McVries let go of him warily, ready to grab him again.
Almost as an afterthought, Garraty turned and looked back, but they were already lost in the crowd again. He thought he would never forget that look of panic rising in their eyes, that feeling of trust and sureness finally kicked brutally away. He got nothing but half a glimpse of a waving blue scarf.
He turned around and faced forward again, not looking at McVries, and his stumbling, traitorous feet carried him on and they walked out of town.
CHAPTER 16
"The blood has begun to flow! Liston is staggering! Clay is rocking him with combinations!... boring in! Clay is killing him! Clay is killing him! Ladies and gentlemen, Liston is down! Sonny Liston is down! Clay is dancing... waving... yelling into the crowd! Oh, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how to describe this scene!"
-Radio Commentator Second Clay-Liston Fight
Tubbins had gone insane.
Tubbins was a short boy with glasses and a faceful of freckles. He wore hiphanging bluejeans that he had been constantly hitching up. He hadn't said much, but he had been a nice enough sort before he went insane.
"WHORE!" Tubbins babbled to the rain. He had turned his face up into it, and the rain dripped off his specs onto his cheeks and over his lips and down off the end of his blunted chin. "THE WHORE OF BABYLON HAS COME AMONG US! SHE LIES IN THE STREETS AND SPREADS HER LEGS ON THE FILTH OF COBBLESTONES! VILE! VILE! BEWARE THE WHORE OF BABYLON! HER LIPS DRIP HONEY BUT HER HEART IS GALL AND WORMWOOD-"
"And she's got the clap," Collie Parker added tiredly. "Jeezus, he's worse than Klingerman." He raised his voice. "Drop down dead, Tubby!"
"WHOREMONGER AND WHOREMASTER!" shrieked Tubbins. "VILE! UNCLEAN!"
"Piss on him," Parker muttered. "I'll kill him myself if he don't shut up." He passed trembling skeletal fingers across his lips, dropped them to his belt, and spent thirty seconds making them undo the clip that held his canteen to his belt. He almost dropped it getting it to his mouth, and then spilled half of it. He began to weep weakly.
It was three in the afternoon. Portland and South Portland were behind them. About fifteen minutes ago they had passed under a wet and flapping banner that proclaimed that the New Hampshire border was only 44 miles away.
Only, Garraty thought. Only, what a stupid little word that is. Who was the idiot who took it into his head that we needed a stupid little word like that?
He was walking next to McVries, but McVries had spoken only in monosyllables since Freeport. Garraty hardly dared speak to him. He was indebted again, and it shamed him. It shamed him because he knew he would not help McVries if the chance came. Now Jan was gone, his mother was gone. Irrevocably and for eternity. Unless he won. And now he wanted to win very badly.
It was odd. This was the first time he could remember wanting to win. Not even at the start, when he had been fresh (back when dinosaurs walked the earth), had he consciously wanted to win. There had only been the challenge. But the guns didn't produce little red flags with BANG written on them. It wasn't baseball or Giant Step; it was all real.
Or had he known it all along?
His feet seemed to hurt twice as badly since he had decided he wanted to win, and there were stabbing pains in his chest when he drew long breaths. The sensation of fever was growing-perhaps he had picked something up from Scramm.
He wanted to win, but not even McVries could carry him over the invisible finish line. He didn't think he was going to win. In the sixth grade he had won his school's spelling bee and had gone on to the district spelldown, but the district spellmaster wasn't Miss Petrie, who let you take it back. Softhearted Miss Petrie. He had stood there, hurt, unbelieving, sure there must have been some mistake, but there had been none. He just hadn't been good enough to make the cut then, and he wasn't going to be good enough now. Good enough to walk most of them down, but not all. His feet and legs had gone beyond numb and angry rebellion, and now mutiny was just a step away.
Only three had gone down since they left Freeport. One of them had been the unfortunate Klingerman. Garraty knew what the rest of them were thinking. It was too many tickets issued for them to just quit, any of them. Not with only twenty left to walk over. They would walk now until their bodies or minds shook apart.
They passed over a bridge spanning a placid little brook, its surface lightly pocked by the rain. The guns roared, the crowd cheered, and Garraty felt the stubborn cranny of hope in the back of his brain open an infinitesimal bit more.
"Did your girl look good to you?"
It was Abraham, looking like a victim of the Bataan March. For some inconceivable reason he had shucked both his jacket and his shirt, leaving his bony chest and stacked ribcage bare.
"Yeah," Garraty said. "I hope I can make it back to her."