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It is not required to watch the annual broadcast of the Long Walk. It won’t result in a visit from the Squads for antipatriotism, although proudly proclaiming to avoid it certainly would. It’s just what everyone does.
And since Evangeline has spent her entire life attempting to pretend that she is like everyone else, she settles onto her ancient, ratty couch with her toast and coffee and stares at the pack of boys waiting for their names to be called. The picture on the television is staticky at the edges, but it's in color, which is more than some of her neighbors can say. Not that she was able to buy it new off her meager paycheck—when her elderly boss at the grocer with barely any family had passed away last year, Evangeline had been first in line at the estate sale, sweettalking the late man’s son into giving her a discount.
She finds some amusement in that, given how much the old bastard had disliked her. Oh, well. It’s not as if he’s around anymore to complain.
She blows a strand of hair out of her face before sipping at her coffee. She hasn’t looked in a mirror yet this morning, but she knows that it’s a mess. There’s an ever-growing knot on the back of her head that she can’t quite reach, and she has half a mind to just give up and cut off all her greying blonde locks once and for all.
The broadcast begins the same as it does every year. Boys mill about at the starting area; boys of every size and from every state, with only one thing in common—they’re all too fucking young for this. Not that Evangeline has much room to talk. She was right smack dab in the eligibility age when the Walks started. Had she been born a boy, she would’ve thrown in her lot without hesitation.
She yawns, loud in the silence broken only by the quiet drone of the television. Lately it seems all she does is work or sleep, and yet no matter how many hours of rest she gets on her day off, the sluggishness never truly goes away. She’s ready for this to be fucking over with already, for her days to brighten and the good times to come back. They always do. Just taking their sweet time right now, apparently.
She nibbles at her toast as she watches without much interest. She’s not one of the betters who take notes on heights and weights and then stake anything from pennies to their entire livelihoods on the one they think will take the prize. She also doesn’t take any joy in watching the deaths. But barely anyone works during the Walk. It’s the only federal holiday they have besides Founder’s Day. So it gives her something to do, at least. Without something to occupy her mind, Evangeline has a tendency to become a little…unlike herself.
As always, the first hour of the broadcast isn’t anything to write home about. It’s just constant footage of boys strolling into the starting area, chatting amongst themselves. Their conversations aren't quite audible yet. But they will be, once the herd starts thinning and the cameras have more opportunity to focus on a select few, the projected winners.
She’s just about to get up and make herself a second slice of toast when she spots him.
A shock of blond hair falling over a pale face, but not enough to cover that familiar nose. Not enough to hide those eyes, the same blue as her own.
Evangeline leans forward despite herself, lips parting, forming a silent word; one she hasn’t spoken—hasn’t even dared to think of—in years.
No, she thinks. No. There are plenty of women in the country with her hair color, eye color, nose and face shape. All of them would have had sons with the same traits. How many must be out there? A hundred? A thousand?
Virtually every boy in the country puts in for the lottery. All of the sons and brothers of her neighbors who were in the proper age range had, although none had been picked. That alone makes at least fifteen entries. And he would’ve been just one. Only one in a sea of countless others. It isn’t him, of course.
The names begin to be called, and only a few numbers in, her fragile hope is shattered.
“Barkovitch, Gary!” The Major calls, his voice bold and damning. The boy with her hair and nose and eyes stands up after a moment of hesitation, approaching the soldier who is holding out his dog tag.
Evangeline covers her mouth, but it does nothing to stop the sob that is ripped from her throat. The plate in her hand falls to the floor, and she’s suddenly grateful she’d used a paper one instead of the few precious porcelains she owns.
It’s not real. It can’t be. It’s just another one of those episodes she has; seeing things, hearing things that aren’t quite in line with reality. She blinks hard, squeezing her eyes shut and opening them over and over, but nothing changes. The cameras pan across all the boys as the Major gives his speech, and every time it makes another rotation, she prays that head of blond hair will have disappeared from the group. But it never does.
She has not seen her son in almost twenty years. But she is a mother, and a mother will always know her child.
Evangeline buries her face in her hands and screams.
✦
Gary, like most children, came into the world shrieking.
His was a difficult birth. After nearly twelve hours of labor, his shoulder had gotten caught on her pubic bone, and when the doctor reached to adjust him she had wailed so loudly she feared she would rip her own vocal cords. But out he had come, a little smaller than average but perfectly healthy. The nurses, as they weighed and measured her son, assured Evangeline that the next one would be much easier. She could do nothing but stare in silent disbelief at the idea of there ever being a “next one”.
She’d been told by every woman in her life with a child how she’d feel such love for her baby the moment she held them for the first time, that all the pain she went through to bring them into the world would fall away the moment she gazed into their eyes.
But when they placed Gary back in her arms, all cleaned up and staring at this strange new world with infantile wonder, dread coiled in Evangeline’s gut.
Because it wasn’t there. That spark, that rush of indescribable love—it didn’t overtake her. It didn’t erase the hours of pain she’d gone through, the fear and embarrassment of being exposed to complete strangers in her most vulnerable moment. All she felt was tired.
Even after she was discharged home, she waited impatiently, and then desperately, for the feeling to hit her. Surely it should have, especially given how Gary looked. Everyone they came across remarked on how much Gary resembled Evangeline. She would laugh and argue lightly that it was too soon to tell; his hair and eyes both might darken with age to more closely match his father’s.
Brennan, her husband, had been annoyed by it. He’d pretended he wasn’t, at first, but it was easy to tell how he really felt. He’d been pleased at having a son, though, so that was…something, at least.
Evangeline tried to be happy about their resemblance. The unmistakable proof that Gary was hers. She truly had, with everything in her. She’d never had much in the way of family herself. She wanted to give her own son a good life, one where he’d always know he was supported and loved.
She wasn’t sure how to do that, now that she wasn’t even sure she liked him, let alone loved him.
Those were horrible thoughts to have, and she had cried herself to sleep over them on more than one occasion.
But they weren’t the worst.
The worst came later, when Gary was three months old.
He had been crying all day, no matter what she’d done. She fed him, changed him, rocked him, sang to him, and none of it seemed to help. Unfortunately, it was not the first time this had happened. Evangeline had had a vague idea of what colic was, but knowing of it and experiencing it with her own child were entirely different things.
Brennan had taken to stepping out of the house whenever Gary really got going—once he’d figured out that feeding and rocking their son didn’t work, he’d thrown up his hands and left it to Evangeline. He did that with most things, these days. His temper was shorter, too. He wasn’t a loud man, but he didn’t have to be. If he was upset, his words cut like knives. Strange, since he’d been the one so thrilled about a child in the first place. Thinking of it too much left a sour taste in her mouth.
There were good days, sure. Days when Gary was happy, playful, affectionate. He would light up at the sight of his mother, babbling happily when she picked him up. He would give her a toothless grin, and she would smile back widely. Those were the moments where she truly believed that this would work, that the special, mysterious maternal instinct was finally coming to her.
But the bad days were very, very bad. They had started to overtake the good. Evangeline felt a bit like a homemade bomb, ticking down to something unspeakable.
The thought occurred to her while she was chopping vegetables for dinner that night: tomatoes, peppers, onions. By then, Gary’s wailing had become a dull ringing in her ears. Her heart rate had picked up some minutes ago, and hadn't yet slowed, bringing a flush to her face and a rapidly developing headache. She swallowed, her mouth dry. She had looked at the large, freshly sharpened knife in her hand, wet with tomato juice, and an idea bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her. It flickered through her mind for the briefest of moments.
She could shut him up permanently.
Almost immediately, the thought was erased with overwhelming horror. She had dropped the knife on the ground, narrowly missing her foot. Her hands had come up to cover her mouth to stifle an agonized moan. She had stared over at Gary, his little fists beating at the air defiantly, his big blue eyes scrunched up tight. Small, and helpless, and hers.
She ran to his high chair, scooping him up into her arms, hugging him as tightly as she dared. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she sobbed into his tiny shoulder, her tears wetting his jumper. “I’m sorry. Mama’s sorry.”
He had kept crying, but she didn’t care. Crying meant he was alive. It meant she hadn’t done that terrible thing. When her own tears died, she sang a lullaby to him softly, dinner preparations forgotten. She sang until he finally exhausted himself and settled into blissful unknowing sleep.
She, on the other hand, did not sleep at all. She tossed and turned and even hit herself in the face a few times, a disturbing habit she thought she had shaken off back in her teenage years. By the time dawn rolled around, she could almost convince herself that it had never happened.
Three days later, while bathing him, she had another thought. This one involved turning the faucet back on, standing up, and walking out of the room. Without Gary.
She’d yanked him up out of the basin, ignoring his squawk of surprise, and sprinted back to the nursery. She’d swaddled him tightly in a towel, placed him down gently, then collapsed to her knees and vomited into the wastebasket.
She sobbed over her own mess until the sound of Gary’s squalling cut through her own. She forced herself to her feet to dry him off properly and redress him, terrified the entire time her hands were near his tiny body.
She’d gotten into some fights during her school days, but she’d never wanted to really hurt anyone. And she’d especially never wanted to hurt something so small and innocent as a baby.
Yet here she was.
What kind of a fucking monster are you? she had screamed at herself in her mind, over and over.
When Gary finally fell asleep, she stood over his crib and stared at him for a long, long time. Every so often she would reach out, trembling fingers longing to brush against his soft skin. She forced herself to pull back each time.
That night, Evangeline Barkovitch threw two suitcases into the trunk of her car and drove away from that house for the last time.
She left her heart behind.
✦
Gary has decided to show the world the very worst parts of himself.
He sneers and snaps at the other boys unprompted. He shouts out how soon he guesses they’ll die, cackling when they tell him to fuck off and baring his teeth in a feral grin. He mocks the ones who get their tickets, smirking at how early into the journey they’ve fallen. He’s quick and cruel and so, so full of pain that Evangeline knows only she can see.
And he has taunted another Walker to death.
Evangeline had not been strong enough to watch that to the end. When number nineteen hadn’t gotten up from the pavement, even as the other boys—her son included—begged him to keep walking, she closed her eyes until she heard the gunshot, and then for several seconds more just to make sure the cameras had cut away from the corpse.
And even hours later, tears are still falling down her cheeks. Slowly, now, but not ending. Not yet. How could they? To the entire country, her baby is now killer.
She is devastated. She is not surprised.
It’s just confirmation of what she had pretended to not know; that her leaving would be the catalyst for Brennan’s anger to become unrestrained. That he, never able to take responsibility for anything, would have to find someone to shift the blame of losing his wife onto. And their son, of course, would be his easiest target.
She knows that she can’t blame it all on Brennan, much as she wants to. And to be honest, she really fucking wants to. But Gary is also half of her, the woman who had nightmares of driving a knife through his tiny heart. Who knows how he would’ve turned out with her for a mother? She may have raised that very same sad, angry, hostile boy—if she hadn’t ended up murdering him by the time he was two, that is.
She refuses to take her eyes off the screen, only stopping to rush to the bathroom when she needs to. Her stomach has been growling for hours now, and she continues to doggedly ignore it. It’s harder to sleep when hungry, and she wants to stay away as long as she can. She needs to see Gary make it through the night.
Her heart is in her throat as she watches the boys scatter and sprint up an incline, the darkness making it hard to see even with the lights on the half-tracks. She has to lean in close to the television, and even then she only catches glimpses of him, hears faint yelling. The cameras are cutting so fast, trying to catch every ticket as more and more boys fall.
Her Gary is not one of them. If it’s selfish to be happy that her son isn’t among the dead, that his odds are now infinitely better, then fuck it. Evangeline will be the most selfish woman on the planet.
If anything, by daybreak he seems more alive than nearly all the other boys. His energy isn’t flagging at all, or at least not visibly. Compared to several of the others stumbling along, he’s doing fantastic. Relieved and energized by his steady gait, Evangeline allows herself to take a break from the broadcast just long enough to change clothes, brush her teeth, and make her first meal in nearly twenty-four hours.
This is the first time she has seen her son in years. She settles back onto the couch with her food and takes in every inch of him—he’s tall, taller than both her and Brennan. His hair is about the same length hers was when she had him. Everyone back then has now been proven right; he is the spitting image of his mother.
The thing she really can’t get over are his eyes. It’s like looking in a mirror. It’s almost haunting, how they are practically a carbon copy of her own. But that wild anger in them—has she ever possessed that? She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to.
He’s built more leanly than many of the other boys, but it’s obvious that he’s fit, given how he’d hopped and skipped around yesterday and is still going strong. She’s proud of him for that. She thinks of the gamblers again, and wonders how many of them have stakes on her boy now.
She regrets, of course, that he felt the need to enter the lottery at all. She shouldn’t be shocked, because she and Brennan had never been well off. But she had hoped that maybe, without her around, some of that burden might be lessened.
Clearly not.
She wonders what Brennan has told Gary about her, if he’s told him anything at all. If he has, she hopes he’s told Gary that she’s dead. At least then, he could imagine her as anything he liked. She would be good and caring in his mind, her life just stolen too soon. He could believe that only death would have taken her away from him.
But that’s wishful thinking. She knows what’s more likely; that Brennan told their son in no unclear terms that Evangeline had abandoned them both. That she had packed up and disappeared into the night without any care for her own flesh and blood. No wonder Gary had gone right for the throat with Rank, accusing him of being unwanted and unloved. It’s how she made him feel, when she removed herself from his life.
He must hate her.
She starts crying again. She feels woozy once she finally manages to stop, and forces herself to her feet to grab a glass of water. All the tears must have dehydrated her. She takes small sips as she stays glued to the screen.
She hasn’t showered for a few days. She has a tendency to be a bit lazy with it; even knowing she’ll feel so much better afterwards often isn’t enough for her to muster the motivation. She’d planned to finally do it before bed on the day the Walk began, knowing her hair desperately needed a wash, but now she can’t bear to tear herself away for that long. Even with a change of clothes, she’s probably starting to smell. Oh, well. It’s not as if there’s anyone else here to care.
The road stretches on. More walkers earn their ticket, but slowly now. She shouldn’t be happy when they do. They are also sons and brothers, with families who will cry and scream and mourn them forever. But she can’t help it, because for every one that dies, her own son’s chances of living grow.
Evangeline stopped believing in God years ago, but now she sends up her first prayer in ages. If you exist, she thinks fiercely, you will keep my boy alive.
The hours tick by, and as they do, she becomes more and more convinced; Gary can win this.
And when he does, Evangeline will go find her boy, and she will tell him she loves him.
✦
Evangeline had never remarried.
Not that she could even if she wanted to—if she went to the courthouse, they’d surely find her old marriage license not yet nullified. In those first few years she’d constantly been looking over her shoulder, sure that Brennan would come after her. He never did. That proved her right about at least one thing; he had never, ever cared about her enough to make anything even close to the same sacrifices she had.
She had left with only enough money for gas and food. When she finally stopped driving and planted herself somewhere relatively safe, she slept in her car for the first year while she worked two jobs saving up for somewhere to stay. In a way, it was better than finding a stable life right away—she was too busy surviving to linger on what she’d left behind.
It was a good plan for the most part. Forgetting Brennan was surprisingly easy. Trying to forget Gary was like carving out half of her soul.
When she left, she hadn’t allowed herself to bring anything of his. No reminders, she had told herself. No photographs. No blankets or stuffies or clothing that carried his smell. Nothing his hands had touched. Nothing that could convince her to go back and put him in danger.
As coldly logical as she forced herself to be, nothing could stop the dreams. She would wake up in tears, the echo of a lullaby still on her lips, a bone-deep feeling of emptiness in her chest.
For a while she took drastic measures. She did her best to avoid anything that would remind her of children. She took longer routes to avoid driving by playgrounds, schools, parks, anywhere she knew they would gather. She timed her shopping trips to take place during school hours, so there was less chance of running into them at stores. When she could finally afford an apartment and her neighbor’s kids played outside in their yards, she drew her curtains.
She wasn’t a total recluse; she had a few friends at work, but she kept a careful distance from them. There had been quite a few men interested over the years, too, but she’d never taken up their offers to go out. She had already uprooted herself once. She would do everything possible to avoid having to do it again.
She had worked hard. She had molded herself into the perfect quiet neighbor, rarely disturbed by anyone. She afforded herself what few luxuries she could to make the bare-bones house she moved into feel more like a home. She chose the loneliness and was determined to thrive in it. No husband, no son. Just Evangeline.
Eventually, things became easier. She stopped feeling like there was an elephant standing on her chest every time she heard a baby's cry. She wasn't rich, but nobody she knew was. She got by, and she did it all on her own.
And finally, Gary’s name became just like everything else she left behind. A buried memory.
✦
Now she knows the truth—that no power on earth could erase her son from her heart.
Evangeline sinks to the floor as she watches Gary plead frantically for the others to forgive him for killing that boy. His face is crumpled, his voice unsteady, and only now can she see it—the exhaustion that he’s either hid so well, or that she’s been intentionally blind to.
It’s always been like that, she thinks to herself. Even when he was small. Nothing could stop him, until he tired himself out…
For the past four days she has barely left the living room. She has slept on the couch each night, waking suddenly every few hours, eyes snapping opening and scanning the television desperately for the sight of her son. She still hasn’t showered. What if in the precious few minutes she’s gone, Gary stumbles? She won’t abandon him again. She’ll be here for him through it all, even to the bitter end.
She’s sent up many more prayers since the first one, but it seems they will remain unanswered. A part of her knew they would. In her soul, with that motherly intuition that has finally come much too late, she knows that his tiredness didn’t start with this Walk. It’s been there for a long, long time.
Her boy is ready to rest now. And she is powerless to save him, just as she was all those years ago.
Number forty-seven, Garraty, puts his arm around Gary, and for a moment, hope blooms in her chest. Maybe he’ll be alright. Maybe he can make amends, have some buddies, like he said. Like she’s always wanted for him. No one should have to walk that road alone.
But then Garraty steps away, and as Evangeline keeps her eyes on her son’s face, she knows with an agonizing certainty that his act of kindness has done nothing but prolong the inevitable by a few precious moments.
With a sudden burst of energy, Gary walks ahead of the others. Evangeline sucks in a ragged gasp. He turns to face those who remain, stopping in his tracks. His first warning rings out. A death toll. The end of everything; the demise of her universe.
She remembers when she would count his tiny toes, singing a song about piggies to the market, and he would giggle and kick his little feet. He would stare up at her with those eyes just like hers, taking in her face with a silent awe. She was his entire world, and he was hers.
She crawls on her knees towards the screen, one hand extended shakily towards it. As if she could reach inside, tear her way through the static and onto that horrible road to reach her boy. As if she could stop what she knows is about to happen.
When Gary drives the blunt end of the spoon deep into his own throat, Evangeline doesn’t scream. She watches in wide-eyed silence as he rips it out, pushes it in again, then again. The viciousness of the action takes her breath away.
He collapses as the other boys shout in horror. She moves forward again, until she can press her palms to the television. She traces a finger over his face, feather-light. Blood pours onto the ground in impossible amounts. His limbs jerk slightly, his expression blank. A death-mask already settling over his features.
But all Evangeline sees are those blue eyes, same as hers.
“My baby,” she whispers. “It’s alright.”
He didn’t cry out, when he did that awful thing to himself. Her brave boy. She leans in and kisses his forehead, lips tingling with static when they meet the screen.
In the death throes of what little was left of her heart, Evangeline sings.
“Baby mine, don’t you cry,” she chokes out, voice hoarse and thick with her tears. It sounds nothing like it did when she sang this to him all those years ago, soothing and melodic. Yet she still remembers every word. She sniffs and forces herself to continue. “Baby mine, dry your eyes…”
The camera refuses to pan away as he twitches on the ground, his throat still gushing red. Her stomach lurches, but she swallows down the bile. “Rest your head close to my heart,” she gasps out. “Never to—”
Her voice breaks as a soldier steps into view, gun cocked and pointed at her Gary’s skull. She prays they’ll just end it now, put a stop to her boy’s suffering, but she knows it’s futile. The rules are the same for everyone. How long now? Five more seconds?
“Never,” she tries again, faltering. “Never to p—” she chokes, then pinches herself harshly.
She’s failed him enough. She won’t fail him now. She will not look away. She will not stop. She has to continue, has to be his mother for the very last time.
Here at the end, she will sing him to sleep.
She inhales shakily. And at the same time the gunshot rings out, she finishes her farewell.
“Never to part, baby of mine.”