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McVries, the immutable fucking bleeding heart, had decided to use up his wish right before the Major cocked the hammer backwards with his thumb.
He wished–no, begged, with his voice raw and uninhibited with panic–for Ray’s life. For a second winner of the Walk. Not a seat at the table, not ten naked ladies or a great big rocket to bring him to the moon, not even the carbine. But a life. Because, impossibly, Peter McVries saw a light in everything.
Years later, Ray still remembers the way the Major’s hand stilled at McVries’ desperate pleading. How the excitable crowd suddenly simmered into a tense silence. Ray couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth. The rainwater was heavy as it fell down the cracked skin of his lips. He watched, in perpetual shock and awe, McVries take hold of his trembling voice as he addressed the Major with puffy eyes.
“That’s my wish,” he said, strong as ever, even with his voice brittle. “I want him alive.”
The Major’s lip twitched, the most his face had ever moved besides his grandiose ramblings of death and bravery and hung testes, but he spared a moment for McVries to keep talking. The guards remained behind him, their chests against his shoulders, keeping him at a steadfast distance. Away from the Major.
Away from Ray.
Pete drew a steadying breath through his nose and looked the Major down the barrel of his shiny aviators. “You gonna deny a winner his wish?”
It was true. While it was there, John Hancock-ed in the fine print, that only one man could circumvent his ticket at the end of the Walk–the optics would be staggeringly bad if the Major painted Ray’s brains on the rain-soaked pavement when the winner’s wish was to keep Ray alive. The money and the one-true-wish were the constants that kept the Walk fair, in a sense. At least for America. For the voyeurs.
The Major’s gun was still aimed, unfaltering, towards Ray. “Are you sure that’s what you want, Mr. McVries?”
“Yes.”
“You could have anything you want–a woman, a big house, you could even be the Goddamn mayor for all we care, but you want–”
“I do, Goddamnit, I want him to live!” Pete snapped, voice cracking in desperation.
The gun lowered to the Major’s side. Ray blinked slowly, that ever-present exhaustion still pawing at him like a beat dog. Christ, nothing of the moment had felt real to him–from the moment his feet stopped moving and Pete swung around in grim realization, to the moment the Major gave in to Pete’s demands. It was all a dream, he thought, his legs must’ve already crumpled like the pages of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky Dad took with him. His ticket must’ve been punched a long time ago–far before Stebbins, at least–and this was his mind’s final rattle before fully shutting down. Some fanciful imaginings that Ray could be a hero. That he was capable of loving hard enough to sacrifice himself.
Even loved enough to be saved.
The Major spoke, but Ray’s head felt submerged beneath the mounting rain. He doesn’t quite know what the old man said, whether he admonished Pete for his insubordination, or praised him for his love of his fellow man. But he remembers seeing Pete’s shoulders sagging in visible relief, the draw of his eyebrows relaxing from its stricken scrunch. He didn’t smile, instead, he swallowed a weary breath as he regarded Ray with tender eyes.
Most of all, he remembers that the beat of his own heart fell at three miles an hour.
***
It wasn’t the first thing they did with all that money, but they bought a house somewhere along the way.
As you do with someone you nearly gave your life for, Pete became Ray’s misfit companion– his conjoined twin in the freakshow of life. He fit there so easily and inexplicably, like the final missing piece of the puzzle nestled between the couch cushions. He was always meant to be there, filling those peculiar gaps, but he almost wasn’t. Ray almost punched in his ticket without ever fully welcoming Peter McVries into his life with open arms.
He supposes the timeline’s all tricky when you start as companions on the road of a death-march up Maine. You’re strangers, then friends, then real friends, then brothers, and somewhere along the way, the line gets all jumbled up between hanging upside down on the moon and having your last words to him be ‘I love you.’
Before the house, there was the love.
It was always there, hidden within Ray, like a frightened barn owl in its nest. He never saw himself a queer, despite fleeting looks and watered mouths in directions he was too panicked to name or even think about. He had a girlfriend, for Christ’s sake– Jan, with her unassuming face and her hair and her plainness, which made way for loveliness. It was the reason he found her so alluring in the first place, when his friends had goaded him into finding a girlfriend, since he was the only one who hadn’t yet. But they broke it off before the Walk, and he couldn’t quite bring the nerve to look her in the eyes after making it back home in Pownal, after everything.
And then there was Peter McVries, his incomparable wit and confidence– the way he found beauty in the world, in people, despite all he’d been through. McVries with the coy smile and kind eyes, so willing to carry Ray when he fell, to wrap a strong arm around his shoulder to keep him upright in sleep. He laughed and grinned and never tired of speaking. To Ray, he was the poet laureate of a world capable of hope– the songwriter of his life; he was like magic on the pavement, and Ray would’ve been satisfied dancing to the tune of him forever, if it was ever possible under that bleak sky.
It was the love that kept him going after waking up in the best hotel suite the government could buy in Maine, when he felt like all else failed in the world. The Major was still alive, the Long Walk was to continue the following year, but he and Pete weren’t victims of it any longer, and they loved each other. The love kept them glued to life.
Anyways, there was the love and then there was the house.
It’s a little ways away from Ray’s childhood home in Pownal, still in Androscoggin county–the country land outside of Lisbon, to be precise–just to feel close enough to Mom without being too close to the memory of Dad being put down like an infertile cow in the driveway. It’s a shy, one storey thing, with a pale exterior and a porch.
(“I think we oughta paint it,” said Pete one day, as they yanked out weeds from the front yard.
“Blue’s my favorite color, just so you know,” Ray mused, wiping away the beading sweat from his forehead.)
Inside, the kitchen is quaint and well-kept– the cabinets and pantry stocked with food the both of them never imagined affording, what with Pete always on the road and Ray being poor as dirt. They split cooking duties whenever they felt like, Pete stirring a pot of beef stew an old foster mother taught him to make, and Ray baking a batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to chase it down. When they feel lazy, they make strawberry jelly sandwiches and eat them in bed.
They have a queen-sized bed in the middle of their bedroom. It’s big enough for both of them to share, but still small enough that they couldn’t ever go to bed angry– not when they’re pressed in an intimate shoulder-to-shoulder. After an argument, Ray will always blink awake to find their limbs tangled together like tumbleweeds, Pete’s eyes closed peacefully in sleep, with the early morning sun bouncing off his skin, lighting him up like a Christmas angel. Like a miracle. And Ray will always manage to forget what he was mad about in the first place.
There’s bookshelves against the walls of the room, and Ray dreams of filling them all one day. They’ll be lined with novels and poetry, like the ones Dad had given him, tomes upon tomes of work banned for no good reason other than that they were against the state. He imagines himself plucking Tropic of Cancer or The Brothers Karazamov from the shelves, and cozying next to Pete, reading aloud so Pete could enter into the only corner of his private world left unexplored. But Ray doesn’t know how to find these books, doesn’t even know where to start, and he can only satisfy that growing need to be fully seen with brief summaries of what he can remember, though eroded with time.
He’s satisfied with the books he can legally own, for now. Fiction and fantasy and Sci-fi compilations with the odd manual shoved between the gaps. There’s trinkets, too– old baseball trophies from high school, flowers in polished Coke bottles, and other knick-knacks he and Pete collected throughout their lives.
(Altoid tins, little plastic military men, a rosary to remind them of Baker, the works.)
Ray wanted to be a teacher before the Walk. He was on track to apply for schools, a fresh-faced eighteen, before he got the acceptance letter in the mail. In so many ways, he tried to be his father. He played baseball, he read like his life depended on it, he believed, deep in his heart, in all the same things Dad did. Most of all, he wanted to be the person who introduced revolutionary new ideas to a new generation, to teach them about literature and changing a regressive world through art. When Mom gave him the letter at the breakfast table, though, he decided he wanted to be a martyr for his dad instead.
The ‘after’ of the Walk was a great big hypothetical he never entertained, since it was almost guaranteed that Ray would be riddled with bullets before the Major would even hit the ground. He realized, laying on the too-soft hotel mattress, with Pete’s sleep-slack mouth against the junction of his neck and shoulder, that even though he lived, college wouldn’t bring him where he wanted to go. He would still be spoon-fed the same shit from high school– of patriotism and the unfailing American dream, where anyone different deserved to crawl six feet under with the maggots. The system was too grievous to simply change from the inside.
Instead, Ray writes. He carries on what poor Richard Harkness started before his ticket, and doesn’t spare a solitary detail. It’s all one unforgettable motion picture in his mind, after all, those memories clung to his brain like they were attached with superglue. He still wakes up some days to the sound of rhythmic footsteps, or the feeling of blisters scraping against the soles of his feet. He writes about the various ways the kids punched in their tickets– Curley with his Charley horse, Parker with his suicidal bravery, Barkovitch with his spoon and his incessant need to be seen.
(Ray can never forget the way the skin of his throat tore apart, how he spat out a river of blood before collapsing like a lead balloon.)
He writes about the Musketeers. Hank Olson and Art Baker, their youthful faces untouched by the inhuman suffering to come. Their easy camaraderie before shit hit the fan– before they hemorrhaged and gave in, both mentally and physically. They could’ve done so much good if they won, but there’s no use dwelling on the past like that anymore.
Pete writes a profuse amount, too, since he’s Ray’s better half. Notebooks upon notebooks of the stuff. Songs and lullabies mostly, poetry when he wants to feel a smidge more creative. There’s a guitar in the living room, between a shelf and the fancy television, that he taught himself to play– grassroots and the blues some days, and rock and roll when he wants to make Ray laugh. He makes his own stuff, mostly, but they’ve assembled a sizable record collection with the money: Lead Belly, Hendrix, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, and James Brown to name a few. They’ve made a routine of returning home from odd jobs, kicking off their shoes, and slow dancing under the warm glow of the overhead light. When they finished and retired to the bedroom, Pete would rub his thumb in circles against Ray’s temple and sing Molly Malone quietly until he fell into the merciful arms of sleep.
They’ve made a peaceful life, together, as each others’ rocks.
It still stays with them, the tragedy of it all, like a fat tick rooted into their skin. Pete makes it a point to keep the fancy television off at the same time every year for their sakes, and on those days, Ray feels like he failed everyone. Last year, the walk took place in Nevada, and the last man standing was only eighteen, too much like himself to even bear. He thinks the boy wished for something childish, like a lifetime supply of beer or a fucking tiger, at least that’s what he’s heard from hearsay. But he doesn’t know the details entirely, because he already watches himself go through the walk time and time again every time he sleeps. Every now and then he wonders what life would be like if he let Pete fall behind the first time, if he was granted the carbine, and shot the Major. He would be dead, of course, but would the practice end there? Would fifty boys still be walking down an endless road, keeping their guts in place with their hands, leaking blood and shit on the pavement?
Those days are the days that Ray feels the most helpless, but God knows he’s not the only one still carrying that weight. Pete holds him a little tighter in bed at night, with his ear pressed firmly against Ray’s chest, so he can hear the soft thud-thumping of his heart. Fifty beats a minute, twenty breaths before he falls under, Pete told him once in the morning. He’s made a habit of carrying Ray in sleep, just to make sure he’s alive, so they could never leave each other without warning. “Not ever again,” Pete said as Ray rubbed his thumb back and forth against his scar. “You and I, we gotta stick together. Always.”
They both have nightmares about the Walk. It’s like they’re both intrinsically connected, two universes bound tightly together with twine, only in their heads.
Ray, he has this strange one, of him and Pete and Stebbins– shambling down the road, telling an absurd fairytale to a fatigued Pete about Ladies Fair and White Knights, catching Pete stumbling towards the crowd in his sleep. In the end, Pete still finds himself at the business end of a Carbine with Ray begging the soldiers to take him instead. Stebbins, that Rabbit, wasn’t far behind– and the curious thing was that Ray kept walking, trailing behind an apparition, still walking ahead, with no prize to speak of.
Pete’s is closer to the real thing, an aberrant echo of that rainy night, a life where Pete never had the chance to bargain for Ray’s life– where he screamed and begged and collapsed to his knees before the Major took the shot and Ray fell like Newton’s apple. Perhaps it was because the Major snuffed out the last ray of hope in Pete of a worthwhile earth, or maybe it was his only way to honor Ray’s memory, but Pete asked for the carbine and shot the Major square in his big, aviated head.
And they hold each other impossibly close when they startle awake, cold sweat smearing their brows, unsure where one ended and the other began. Ray and Pete, Pete and Ray, winners of the Long Walk and that short game of life. Pete holds him close, and their bodies, from the naked pores of their skin to the ventricles of their hearts, find themselves ultimately connected.
It’s the only reward Ray feels he deserves, sometimes.
(Pete tells him that he needs to believe that everything in his life is a reward he deserves, and Ray believes him, because Pete is in it.)
***
Today, Pete rolls onto the driveway with their fancy car– a black Chevrolet One-fifty that Ray takes care of like a spoiled child– from the shops since it’s Sunday, his errand day, while Ray drinks coffee on the porch. He kills the engine, flings the door open, and pops the trunk. He manages to wrestle three grocery bags into his arms before regarding Ray with a smile. “You gonna help me, baby?”
Ray takes a noncommittal sip of his coffee– cream and three sugars– and says, “I think I’m fine with watching,” since Pete looks so beautiful with the midday sun shining down on his face. He lights up like the North Star.
“Don’t you talk like that, Ray Garraty,” Pete says with a gold-plated laugh as he skips up the steps of the porch. He stops at Ray’s side, shifts the bags into one arm, and claps him on the shoulder, rubbing fond circles into the fabric of his shirt. “There’s a surprise in the trunk. You oughta check it out.”
Ray’s eyebrows rise to his hairline. He smiles into his mug. “You pulling my leg?”
“I ain’t ever dreamed of pulling your leg, Ray.”
“I can think of a couple times.”
“Come on,” Pete insists, shaking Ray’s shoulder.
“Alright, alright, I’ll check the damn trunk.” He sets down the mug on top of the balustrade, gives Pete a soft peck on the mouth, and ambles down the driveway to the car.
In the trunk sits two metal five-gallon buckets, one is primer, and the other is paint– a particular shade of light blue that matches the cloudless summer sky at noon. It’s Ray’s favorite color. It's the type that brings him back to his small backyard, baseball mitt in hand, playing catch with Dad. It makes him think of Mom and her unending devotion, her foil-wrapped cookies and iced tea on a hot summer’s day. Most of all, it reminds him of the sky when he and Pete pulled into the driveway for the first time, of life and rebirth. Holding on and finally letting go.
Ray smiles to himself, then redirects that supernova of joy to Pete, who’s leaning against the doorframe with a coy smirk on his dashing face. “You remembered,” he says breathlessly.
“Of course I did,” Pete says earnestly. “I’d never forget anything about you.”
They spend the better part of three days laboring tirelessly over the house, painting the exterior the way Ray had always wanted to. Mom visits on the third day, armed to the teeth with a collection of homemade sweets he and Pete split on their self-appointed breaks– oatmeal cookies and brownies and coconut cake Pete readily shovels down his gullet since Ray always had a thing he couldn’t get over about those damn coconut flakes– and when they decide they’re fat and happy enough, they keep going while she fiddles with the radio and feeds the stray cat that occasionally trots up to their door (full name Art Olson).
The paint job is finished right as the sun sets, painting the sky in a dazzling wash of pink and orange, like God’s watercolor bleeding onto the pages of a sketchbook. Ray looks at the house with utter amazement while Pete satisfies himself with looking at Ray. He knows Pete’s gazing at him with googly eyes, since he knows the very minutiae of him, down to the marrow of his bones, but he can’t bring himself to care all too much, because Ray always finds himself staring back at Pete. Love makes you tunnel-vision on foolish things.
Not that Ray or Pete are foolish things. Quite the opposite, actually.
They’re hopeful.