The Long Walk

McVries had produced a toothbrush of all things from his small packsack and was busy dry-brushing his teeth. It all goes on, Garraty thought wonderingly. You burp, you say excuse me. You wave back at the people who wave to you because that’s the polite thing to do. No one argues very much with anyone else (except for Barkovitch) because that’s also the polite thing to do. It all goes on.

Or did it? He thought of McVries sobbing at Stebbins to shut up. Of Olson taking his cheese with the dumb humility of a whipped dog. It all seemed to have a heightened intensity about it, a sharper contrast of colors and light and shadow.

At eleven o’clock, several things happened almost at once. The word came back that a small plank bridge up ahead had been washed out by a heavy afternoon thunderstorm. With the bridge out, the Walk would have to be temporarily stopped. A weak cheer went up through the ragged ranks, and Olson, in a very soft voice, muttered “Thank God.”

A moment later Barkovitch began to scream a flood of profanity at the boy next to him, a squat, ugly boy with the unfortunate name of Rank. Rank took a swing at him-something expressly forbidden by the roles-and was warned for it. Barkovitch didn’t even break stride. He simply lowered his head and ducked under the punch and went on yelling.

“Come on, you sonofabitch! I’ll dance on your goddam grave! Come on, Dumbo, pick up your feet! Don’t make it too easy for me!”

Rank threw another punch. Barkovitch nimbly stepped around it, but tripped over the boy walking next to him. They were both warned by the soldiers, who were now watching the developments carefully but emotionlessly-like men watching a couple of ants squabbling over a crumb of bread, Garraty thought bitterly.

Rank started to walk faster, not looking at Barkovitch. Barkovitch himself, furious at being warned (the boy he had tripped over was Gribble, who had wanted to tell the Major he was a murderer), yelled at him: “Your mother sucks cock on 42nd Street, Rank!”

With that, Rank suddenly turned around and charged Barkovitch.

Cries of “Break it up!” and “Cut the shit!” filled the air, but Rank took no notice. He went for Barkovitch with his head down, bellowing.

Barkovitch sidestepped him. Rank went stumbling and pinwheeling across the soft shoulder, skidded in the sand, and sat down with his feet splayed out. He was given a third warning.

“Come on, Dumbo!” Barkovitch goaded. “Get up!”

Rank did get up. Then he slipped somehow and fell over on his back. He seemed dazed and woozy.

The third thing that happened around eleven o’clock was Rank’s death. There was a moment of silence when the carbines sighted in, and Baker’s voice was loud and clearly audible: “There, Barkovitch, you’re not a pest anymore. Now you’re a murderer.”

The guns roared. Rank’s body was thrown into the air by the force of the bullets. Then it lay still and sprawled, one arm on the road.

“It was his own fault!” Barkovitch yelled. “You saw him, he swung first! Rule 8! Rule 8!”

No one said anything.

“Go fuck yourselves! All of you!”

McVries said easily: “Go on back and dance on him a little, Barkovitch. Go entertain us. Boogie on him a little bit, Barkovitch.”

“Your mother sucks cock on 42nd Street too, scarface,” Barkovitch said hoarsely.

“Can’t wait to see your brains all over the road,” McVries said quietly. His hand had gone to the scar and was rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. “I’ll cheer when it happens, you murdering little bastard.”

Barkovitch muttered something else under his breath. The others had shied away from him as if he had the plague and he was walking by himself.

They hit sixty miles at about ten past eleven, with no sign of a bridge of any kind. Garraty was beginning to think the grapevine had been wrong this time when they cleared a small hill and looked down into a pool of light where a small crowd of hustling, bustling men moved.

The lights were the beams of several trucks, directed at a plank bridge spanning a fast-running rill of water. “Truly I love that bridge,” Olson said, and helped himself to one of McVries’s cigarettes. “Truly.”

But as they drew closer, Olson made a soft, ugly sound in his throat and pitched the cigarette away into the weeds. One of the bridge’s supports and two of the heavy butt planks had been washed away, but the Squad up ahead had been working diligently. A sawed-off telephone pole had been planted in the bed of the stream, anchored in what looked like a gigantic cement plug. They hadn’t had a chance to replace the butts, so they had put down a big convoy-truck tailgate in their place. Makeshift, but it would serve.

“The Bridge of San Loois Ray,” Abraham said. “Maybe if the ones up front stomp a little, it’ll collapse again.”

“Small chance,” Pearson said, and then added in a breaking, weepy voice, “Aw, shit!”