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Testo

Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“I understand. I’m saying no. No trip back to Green River. No rope. No car. Against the rules of the game.”
“It’s no fucking game!” Larry cried. “You’d die here!”
“And you’re almost surely gonna die over there in Nevada. Now go on and get getting. You’ve got another four hours of daylight. No need to waste it.”
“We’re not going to leave you,” Larry said.
“I’m sorry, but you are. I’m telling you to.”
“No. I’m in charge now. Mother said if anything happened to you—”
“—that you were to go on.”
“No. No.” Larry looked around at Glen and Ralph for support. They looked back at him, troubled. Kojak sat nearby, watching all four with his tail curled neatly around his paws.
“Listen to me, Larry,” Stu said. “This whole trip is based on the idea that the old lady knew what she was talking about. If you start frigging around with that, you’re putting everything on the line.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Ralph said.
“No, it ain’t right, you sodbuster,” Larry said, furiously mimicking Ralph’s flat Oklahoma accent. “It wasn’t God’s will that Stu fell down here, it wasn’t even the dark man’s doing. It was just loose dirt, that’s all, just loose dirt! I’m not leaving you, Stu. I’m done leaving people behind.”
“Yes. We are going to leave him,” Glen said quietly.
Larry stared around unbelievingly, as if he had been betrayed. “I thought you were his friend!”
“I am. But that doesn’t matter.”
Larry uttered a hysterical laugh and walked a little way down the gully. “You’re crazy! You know that?”
“No I’m not. We made an agreement. We stood around Mother Abagail’s deathbed and entered into it. It almost certainly meant our deaths, and we knew it. We understood the agreement. Now we’re going to live up to it.”
“Well, I want to, for Chrissake. I mean, it doesn’t have to be Green River; we can get a station wagon, put him in the back, and go on—”
“We’re supposed to walk,” Ralph said. He pointed at Stu. “He can’t walk.”
“Right. Fine. He’s got a broken leg. What do you propose we do? Shoot him like a horse?”
“Larry—” Stu began.
Before he could go on, Glen grabbed Larry’s shirt and yanked him toward him. “Who are you trying to save?” His voice was cold and stern. “Stu, or yourself?”
Larry looked at him, mouth working.
“It’s very simple,” Glen said. “We can’t stay… and he can’t go.”
“I refuse to accept that,” Larry whispered. His face was dead pale.
“It’s a test,” Ralph said suddenly. “That’s what it is.”
“A sanity test, maybe,” Larry said.
“Vote,” Stu said from the ground. “I vote you go on.”
“Me too,” Ralph said. “Stu, I’m sorry. But if God’s gonna watch out for us, maybe he’ll watch out for you, too—”
“I won’t do it,” Larry said.
“It’s not Stu you’re thinking of,” Glen said. “You’re trying to save something in yourself, I think. But this time it’s right to go on, Larry. We have to.”
Larry rubbed his mouth slowly with the back of his hand.
“Let’s stay here tonight,” he said. “Let’s think this thing out.”
“No,” Stu said.
Ralph nodded. A look passed between him and Glen, and then Glen fished the bottle of “arthritis pills” out of his pocket and put it in Stu’s hand. “These have a morphine base,” he said. “More than three or four would probably be fatal.” His eyes locked with Stu’s. “Do you understand, East Texas?”
“Yeah. I get you.”
“What are you talking about?” Larry cried. “Just what the hell are you suggesting?”
“Don’t you know?” Ralph said with such utter contempt that for a moment Larry was silenced. Then it all rushed before him again with the nightmare speed of strangers’ faces as you ride the whip at the carnival: pills, uppers, downers, cruisers. Rita. Turning her over in her sleeping bag and seeing that she was dead and...
“No! ” he yelled, and tried to snatch the bottle from Stu’s hand.
Ralph grabbed him by the shoulders. Larry struggled.
“Let him go,” Stu said. “I want to talk to him.” Ralph still held on, looking at Stu uncertainly. “No, go on, let him go.”
Ralph let go, but looked ready to spring again.
Stu said, “Come here, Larry. Hunker down.”
Larry came over and hunkered by Stu. He looked miserably into Stu’s face. “It’s not right, man. When somebody falls down and breaks his leg, you don’t… you can’t just walk off and let that person die. Don’t you know that? Hey, man…” He touched Stu’s face. “Please. Think.”
Stu took Larry’s hand and held it. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No! No, but—”
“And do you think that people who are in their right minds have the right to decide for themselves what they want to do?”
“Oh, man,” Larry said, and started to cry.
“Larry, you’re not in this. I want you to go on. If you get out of Vegas, come back this way. Maybe God’ll send a raven to feed me, you don’t know. I read once in the funny-pages that a man can go seventy days without food, if he’s got water.”
“It’s going to be winter before that here. You’ll be dead of exposure in three days, even if you don’t use the pills.”
“That ain’t up to you. You ain’t in this part of it.”