Chapter 9

" Very good, Northwestern, now here is your ten‑ point tossup question. "

Allen Ludden

College Bowl

At one o'clock, Garraty took inventory again.

One hundred and fifteen miles traveled. They were forty‑ five miles north of Oldtown, a hundred and twenty‑ five miles north of Augusta, the state capital, one hundred and fifty to Freeport (or more... he was terribly afraid there were more than twenty‑ five miles between Augusta and Freeport), probably two‑ thirty to the New Hampshire border. And the word was that this Walk was sure to go that far.

For a long while‑ ninety minutes or so‑ no one at all had been given a ticket. They walked, they half‑ listened to the cheers from the sidelines, and they stared at mile after monotonous mile of piney woods. Garraty discovered fresh twinges of pain in his left calf to go with the steady, wooden throbbing that lived in both of his legs, and the low‑ key agony that was his feet.

Then, around noon, as the day's heat mounted toward its zenith, the guns began to make themselves heard again. A boy named Tressler, 92, had a sunstroke and was shot as he lay unconscious. Another boy suffered a convulsion and got a ticket. as he crawdaddied on the road, making ugly noises around his swallowed tongue. Aaronson, 1, cramped up in both feet and was shot on the white line, standing like a statue, his face turned up to the sun in neck‑ straining concentration. And at five minutes to one, another boy Garraty did not know had a sunstroke.

This is where I came in, Garraty thought, walking around the twitching, mum­bling form on the road where the rifles sight in, seeing the jewels of sweat in the exhausted and soon‑ to‑ be‑ dead boy's hair. This is where I came in, can't I leave now?

The guns roared, and a covey of high school boys sitting in the scant shade of a Scout camper applauded briefly.

" I wish the Major would come through, " Baker said pettishly. " I want to see the Major."

" What? " Abraham asked mechanically. He had grown gaunter in the last few hours. His eyes were sunk deeper in their sockets. The blue suggestion of a beard patched his face.

" So I can piss on him, " Baker said.

" Relax, " Garraty said. " Just relax. " All three of his warnings were gone now.

" You relax, " Baker said. " See what it gets you."

" You've got no right to hate the Major. He didn't force you."

" Force me? FORCE me? He's KILLING me, that's all! "

" It's still not‑ "

" Shut up, " Baker said curtly, and Garraty shut. He rubbed the back of his neck briefly and stared up into the whitish‑ blue sky. His shadow was a deformed huddle almost beneath his feet. He turned up his third canteen of the day and drained it.

Baker said: " I'm sorry. I surely didn't mean to shout. My feet‑ "

" Sure, " Garraty said.

" We're all getting this way, " Baker said. " I sometimes think that's the worst part."

Garraty closed his eyes. He was very sleepy.

" You know what I'd like to do? " Pearson said. He was walking between Gar­raty and Baker.

" Piss on the Major, " Garraty said. " Everybody wants to piss on the Major. When he comes through again we'll gang up on him and drag him down and all unzip and drown him in‑ "

" That isn't what I want to do. " Pearson was walking like a man in the last stages of conscious drunkenness. His head made half‑ rolls on his neck. His eyelids snapped up and down like spastic windowblinds. " It's got nothin' to do with the Major. I just want to go into the next field and lay down and close my eyes. Just lay there on my back in the wheat‑ "

" They don't grow wheat in Maine, " Garraty said. " It's hay."

" ‑ in the hay, then. And compose myself a poem. While I go to sleep."

Garraty fumbled in his new foodbelt and found nothing in most of the pouches. Finally he happened on a waxpac of Saltines and began washing them down with water. " I feel like a sieve, " he said. " I drink it and it pops out on my skin two minutes later."

The guns roared again and another figure collapsed gracelessly, like a tired jack­in‑ the‑ box.

" Fordy fibe, " Scramm said, joining them. " I don't thing we'll even get to Pordland ad this rade."

" You don't sound so good, " Pearson said, and there might have been careful optimism in his voice.

" Luggy for me I god a good codstitution, " Scramm said cheerfully. " I thing I'be rudding a fever now."

" Jesus, how do you keep going? " Abraham asked, and there was a kind of re­ligious fear in his voice.

" Me? Talk about me? " Scramm said. " Look at hib! How does he keep going? Thad's what I'd like to know! " And he cocked his thumb at Olson.

Olson had not spoken for two hours. He had not touched his newest canteen. Greedy glances were shot at his foodbelt, which was also almost untouched. His eyes, darkly obsidian, were fixed straight ahead. His face was speckled by two days of beard and it looked sickly vulpine. Even his hair, frizzed up in back and hanging across his forehead in front, added to the overall impression of ghoulish­ness. His lips were parched dry and blistering. His tongue hung over his bottom lip like a dead serpent on the lip of a cave. Its healthy pinkness had disappeared. It was dirty‑ gray now. Road‑ dust clung to it.

He's there, Garraty thought, sure he is. Where Stebbins said we'd all go if we stuck with it long enough. How deep inside himself is he? Fathoms? Miles? Light­years? How deep and how dark? And the answer came back to him: Too deep to see out. He's hiding down there in the darkness and it's too deep to see out.

" Olson? " he said softly. " Olson? "

Olson didn't answer. Nothing moved but his feet.

" I wish he'd put his tongue in at least, " Pearson whispered nervously.

The Walk went on.

The woods melted back and they were passing through another wide place in the road. The sidewalks were lined with cheering spectators. Garraty signs again predominated. Then the woods closed in again. But not even the woods could hold the spectators back now. They were beginning to line the soft shoulders. Pretty girls in shorts and halters. Boys in basketball shorts and muscle shirts.

Gay holiday, Garraty thought.

He could no longer wish he wasn't here; he was too tired and numb for retro­spect. What was done was done. Nothing in the world would change it. Soon enough, he supposed, it would even become too much of an effort to talk to the others. He wished he could hide inside himself like a little boy rolled up inside a rug, with no more worries. Then everything would be much simpler.

He had wondered a great deal about what McVries had said. That they had all been swindled, rooked. But that couldn't be right, he insisted stubbornly to him­self. One of them had not been swindled. One of them was going to swindle every­one else... wasn't that right?

He licked his lips and drank some water.

They passed a small green sign that informed them the Maine turnpike was forty­-four miles hence.

" That's it, " he said to no one in particular. " Forty‑ four miles to Oldtown."

No one replied and Garraty was just considering taking a walk back up to McVries when they came to another intersection and a woman began to scream. The traffic had been roped off, and the crowd pressed eagerly against the barriers and the cops manning them. They waved their hands, their signs, their bottles of suntan lotion.

The screaming woman was large and red‑ faced. She threw herself against one of the waist‑ high sawhorse barriers, toppling it and yanking a lot of the bright yel­low guard‑ rope after it. Then she was fighting and clawing and screaming at the policemen who held her. The cops were grunting with effort.

I know her, Garraty thought. Don't I know her?

The blue kerchief. The belligerent, gleaming eyes. Even the navy dress with the crooked hem. They were all familiar. The woman's screams had become incoherent. One pinwheeling hand ripped stripes of blood across the face of one of the cops holding her‑ trying to hold her.

Garraty passed within ten feet of her. As he walked past, he knew where he had seen her before‑ she was Percy 's mom, of course. Percy who had tried to sneak into the woods and had snuck right into the next world instead.

" I want m'boy! " she hollered. " I want m'boy! "

The crowd cheered her enthusiastically and impartially. A small boy behind her spat on her leg and then darted away.

Jan, Garraty thought. I'm walking to you, Jan, fuck this other shit, I swear to God I'm coming. But McVries had been right. Jan hadn't wanted him to come. She had cried. She had begged him to change his mind. They could wait, she didn't want to lose him, please Ray, don't be dumb, the Long Walk is nothing but murder‑

They had been sitting on a bench beside the bandstand. It had been a month ago, April, and he had his arm around her. She had been wearing the perfume he had gotten her for her birthday. It seemed to bring out the secret girl‑ smell of her, a dark smell, fleshy and heady. I have to go, he had told her. I have to, don't you understand, I have to.

Ray, you don't understand what you're doing. Ray, please don't. I love you.

Well, he thought now, as he walked on down the road, she was right about that. I sure didn't understand what I was doing.

But I don't understand it even now. That's the hell of it. The pure and simple hell of it.

" Garraty? "

He jerked his head up, startled. He had been half‑ asleep again. It was McVries, walking beside him.

" How you feeling? "

" Feeling? " Garraty said cautiously. " All right, I guess. I guess I'm all right."

" Barkovitch is cracking, " McVries said with quiet joy. " I'm sure of it. He's talking to himself. And he's limping."

" You're limping, too, " Garraty said. " So's Pearson. So am I."

" My foot hurts, that's all. But Barkovitch... he keeps rubbing his leg. I think he's got a pulled muscle. "

" Why do you hate him so much? Why not Collie Parker? Or Olson? Or all of us? "

" Because Barkovitch knows what he's doing."

" He plays to win, do you mean? "

" You don't know what I mean, Ray."

" I wonder if you do yourself, " Garraty said. " Sure he's a bastard. Maybe it takes a bastard to win."

" Good guys finish last? "

" How the hell should I know? "

They passed a clapboard one‑ room schoolhouse. The children stood out in the play yard and waved. Several boys stood atop the jungle gym like sentries, and Garraty was reminded of the men in the lumberyard a ways back.

" Garraty! " One of them yelled. " Ray Garraty! Gar‑ ra‑ tee! " A small boy with a tousled head of hair jumped up and down on the top level of the jungle gym, waving with both arms. Garraty waved back halfheartedly. The boy flipped over, hung upside down by the backs of his legs, and continued to wave. Garraty was a little relieved when he and the schoolyard were out of sight. That last had been a little too strenuous to bear thinking about for long.

Pearson joined them. " I've been thinking."

" Save your strength, " McVries said.

" Feeble, man. That is feeble."

" What have you been thinking about? " Garraty asked.

" How tough it's going to be for the second‑ to‑ last guy."

" Why so tough? " McVries asked.

" Well... " Pearson robbed his eyes, then squinted at a pine tree that had been struck by lightning some time in the past. " You know, to walk down every­body, absolutely everybody but that last guy. There ought to be a runner‑ up Prize, that's what I think."

" What? " McVries asked flatly.

" I dunno."

" How about his life? " Garraty asked.

" Who'd walk for that? "

" Nobody, before the Walk started, maybe. But right now I'd be happy enough with just that, the hell with the Prize, the hell with having my every heart's desire. How about you? "

Pearson thought about it for a long time. " I just don't see the sense of it, " he said at last, apologetically.

" You tell him, Pete, " Garraty said.

" Tell him what? He's right. The whole banana or no banana at all. "

" You're crazy, " Garraty said, but without much conviction. He was very hot and very tired, and there were the remotest beginnings of a headache in back of his eyes. Maybe this is how sunstroke starts, he thought. Maybe that would be the best way, too. Just go down in a dreamy, slow‑ motion half‑ knowingness, and wake up dead.

" Sure, " McVries said amiably. " We're all crazy or we wouldn't be here. I thought we'd thrashed that out a long time ago. We want to die, Ray. Haven't you got that through your sick, thick head yet? Look at Olson. A skull on top of a stick. Tell me he doesn't want to die. You can't. Second place? It's bad enough that even one of us has got to get gypped out of what he really wants."

" I don't know about all that fucking psychohistory, " Pearson said finally. " I just don't think anyone should get to cop out second."

Garraty burst out laughing. " You're nuts, " he said.

McVries also laughed. " Now you're starting to see it my way. Get a little more sun, stew your brain a little more, and we'll make a real believer out of you."

The Walk went on.

The sun seemed neatly poised on the roof of the world. The mercury reached sev­enty‑ nine degrees (one of the boys had a pocket thermometer) and eighty trembled in its grasp for a few broiling minutes. Eighty, Garraty thought. Eighty. Not that hot.

In July the mercury would go ten degrees higher. Eighty. Just the right temperature to sit in the backyard under an elm tree eating a chicken salad on lettuce. Eighty. Just the ticket for belly‑ flopping into the nearest piece of the Royal River, oh Jesus, wouldn't that feel good. The water was warm on the top, but down by your feet it was cold and you could feel the current pull at you just a little and there were suckers by the rocks, but you could pick 'em off if you weren't a pussy. All that water, bathing your skin, your hair, your crotch. His hot flesh trembled as he thought about it. Eighty. Just right for shucking down to your swan trunks and laying up in the canvas ham­mock in the backyard with a good book. And maybe drowse off. Once he had pulled Jan into the hammock with him and they had lain there together, swinging and neck­ing until his cock felt like a long hot stone against his lower belly. She hadn't seemed to mind. Eighty. Christ in a Chevrolet, eighty degrees.

Eighty. Eightyeightyeighty. Make it nonsense, make it gone.

" I'd never been so hod id by whole life, " Scramm said through his plugged nose. His broad face was red and dripping sweat. He had stripped off his shirt and bared his shaggy torso. Sweat was cunning all over him like small creeks in spring flow.

" You better put your shirt back on, " Baker said. " You'll catch a chill when the sun starts to go down. Then you'll really be ih trouble."

" This goddab code, " Scramm said. " I'be burding ub."

" It'll rain, " Baker said. His eyes searched the empty sky. " It has to rain.'

" It doesn't have to do a goddam thing, " Collie Parker said. " I never seen such a fucked‑ up state."

" If you don't like it, why don't you go on home? " Garraty asked, and giggled foolishly.

" Stuff it up your ass."

Garraty forced himself to drink just a little from his canteen. He didn't want water cramps. That would be a hell of a way to buy out. He'd had them once, and once had been enough. He had been helping their next‑ door neighbors, the El­wells, get in their hay. It was explosively hot in the loft of the Elwells' barn, and they had been throwing up the big seventy‑ pound bales in a fireman's relay. Gar­raty had made the tactical mistake of drinking three dipperfuls of the ice‑ cold water Mrs. Elwell had brought out. There had been sudden blinding pain in his chest and belly and head, he had slipped on some loose hay and had fallen bonelessly out of the loft and into the truck. Mr. Elwell held him around the middle with his work­callused hands while he threw up over the side, weak with pain and shame. They had sent him home, a boy who had flunked one of his first manhood tests, hayrash on his arms and chaff in his hair. He had walked home, and the sun had beaten down on the back of his sunburned neck like a ten‑ pound hammer.

He shivered convulsively, and his body broke out momentarily in heat‑ bumps. The headache thumped sickishly behind his eyes... how easy it would be to let go of the rope.

He looked over at Olson. Olson was there. His tongue was turning blackish. His face was dirty. His eyes stared blindly. I'm not like him. Dear God, not like him. Please, I don't want to go out like Olson.

" This'll take the starch out, " Baker said gloomily. " We won't make it into New Hampshire. I'd bet money on it."

" Two years ago they had sleet, " Abraham said. " They made it over the border. Four of 'em did, anyway."

" Yeah, but the heat's different, " Jensen said. " When you're cold you can walk faster and get warmed up. When you're hot you can walk slower... and get iced. What can you do? "

" No justice, " Collie Parker said angrily. " Why couldn't they have the goddam Walk in Illinois, where the ground's flat? "

" I like Baine, " Scramm said. " Why do you swear so buch, Parger? "

" Why do you have to wipe so much snot out of your nose? " Parker asked. " Be­cause that's the way I am, that's why. Any objections? "

Garraty looked at his watch, but it was stopped at 10: 16. He had forgotten to wind it. " Anybody got the time? " he asked.

" Lemme see. " Pearson squinted at his watch. " Just happast an asshole, Garraty. "

Everyone laughed. " Come on, " he said. " My watch stopped."

Pearson looked again. " It's two after two. " He looked up at the sky. " That sun isn't going to set for a long time. "

The sun was poised malevolently over the fringe of woods. There was not enough angle on it yet to throw the road into the shade, and wouldn't be for another hour or two. Far off to the south, Garraty thought he could see purple smudges that might be thunderheads or only wishful thinking.

Abraham and Collie Parker were lackadaisically discussing the merits of four­barrel carbs. No one else seemed much disposed to talk, so Garraty wandered off by himself to the far side of the road, waving now and then to someone, but not bothering as a rule.

The Walkers were not spread out as much as they had been. The vanguard was in plain sight: two tall, tanned boys with black leather jackets tied around their waists. The word was that they were queer for each other, but Garraty believed that like he believed the moon was green cheese. They didn't look effeminate, and they seemed like nice enough guys... not that either one of those things had much to do with whether or not they were queer, he supposed. And not that it was any of his business if they were. But...

Barkovitch was behind the leather boys and McVries was behind him, staring intently at Barkovitch's back. The yellow rainhat still dangled out of Barkovitch's back pocket, and he didn't look like he was cracking to Garraty. In fact, he thought with a painful twinge, McVries was the one who looked bushed.

Behind McVries and Barkovitch was a loose knot of seven or eight boys, the kind of carelessly knit confederation that seemed to form and reform during the course of the Walk, new and old members constantly coming and going. Behind them was a smaller group, and behind that group was Scramm, Pearson, Baker, Abraham, Parker, and Jensen. His group. There had been others with it near the start, and now he could barely remember their names.

There were two groups behind his, and scattered through the whole raggle‑ taggle column like pepper through salt were the loners. A few of them, like Olson, were withdrawn and catatonic. Others, like Stebbins, seemed to genuinely prefer their own company. And almost all of them had that intent, frightened look stamped on their faces. Garraty had come to know that look so well.

The guns came down and bore on one of the loners he had been looking at, a short, stoutish boy who was wearing a battered green silk vest. It seemed to Gar­raty that he had collected his final warning about half an hour ago. He threw a short, terrified glance at the guns and stepped up his pace. The guns lost their dreadful interest in him, at least for the time being.

Garraty felt a sudden incomprehensible rise in spirits. They couldn't be much more than forty miles from Oldtown and civilization now‑ if you wanted to call a mill, shoe, and canoe town civilization. They'd pull in there sometime late to­night, and get on the turnpike. The turnpike would be smooth sailing, compared to this. On the turnpike you could walk on the grassy median strip with your shoes off if you wanted. Feel the cold dew. Good Christ, that would be great. He mopped his brow with his forearm. Maybe things were going to turn out okay after all. The purple smudges were a little closer, and they were definitely thunderheads.

The guns went off and he didn't even jump. The boy in the green silk vest had bought a ticket, and he was staring up at the sun. Not even death was that bad, maybe. Everybody, even the Major himself, had to face it sooner or later. So who was swindling who, when you came right down to it? He made a mental note to mention that to McVries the next time they spoke.

He picked up his heels a little and made up his mind to wave to the next pretty girl he saw. But before there was a pretty girl, there was the little Italian man.

He was a caricature Italian man, a small guy with a battered felt hat and a black mustache that curled up at the ends. He was beside an old station wagon with the back hatch standing open. He was waving and grinning with incredibly white, in­credibly square teeth.

An insulating mat had been laid on the bottom of the station wagon's cargo com­partment. The mat had been piled high with crushed ice, and peeking through the ice in dozens of places, like wide pink peppermint grins, were wedges of watermelon.

Garraty felt his stomach flop over twice, exactly like a snap‑ rolling high diver. A sign on top of the station wagon read: DOM L'ANTIO LOVES ALL LONG WALKERS‑ FREE WATERMELON!!!

Several of the Walkers, Abraham and Collie Parker among them, broke for the shoulder at a dogtrot. All were warned. They were doing better than four an hour, but they were doing it in the wrong direction. Dom L'Antio saw them coming and laughed‑ a crystal, joyous, uncomplicated sound. He clapped his hands, dug into the ice, and came out with double handfuls of pink grinning watermelons. Garraty felt his mouth shrivel with want. But they won't let him, he thought. Just like they wouldn't let the storekeeper give the sodas. And then: But oh God, it'd taste good. Would it be too much, God, for them to be a little slow with the hook this time? Where did he get watermelon this time of year, anyway?

The Long Walkers milled outside the restraining ropes, the small crowd around Dom went mad with happiness, second warnings were parceled out, and three State Troopers appeared miraculously to restrain Dom, whose voice came loud and clear:

" Whatcha mean? Whatcha mean I can't? These my wat'amelon, you dumb cop! I wanna give, I gonna give, hey! what you t'ink? Get offa my case, you hardass! "

One of the Troopers made a grab for the watermelons Dom held in his hands. Another buttonhooked around him and slammed the cargo door of the wagon shut.

" You bastards! " Garraty screamed with all his force. His shriek sped through the bright day like a glass spear, and one of the Troopers looked around, startled and... well, almost hangdog.

" Stinking sonsofbitches! " Garraty shrieked at them. " I wish your mothers had miscarried you stinking whoresons! "

" You tell 'em Garraty! " someone else yelled, and it was Barkovitch, grinning like a mouthful of tenpenny nails and shaking both of his fists at the State Troopers. " You tell‑ "

But they were all screaming now, and the Troopers were not handpicked Long Walk soldiers fresh off the National Squads. Their faces were red and embar­rassed, but all the same they were hustling Dom and his double handfuls of cool pink grins away from the sidelines at double time.

Dom either lost his English or gave it up. He began to yell fruity Italian curses. The crowd booed the State Troopers. A woman in a floppy straw sunhat threw a transistor radio at one of them. It hit him in the head and knocked off his cap. Garraty felt sorry for the Trooper but continued to scream curses. He couldn't seem to help it. That word " whoresons, " he hadn't thought anybody ever used a word like that outside of books.

Just as it seemed that Dom L'Antio would be removed from their view for good, the little Italian slipped free and dashed back toward them, the crowd parting mag­ically for him and closing‑ or trying to‑ against the police. One of the Troopers threw a flying tackle at him, caught him around the knees, and spilled him for­ward. At the last instant of balance Dom let his beautiful pink grins fly in a wide­swinging throw.

" DOM L'ANTIO LOVES YOU ALL! " he cried.

The crowd cheered hysterically. Dom landed headfirst in the dirt, and his hands were cuffed behind him in a trice. The watermelon slices arced and pinwheeled through the bright air, and Garraty laughed aloud and raised both hands to the sky and shook his fists triumphantly as he saw Abraham catch one with nonchalant deftness.

Others were third‑ warned for stopping to pick up chunks of watermelon, but amazingly, no one was shot and five‑ -no, six, Garraty saw‑ -of the boys had ended up with watermelon. The rest of them alternately cheered those who had managed to get some of it, or cursed the wooden‑ faced soldiers, whose expressions were now satisfyingly interpreted to hold subtle chagrin.

" I love everybody! " Abraham bellowed. His grinning face was streaked with pink watermelon juice. He spat three brown seeds into the air.

" Goddam, " Collie Parker said happily. " I'm goddamned, goddam if I ain't.

He drove his face into the watermelon, gobbled hungrily, then busted his piece in two. He threw half of it over to Garraty, who almost fumbled it in his surprise. " There ya go, hicksville! " Collie shouted. " Don't say I never gave ya nothin', ya goddam rube! "

Garraty laughed. " Go fuck yourself, " he said. The watermelon was cold, cold. Some of the juice got up his nose, some more ran down his chin, and oh sweet heaven in his throat, running down his throat.

He only let himself eat half. " Pete! " he shouted, and tossed the remaining chunk to him.

McVries caught it with a flashy backhand, showing the sort of stuff that makes college shortstops and, maybe, major league ballplayers. He grinned at Garraty and ate the melon.

Garraty looked around and felt a crazy joy breaking through him, pumping at his heart, making him want to run around in circles on his hands. Almost everyone had gotten a scrap of the melon, even if it was no more than a scrap of the pink meat clinging to a seed.

Stebbins, as usual, was the exception. He was looking at the road. There was nothing in his hands, no smile on his face.

Screw him, Garraty thought. But a little of the joy went out of him nevertheless. His feet felt heavy again. He knew that it wasn't that Stebbins hadn't gotten any. Or that Stebbins didn't want any. Stebbins didn't need any.

2: 30 PM. They had walked a hundred and twenty‑ one miles. The thunderheads drifted closer. A cool breeze sprang up, chill against Garraty's hot skin. It's going to rain again, he thought. Good.

The people at the sides of the road were rolling up blankets, catching flying bits of paper, reloading their picnic baskets. The storm came flying lazily at them, and all at once the temperature plummeted and it felt like autumn. Garraty buttoned his shirt quickly.

" Here it comes again, " he told Scramm. " Better get your shirt on."

" Are you kidding? " Scramm grinned. " This is the besd I've feld all day! "

" It's gonna be a boomer! " Parker yelled gleefully.

They were on top of a gradually slanting plateau, and they could see the curtain of rain beating across the woods toward them below the purple thunderheads. Di­rectly above them the sky had gone a sick yellow. A tornado sky, Garraty thought. Wouldn't that be the living end. What would they do if a tornado just came tearing ass down the road and carried them all off to Oz in a whirling cloud of dirt, flapping shoeleather, and whirling watermelon seeds?

He laughed. The wind ripped the laugh out of his mouth.

" McVries! "

McVries angled to meet him. He was bent into the wind, his clothes plastered against his body and streaming out behind him. The black hair and the white scar etched against his tanned face made him look like a weathered, slightly mad sea captain astride the bridge of his ship.

" What? " he bellowed.

" Is there a provision in the rules for an act of God? "

McVries considered. " No, I don't think so." He began buttoning his jacket.

" What happens if we get struck by lightning? "

McVries threw back his head and cackled. " We'll be dead! "

Garraty snorted and walked away. Some of the others were looking up into the sky anxiously. This was going to be no little shower, the kind that had cooled them off after yesterday's heat. What had Parker said? A boomer. Yes, it certainly was going to be a boomer.

A baseball cap went cartwheeling between his legs, and Garraty looked over his shoulder and saw a small boy looking after it longingly. Scramm grabbed it and tried to scale it back to the kid, but the wind took it in a big boomerang arc and it wound up in a wildly lashing tree.

Thunder whacked. A white‑ purple tine of lightning jabbed the horizon. The comforting sough of the wind in the pines had become a hundred mad ghosts, flap­ping and hooting.

The guns cracked, a small popgun sound almost lost in the thunder and the wind. Garraty jerked his head around, the premonition that Olson had finally bought his bullet strong upon him. But Olson was still there, his flapping clothes revealing how amazingly fast the weight had melted off him. Olson had lost his jacket somewhere; the arms that poked out of his short shirtsleeves were bony and as thin as pencils.

It was somebody else who was being dragged off. The face was small and ex­hausted and very dead beneath the whipping mane of his hair.

" If it was a tailwind we could be in Oldtown by four‑ thirty! " Barkovitch said gleefully. He had his rainhat jammed down over his ears, and his sharp face was joyful and demented. Garraty suddenly understood. He reminded himself to tell McVries. Barkovitch was crazy.

A few minutes later the wind suddenly dropped off. The thunder faded to a se­ries of thick mutters. The heat sucked back at them, clammy and nearly unbearable after the cushy coolness of the wind.

" What happened to it? " Collie Parker brayed. " Garraty! Does this goddam state punk out on its rainstorms, too? "

" I think you'll get what you want, " Garraty said. " I don't know if you'll want it when you get it, though."

" Yoo‑ hoo! Raymond! Raymond Garraty! "

Garraty's head jerked up. For one awful moment he thought it was his mother, and visions of Percy danced through his head. But it was only an elderly, sweet‑ faced lady peeping at him from beneath a Vogue magazine she was using as a rain‑ hat.

" Old bag, " Art Baker muttered at his elbow.

" She looks sweet enough to me. Do you know her? "

" I know the type, " Baker said balefully. " She looks just like my Aunt Hattie. She used to like to go to funerals, listen to the weeping and wailing and carrying­-ons with just that same smile. Like a cat that got into the aigs."

" She's probably the Major's mother, " Garraty said. It was supposed to be funny, but it fell flat. Baker's face was strained and pallid under the fading light in the rushing sky.

" My Aunt Hattie had nine kids. Nine, Garraty. She buried four of 'em with just that same look. Her own young. Some folks like to see other folks die. I can't understand that, can you? "

" No, " Garraty said. Baker was making him uneasy. The thunder had begun to roll its wagons across the sky again. " Your Aunt Hattie, is she dead now? "

" No." Baker looked up at the sky. " She's down home. Probably out on the front porch in her rockin' chair. She can't walk much anymore. Just sittin' and rockin' and listenin' to the bulletins on the radio. And smilin' each time she hears the new figures." Baker rubbed his elbows with his palms. " You ever see a cat eat its own kittens, Garraty? "

Garraty didn't reply. There was an electric tension in the air now, something about the storm poised above them, and something more. Garraty could not fathom it. When he blinked his eyes he seemed to see the out‑ of‑ kilter eyes of Freaky D'Allessio looking back at him from the darkness.

Finally he said to Baker: " Does everybody in your family study up on dying? "

Baker smiled pallidly. " Well, I was turnin' over the idea of going to mortician's school in a few years. Good job. Morticians go on eating even in a depression."

" I always thought I'd get into urinal manufacture, " Garraty said. " Get con­tracts with cinemas and bowling alleys and things. Sure‑ fire. How many urinal factories can there be in the country? "

" I don't think I'd still want to be a mortician, " Baker said. " Not that it matters."

A huge flash of lightning tore across the sky. A gargantuan clap of thunder fol­lowed. The wind picked up in jerky gusts. Clouds raced across the sky like crazed privateers across an ebony nightmare sea.

" It's coming, " Garraty said. " It's coming, Art."

" Some people say they don't care, " Baker said suddenly. " 'Something sim­ple, that's all I want when I go, Don.' That's what they'd tell him. My uncle. But most of 'em care plenty. That's what he always told me. They say, 'Just a pine box will do me fine.' But they end up having a big one... with a lead sleeve if they can afford it. Lots of them even write the model number in their wills."

" Why? " Garraty asked.

" Down home, most of them want to be buried in mausoleums. Aboveground. They don't want to be underground 'cause the water table's so high where I come from. Things not quick in the damp. But if you're buried aboveground, you got the rats to worry about. Big Louisiana bayou rats. Graveyard rats. They'd gnaw through one of them pine boxes in zip flat. "

The wind pulled at them with invisible hands. Garraty wished the storm would come on and come. It was like an insane merry‑ go‑ round. No matter who you talked to, you came around to this damned subject again.

" Be fucked if I'd do it, " Garraty said. " Lay out fifteen hundred dollars or something just to keep the rats away after I was dead. "

" I dunno, " Baker said. His eyes were half‑ lidded, sleepy. " They go for the soft parts, that's what troubles my mind. I could see 'em worryin' a hole in my own coffin, then makin' it bigger, finally wrigglin' through. And goin' right for my eyes like they was jujubes. They'd eat my eyes and then I'd be part of that rat. Ain't that right? "

" I don't know, " Garraty said sickly.

" No thanks. I'll take that coffin with the lead sleeve. Every time."

" Although you'd only actually need it the once, " Garraty said with a horrified little giggle.

" That is true, " Baker agreed solemnly.

Lightning forked again, an almost pink streak that left the air smelling of ozone. A moment later the storm smote them again. But it wasn't rain this time. It was hail.

In a space of five seconds they were being pelted by hailstones the size of small pebbles. Several of the boys cried out, and Garraty shielded his eyes with one hand. The wind rose to a shriek. Hailstones bounced and smashed against the road, against faces and bodies.

Jensen ran in a huge, rambling circle, eyes covered, feet stumbling and re­bounding against each other, in a total panic. He finally blundered off the shoul­der, and the soldiers on the halftrack pumped half a dozen rounds into the undulating curtain of hail before they could be sure. Goodbye, Jensen, Garraty thought. Sorry, man.

Then rain began to fall through the hail, sluicing down the hill they were climb­ing, melting the hail scattered around their feet. Another wave of stones hit them, more rain, another splatter of hail, and then the rain was falling in steady sheets, punctuated by loud claps of thunder.

" Goddam! " Parker yelled, striding up to Garraty. His face was covered with red blotches, and he looked like a drowned water rat. " Garraty, this is without a doubt‑ "

" ‑ yeah, the most fucked‑ up state in the fifty‑ one, " Garraty finished. " Go soak your head.' Parker threw his head back, opened his mouth, and let the cold rain patter in.

" I am, goddammit, I am! "

Garraty bent himself into the wind and caught up with McVries. " How does this grab you? " he asked.

McVries clutched himself and shivered. " You can't win. Now I wish the sun was out. "

" It won't last long, " Garraty said, but he was wrong. As they walked into four o'clock, it was still raining.