did, anyway.”
“Yeah, but the heat’s different,” Jensen said. “When you’re cold you can walk faster and get warmed up. When you’re hot you can walk slower . . . and get iced. What can you do?”
“No justice,” Collie Parker said angrily. “Why couldn’t they have the goddam Walk in Illinois, where the ground’s flat?”
“I like Baine,” Scramm said. “Why do you swear so buch, Parger?”
“Why do you have to wipe so much snot out of your nose?” Parker asked. “Because that’s the way I am, that’s why. Any objections?”
Garraty looked at his watch, but it was stopped at 10:16. He had forgotten to wind it. “Anybody got the time?” he asked.
“Lemme see.” Pearson squinted at his watch. “Just happast an asshole, Garraty.”
Everyone laughed. “Come on,” he said. “My watch stopped.”
Pearson looked again. “It’s tw
o after two.” He looked up at the sky. “That sun isn’t going to set for a long time.”
The sun was poised malevolently over the fringe of woods. There was not enough angle on it yet to throw the road into the shade, and wouldn’t be for another hour or two. Far off to the south, Garraty thought he could see purple smudges that might be thunderheads or only wishful thinking.
Abraham and Collie Parker were lackadaisically discussing the merits of four-barrel carbs. No one else seemed much disposed to talk, so Garraty wandered off by himself to the far side of the road, waving now and then to someone, but not bothering as a rule.
The Walkers were not spread out as much as they had been. The vanguard was in plain sight: two tall, tanned boys with black leather jackets tied around their waists. The word was that they were queer for each other, but Garraty believed that like he believed the moon was green cheese. They didn’t look effeminate, and they seemed like nice enough guys . . . not that either one of those things had much to do with whether or not they were queer, he supposed. And not that it was any of his business if they were. But . . .
Barkovitch was behind the leather boys and McVries was behind him, staring intently at Barkovitch’s back. The yellow rainhat still dangled out of Barkovitch’s back pocket, and he didn’t look like he was cracking to Garraty. In fact, he thought with a painful twinge, McVries was the one who looked bushed.
Behind McVries and Barkovitch was a loose knot of seven or eight boys, the kind of carelessly knit confederation that seemed to form and reform during the course of the Walk, new and old members constantly coming and going. Behind them was a smaller group, and behind that group was Scramm, Pearson, Baker, Abraham, Parker, and Jensen. His group. There had been others with it near the start, and now he could barely remember their names.
There were two groups behind his, and scattered through the whole raggle-taggle column like pepper through salt were the loners. A few of them, like Olson, were withdrawn and catatonic. Others, like Stebbins, seemed to genuinely prefer their own company. And almost all of them had that intent, frightened look stamped on their faces. Garraty had come to know that look so well.
The guns came down and bore on one of the loners he had been looking at, a short, stoutish boy who was wearing a battered green silk vest. It seemed to Garraty that he had collected his final warning about half an hour ago. He threw a short, terrified glance at the guns and stepped up his pace. The guns lost their dreadful interest in him, at least for the time being.
Garraty felt a sudden incomprehensible rise in spirits. They couldn’t be much more than forty miles from Oldtown and civilization now—if you wanted to call a mill, shoe, and canoe town civilization. They’d pull in there sometime late tonight, and get on the turnpike. The turnpike would be smooth sailing, compared to this. On the turnpike you could walk on the grassy median strip with your shoes off if you wanted. Feel the cold dew. Good Christ, that would be great. He mopped his brow with his forearm. Maybe things were going to turn out okay after all. The purple smudges were a little closer, and they were definitely thunderheads.
The guns went off and he didn’t even jump. The boy in the green silk vest had bought a ticket, and he was staring up at the sun. Not even death was that bad, maybe. Everybody, even the Major himself, had to face it sooner or later. So who was swindling who, when you came right down to it? He made a mental note to mention that to McVries the next time they spoke.
He picked up his heels a little and made up his mind to wave to the next pretty girl he saw. But before there was a pretty girl, there was the little Italian man.
He was a caricature Italian man, a small guy with a battered felt hat and a black mustache that curled up at the ends. He was beside an old station wagon with the back hatch standing open. He was waving and grinning with incredibly white, incredibly square teeth.
An insulating mat had been laid on the bottom of the station wagon’s cargo compartment. The mat had been piled high with crushed ice, and peeking through the ice in dozens of places, like wide pink peppermint grins, were wedges of watermelon.
Garraty felt his stomach flop over twice, exactly like a flip-rolling high diver. A sign on top of the station wagon read: DOM L’ANTIO LOVES ALL LONG WALKERS—FREE WATERMELON!!!
Several of the Walkers, Abraham and Collie Parker among them, broke for the shoulder at a dogtrot. All were warned. They were doing better than four an hour, but they were doing it in the wrong direction. Dom L’Antio saw them coming and laughed—a crystal, joyous, uncomplicated sound. He clapped his hands, dug into the ice, and came out with double handfuls of pink grinning watermelons. Garraty felt his mouth shrivel with want. But they won’t let him, he thought. Just like they wouldn’t let the storekeeper give the sodas. And then: But oh God, it’d taste good. Would it be too much, God, for them to be a little slow with the hook this time? Where did he get watermelon this time of year, anyway?
The Long Walkers milled outside the restraining ropes, the small crowd around Dom went mad with happiness, second warnings were parceled out, and three State Troopers appeared miraculously to restrain Dom, whose voice came loud and clear:
“Whatcha mean? Whatcha mean I can’t? These my wat’amelon, you dumb cop! I wanna give, I gonna give, hey! what you t’ink? Get offa my case, you hardass!”
One of the Troopers made a grab for the watermelons Dom held in his hands. Another button-hooked around him and slammed the cargo door of the wagon shut.
“You bastards!” Garraty screamed with all his force. His shriek sped through the bright day like a glass spear, and one of the Troopers looked around, startled and . . . well, almost hangdog.
“Stinking sonsofbitches!” Garraty shrieked at them. “I wish your mothers had miscarried you stinking whoresons!”
“You tell ’em Garraty!” someone else yelled, and it was Barkovitch, grinning like a mouthful of tenpenny nails and shaking both of his fists at the State Troopers. “You tell—”
But they were all screaming now, and the Troopers were not handpicked Long Walk soldiers fresh off the National Squads. Their faces were red and embarrassed, but all the same they were hustling Dom and his double handfuls of cool pink grins away from the sidelines at double time.
Dom either lost his English or gave it up. He began to yell fruity Italian curses. The crowd booed the State Troopers. A woman in a floppy straw sun-hat threw a transistor radio at one of them. It hit him in the head and knocked off his cap. Garraty felt sorry for the Trooper but continued to scream curses. He couldn’t seem to help it. That word “whoresons,” he hadn’t thought anybody ever used a word like that outside of books.
Just as it seemed that Dom L’Antio would be removed from their view for good, the little Italian slipped free and dashed back toward them, the crowd parting magically for him and closing—or trying to—against the police. One of the Troopers threw a flying tackle at him, caught him around the knees, and spilled him forward. At the last instant of balance Dom let his beautiful pink grins fly in a wide-swinging throw.
“DOM L’ANTIO LOVES YOU ALL!” he cried.
The crowd cheered hysterically. Dom landed headfirst in the dirt, and his hands were cuffed behind him in a trice. The watermelon slices arced and pinwheeled through the bright air, and Garraty laughed aloud and raised both hands to the sky and shook his fists triumphantly as he saw Abraham catch one with nonchalant deftness.
Others were third-warned for stopping to pick up chunks of watermelon, but amazingly, no one was shot and five—no, six, Garraty saw—of the boys had ended up with watermelon. The rest of them alternately cheered those who had managed to get some of it, or cursed the wooden-faced soldiers, whose expressions were now satisfyingly interpreted to hold subtle chagrin.
“I love everybody!” Abraham bellowed. His grinning face was streaked with pink watermelon juice. He spat three brown seeds into the air.
“Goddam,” Collie Parker said happily. “I’m goddamned, goddam if I ain’t.” He drove his face into the watermelon, gobbled
hungrily, then busted his piece in two. He threw half of it over to Garraty, who almost fumbled it in his surprise. “There ya go, hicksville!” Collie shouted. “Don’t say I never gave ya nothin’, ya goddam rube!”
Garraty laughed. “Go fuck yourself,” he said. The watermelon was cold, cold. Some of the juice got up his nose, some more ran down his chin, and oh sweet heaven in his throat, running down his throat.
He only let himself eat half. “Pete!” he shouted, and tossed the remaining chunk to him.
McVries caught it with a flashy backhand, showing the sort of stuff that makes college shortstops and, maybe, major league ballplayers. He grinned at Garraty and ate the melon.
Garraty looked around and felt a crazy joy breaking through him, pumping at his heart, making him want to run around in circles on his hands. Almost everyone had gotten a scrap of the melon, even if it was no more than a scrap of the pink meat clinging to a seed.
Stebbins, as usual, was the exception. He was looking at the road. There was nothing in his hands, no smile on his face.
Screw him, Garraty thought. But a little of the joy went out of him nevertheless. His feet felt heavy again. He knew that it wasn’t that Stebbins hadn’t gotten any. Or that Stebbins didn’t want any. Stebbins didn’t need any.
2:30 PM. They had walked a hundred and twenty-one miles. The thunderheads drifted closer. A cool breeze sprang up, chill against Garraty’s hot skin. It’s going to rain again, he thought. Good.
The people at the sides of the road were rolling up blankets, catching flying bits of paper, reloading their picnic baskets. The storm came flying lazily at them, and all at once the temperature plummeted and it felt like autumn. Garraty buttoned his shirt quickly.
“Here it comes again,” he told Scramm. “Better get your shirt on.”
“Are you kidding?” Scramm grinned. “This is the besd I’ve feld all day!”
“It’s gonna be a boomer!” Parker yelled gleefully.
They were on top of a gradually slanting plateau, and they could see the curtain of rain beating across the woods toward them below the purple thunderheads. Directly above them the sky had gone a sick yellow. A tornado sky, Garraty thought. Wouldn’t that be the living end. What would they do if a tornado just came tearing ass down the road and carried them all off to Oz in a whirling cloud of dirt, flapping shoeleather, and whirling watermelon seeds?
