The Catcher in the Corn

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

I watched the car roll into Gatlin. I like to watch cars, they way they move, and also the way they don't move when they're not moving. It's like they know where they're going and what they're going to do, later on, when they finally zip off somewhere else.

The man and the woman got out of the car. Of course they started fighting, almost before he had slammed the door shut. I could tell that he was the angry kind, and she was dumb, and they hated each other, but there was something else there I couldn't figure out. Maybe it was love. I never could understand love too hot. It's funny. It's like everybody talks about love and wants it and everything, but nobody really understands what it is.

I watched them fight from behind the old filling station with the broken sign and the loose roof shingles flapping in the wind. I knew I should be gathering with Malachi and the others, but I didn't feel like it. The truth is, I was scared. It's no fun to be yellow. Maybe I'm not all yellow. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just partly yellow and partly the type that doesn't give much of a damn if they lose their gloves. But I just watched.

I didn't want to be with goddamn Malachi. He was such a phony. All his talk about He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and his sacrifices, and the names on the book. It was just dumb. I decided all at once I would leave. I would get in the car with the people, and I would tell them not to fight, and we would go somewhere else, just to be in a place that wasn't Gatlin.

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse. Especially since all those people died. I knew I should feel something about that, but I really didn't. I didn't know anything about what I should feel or be or do.

All I could think of was this: I kept picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field near the corn and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me, and something dark behind the rows. And I'm standing on the edge of some cornfield. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go into the corn - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the corn and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.

Malachi and the others came. There was a lot of dumb yelling and stuff. I couldn't understand why Malachi wanted to serve He Who Walks Behind the Rows anyhow. Who wants human sacrifice when you're some kind of all-powerful agent of evil? Nobody.

I didn't want to watch anymore so I walked back down the road towards Hemingford Home. Then I felt I should walk faster, and then even faster. Pretty soon I was running, with corn rustling around me and the wind whipping back my hair like I was some kind of speed demon.

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it.