"Yeah, sure it does."
Olson didn't say anything, but his lips moved. Garraty thought for a moment he was praying, but then he realized he was just counting his paces.
Two shots rang out suddenly. There was a cry, then a third shot.
They looked and saw a boy in a blue sweater and dirty white clamdiggers lying facedown in a puddle of water. One of his shoes had come off. Garraty saw he had been wearing white athletic socks. Hint 12 recommended them.
Garraty stepped over him, not looking too closely for holes. The word came back that this boy had died of slowing down. Not blisters or a charley horse, he had just slowed down once too often and got a ticket.
Garraty didn't know his name or number. He thought the word would come back on that, but it never did. Maybe nobody knew. Maybe he had been a loner like Stebbins.
Now they were twenty-five miles into the Long Walk. The scenery blended into a continuous mural of woods and fields, broken by an occasional house or a crossroads where waving, cheering people stood in spite of the dying drizzle. One old lady stood frozenly beneath a black umbrella, neither waving nor speaking nor smiling. She watched them go by with gimlet eyes. There was not a sign of life or movement about her except for the wind-twitched hem of her black dress. On the middle finger of her right hand she wore a large ring with a purple stone. There was a tarnished cameo at her throat.
They crossed a railroad track that had been abandoned long ago-the rails were rusty and witch-grass was growing in the cinders between the ties. Somebody stumbled and fell and was warned and got up and went on walking with a bleeding knee.
It was only nineteen miles to Caribou, but dark would come before that. No rest for the wicked, Garraty thought, and that struck him funny. He laughed.
McVries looked at him closely. "Getting tired?"
"No," Garraty said. "I've been tired for quite a while now." He looked at McVries with something like animosity. "You mean you're not?"
McVries said, "Just go on dancing with me like this forever, Garraty, and I'll never tire. We'll scrape our shoes on the stars and hang upside down from the moon."
He blew Garraty a kiss and walked away.
Garraty looked after him. He didn't know what to make of McVries.
By quarter of four the sky had cleared and there was a rainbow in the west, where the sun was sitting below gold-edged clouds. Slanting rays of the late afternoon sunlight colored the newly turned fields they were passing, making the furrows sharp and black where they contoured around the long, sloping hills.
The sound of the halftrack was quiet, almost soothing. Garraty let his head drop forward and semi-dozed as he walked. Somewhere up ahead was Freeport. Not tonight or tomorrow, though. Lot of steps. Long way to go. He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers. The whole Walk seemed nothing but one looming question mark. He told himself that a thing like this must have some deep meaning. Surely it was so. A thing like this must provide an answer to every question; it was just a matter of keeping your foot on the throttle. Now if he could only-
He put his foot down in a puddle of water and started fully awake again. Pearson looked at him quizzically and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "You know that guy that fell down and cut himself when we were crossing the tracks?"
"Yeah. It was Zuck, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. I just heard he's still bleeding."
"How far to Caribou, Maniac?" somebody asked him. Garraty looked around. It was Barkovitch. He had tucked his rainhat into his back pocket where it flapped obscenely.
"How the hell should I know?"
"You live here, don't you?"
"It's about seventeen miles," McVries told him. "Now go peddle your papers, little man."
Barkovitch put on his insulted look and moved away.
"He's some hot ticket," Garraty said.
"Don't let him get under your skin," McVries replied. "Just concentrate on walking him into the ground."
"Okay, coach."
McVries patted Garraty on the shoulder. "You're going to win this one for the Gipper, my boy."
"It seems like we've been walking forever, doesn't it?"
"Yeah."
Garraty licked his lips, wanting to express himself and not knowing just how. "Did you ever hear that bit about a drowning man's life passing before his eyes?"
"I think I read it once. Or heard someone say it in a movie."
"Have you ever thought that might happen to us? On the Walk?"
McVries pretended to shudder. "Christ, I hope not."
Garraty was silent for a moment and then said, "Do you think.. never mind. The hell with it."
"No, go on. Do I think what?"
"Do you think we could live the rest of our lives on this road? That's what I meant. The part we would have had if we hadn't... you know."
McVries fumbled in his pocket and came up with a package of Mellow cigarettes. "Smoke?"