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 psychohistory,” 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. Eighty. 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 swan 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 cunning 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 burding 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 .
“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 his 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 workcallused 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, hayrash 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 two 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.