They climbed a short, steep, and savagely sunny rise and then crossed another small bridge. Fifteen minutes went by, then twenty. McVries didn’t say anything. Garraty cleared his throat twice but said nothing. He thought that the longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence. Probably McVries was pissed that he had saved his ass now. Probably McVries had repented of it. That made Garraty’s stomach quiver emptily. It was all hopeless and, stupid and pointless, most of all that, so goddam pointless it was really pitiful. He opened his mouth to tell McVries that, but before he could, McVries spoke.
“Everything’s all right.” Barkovitch jumped at the sound of his voice and McVries added, “Not you, killer. Nothing’s ever going to be all right for you. Just keep striding.”
“Eat my meat,” Barkovitch snarled.
“I guess I caused you some trouble,” Garraty said in a low voice.
“I told you, fair is fair, square is square, and quits are quits,” McVries said evenly. “I won’t do it again. I want you to know that.”
“I understand that,” Garraty said. “I just-”
“Don’t hurt me!” someone screamed. “Please don’t hurt me!”
It was a redhead with a plaid shirt tied around his waist. He had stopped in the middle of the road and he was weeping. He was given first warning. And then he raced toward the halftrack, his tears cutting runnels through the sweaty dirt on his face, red hair glinting like a fire in the sun. “Don’t… I can’t… please… MY mother.. I can’t… don’t… no more… my feet…” He was trying to scale the side, and one of the soldiers brought the butt of his carbine down on his hands. The boy cried out and fell in a heap.
He screamed again, a high, incredibly thin note that seemed sharp enough to shatter glass and what he was screaming was:
“My feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-”
“Jesus,” Garraty muttered. “Why doesn’t he stop that?” The screams went on and on.
“I doubt if he can,” McVries said clinically. “The back treads of the halftrack ran over his legs.”
Garraty looked and felt his stomach lurch into his throat. It was true. No wonder the redheaded kid was screaming about his feet. They had been obliterated.
“Warning! Warning 38!”
“-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-”
“I want to go home,” someone behind Garraty said very quietly. “Oh Christ, do I ever want to go home.”
A moment later the redheaded boy’s face was blown away.
“I’m gonna see my girl in Freeport,” Garraty said rapidly. “And I’m not gonna have any warnings and I’m gonna kiss her, God I miss her, God, Jesus, did you see his legs? They were still warning him, Pete, like they thought he was gonna get up and walk-”
“Another boy has gone ober to dat Silver City, lawd, lawd,” Barkovitch intoned.
“Shut up, killer,” McVries said absently. “She pretty, Ray? Your girl?”
“She’s beautiful. I love her.”
McVries smiled. “Gonna marry her?”
“Yeah,” Garraty babbled. “We’re gonna be Mr. and Mrs. Norman Normal, four kids and a collie dog, his legs, he didn’t have any legs, they ran over him, they can’t run over a guy, that isn’t in the rules, somebody ought to report that, somebody-”
“Two boys and two girls, that what you’re gonna have?”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s beautiful, I just wish I hadn’t-”
“And the first kid will be Ray Junior and the dog’ll have a dish with its name on it, right?”
Garraty raised his head slowly, like a punchdrunk fighter. “Are you making fun of me? Or what?”
“No!” Barkovitch exclaimed. “He’s shitting on you, boy! And don’t you forget it. But I’ll dance on his grave for you, don’t worry.” He cackled briefly.
“Shut up, killer,” McVries said. “I’m not dumping on you, Ray. Come on, let’s get away from the killer, here.”
“Shove it up your ass!” Barkovitch screamed after them.
“She love you? Your girl? Jan?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Garraty said.
McVries shook his head slowly. “All of that romantic horseshit… you know, it’s true. At least, for some people for some short time, it is. It was for me. I felt like you.” He looked at Garraty. “You still want to hear about the scar?”
They rounded a bend and a camperload of children squealed and waved. “Yes,” Garraty said.
“Why?” He looked at Garraty, but his suddenly naked eyes might have been searching himself.
“I want to help you,” Garraty said.
McVries looked down at his left foot. “Hurts. I can’t wiggle the toes very much anymore. My neck is stiff and my kidneys ache. My girl turned out to be a bitch, Garraty. I got into this Long Walk shit the same way that guys used to get into the Foreign Legion. In the words of the great rock and roll poet, I gave her my heart, she tore it apart, and who gives a fart.”
Garraty said nothing. It was 10:30. Freeport was still far.
“Her name was Priscilla,” McVries said. “You think you got a case? I was the original Korny Kid, Moon-June was my middle name. I used to kiss her fingers. I even took to reading Keats to her out in back of the house, when the wind was right. Her old man kept cows, and the smell of cowshit goes, to put it in the most delicate way, in a peculiar fashion with the works of John Keats. Maybe I should have read her Swinburne when the wind was wrong.” McVries laughed.
“You’re cheating what you felt,” Garraty said.
“Ah, you’re the one faking it, Ray, not that it matters. All you remember is the Great Romance, not all the times you went home and jerked your meat after whispering words of love in her shell-pink ear.”
“You fake your way, I’ll fake mine.”
McVries seemed not to have heard. “These things, they don’t even bear the weight of conversation,” he said. “J. D. Salinger… John Knowles… even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes… they’ve destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you’re a sixteen-year-old boy, you can’t discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon.”
McVries laughed a little hysterically. Garraty had no idea what McVries was talking about. He was secure in his love for Jan, he didn’t feel in the least self-conscious about it. Their feet scuffed on the road. Garraty could feel his right heel wobbling. Pretty soon the nails would let go, and he would shed the shoeheel like dead skin. Behind them, Scramm had a coughing fit. It was the Walk that bothered Garraty, not all this weird shit about romantic love.
“But that doesn’t have anything to do with the story,” McVries said, as if reading his mind. “About the scar. It was last summer. We both wanted to get away from home, away from our parents, and away from the smell of all that cowshit so the Great Romance could bloom in earnest. So we got jobs working for a pajama factory in New Jersey. How does that grab you, Garraty? A pj factory in New Jersey.
“We got separate apartments in Newark. Great town, Newark, on a given day you can smell all the cowshit in New Jersey in Newark. Our parents kicked a little, but with separate apartments and good summer jobs, they didn’t kick too much. My place was with two other guys, and there were three girls in with Pris. We left on June the third in my car, and we stopped once around three in the afternoon at a motel and got rid of the virginity problem. I felt like a real crook. She didn’t really want to screw, but she wanted to please me. That was the Shady Nook motel. When we were done I flushed that Trojan down the Shady Nook john and washed out my mouth with a Shady Nook paper cup. It was all very romantic, very ethereal.
“Then it was on to Newark, smelling the cowshit and being so sure it was different cowshit. I dropped her at her apartment and then went on to my own. The next Monday we started in at the Plymouth Sleepwear factory. It wasn’t much like the movies, Garraty. It stank of raw cloth and my foreman was a bastard and during lunch break we used to throw baling hooks at the rats under the fabric bags. But I didn’t mind because it was love. See? It was love.”