Child of God by Cormac McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

slewed up in snow to his thighs, wallowing in the drifts with the rifle held overhead in one hand. He caught himself on a grapevine and swung about and came to a stop. A shower of dead leaves and twigs fell over the smooth mantle of snow. He fetched debris from out of his shirtcollar and looked down the slope to find another stopping place.
    When he reached the flats at the foot of the mountain he found himself in scrub cedar and pines. He followed rabbit paths through these woods. The snow had thawed and frozen over again and there was a light crust on top now and the day was very cold. He entered a glade and a robin flew. Another. They heldtheir wings aloft and went skittering over the snow. Ballard looked more closely. A group of them were huddled under a cedar tree. At his approach they set forth in pairs and threes and went hopping and hobbling over the crust, dragging their wings. Ballard ran after them. They ducked and fluttered. He fell and rose and ran laughing. He caught and held one warm and feathered in his palm with the heart of it beating there just so.

H E CAME UP A RUTTED drive and past the roof of a car sliced off and propped on the ground with cinderblocks. A light-cord ran across the mud and underneath the car roof a bulb burned and a group of depressed looking chickens huddled and clucked. Ballard rapped on the porch floor. It was a cold gray day. Thick gouts of brownish smoke swirled over the roof and the rags of snow in the yard lay gray and lacy and flecked with coalsoot. He peeped down at the bird against his breast. The door opened.
    Get in here, said a woman in a thin cotton house-dress.
    He went on up the porchsteps and entered the house. He spoke with the woman but his eye was on the daughter. She moved ill at ease about the house, all tits and plump young haunch and naked legs. Cold enough for ye? said Ballard.
    What about this weather, said the woman.
    I brung him a playpretty, Ballard said, nodding to the thing in the floor.
    The woman turned her shallow dish-shaped face upon him. Done what? she said.
    Brung him a playpretty. Looky here.
    He hauled forth the half froze robin from his shirt and held it out. It turned its head. Its eye flicked.
    Looky here, Billy, said the woman.
    It didn’t look. A hugeheaded bald and slobbering primate that inhabited the lower reaches of the house, familiar of the warped floorboards and the holes tacked up with foodtins hammered flat, a consort of roaches and great hairy spiders in their season, perenially benastied and afflicted with a nameless crud.
    Here’s ye a playpretty.
    The robin started across the floor, its wings awobble like lateen sails. It spied the … what? child? child, and veered off toward a corner. The child’s dull eyes followed. It stirred into sluggish motion.
    Ballard caught the bird and handed it down. The child took it in fat gray hands.
    He’ll kill it, the girl said.
    Ballard grinned at her. It’s hisn to kill if he wants to, he said.
    The girl pouted her mouth at him. Shoot, she said.
    I got somethin I’m a goin to bring you, Ballard told her.
    You ain’t got nothin I want, she said.
    Ballard grinned.
    I got some coffee hot on the stove, said the woman from the kitchen. Did you want a cup?
    I wouldn’t care to drink maybe just a cup, said Ballard, rubbing his hands together to say how cold it was.
    At the kitchen table, a huge white porcelain cup before him, the steam white in the cold of the room by the one window where he sat and the moisture condensing on the flower faded oilcloth. He tilted canned milk in and stirred.
    What time do you reckon Ralph will be in?
    He ain’t said.
    Well.
    Just wait on him if ye want.
    Well. I’ll wait on him a minute. If he don’t come I got to get on.
    He heard the back door shut. He saw her go along the muddied rut of a path to the outhouse. He looked at the woman. She was rolling out biscuits at the sideboard. He looked quickly back out the window. The girl opened the outhouse door and