The Long Walk

At about 4:45, Garraty had supper-a tube of processed tuna fish, a few Snappy Crackers with cheese spread, and a lot of water. He had to force himself to stop there. You could get a canteen anytime, but there would be no fresh concentrates until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock… and he might want a midnight snack. Hell, he might need a midnight snack.

“It may be a matter of life and death,” Baker said, “but it sure isn’t hurtin’ your appetite any.”

“Can’t afford to let it,” Garraty answered. “I don’t like the idea of fainting about two o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Now there was a genuinely unpleasant thought. You wouldn’t know anything, probably. Wouldn’t feel anything. You’d just wake up in eternity.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Baker said softly.

Garraty looked at him. In the fading daylight, Baker’s face was soft and young and beautiful. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about a whole hell of a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“Him, for one,” Garraty said, and jerked his head toward Stebbins, who was still walking along at the same pace he had been walking at when they started out. His pants were drying on him. His face was shadowy. He was still saving his last half-sandwich.

“What about him?”

“I wonder why he’s here, why he doesn’t say anything. And whether he’ll live or die.”

“Garraty, we’re all going to die.”

“But hopefully not tonight,” Garraty said. He kept his voice light, but a shudder suddenly wracked him. He didn’t know if Baker saw it or not. His kidneys contracted. He turned around, unzipped his fly, and began walking backward.

“What do you think about the Prize?” Baker asked.

“I don’t see much sense thinking about it,” Garraty said, and began to urinate. He finished, zipped his fly, and turned around again, mildly pleased that he had accomplished the operation without drawing a warning.

“I think about it,” Baker said dreamily. “Not so much the Prize itself as the money. All that money.”

“ Rich men don’t enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” Garraty said. He watched his feet, the only things that were keeping him from finding out if there really was a Kingdom of Heaven or not.

“Hallelujah,” Olson said. “There’ll be refreshments after the meetin’.”

“You a religious fella?” Baker asked Garraty.

“No, not particularly. But I’m no money freak.”

“You might be if you grew up on potato soup and collards,” Baker said. “Sidemeat only when your daddy could afford the ammunition.”

“Might make a difference,” Garraty agreed, and then paused, wondering whether to say anything else. “But it’s never really the important thing.” He saw Baker looking at him uncomprehendingly and a little scornfully.

“You can’t take it with you, that’s your next line,” McVries said.

Garraty glanced at him. McVries was wearing that irritating, slanted smile again. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said. “We don’t bring anything into the world and we sure as shit don’t take anything out.”

“Yes, but the period in between those two events is more pleasant in comfort, don’t you think?” McVries said.

“Oh, comfort, shit,” Garraty said. “If one of those goons riding that overgrown Tonka toy over there shot you, no doctor in the world could revive you with a transfusion of twenties or fifties.”

“I ain’t dead,” Baker said softly.

“Yeah, but you could be.” Suddenly it was very important to Garraty that he put this across. “What if you won? What if you spent the next six weeks planning what you were going to do with the cash-never mind the Prize, just the cash and what if the first time you went out to buy something, you got flattened by a taxicab?”

Harkness had come over and was now walking beside Olson. “Not me, babe,” he said. “First thing I’d do is buy a whole fleet of Checkers. If I win this, I may never walk again.”

“You don’t understand,” Garraty said, more exasperated than ever. “Potato soup or sirloin tips, a mansion or a hovel, once you’re dead that’s it, they put you on a cooling board like Zuck or Ewing and that’s it. You’re better to take it a day at a time, is all I’m saying. If people just took it a day at a time, they’d be a lot happier.”

“Oh, such a golden flood of bullshit,” McVries said.

“Is that so?” Garraty cried. “How much planning are you doing?”

“Well, right now I’ve sort of adjusted my horizons, that’s true-”

“You bet it is,” Garraty said grimly. “The only difference is we’re involved in dying right now.”

Total silence followed that. Harkness took off his glasses and began to polish them. Olson looked a shade paler. Garraty wished he hadn’t said it; he had gone too far.

Then someone in back said quite clearly: “Hear, hear!”

Garraty looked around, sure it was Stebbins even though he had never heard Stebbins’s voice. But Stebbins gave no sign. He was looking down at the road.

“I guess I got carried away,” Garraty muttered, even though he wasn’t the one who had gotten carried away. That had been Zuck. “Anyone want a cookie?”