The Long Walk

backout date was yesterday.”
Still in that low conspirator’s voice that he hated: “They’d understand, I know they would. The Major-
“The Major would-” Garraty began, and saw his mother wince. “You know what the Major would do, Mom.”
Another car had finished the small ritual at the gate and had parked. A boy with dark hair got out. His parents followed and for a moment the three of them stood in conference like worried baseball players. He, like some of the other boys, was wearing a light packsack. Garraty wondered if he hadn’t been a little stupid not to bring one himself.
“You won’t change your mind?”
It was guilt, guilt taking the face of anxiety. Although he was only sixteen, Ray Garraty knew something about guilt. She felt that she had been too dry, too tired, or maybe just too taken up with her older sorrows to halt her son’s madness in its seedling stage-to halt it before the cumbersome machinery of the State with its guards in khaki and its computer terminals had taken over, binding himself more tightly to its insensate self with each passing day, until yesterday, when the lid had come down with a final bang.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “This is my idea, Mom. I know it wasn’t yours. I-” He glanced around. No one was paying the slightest attention to them. “I love you, but this way is best, one way or the other.”
“It’s not,” she said, now verging on tears. “Ray, it’s not, if your father was here, he’d put a stop to-”
“Well, he’s not, is he?” He was brutal, hoping to stave off her tears… what if they had to drag her off? He had heard that sometimes that happened. The thought made him feel cold. In a softer voice he said, “Let it go now, Mom. Okay?” He forced a grin. “Okay,” he answered for her.
Her chin was still trembling, but she nodded. Not all right, but too late. There was nothing anyone could do.
A light wind soughed through the pines. The sky was pure blue. The road was just ahead and the simple stone post that marked the border between America and Canada. Suddenly his anticipation was greater than his fear, and he wanted to get going, get the show on the road.
“I made these. You can take them, can’t you? They’re not too heavy, are they?” She thrust a foil-wrapped package of cookies at him.
“Yeah.” He took them and then clutched her awkwardly, trying to give her what she needed to have. He kissed her cheek. Her skin was like old silk. For a moment he could have cried himself. Then he thought of the smiling, mustachioed face of the Major and stepped back, stuffing the cookies into the pocket of his fatigue jacket.
“G’bye, Mom.”
“Goodbye, Ray. Be a good boy.”
She stood there for a moment and he had a sense of her being very light, as if even the light puffs of breeze blowing this morning might send her sailing away like a dandelion gone to seed. Then she got back into the car and started the engine. Garraty stood there. She raised her hand and waved. The tears were flowing now. He could see them. He waved back and then as she pulled out he just stood there with his arms at his sides, conscious of how fine and brave and alone he must look. But when the car had passed back through the gate, forlornness struck him and he was only a sixteen-year-old boy again, alone in a strange place.
He turned back toward the road. The other boy, the dark-haired one, was watching his folks pull out. He had a bad scar along one cheek. Garraty walked over to him and said hello.
The dark-haired boy gave him a glance. “Hi.”
“I’m Ray Garraty,” he said, feeling mildly like an asshole.
“I’m Peter McVries.”
“You all ready?” Garraty asked.
McVries shrugged. “I feel jumpy. That’s the worst.”
Garraty nodded.
The two of them walked toward the road and the stone marker. Behind them, other cars were pulling out. A woman began screaming abruptly. Unconsciously, Garraty and McVries drew closer together. Neither of them looked back. Ahead of them was the road, wide and black.
“That composition surface will be hot by noon,” McVries said abruptly. “I’m going to stick to the shoulder.”
Garraty nodded. McVries looked at him thoughtfully.
“What do you weigh?”
“Hundred and sixty.”
“I’m one-sixty-seven. They say the heavier guys get tired quicker, but I think I’m in pretty good shape.”
To Garraty, Peter McVries looked rather more than that-he looked awesomely fit. He wondered who they were that said the heavier guys got tired quicker, almost asked, and decided not to. The Walk was one of those things that existed on apocrypha, talismans, legend.
McVries