The Road by Cormac McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

want to.
    No you cant. If you look at him again I’ll shoot you.
    The boy was sitting with both hands on top of his head and looking out between his forearms.
    I’ll bet that boy is hungry. Why dont you all just come on to the truck? Get something to eat. Aint no need to be such a hard-ass.
    You dont have anything to eat. Let’s go.
    Go where?
    Let’s go.
    I aint goin nowheres.
    You’re not?
    No. I aint.
    You think I wont kill you but you’re wrong. But what I’d rather do is take you up this road a mile or so and then turn you loose. That’s all the head start we need. You wont find us. You wont even know which way we went.
    You know what I think?
    What do you think.
    I think you’re chickenshit.
    He let go of the belt and it fell in the roadway with the gear hanging from it. A canteen. An old canvas army pouch. A leather sheath for a knife. When he looked up the roadrat was holding the knife in his hand. He’d only taken two steps but he was almost between him and the child.
    What do you think you’re going to do with that?
    He didnt answer. He was a big man but he was very quick. He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with the knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handed position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead. The boy was lying in his lap with no expression on his face at all. He shoved the pistol in his belt and slung the knapsack over his shoulder and picked up the boy and turned him around and lifted him over his head and set him on his shoulders and set off up the old roadway at a dead run, holding the boy’s knees, the boy clutching his forehead, covered with gore and mute as a stone.
    They came to an old iron bridge in the woods where the vanished road had crossed an all but vanished stream. He was starting to cough and he’d hardly breath to do it with. He dropped down out of the roadway and into the woods. He turned and stood gasping, trying to listen. He heardnothing. He staggered on another half mile or so and finally dropped to his knees and put the boy down in the ashes and leaves. He wiped the blood from his face and held him. It’s okay, he said. It’s okay.
    In the long cold evening with the darkness dropping down he heard them only once. He held the boy close. There was a cough in his throat that never left. The boy so frail and thin through his coat, shivering like a dog. The footsteps in the leaves stopped. Then they moved on. They neither spoke nor called to each other, the more sinister for that. With the final onset of dark the iron cold locked down and the boy by now was shuddering violently. No moon rose beyond the murk and there was nowhere to go. They had a single blanket in the pack and he got it out and covered the boy with it and he unzipped his parka and held the boy against him. They lay there for a long time but they were freezing and finally he sat up. We’ve got to move, he said. We cant just lie here. He looked around but there was nothing to see. He spoke into a blackness without depth or dimension.
    He held the boy’s hand as they stumbled through the woods. The other hand he held out before him. He could see no worse with his eyes shut. The boy was wrapped in the blanket and he told him not to drop it because they would never find it again. He wanted to be carried but the man told him that he had to keep moving. They stumbledand fell through the woods the night long and long before dawn the boy fell and would not get up again. He wrapped him in his own parka and wrapped him in the blanket and sat holding him, rocking back and forth. A single round left in the revolver. You will not face the truth. You will not.
    In the grudging light that passed for day he put the boy in the leaves and sat studying the woods. When it was a bit lighter