The long walk

“I keep wandering away from that, don't I?” McVries wiped his forehead and unbuttoned his shirt as they breasted the hill. Waves of woods stretched away before them to a horizon poked with mountains. They met the sky like interlocking jigsaw pieces. Perhaps ten miles away, almost lost in the heat-haze, a fire tower jutted up through the green. The road cut through it all like a sliding gray serpent.

“At first, the joy and bliss was Keatsville all the way. I screwed her three more times, all at the drive-in with the smell of cowshit coming in through the car window from the next pasture. And I could never get all of the loose fabric out of my hair no matter how many times I shampooed it, and the worst thing was she was getting away from me, going beyond me. I loved her, I really did, I knew it and there was no way I could tell her anymore so she'd understand. I couldn't even screw it into her. There was always that smell of cowshit.

“The thing of it was, Garraty, the factory was on piecework. That means we got lousy wages, but a percentage for all we did over a certain minimum. I wasn't a very good bagger. I did about twenty-three bags a day, but the norm was usually right around thirty. And this did not endear me to the rest of the boys, because I was fucking them up. Harlan down in the dyehouse couldn't make piecework because I was tying up his blower with full bins. Ralph on the picker couldn't make piecework because I wasn't shifting enough bags over to him. It wasn't pleasant. They saw to it that it wasn't pleasant. You understand?”

“Yeah,” Garraty said. He wiped the back of his hand across his neck and then wiped his hand on his pants. It made a dark stain.

“Meanwhile, down in buttoning, Pris was keeping herself busy. Some nights she'd talk for hours about her girlfriends, and it was usually the same tune. How much this one was making. How much that one was making. And most of all, how much she was making. And she was making plenty. So I got to find out how much fun it is to be in competition with the girl you want to marry. At the end of the week I'd go home with a check for $64.40 and put some Cornhusker's Lotion on my blisters. She was making something like ninety a week, and socking it away as fast as she could run to the bank. And when I suggested we go someplace dutch, you would have thought I'd suggested ritual murder.

“After a while I stopped screwing her. I'd like to say I stopped going to bed with her, it's more pleasant, but we never had a bed to go to. I couldn't take her to my apartment, there were usually about sixteen guys there drinking beer, and there were always people at her place - that's what she said, anyway - and I couldn't afford another motel room and I certainly wasn't going to suggest we go dutch on that, so it was just screwing in the back seat at the drive-in. And I could tell she was getting disgusted. And since I knew it and since I had started to hate her even though I still loved her, I asked her to marry me. Right then. She started wriggling around, trying to put me off, but I made her come out with it, yes or no.”

“And it was no.”

“Sure it was no. ‘Pete, we can't afford it. What would my mom say. Pete, we have to wait.' Pete this and Pete that and all the time the real reason was her money, the money she was making sewing on buttons.”

“Well, you were damned unfair to ask her.”

“Sure I was unfair!” McVries said savagely. “I knew that. I wanted to make her feel like a greedy, self-centered little bitch because she was making me feel like a failure.”

His hand crept up to the scar.

“Only she didn't have to make me feel like a failure, because I was a failure. I didn't have anything in particular going for me except a cock to stick in her and she wouldn't even make me feel like a man by refusing that.”

The guns roared behind them.

“Olson?” McVries asked.

“No. He's still back there.”

“Oh...”

“The scar,” Garraty reminded.

“Oh, why don't you let it alone?”

“You saved my life.”

“Shit on you.”

“The scar.”