The Long Walk

One of the rifles roared, and a bullet clipped asphalt beside Olson’s left hand and whined away. He began to climb slowly, wearily, to his feet again. They’re playing with him, Garraty thought. All of this must be terribly boring for them, so they are playing with Olson. Is Olson fun, boys? Is Olson keeping you amused?

Garraty began to cry. He ran over to Olson and fell on his knees beside him and held the tired, hectically hot face against his chest. He sobbed into the dry, badsmelling hair.

“Warning! Warning 47!”

“Warning! Warning 61!”

McVries was pulling at him. It was McVries again. “Get up, Ray, get up, you can’t help him, for God’s sake get up!”

“It’s not fair!” Garraty wept. There was a sticky smear of Olson’s blood on his cheekbone. “It’s just not fair!”

“I know. Come on. Come on.”

Garraty stood up. He and McVries began walking backward rapidly, watching Olson, who was on his knees. Olson got to his feet. He stood astride the white line. He raised both hands up into the sky. The crowd sighed softly.

“I DID IT WRONG!” Olson shouted tremblingly, and then fell flat and dead.

The soldiers on the halftrack put another two bullets in him and then dragged him busily off the road.

“Yes, that’s that.”

They walked quietly for ten minutes or so, Garraty drawing a low-key comfort just from McVries’s presence. “I’m starting to see something in it, Pete,” he said at last. “There’s a pattern. It isn’t all senseless.”

“Yeah? Don’t count on it.”

“He talked to me, Pete. He wasn’t dead until they shot him. He was alive.” Now it seemed that was the most important thing about the Olson experience. He repeated it. “Alive.”

I don’t think it makes any difference,” McVries said with a tired sigh. “He’s just a number. Part of the body count. Number fifty-three. It means we’re a little closer and that’s all it means.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“Don’t tell me what I think and what I don’t!” McVries said crossly. “Leave it alone, can’t you?”

“I put us about thirteen miles outside of Oldtown,” Garraty said.

“Well hot shit!”

“Do you know how Scramm is?”

“I’m not his doctor. Why don’t you scram yourself?”

“What the hell’s eating you?”

McVries laughed wildly. “Here we are, here we are and you want to know what’s eating me! I’m worried about next year’s income taxes, that’s what’s eating me. I’m worried about the price of grain in South Dakota, that’s what’s eating me. Olson, his guts were falling out, Garraty, at the end he was walking with his guts falling out, and that’s eating me, that’s eating me-” He broke off and Garraty watched him struggle to keep from vomiting. Abruptly McVries said, “Scramm’s poor.

“Is he?”

“Collie Parker felt his forehead and said he was burning up. He’s talking funny. About his wife, about Phoenix, Flagstaff, weird stuff about the Hopis and the Navajos and kachina dolls… it’s hard to make out.”

“How much longer can he go?”

“Who can say. He still might outlast us all. He’s built like a buffalo and he’s trying awful hard. Jesus, am I tired.”

“What about Barkovitch?”

“He’s wising up. He knows a lot of us’ll be glad to see him buy a ticket to see the farm. He’s made up his mind to outlast me, the nasty little fucker. He doesn’t like me shagging him. Tough shit, right, I know.” McVries uttered his wild laugh again. Garraty didn’t like the sound of it. “He’s scared, though. He’s easing up on the lungpower and going to leg-power.”

“We all are.”

“Yeah. Oldtown coming up. Thirteen miles?”

“That’s tight.”

“Can I say something to you, Garraty?”

“Sure. I’ll carry it with me to the grave.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

Someone near the front of the crowd set off a firecracker, and both Garraty and McVries jumped. Several women screeched. A burly man in the front row said “Goddammit!” through a mouthful of popcorn.

“The reason all of this is so horrible,” McVries said, “is because it’s just trivial. You know? We’ve sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities. Olson, he was trivial. He was magnificent, too, but those things aren’t mutually exclusive. He was magnificent and trivial. Either way, or both, he died like a bug under a microscope.”

“You’re as bad as Stebbins,” Garraty said resentfully.

“I wish Priscilla had killed me,” McVries said. “At least that wouldn’t have been-”

“Trivial,” Garraty finished.

“Yes. I think-”

“Look, I want to doze a little if I can. You mind?”

“No. I’m sorry.” McVries sounded stiff and offended.

“I’m sorry,” Garraty said. “Look, don’t take it to heart. It’s really-”

“Trivial,” McVries finished. He laughed his wild laugh for the third time and walked away. Garraty wished-not for the first time-that he had made no friends on the Long Walk. It was going to make it hard. In fact, it was already hard.