"That's some view," Scramm said.
The road could be seen for perhaps twelve miles ahead. It slid down the long slope, ran in flat zigzags through the woods, a blackish-gray charcoal mark across a green swatch of crepe paper. Far ahead it began to climb again, and faded into the rosy-pink haze of early morning light.
"This might be what they call the Hainesville Woods," Garraty said, not too sure. "Truckers' graveyard. Hell in the wintertime."
"I never seen nothing like it," Scramm said reverently. "There isn't this much green in the whole state of Arizona."
"Enjoy it while you can," Baker said, joining the group. "It's going to be a scorcher. It's hot already and it's only six-thirty in the morning."
"Think you'd get used to it, where you come from," Pearson said, almost resentfully.
"You don't get used to it," Baker said, slinging his light jacket over his arm. "You just learn to live with it."
"I'd like to build a house up here," Scramm said. He sneezed heartily, twice, sounding a little like a bull in heat. "Build it right up here with my own two hands, and look at the view every morning. Me and Cathy. Maybe I will someday, when this is all over."
Nobody said anything.
By 6:45 the ridge was above and behind them, the breeze mostly cut off, and the heat already walked among them. Garraty took off his own jacket, rolled it, and tied it securely about his waist. The road through the woods was no longer deserted. Here and there early risers had parked their cars off the road and stood or sat in clumps, cheering, waving, and holding signs.
Two girls stood beside a battered MG at the bottom of one dip. They were wearing tight summer shorts, middy blouses, and sandals. There were cheers and whistles. The faces of these girls were hot, flushed, and excited by something ancient, sinuous, and, to Garraty, erotic almost to the point of insanity. He felt animal lust rising in him, an aggressively alive thing that made his body shake with a palsied fever all its own.
It was Gribble, the radical among them, that suddenly dashed at them, his feet kicking up spurts of dust along the shoulder. One of them leaned back against the hood of the MG and spread her legs slightly, tilting her hips at him. Gribble put his hands over her br**sts. She made no effort to stop him. He was warned, hesitated, and then plunged against her, a jamming, hurtling, frustrated, angry, frightened figure in a sweaty white shirt and cord pants. The girl hooked her ankles around Gribble's calves and put her arms lightly around his neck. They kissed.
Gribble took a second warning, then a third, and then, with perhaps fifteen seconds of grace left, he stumbled away and broke into a frantic, shambling run. He fell down, picked himself up, clutched at his crotch and staggered back onto the road. His thin face was hectically flushed.
"Couldn't," he was sobbing. "Wasn't enough time and she wanted me to and I couldn't... I..." He was weeping and staggering, his hands pressed against his crotch. His words were little more than indistinct wails.
"So you gave them their little thrill," Barkovitch said. "Something for them to talk about in Show and Tell tomorrow."
"You just shut up!" Gribble screamed. He dug at his crotch. "It hurts, I got a cramp-"
"Blue balls," Pearson said. "That's what he's got."
Gribble looked at him through the stringy bangs of black hair that had fallen over his eyes. He looked like a stunned weasel. "It hurts," he muttered again. He dropped slowly to his knees, hands pressed into his lower belly, head drooping, back bowed. He was shivering and snuffling and Garraty could see the beads of sweat on his neck, some of them caught in the fine hairs on the nape-what Garraty's own father had always called quackfuzz.
A moment later and he was dead.
Garraty turned his head to look at the girls, but they had retreated inside their MG. They were nothing but shadow-shapes.
He made a determined effort to push them from his mind, but they kept creeping back in. How must it have been, dry-humping that wane, willing flesh? Her thighs had twitched, my God, they had twitched, in a kind of spasm, orgasm, oh God, the uncontrollable urge to squeeze and caress... and most of all to feel that heat... that heat
He felt himself go. That warm, shooting flow of sensation, warming him. Wetting him. Oh Christ, it would soak through his pants and someone would notice. Notice and point a finger and ask him how he'd like to walk around the neighborhood with no clothes on, walk naked, walk... and walk... and walk...
Oh Jan I love you really I love you, he thought, but it was confused, all mixed up in something else.