Road Ends by Mary Lawson Read Free Book Online Page A

again, into the entrance hall where the coats were piled on pegs and the floor was a mad scramble of boots. He found his own and savagely pulled them on. The twins might have been of some help had they still been home—they were both reasonably sensible—but the idea of either Corey or Peter doing anything was laughable and he wasn’t going to waste his breath by asking them. It was easier to do it himself.
    He checked his pockets for money, reckoned he had enough to buy the basics, looked up and saw Adam standing in the doorway, watching him, his hands clenched tightly under his chin.
    “Don’t stand in the doorway!” Tom said sharply. “You’ll catch cold. I’m going to buy some food.” He went out, slamming the door behind him.
    It was so dark outside you’d think it was four in the morning rather than four in the afternoon. Marcel and the snowplough thundered by just as he got to Main Street, but even if it hadn’t been snowing so hard there would have been no question of taking the car. The piles of snow thrown up by the plough blocked off all of the side roads; opening them up again was the second stage of the procedure and in weather like this the plough never got to the second stage. Anyway, it would have taken him at least an hour to shovel out the driveway. He walked along the road, following in the wake of the plough. From time to time muffled snatches of its roar were carried back to him on the wind.
    It was viciously cold. He pulled his scarf up over his nose and his hat down to his eyes and bent his head into the wind. Snow was drifting back across the road—by the time the plough got to one end of town it would all need doing again. You could plough the same bit of road forever. Like Sisyphus, Tom thought, rolling his bloody rock up the hill.
    There was a lull in the wind, and the roar of the plough was suddenly loud. He looked up and saw the tail lights winking in the distance, and all at once Robert was beside him and the two of them were staggering along this same stretch of road in a similar blizzard, howling with laughter and drunk as two skunks. Robert had filched a bottle of hooch from a logger who’d slipped on the ice outside Ben’s Bar. Somehow he’d managed to hold the bottlealoft as he fell, and Robert had relieved him of it. They were fifteen or so and it was the first time they’d been drunk and it was wonderful. Rob found a hubcap half buried in a snowbank and insisted on taking it with them, clutching it close to his chest, crooning to it, and Tom had yelled, “Don’t kiss it, don’t kiss it!” afraid that his friend’s lips would freeze to the metal, wondering how they’d explain that to the doctor.
    Then the wind swung around and blasted him again, and Rob was gone.
    It wasn’t far to the centre of town—nowhere in Struan was far from anywhere else. Many of the stores had closed early to allow staff to get home while it was still possible. The post office, the drugstore, Harper’s restaurant, all of them shut. Ben’s Bar was still open, its windows lit by oily light. This being Saturday it would be full of loggers, most of them more than happy, storm or no storm, to spend the night on the floor.
    Marshall’s Grocery was still open, to Tom’s relief. Better still there was no one in it apart from the girl behind the counter. What he feared more than anything was running into someone he knew, someone who might try to talk to him, or look at him with sympathetic eyes.
    The wind caught the door when he opened it and he had to lean his full weight against it to get it closed again.
    “Nice day, isn’t it?” the girl behind the counter said.
    Tom nodded, stamping his feet to get rid of the worst of the snow. He removed his gloves and hat and shook the snow off them, grabbed a shopping cart and headed straight down the first aisle before the girl had time to say anything else. He scanned the shelves, picking off likely-looking items as fast as he could and dropping them