Pearson didn't say anything. He studied the fallow field they were passing with anxious embarrassment. Finally he muttered, “I didn't mean to say anything about it. It was for good luck, that was all.”
“It's dirty,” Olson croaked. “It's filthy. It's—”
“Oh, quit it,” Abraham said. “Quit getting on my nerves.”
Garraty looked at his watch. It was twenty past eight. Forty minutes to food. He thought how nice it would be to go into one of those little roadside diners that dotted the road, snuggle his fanny against one of the padded counter stools, put his feet up on the rail (oh God, the relief of just that!) and order steak and fried onions, with a side of French fries and a big dish of vanilla ice cream with strawberry sauce for dessert. Or maybe a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs, with Italian bread and peas swimming in butter on the side. And milk. A whole pitcher of milk. To hell with the tubes and the canteens of distilled water. Milk and solid food and a place to sit and eat it in. Would that be fine?
Just ahead a family of five - mother, father, boy, girl, and white-haired grandmother - were spread beneath a large elm, eating a picnic breakfast of sandwiches and what looked like hot cocoa. They waved cheerily at the Walkers.
“Freaks,” Garraty muttered.
“What was that?” McVries asked.
“I said I want to sit down and have something to eat. Look at those people. Fucking bunch of pigs.”
“You'd be doing the same thing,” McVries said. He waved and smiled, saving the biggest, flashiest 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...”
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. Isn't that wonderful, Garraty thought, feeling the saliva spurt in his mouth as McVries mopped the last of the chicken concentrate out of the tube and then cast the empty aside. Great. I hope they all drop dead right now.
A teenager in pegged jeans raced a middle-aged housewife for McVries's empty tube, which had stopped being something useful and had begun its new career as a souvenir. The housewife was closer but the kid was faster and he beat her by half a length. “Thanks!” he hollered to McVries, holding the bent and twisted tube aloft. He scampered back to his friends, still waving it. The housewife eyed him sourly.
“Aren't you eating anything?” McVries asked.
“I'm making myself wait.”
“For what?”
“Nine-thirty.”
McVries eyed him thoughtfully. “The old self-discipline bit?”
Garraty shrugged, ready for the backlash of sarcasm, but McVries only went on looking at him.
“You know something?” McVries said finally.
“What?”
“If I had a dollar... just a dollar, mind you... I think I'd put it on you, Garraty. I think you've got a chance to win this thing.”
Garraty laughed self-consciously. “Putting the whammy on me?”
“The what?”
“The whammy. Like telling a pitcher he's got a no-hitter going.”
“Maybe I am,” McVries said. He put his hands out in front of him. They were shaking very slightly. McVries frowned at them in a distracted sort of concentration. It was a half-lunatic sort of gaze. “I hope Barkovitch buys out soon,” he said.
“Pete?”
“What?”
“If you had it to do all over again... if you knew you could get this far and still be walking... would you do it?”
McVries put his hands down and stared at Garraty. “Are you kidding? You must be.”
“No, I'm serious.”