Chapter 8

" Three‑ six‑ nine, the goose drank wine

The monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line

The line broke

The monkey got choked

And they all went to heaven in a little rowboat... "

Children's rhyme

Ray Garraty cinched the concentrate belt tightly around his waist and firmly told himself he would eat absolutely nothing until nine‑ thirty at least. He could tell it was going to be a hard resolution to keep. His stomach gnawed and growled. All around him Walkers were compulsively celebrating the end of the first twenty‑ four hours on the road.

Scramm grinned at Garraty through a mouthful of cheese spread and said some­thing pleasant but untranslatable. Baker had his vial of olives‑ real olives‑ and was popping them into his mouth with machine‑ gun regularity. Pearson was jam­ming crackers mounded high with tuna spread into his mouth, and McVries was slowly eating chicken spread. His eyes were half‑ lidded, and he might have been in extreme pain or at the pinnacle of pleasure.

Two more of them had gone down between eight‑ thirty and nine; one of them had been the Wayne that the gas jockey had been cheering for a ways back. But they had come ninety‑ nine miles with just thirty‑ six gone. Isn't that wonderful, Garraty thought, feeling the saliva spurt in his mouth as McVries mopped the last of the chicken concentrate out of the tube and then cast the empty aside. Great. I hope they all drop dead right now.

A teenager in pegged jeans raced a middle‑ aged housewife for McVries's empty tube, which had stopped being something useful and had begun its new career as a souvenir. The housewife was closer but the kid was faster and he beat her by half a length. " Thanks! " he hollered to McVries, holding the bent and twisted tube aloft. He scampered back to his friends, still waving it. The housewife eyed him sourly.

" Aren't you eating anything? " McVries asked.

" I'm making myself wait."

" For what? "

" Nine‑ thirty. "

McVries eyed him thoughtfully. " The old self‑ discipline bit? "

Garraty shrugged, ready for the backlash of sarcasm, but McVries only went on looking at him.

" You know something? " McVries said finally.

" What? "

" If I had a dollar... just a dollar, mind you... I think I'd put it on you, Garraty. I think you've got a chance to win this thing."

Garraty laughed self‑ consciously. " Putting the whammy on me? "

" The what? "

" The whammy. Like telling a pitcher he's got a no‑ hitter going."

" Maybe I am, " McVries said. He put his hands out in front of him. They were shaking very slightly. McVries frowned at them in a distracted sort of concentra­tion. It was a half‑ lunatic sort of gaze. " I hope Barkovitch buys out soon, " he said.

" Pete? "

" What? "

" If you had it to do all over again... if you knew you could get this far and still be walking... would you do it? "

McVries put his hands down and stared at Garraty. " Are you kidding? You must be."

" No, I'm serious."

" Ray, I don't think I'd do it again if the Major put his pistol up against my nads. This is the next thing to suicide, except that a regular suicide is quicker."

" True, " Olson said. " How true." He smiled a hollow, concentration‑ camp smile that made Garraty's belly crawl.

Ten minutes later they passed under a huge red‑ and‑ white banner that pro­claimed: 100 MILES!! CONGRATULATIONS FROM THE JEFFERSON PLANTATION CHAMBER OF COMMERCE! CONGRATULATIONS TO THIS YEAR'S " CENTURY CLUB" LONG WALKERS!!

" I got a place where they can put their Century Club, " Collie Parker said. " It's long and brown and the sun never shines there."

Suddenly the spotty stands of second‑ growth pine and spruce that had bordered the road in scruffy patches were gone, hidden by the first real crowd they had seen. A tremendous cheer went up, and that was followed by another and another. It was like surf hammering on rocks. Flashbulbs popped and dazzled. State police held the deep ranks of people back, and bright orange nylon restraining ropes were strong along the soft shoulders. A policeman struggled with a screaming little boy. The boy had a dirty face and a snotty nose. He was waving a toy glider in one hand and an autograph book in the other.

" Jeez! " Baker yelled. " Jeez, look at 'em, just look at 'em all! "

Collie Parker was waving and smiling, and it was not until Garraty closed up with him a little that he could hear him calling in his flat Midwestern accent: " Glad to seeya, ya goddam bunch of fools! " A grin and a wave. " Howaya, Mother McCree, you goddam bag. Your face and my ass, what a match. Howaya, ho­waya? "

Garraty clapped his hands over his mouth and giggled hysterically. A man in the first rank waving a sloppily lettered sign with Scramm's name on it had popped his fly. A row back a fat woman in a ridiculous yellow sunsuit was being ground between three college students who were drinking beer. Stone‑ ground fatty, Gar­raty thought, and laughed harder.

You're going to have hysterics, oh my God, don't let it get you, think about Gribble... and don't... don't let... don't...

But it was happening. The laughter came roaring out of him until his stomach was knotted and cramped and he was walking bent‑ legged and somebody was hol­lering at him, screaming at him over the roar of the crowd. It was McVries. " Ray! Ray! What is it? You all right? "

" They're funny! " He was nearly weeping with laughter now. " Pete, Pete, they're so funny, it's just... just... that they're so funny! "

A hard‑ faced little girl in a dirty sundress sat on the ground, pouty‑ mouthed and frowning. She made a horrible face as they passed. Garraty nearly collapsed with laughter and drew a warning. It was strange‑ in spite of all the noise he could still hear the warnings clearly.

I could die, he thought. I could just die laughing, wouldn't that be a scream?

Collie was still smiling gaily and waving and cursing spectators and newsmen roundly, and that seemed funniest of all. Garraty fell to his knees and was warned again. He continued to laugh in short, barking spurts, which were all his laboring lungs would allow.

" He's gonna puke! " someone cried in an ecstasy of delight. " Watch 'im, Al­ice, he's gonna puke! "

" Garraty! Garraty for God's sake! " McVries was yelling. He got an arm around Garraty's back and hooked a hand into his armpit. Somehow he yanked him to his feet and Garraty stumbled on.

" Oh God, " Garraty gasped. " Oh Jesus Christ they're killing me. I... I can't... " He broke into loose, trickling laughter once more. His knees buckled. McVries ripped him to his feet once more. Garraty's collar tore. They were both warned. That's my last warning, Garraty thought dimly. I'm on my way to see that fabled farm. Sorry, Jan, I...

" Come on, you turkey, I can't lug you! " McVries hissed.

" I can't do it, " Garraty gasped. " My wind's gone, I‑ "

McVries slapped him twice quickly, forehand on the right cheek, backhand on the left. Then he walked away quickly, not looking back.

The laughter had gone out of him now but his gut was jelly, his lungs empty and seemingly unable to refill. He staggered drunkenly along, weaving, trying to find his wind. Black spots danced in front of his eyes, and a part of him understood how close to fainting he was. His one foot fetched against his other foot, he stum­bled, almost fell, and somehow kept his balance.

If I fall, I die. I'll never get up.

They were watching him. The crowd was watching him. The cheers had died away to a muted, almost sexual murmur. They were waiting for him to fall down.

He walked on, now concentrating only on putting one foot out in front of the other. Once, in the eighth grade, he had read a story by a man named Ray Bradbury, and this story was about the crowds that gather at the scenes of fatal acci­dents, about how these crowds always have the same faces, and about how they seem to know whether the wounded will live or die. I'm going to live a little longer, Garraty told them. I'm going to live. I'm going to live a little longer.

He made his feet rise and fall to the steady cadence in his head. He blotted every­thing else out, even Jan. He was not aware of the heat, or of Collie Parker, or of Freaky D'Allessio. He was not even aware of the steady dull pain in his feet and the frozen stiffness of the hamstring muscles behind his knees. The thought pounded in his mind like a big kettledrum. Like a heartbeat. Live a little longer. Live a little longer. Live a little longer. Until the words themselves became mean­ingless and signified nothing.

It was the sound of the guns that brought him out of it.

In the crowd‑ hushed stillness the sound was shockingly loud and he could hear someone screaming. Now you know, he thought, you live long enough to hear the sound of the guns, long enough to hear yourself screaming‑

But one of his feet kicked a small stone then and there was pain and it wasn't him that had bought it, it was 64, a pleasant, smiling boy named Frank Morgan. They were dragging Frank Morgan off the road. His glasses were dragging and bouncing on the pavement, still hooked stubbornly over one ear. The left lens had been shattered.

" I'm not dead, " he said dazedly. Shock hit him in a warm blue wave, threat­ening to turn his legs to water again.

" Yeah, but you ought to be, " McVries said.

" You saved him, " Olson said, turning it into a curse. " Why did you do that? Why did you do that? " His eyes were as shiny and as blank as doorknobs. " I'd kill you if I could. I hate you. You're gonna die, McVries. You wait and see. God's gonna strike you dead for what you did. God's gonna strike you dead as dogshit." His voice was pallid and empty. Garraty could almost smell the shroud on him. He clapped his own hands over his mouth and moaned through them. The truth was that the smell of the shroud was on all of them.

" Piss on you, " McVries said calmly. " I pay my debts, that's all." He looked at Garraty. " We're square, man. It's the end, right? " He walked away, not hur­rying, and was soon only another colored shirt about twenty yards ahead.

Garraty's wind came back, but very slowly, and for a long time he was sure he could feel a stitch coming in his side... but at last that faded. McVries had saved his life. He had gone into hysterics, had a laughing jag, and McVries had saved him from going down. We're square, man. It's the end, right? All right.

" God will punish him, " Hank Olson was blaring with dead and unearthly as­surance. " God will strike him down."

" Shut up or I'll strike you down myself, " Abraham said.

The day grew yet hotter, and small, quibbling arguments broke out like brush­fires. The huge crowd dwindled a little as they walked out of the radius of TV cameras and microphones, but it did not disappear or even break up into isolated knots of spectators. The crowd had come now, and the crowd was here to stay.

The people who made it up merged into one anonymous Crowd Face, a vapid, eager visage that duplicated itself mile by mile. It peopled doorsteps, lawns, drive­ways, picnic areas, gas station tarmacs (where enterprising owners had charged admission), and, in the next town they passed through, both sides of the street and the parking lot of the town's supermarket. The Crowd Face mugged and gibbered and cheered, but always remained essentially the same. It watched voraciously when Wyman squatted to make his bowels work. Men, women, and children, the Crowd Face was always the same, and Garraty tired of it quickly.

He wanted to thank McVries, but somehow doubted that McVries wanted to be thanked. He could see him up ahead, walking behind Barkovitch. McVries way staring intently at Barkovitch's neck.

Nine‑ thirty came and passed. The crowd seemed to intensify the heat, and Gar­raty unbuttoned his shirt to just above his belt buckle. He wondered if Freaky D'Allessio had known he was going to buy a ticket before he did. He supposed that knowing wouldn't have really changed things for him, one way or the other.

The road inclined steeply, and the crowd fell away momentarily as they climbed up and over four sets of east/west railroad tracks that ran below, glittering hotly in their bed of cinders. At the top, as they crossed the wooden bridge, Garrat5 could see another belt of woods ahead, and the built‑ up, almost suburban area through which they had just passed to the right and left.

A cool breeze played over his sweaty skin, making him shiver. Scramm sneezed sharply three times.

" I am getting a cold, " he announced disgustedly.

" That'll take the starch right out of you, " Pearson said. " That's a bitch."

" I'll just have to work harder, " Scramm said.

" You must be made of steel, " Pearson said. " If I had a cold I think I'd roll right over and die. That's how little energy I've got left."

" Roll over and die now! " Barkovitch yelled back. " Save some energy! "

" Shut up and keep walking, killer, " McVries said immediately.

Barkovitch looked around at him. " Why don't you get off my back, McVries? Go walk somewhere else."

" It's a free road. I'll walk where I damn well please."

Barkovitch hawked, spat, and dismissed him.

Garraty opened one of his food containers and began to eat cream cheese on crackers. His stomach growled bitterly at the first bite, and he had to fight himself to keep from wolfing everything. He squeezed a tube of roast beef concentrate into his mouth, swallowing steadily. He washed it down with water and then made himself stop there.

They walked by a lumberyard where men stood atop stacks of planks, silhou­etted against the sky like Indians, waving to them. Then they were in the wood again and silence seemed to fall with a crash. It was not silent, of course; Walkers talked, the halftrack ground along mechanically, somebody broke wind, some­body laughed, somebody behind Garraty made a hopeless little groaning sound. The sides of the road were still lined with spectators, but the great " Century Club" crowd had disappeared and it seemed quiet by comparison. Birds sang in the high-­crowned trees, the furtive breeze now and then masked the heat for a moment or two, sounding like a lost soul as it soughed through the trees. A brown squirrel froze on a high branch, tail bushed out, black eyes brutally attentive, a nut caught between his ratlike front paws. He chittered at them, then scurried higher up and disappeared. A plane droned far away, like a giant fly.

To Garraty it seemed that everyone was deliberately giving him the silent treat­ment. McVries was still walking behind Barkovitch. Pearson and Baker were talk­ing about chess. Abraham was eating noisily and wiping his hands on his shirt. Scramm had torn off a piece of his T‑ shirt and was using it as a hanky. Collie Parker was swapping girls with Wyman. And Olson... but he didn't even want to look at Olson, who seemed to want to implicate everyone else as an accessory in his own approaching death.

So he began to drop back, very carefully, just a little at a time (very mindful of his three warnings), until he was in step with Stebbins. The purple pants were dusty now. There were dark circles of sweat under the armpits of the chambray shirt. Whatever else Stebbins was, he wasn't Superman. He looked up at Garraty for a moment, lean face questioning, and then he dropped his gaze back to the road. The knob of spine at the back of his neck was very prominent.

" How come there aren't more people? " Garraty asked hesitantly. " Watching, I mean. "

For a moment he didn't think Stebbins was going to answer. But finally he looked up again, brushed the hair off his forehead and replied, " There will be. Wait awhile. They'll be sitting on roofs three deep to look at you."

" But somebody said there was billions bet on this. You'd think they'd be lined up three deep the whole way. And that there'd be TV coverage‑ "

" It's discouraged. "

" Why? "

" Why ask me? "

" Because you know, " Garraty said, exasperated.

" How do you know? "

" Jesus, you remind me of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, sometimes, " Garraty said. " Don't you ever just talk? "

" How long would you last with people screaming at you from both sides? The body odor alone would be enough to drive you insane after a while. It would be like walking three hundred miles through Times Square on New Year's Eve."

" But they do let them watch, don't they? Someone said it was one big crowd from Oldtown on."

" I'm not the caterpillar, anyway, " Stebbins said with a small, somehow secre­tive smile. " I'm more the white rabbit type, don't you think? Except I left my gold watch at home and no one has invited me to tea. At least, to the best of my knowl­edge, no one has. Maybe that's what I'll ask for when I win. When they ask me what I want for my Prize, I'll say, 'Why, I want to be invited home for tea.' "

" Goddammit! "

Stebbins smiled more widely, but it was still only an exercise in lip‑ pulling. " Yeah, from Oldtown or thereabouts the damper is off. By then no one is thinking very much about mundane things like B.O. And there's continuous TV coverage from Augusta. The Long Walk is the national pastime, after all."

" Then why not here? "

" Too soon, " Stebbins said. " Too soon."

From around the next curve the guns roared again, startling a pheasant that rose from the underbrush in an electric uprush of beating feathers. Garraty and Stebbins rounded the curve, but the bodybag was already being zipped up. Fast work. He couldn't see who it had been.

" You reach a certain point, " Stebbins said, " when the crowd ceases to matter, either as an incentive or a drawback. It ceases to be there. Like a man on a scaffold, I think. You burrow away from the crowd. "

" I think I understand that, " Garraty said. He felt timid.

" If you understood it, you wouldn't have gone into hysterics back there and needed your friend to save your ass. But you will. "

" How far do you burrow, I wonder? "

" How deep are you? "

" I don't know."

" Well, that's something you'll get to find out, too. Plumb the unplumbed depths of Garraty. Sounds almost like a travel ad, doesn't it? You burrow until you hit bedrock. Then you burrow into the bedrock. And finally you get to the bottom. And then you buy out. That's my idea. Let's hear yours. "

Garraty said nothing. Right at present, he had no ideas.

The Walk went on. The heat went on. The sun hung suspended just above the line of trees the road cut its way through. Their shadows were stubby dwarves. Around ten o'clock, one of the soldiers disappeared through the back hatch of the halftrack and reappeared with a long pole. The upper two thirds of the pole was shrouded in cloth. He closed the hatch and dropped the end of the pole into a slot in the metal. He reached under the cloth and did something... fiddled some­thing, probably a stud. A moment later a large, dun‑ colored sun umbrella popped up. It shaded most of the halftrack's metal surface. He and the other two soldiers currently on duty sat cross‑ legged in the army‑ drab parasol's shade.

" You rotten sonsabitches! " somebody screamed. " My Prize is gonna be your public castration! "

The soldiers did not seem exactly struck to the heart with terror at the thought. They continued to scan the Walkers with their blank eyes, referring occasionally to their computerized console.

" They probably take this out on their wives, " Garraty said. " When it's over. "

" Oh, I'm sure they do, " Stebbins said, and laughed.

Garraty didn't want to walk with Stebbins anymore, not right now. Stebbins made him uneasy. He could only take Stebbins in small doses. He walked faster, leaving Stebbins by himself again. 10: 02. In twenty‑ three minutes he could drop a warning, but for now he was still walking with three. It didn't scare him the way he had thought it would. There was still the unshakable, blind assurances that this organism Ray Garraty could not die. The others could die, they were extras in the movie of his life, but not Ray Garraty, star of that long‑ running hit film, The Ray Garraty Story. Maybe he would eventually come to understand the untruth of that emotionally as well as intellectually... maybe that was the final depth of which Stebbins had spoken. It was a shivery, unwelcome thought.

Without realizing it, he had walked three quarters of the way through the pack. He was behind McVries again. There were three of them in a fatigue‑ ridden conga line: Barkovitch at the front, still trying to look cocky but flaking a bit around the edges; McVries with his head slumped, hands half‑ clenched, favoring his left foot a little now; and, bringing up the rear, the star of The Ray Garraty Story himself. And how do I look? he wondered.

He robbed a hand up the side of his cheek and listened to the rasp his hand made against his light beard‑ stubble. Probably he didn't look all that snappy himself.

He stepped up his pace a little more until he was walking abreast of McVries, who looked over briefly and then back at Barkovitch. His eyes were dark and hard to read.

They climbed a short, steep, and savagely sunny rise and then crossed another small bridge. Fifteen minutes went by, then twenty. McVries didn't say anything. Garraty cleared his throat twice but said nothing. He thought that the longer you went without speaking, the harder it gets to break the silence. Probably McVries was pissed that he had saved his ass now. Probably McVries had repented of it. That made Garraty's stomach quiver emptily. It was all hopeless and, stupid and pointless, most of all that, so goddam pointless it was really pitiful. He opened his mouth to tell McVries that, but before he could, McVries spoke.

" Everything's all right." Barkovitch jumped at the sound of his voice and McVries added, " Not you, killer. Nothing's ever going to be all right for you. Just keep striding."

" Eat my meat, " Barkovitch snarled.

" I guess I caused you some trouble, " Garraty said in a low voice.

" I told you, fair is fair, square is square, and quits are quits, " McVries said evenly. " I won't do it again. I want you to know that."

" I understand that, " Garraty said. " I just‑ "

" Don't hurt me! " someone screamed. " Please don't hurt me! "

It was a redhead with a plaid shirt tied around his waist. He had stopped in the middle of the road and he was weeping. He was given first warning. And then he raced toward the halftrack, his tears cutting runnels through the sweaty dirt on his face, red hair glinting like a fire in the sun. " Don't... I can't... please... MY mother.. I can't... don't... no more... my feet... " He was trying to scale the side, and one of the soldiers brought the butt of his car­bine down on his hands. The boy cried out and fell in a heap.

He screamed again, a high, incredibly thin note that seemed sharp enough to shatter glass and what he was screaming was:

" My feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee‑ "

" Jesus, " Garraty muttered. " Why doesn't he stop that? " The screams went on and on.

" I doubt if he can, " McVries said clinically. " The back treads of the halftrack ran over his legs."

Garraty looked and felt his stomach lurch into his throat. It was true. No wonder the redheaded kid was screaming about his feet. They had been obliterated.

" Warning! Warning 38! "

" ‑ eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee‑ "

" I want to go home, " someone behind Garraty said very quietly. " Oh Christ, do I ever want to go home."

A moment later the redheaded boy's face was blown away.

" I'm gonna see my girl in Freeport, " Garraty said rapidly. " And I'm not gonna have any warnings and I'm gonna kiss her, God I miss her, God, Jesus, did you see his legs? They were still warning him, Pete, like they thought he was gonna get up and walk‑ "

" Another boy has gone ober to dat Silver City, lawd, lawd, " Barkovitch in­toned.

" Shut up, killer, " McVries said absently. " She pretty, Ray? Your girl? "

" She's beautiful. I love her."

McVries smiled. " Gonna marry her? "

" Yeah, " Garraty babbled. " We're gonna be Mr. and Mrs. Norman Normal, four kids and a collie dog, his legs, he didn't have any legs, they ran over him, they can't run over a guy, that isn't in the rules, somebody ought to report that, somebody‑ "

" Two boys and two girls, that what you're gonna have? "

" Yeah, yeah, she's beautiful, I just wish I hadn't‑ "

" And the first kid will be Ray Junior and the dog'll have a dish with its name on it, right? "

Garraty raised his head slowly, like a punchdrunk fighter. " Are you making fun of me? Or what? "

" No! " Barkovitch exclaimed. " He's shitting on you, boy! And don't you for­get it. But I'll dance on his grave for you, don't worry." He cackled briefly.

" Shut up, killer, " McVries said. " I'm not dumping on you, Ray. Come on, let's get away from the killer, here. "

" Shove it up your ass! " Barkovitch screamed after them.

" She love you? Your girl? Jan? "

" Yeah, I think so, " Garraty said.

McVries shook his head slowly. " All of that romantic horseshit... you know, it's true. At least, for some people for some short time, it is. It was for me. I felt like you. " He looked at Garraty. " You still want to hear about the scar? "

They rounded a bend and a camperload of children squealed and waved. " Yes, " Garraty said.

" Why? " He looked at Garraty, but his suddenly naked eyes might have been searching himself.

" I want to help you, " Garraty said.

McVries looked down at his left foot. " Hurts. I can't wiggle the toes very much anymore. My neck is stiff and my kidneys ache. My girl turned out to be a bitch, Garraty. I got into this Long Walk shit the same way that guys used to get into the Foreign Legion. In the words of the great rock and roll poet, I gave her my heart, she tore it apart, and who gives a fart. "

Garraty said nothing. It was 10: 30. Freeport was still far.

" Her name was Priscilla, " McVries said. " You think you got a case? I was the original Korny Kid, Moon‑ June was my middle name. I used to kiss her fingers. I even took to reading Keats to her out in back of the house, when the wind was right. Her old man kept cows, and the smell of cowshit goes, to put it in the most delicate way, in a peculiar fashion with the works of John Keats. Maybe I should have read her Swinburne when the wind was wrong." McVries laughed.

" You're cheating what you felt, " Garraty said.

" Ah, you're the one faking it, Ray, not that it matters. All you remember is the Great Romance, not all the times you went home and jerked your meat after whis­pering words of love in her shell‑ pink ear."

" You fake your way, I'll fake mine."

McVries seemed not to have heard. " These things, they don't even bear the weight of conversation, " he said. " J. D. Salinger... John Knowles... even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes... they've destroyed being an ad­olescent, Garraty. If you're a sixteen‑ year‑ old boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fuck­ing Ron Howard with a hardon."

McVries laughed a little hysterically. Garraty had no idea what McVries was talking about. He was secure in his love for Jan, he didn't feel in the least self-­conscious about it. Their feet scuffed on the road. Garraty could feel his right heel wobbling. Pretty soon the nails would let go, and he would shed the shoeheel like dead skin. Behind them, Scramm had a coughing fit. It was the Walk that bothered Garraty, not all this weird shit about romantic love.

" But that doesn't have anything to do with the story, " McVries said, as if read­ing his mind. " About the scar. It was last summer. We both wanted to get away from home, away from our parents, and away from the smell of all that cowshit so the Great Romance could bloom in earnest. So we got jobs working for a pajama factory in New Jersey. How does that grab you, Garraty? A pj factory in New Jersey.

" We got separate apartments in Newark. Great town, Newark, on a given day you can smell all the cowshit in New Jersey in Newark. Our parents kicked a little, but with separate apartments and good summer jobs, they didn't kick too much. My place was with two other guys, and there were three girls in with Pris. We left on June the third in my car, and we stopped once around three in the afternoon at a motel and got rid of the virginity problem. I felt like a real crook. She didn't really want to screw, but she wanted to please me. That was the Shady Nook mo­tel. When we were done I flushed that Trojan down the Shady Nook john and washed out my mouth with a Shady Nook paper cup. It was all very romantic, very ethereal.

" Then it was on to Newark, smelling the cowshit and being so sure it was dif­ferent cowshit. I dropped her at her apartment and then went on to my own. The next Monday we started in at the Plymouth Sleepwear factory. It wasn't much like the movies, Garraty. It stank of raw cloth and my foreman was a bastard and during lunch break we used to throw baling hooks at the rats under the fabric bags. But I didn't mind because it was love. See? It was love."

He spat dryly into the dust, swallowed from his canteen, then yelled for another one. They were climbing a long, curve‑ banked hill now, and his words came in out‑ of‑ breath bursts.

" Pris was on the first floor, the showcase for all the idiot tourists who didn't have anything better to do than go on a guided tour of the place that made their jam jams. It was nice down where Pris was. Pretty pastel walls, nice modern ma­chinery, air conditioning. Pris sewed on buttons from seven till three. Just think, there are men all over the country wearing pj's held up by Priscilla's buttons. There is a thought to warm the coldest heart.

" I was on the fifth floor. I was a bagger. See, down in the basement they dyed the raw cloth and sent it up to the fifth floor in these warm‑ air tubes. They'd ring a bell when the whole lot was done, and I'd open my bin and there'd be a whole shitload of loose fiber, all the colors of the rainbow. I'd pitchfork it out, put it in two‑ hundred‑ pound sacks, and chain‑ hoist the sacks onto a big pile of other sacks for the picker machine. They'd separate it, the weaving machines wove it, some other guys cut it and sewed it into pajamas, and down there on that pretty pastel first floor Pris put on the buttons while the dumbass tourists watched her and the other girls through this glass wall... just like the people are watching us today. Am I getting through to you at all, Garraty? "

" The scar, " Garraty reminded.

" 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. "

" I got into a fight, " McVries said finally, after a long pause. " With Ralph, the guy on the picker. He blacked both my eyes and told me I better take off or he'd break my arms as well. I turned in my time and told Pris that night that I'd quit. She could see what I looked like for herself. She understood. She said that was probably best. I told her I was going home and I asked her to come. She said she couldn't. I said she was nothing but a slave to her fucking buttons and that I wished I'd never seen her. There was just so much poison inside me, Garraty. I told her she was a fool and an unfeeling bitch that couldn't see any further than the goddam bank book she carried around in her purse. Nothing I said was fair, but... there was some truth in all of it, I guess. Enough. We were at her apartment. That was the first time I'd ever been there when all her roommates were out. They were at the movies. I tried to take her to bed and she cut my face open with a letter‑ opener. It was a gag letter‑ opener, some friend of hers sent it to her from England. It had Paddington Bear on it. She cut me like I was trying to rape her. Like I was germs and I'd infect her. Am I giving you the drift, Ray? "

" Yes, I'm getting it, " Garraty said. Up ahead a white station wagon with the words WHGH NEWSMOBILE lettered on the side was pulled off the road. As they drew near, a balding man in a shiny suit began shooting them with a big news­reel cine camera. Pearson, Abraham, and Jensen all clutched their crotches with their left hand and thumbed their noses with their right. There was a Rockette-like precision about this little act of defiance that bemused Garraty.

" I cried, " McVries said. " I cried like a baby. I got down on my knees and held her skirt and begged her to forgive me, and all the blood was getting on the floor, it was a basically disgusting scene, Garraty. She gagged and ran off into the bath­room. She threw up. I could hear her throwing up. When she came out, she had a towel for my face. She said she never wanted to see me again. She was crying. She asked me why I'd done that to her, hurt her like that. She said I had no right. There I was, Ray, with my face cut wide open and she's asking me why I hurt her. "

" Yeah."

" I left with the towel still on my face. I had twelve stitches and that's the story of the fabulous scar and aren't you happy? "

" Have you ever seen her since? "

" No, " McVries said. " And I have no real urge to. She seems very small to me now, very far away. Pris at this point in my life is no more than a speck on the horizon. She really was mental, Ray. Something... her mother, maybe, her mother was a lush... something had fixed her on the subject of money. She was a real miser. Distance lends perspective, they say. Yesterday morning Pris was still very important to me. Now she's nothing. That story I just told you, I thought that would hurt. It didn't hurt. Besides, I doubt if all that shit really has anything to do with why I'm here. It just made a handy excuse at the time."

" What do you mean? "

" Why are you here, Garraty? "

" I don't know." His voice was mechanical, doll‑ like. Freaky D'Allessio hadn't been able to see the ball coming‑ his eyes weren't right, his depth perception was screwed‑ it had hit him in the forehead, and branded him with stitches. And later (or earlier... all of his past was mixed up and fluid now) he had hit his best friend in the mouth with the barrel of an air rifle. Maybe he had a scar like McVries. Jimmy. He and Jimmy had been playing doctor.

" You don't know, " McVries said. " You're dying and you don't know why."

" It's not important after you're dead."

" Yeah, maybe, " McVries said, " but there's one thing you ought to know, Ray, so it won't all be so pointless."

" What's that? "

" Why, that you've been had. You mean you really didn't know that, Ray? You really didn't? "