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#47, Pete McVries, has a girl back home. It takes a while to get him to open up about it, he’s cagey about his home life, the tinfoil wrapped package of cookies in his pack, and the photograph he keeps folded into quarters and tucked into his shirt pocket. Almost everyone’s tried to get a peek at it over his shoulder at one point or another, and Olson even gets a warning for interference when he tries to snatch it from his hands.
“C’mon,” Olson whines. “Why don’t you want us to see her? She ugly or something?”
“Prettiest thing you’ve ever seen.” McVries is finally coaxed into saying. “Big brown eyes, red hair, soft all over.”
“You know what they say about redheads,” Olson says sagely, the expertise only a man who wished for ten naked ladies could command. “Feisty. I bet she’s a real live wire in the sack.”
“Can’t complain.”
“How ‘bout her tits?” Pearson snickers. “They big?”
Far from rising to the bait, McVries just throws his head back and laughs. There’s an uncontrollable quality about it, a mischievous light in his eyes like Pearson walked right into a joke he didn’t even know the punchline for.
“Like I said, Pearson.” McVries grins. “My baby’s soft all over.”
He makes a crude gesture, indicating a sex act that a bespectacled virgin like Pearson probably never knew existed until that very moment. That brings a chorus of whoops and wolf whistles from the boys and Olson cries out McVries you dog! and McVries laughs, almost bashfully.
Olson knows he should tell McVries about Clementine. If there’s anyone on the walk he can talk to, aside from the impulsive and fear-sick confession he delivered to Parker at the starting line as he watched Clem’s car pull away, it’s McVries.
But there’s something different about him, something Olson is missing. He can understand the reluctance to talk about your girl. Every time Olson’s thoughts drift back to Clem - her hair in a long dark braid, the taste of her peppermint chapstick - he’s seized with a feeling of horror and regret that almost sends him bolting off the road screaming I fucked up! I did it wrong!
But McVries is different. He doesn’t seem like a flight risk. He’s sad and there’s something broken in him, Olson can tell, but his shoulders aren’t bent with the same heavy regret he feels on himself and sees on some of the other boys. Whatever the story is with MvVries and his girl, he genuinely believes that he has to be here, that she’ll be better off for it. God, that poor bastard.
“I bet he doesn’t even have a girl.” Barkovitch mutters to himself, twitching. “Bet he’s really some queer.”
Nobody else listens, but McVries watches him and frowns.
The night air is thick with gunsmoke and the smell of blood, the hill is the worst thing any of them have ever seen, and McVries is fading. Maybe it’s just too much, too much noise, too much death, just too much for him to face alone. Baker sees him up ahead, holding that photograph to his lips and whispering something to himself feverishly. Further up ahead is Olson, trucking along like he has been for the past ten miles, empty eyed and incomprehensible but still moving in a straight line.
Putting on a burst of speed that nearly takes his legs out from under him, Baker catches up with McVries just as he’s starting to weave side to side.
“What’s she like?” Baker asks, falling into step beside McVries.
“What?” McVries looks up in surprise, fumbling to fold his precious photograph into its familiar quarters again and tuck it back in his pocket. Baker gets a glimpse of it, just one of the corners, enough to catch a rounded, flannel-clad shoulder.
“Your girl,” he says. “What’s she like?”
“I told you boys already,” McVries says. “Weren’t you listening? Natural redhead, natural tits-”
“But what’s she like?” He presses. “Come on McVries, I know you ain’t as shallow as all that.”
McVries looks like he wants to argue or shrink back into that shell he’d put up for the other boys that afternoon, but another ticket gets punched and another boy screams and they’re both so scared.
“My baby’s like no one you’ve ever met.” McVries sighs. “Real sweet, gentle even. The sweetest smile, and one little chipped tooth. And lord, the temper on that- that girl.”
“Oh yeah?” Baker asks. “Feisty, like Olson said?”
“Righteous.” McVries half-whispers. “Can’t stand seeing all the things wrong in the world, my baby. Can’t stand when things are unfair or people are hurt. Knows a lot of big words and ain’t afraid to use ‘em. God, she’s smart. Real smart.”
“Sounds dangerous.” Baker whistles.
“Love’s dangerous.” McVries fires back.
“If you get out of here, you gonna marry her?”
“God, I’d marry her.” McVries closes his eyes tight like he’s praying. “I’d do anything for that. Course I’d marry her.”
“Gonna have kids?”
His smile’s back now, McVries is thinking about the private joke again.
“Shit, we'll certainly try.”
“C’mon,” Baker urges. “You don’t have to be crass, I mean it. I really wanna know.”
McVries’ face crumples into something a bit more sad, a bit more wistful, a bit more unguarded. For a second Baker worries that this was the wrong approach, that it was just going to make McVries stop walking, but then he speaks in a small voice.
“I’d like that.” McVries says. “I’d like to have a family like that. Never really had a family before.”
“What’s her name, man?” Baker coaxes, not callous or teasing. “Your girl’s gotta have a name.”
“I can’t.” McVries shakes his head, but Baker can tell it’s taking everything in him not to let it all rush out of him in a flood of words.
“Why not?”
“I shouldn’t talk about her so much here. I’ve already said too much, I’m selfish.” McVries says. “It feels dirty. It feels like I’m bringing h- bringing her here, ruining such a beautiful thing by bringing her to such a horrible place. If I say her name, that’ll be it. It’s like that ghost story. Say her name three times in the mirror and she’ll appear. I never thought about how horrible that is for the ghost, isn’t that funny? Wherever she is, she’s just minding her ghost business til some dumb kids summon her and drag her into whatever piss stained public bathroom they’re playing in. She doesn’t wanna be there.”
“You don’t think she’d want to be here with you?” Baker asks. “Give you something to walk for?”
McVries barks out a laugh, humorless and bitter.
“Oh, I know she would.” McVries says. “She’d be here cussing out the Major and spitting at soldiers. She’d like you, Baker. And Olson, the little weirdo. She’d hate Stebbins, I think. She’d take my place in a heartbeat, that’s why I- why I can’t bring her here.”
Baker nods. Somehow, sometime during the night, they’d crested the hill. The incline was behind them now. Morning’s just around the corner, and he can’t wait to feel the sun on his face again. He thinks of the photograph in Pete’s pocket, the shoulder a bit too broad to be a girl’s.
When Parker brings up Olson’s wife, Barkovitch knows the other boys are closing ranks. They talk like he’s not even there, making big declarations and promises to pay the bitch’s rent or whatever. McVries even asks Stebbins, of all people, and Stebbins actually agrees. Nobody asks Barkovitch, though, like they don’t trust him to be good. He can be good, he can be trusted, he can be one of them. They’ll turn on him soon, they’ll all turn on him and forget about him unless he does something fast. Maybe that’s why he says it, or maybe it’s because deep down he knows it’ll cause a fight, get a reaction.
“What about McVries’ girl?” He asks, and sees McVries tense up from where he’s walking with Baker and Parker. “Hey, McVries - shouldn’t we promise to take care of your girl, too?”
“I don’t want you talking about my girl, killer.” McVries won’t look at him, but he’s on high alert now. Hackles raised, voice clipped, giving Barkovitch his full attention. It’s not exactly the reaction he wanted, McVries isn’t weeping thank you, Barkovitch, I owe you a debt and my girl who is absolutely pregnant will name our son after you thereby proving once and for all that you, Gary Barkovitch, are Good, but it’ll do. Any sort of reaction is a good reaction.
“Come on, lover boy!” Barkovitch crows. “If I win, I’ll have enough dough to keep that bitch on Park Avenue for the rest of her life.”
“You shouldn’t call ladies that, Barkovitch.” Baker, prim as ever, pipes up.
“I can call her whatever I want when I’m paying her rent.” He practically sings. “Hey, I bet she’ll even like it. Do you call her a bitch, McVries? You should, I bet she’d like it. Bet it’d get her all hot.”
“Back off, Barkovitch.” Parker warns now, practically everyone coming to the defense of McVries’ precious little girlfriend. And isn’t that a laugh, McVries with his tight pants and fruity words with a girlfriend. Yeah right.
“Don’t you want someone to take care of your girl, McVries?” He goads, paying Parker no attention. It’s not like he’ll hurt him, it’s not like any of them will. Because if they trip Barkovitch and he falls and dies then they’ll all be just as bad as he is, and wouldn’t that be a treat. “C’mon, doesn’t even have to be me. If Baker or Parker win, maybe they can give it to your girl for you, seems like they already want to, standing up for her like that. Hey, I bet even Stebbins would be happy to go to town on your girl once he gets over that cold-”
Warning. An intercom blares. Number 47, First Warning.
Barkovitch doesn’t even realize McVries has stopped until he’s colliding with #47’s broad back as he steps forward.
Warning. Number 5, First Warning.
“Jesus!” Barkovitch yelps. McVries turns to face him, dark eyes hard with feeling. He feels a prickle of anticipation down his spine and wonders if McVries is really going to react this time.
Prove it, he thinks. If he can’t be good, then it’s enough for the other boys to be bad. Especially McVries, noble and unstoppable McVries who everyone seems to love. Go on, prove it. Prove you’re Bad like me, prove that you can be a killer too.
But McVries doesn’t budge, doesn’t so much as move a muscle, and Barkovitch feels frozen in place now, too.
Warning. Number 47, Second Warning. Number 5, Second Warning.
“I’m only gonna say this once, Barkovitch.” McVries says, voice low. “I don’t need anyone to make any promises about my baby, because I’m going home to her. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll walk to Florida and back again. I’ll walk to the end of the earth. I’ll walk forever. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll go home to her.”
And then he’s turning around, he keeps walking. He keeps walking and Gary Barkovitch fades into the background, an unremarkable blip in the face of McVries’ girl.
Freeport is the biggest town they’ve walked through so far, which is saying something because Freeport is not much more than a deserted stretch of shuttered brick buildings. Parker doesn’t think too highly of it, like the rest of Maine it seems like a place where the locals go out cow tipping on weekends and walk around with long stalks of grass in their mouths like the pictures of folksy down home farmers in the government textbooks. It must be too early for working people to be out and about, because there’s nobody out to watch the walk besides a pale, freckled boy on the steps of a post office. “Man” might be more accurate than “boy”, he looks about their age. Old enough to join the walk, albeit not by much. Still, there’s something distinctly boyish about the way he holds himself, twisting a hat in his uncertain hands and scanning the road with wide eyes.
Maybe he’s a Long Walk superfan, or a stupid, lucky son of a bitch who put in to walk for Maine but didn’t get picked. For an irrational minute, Parker hates this soft, stupid boy with his baseball shirt and unbloodied shoes. He should be home with his mom, lying in bed, enjoying the life he still got to live for another year. He should be eating pancakes for breakfast and laughing with his friends and doing all the things Parker never knew he’d miss so much until it became horribly clear he’d never get to do them again. So maybe he doesn’t hate this kid, maybe he’s just homesick and queasy with jealousy. This kid could be home, instead he came to gawk at them in the flesh, like the TV broadcast wasn’t enough. Parker readies himself to wave and curse at the boy under his breath, a pastime that had been funny at first but has since lost all flavor like poor, dead Olson’s gum. But before he can, something happens up ahead.
McVries, who’d never so much as glanced at the onlookers before, lifts a hand to the boy. He knows him, makes sense. McVries is the walker for this godforsaken state after all. The boy is probably a friend of his, maybe even his mystery girl’s kid brother.
“Pete.” The boy says, and McVries murmurs something back. Something that sounds a lot like I’m sorry.
For a few seconds, McVries keeps walking. He keeps his eyes on the street ahead of him, the ephemeral out-of-reach finish line, jaw clenched and fists at his sides. It almost seems like that will be it, that this exchange will fade into the background with Freeport miles down the line, but then the impossible is happening. McVries, who’s spent the whole walk as steady as a hammer, is tearing away from the path, battered feet carrying him to the edge of the road where the boy shakes and screams no, Pete, no as the speaker blares his first warning.
“I’m sorry,” McVries babbles. “I’m so sorry baby, you know I’m sorry. You know why I had to do it, don’t you? Don’t you, darlin’? I couldn’t let them get you, baby.”
Oh. Parker thinks. He remembers what McVries had told them all those miles ago. Big brown eyes, red hair, soft all over. So that’s McVries’ girl, not a girl at all but a plain, round faced boy who reaches out to him desperately with soft hands. It makes sense now; his caginess, the furtive protectiveness over the photograph, the private jokes he seemed to have when the other boys teased him. McVries is tough and funny and brave with a spine of steel, and he is a homosexual. It should feel like more of a revelation than it ends up being, it just ends up sliding into place. They’re all dying anyway. Who cares if McVries’ queer for this boy.
McVries isn’t dumb enough to step off the road, but only just. Parker can tell how badly McVries wants to cross that line, hold his girl so tight he leaves handprint shaped bruises on his hips and the back of his neck.
There’ve been a few times when boys have rushed the sidelines to kiss a cheering girl in the crowd, deciding a warning was worth it for the brief ecstasy of human touch again, but Parker doubts they’ll give a queer that same courtesy.
“Hold me,” the boy practically sobs. Real stroke of luck that McVries got picked for the walk over this kid, he seems like the type who would’ve lost it on the first night. “Pete, I need you to hold me-“
He’s gonna get him killed. Parker thinks to himself. This stupid kid is gonna get McVries killed, and he’ll go happily.
“I will, I will sweetheart.” McVries coos. He’s trying to keep it together for this kid, reassuring him like he’s not the one with bloody feet and torn muscles and a bullet waiting for him if he takes any longer here. But Parker gets the sense that it’s an act McVries needs to hold himself together. “You just gotta wait a bit longer, wait a bit longer for me. Okay?”
Warning. Number 47, Second Warning.
“No,” the boy’s practically hysterical as the soldiers begin to circle. “Let him go, please, please. Take me, take me!”
McVries’ tightly held restraint, already so fragile, is starting to crumble in earnest now. The invisible line holding him back from the boy on the side of the road gets stretched out thinner and thinner. He’s going to break, Parker realizes with a dawning horror. It’s an awful scene, he tries to tear his eyes away from the inevitable: McVries’ brains spilling out on the pavement, his blood splattered all over the boy he loves.
“I’m sorry, Christ baby I’m so sorry.” McVries cries, desperate and wrecked. “Let me touch you, fuck it. One last time, baby. Please. Let me-”
Warning. Number 47, Final Warning.
“Pete-”
It is, of all people, Stebbins who steps in. He doesn’t even break his stride, just adjusts his trajectory enough to pass by the side of the road and grab McVries by the handle of his backpack and haul him back onto the road. He doesn’t so much as earn himself a warning.
“Let me go!” McVries spits and thrashes like a wounded animal, but Stebbins doesn’t let go, just keeps dragging him along. “Let me go, I’m done. Let me die-”
“Best case scenario your boy back there learns what the inside of your head looks like.” Stebbins says, the same flat and indifferent tone he delivers everything with. “But the way you were headed, more likely than not you’d just end up getting him shot, too.”
That gets McVries’ attention. He wrenches himself out of Stebbins’ grip, pissed as hell but at least he’s stopped struggling and stays at pace.
“The fuck are you talking about, Stebbins?” McVries hisses. “They wouldn’t do that. He’s not walking. They can’t touch him, they aren’t allowed to touch him.”
“Public indecency. Interfering with the walk. Illicit homosexual behavior.” Stebbins rattles off the list. “They’ve done it before. Not for illicit homosexual behavior, of course. A few years back a walker’s girl ran onto the road and tried to pull him away. They managed to get them both through the head with one clean shot. Didn’t even have to waste a bullet.”
“Stop it, just stop it!” Baker cries out. It's an uncharacteristic outburst from such a gentle boy, who’s only gotten quieter as the miles have worn him down. “That’s horrible, Stebbins. Why do you have to be so horrible?”
McVries is silent, his eyes are squeezed tight and even from a distance Parker can see the fat tears rolling down his face. Parker looks back, the soldiers and halftracks have moved on. McVries’ boy has been left alone, standing in the middle of the road and staring at them still twisting his hat in his hands. He still looks a little lost and devastated, but there’s something else in those dark eyes and the set of his jaw. Anger. Parker likes the kid a bit more for it, and for a moment sees him the way McVries must.
“I’m just offering my expertise.” Stebbins sniffles loudly, unwrapping another jelly sandwich.
There are crowds, now that it’s just down to Stebbins and McVries. People stand shoulder to shoulder, three rows deep along the side of the street that takes them through downtown Portsmouth. They’re all a blur to Stebbins, so congested and weary that he feels like he can barely open his eyes more than a sliver, just enough to see the back of McVries’ head a few feet ahead of him.
The air’s turned cold, and every rattling breath Stebbins takes feels like the wind is ripping right through him, tearing at his throat and lungs like sandpaper. He takes a swig from his canteen, but that’s ice cold too and he’s barely able to hold it down as a hacking cough overtakes him and rattles his failing body. When he straightens and peels his eyes open again, McVries’ head is gone from in front of him.
I didn’t hear a warning. He thinks idly for a moment before he becomes aware of McVries’ presence by his shoulder.
“Why’d you do that, Stebbins?” McVries asks.
Buying himself some time, Stebbins takes a moment to sniff a deep inhale, gathering as much mucus and phlegm as he can into his mouth and spitting it onto the sidewalk. He doesn’t feel any better. He’s still drowning slowly from the inside out.
“Do what?” He asks. He doesn’t need to see McVries to know that he’s rolling his eyes.
“Don’t play fucking dumb, Stebbins.” McVries says. “Freeport. Why’d you stick your neck out for me.”
“It was hardly sticking my neck out.” Stebbins snorts. Less for emphasis, more to try once again to clear his nose. “I didn’t even get a warning. It cost me nothing.”
“Cut the bullshit.” McVries urges. “Come on, Stebbins. We’re at the end here, you’ve been nothing but cryptic and weird this whole damn time. Say something real.”
Stebbins can smell rain in the air. He can hear the crowd, faintly. He wonders if McVries’ boy is here somewhere, or if he’d come to his senses and run home to his mama. Probably the latter, the spectators at the finish line were rarely anybody the walkers knew. Just rows and rows of strangers come to watch one last boy die. Lucky Stebbins, though. He’s got family with him, he’s had family hounding him this whole time.
“I don’t think a queer’s ever won the Long Walk before.”
“Don’t count yourself out so soon, Stebbins.” McVries smiles. Stebbins doesn’t. He’s not gonna win this, they both know. McVries, for all his exhaustion, is still strong and healthy where Stebbins is falling apart with every step. But that’s not what this is really about. So he replies-
“I’m not.”
It hangs for a moment, and McVries turns to look at him, really look at him for the first time this whole walk, and he smiles.
“That so?” McVries asks. “You got a man back home, Stebbins?”
Stebbins shakes his head. There’d been girls, nice corn-fed midwestern girls who liked Billy Stebbins for his manners and good looks and what it meant for their status around school to be seen with a boy like Stebbins, but that never really felt right to him. There had been a Boy Scout leader who made little Billy Stebbins stammer and blush when he showed him how to tie a fisherman’s knot or the right way to build a fire. There was something he knew about himself, even when he was very young, and above it all there was a certain standard that his mother told him that he was held to because of who his father was. Even if he never knew, even if he never claimed him, it still meant something.
“The Major’s my father. I’m his bastard. He’s got dozens of us.” Stebbins says. “I didn’t think he knew, and even if he didn’t, it still wasn’t something I could... it’s not something that I can be.”
“I’m sorry, man.” McVries says, turning those earnest dark eyes on him. And he really sounds sorry, too. Not everyone can be as lucky as McVries, with a pretty, wide eyed boy waiting up at home for him. Not everyone can be that loved. And it's obvious, looking at him, just how loved McVries is. Maybe he hadn’t always been that lucky, the scar on his face and the tough exterior is proof enough, but Stebbins doesn’t think he’ll be able to forget how McVries had sounded trying to tell his boy that it was all going to be alright, the kind of softness and strength only real love can bring out of you.
“What are you going to wish for, McVries? When you win.” Stebbins asks, half changing the subject. McVries just chuckles.
“I already got my wish.” He says, steady swinging gait as constant as ever. “I saved him.”
“Your boy?”
McVries nods.
“He was supposed to walk. I don’t know if I told anyone that.” He goes on. “He got picked as the walker, and I got picked as backup. A real cosmic joke, and there was no way I could talk him into backing out, because he knew that would just send me in. Stupid, self-sacrificing asshole.”
Stebbins tries to ask what’d you do? But the first word gets caught in his throat as another coughing fit overtakes him. He wipes at his chin when he’s able to stand up straight again, and his fist comes away slightly pinkish with the blood mixed into his spittle. But as it turns out, he doesn’t need to ask. McVries keeps talking anyways.
“I sent in his back out letter without him knowing.” He goes on, barely seeing Stebbins anymore. “Probably wouldn’t have gotten away with it if his mom didn’t slip me a copy of his identification.”
“Can’t imagine he was happy about that.”
“Didn’t tell him.” McVries shrugs. “Hitched a ride up to the border, his mom covered for me. I’m not gonna lie, Stebbins. Leaving him was damn hard, but I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. I couldn’t sit there and watch him suffer like this. It’d kill me. He’s the only thing I’ve ever really had to lose, and they were just going to pull him out from under me. It’d kill me, and it’d kill his mom. I couldn’t live in a world without him, I couldn’t.”
Stebbins starts coughing again, and this time he can’t stop, earning himself a warning for the second time this whole walk. His body doesn’t stop vibrating once the coughing stops, hands shaking and heart skipping in his chest, rabbit-like.
“You alright, Stebbins?” McVries asks. Nice of him to ask, but ultimately pointless.
“You better start thinking of another wish.” Stebbins manages to get out. “You’re going to win, it’d be a shame if you didn’t have a good wish.”
McVries looks at him, brow still furrowed in confusion. There are dark splotches on the shoulders of his shirt - raindrops. Stebbins hadn’t even realized it started raining, he can barely feel anything anymore.
“What’s your wish gonna be, McVries?” He asks, practically begs. Stebbins has to hear something good before he dies, he has to know that someday, somewhere, someone can be happy again.
“I think...” McVries starts. “I think I’m going to ask them to leave us alone. No squads, no press, no parades. Hell, they can keep all the prize money. I don’t need it. I just need them to leave us alone and we’ll be happy. Play house, get a dog. I’ll write him songs and he’ll read to me, we’ll learn to cook and sleep in late and go see the ocean. Or maybe we’ll just lie in bed together for months and months, that’s all. That’s my wish: let us be happy. Me and Ray.”
Ray. McVries’ boy finally has a name. Stebbins could almost smile.
“That’s a good wish.” He says. “Go on home, McVries.”
“It’s been good walking with you, Stebbins.”
Stebbins feels the rain now, he’s always liked the rain. He earns himself his second warning, then finally stops. McVries doesn’t stop, just keeps on walking home to his boy. To Ray.