Free The road by Cormac McCarthy Page A

at the boy's face sleeping in the orange light. The
sunken cheeks streaked with black. He fought back the rage. Useless. He didnt
think the boy could travel much more. Even if it stopped snowing the road would
be all but impassable. The snow whispered down in the stillness and the sparks
rose and dimmed and died in the eternal blackness.
     
    He was half asleep when he heard a crashing in the
woods. Then another. He sat up. The fire was down to scattered flames among the
embers. He listened. The long dry crack of shearing limbs. Then another crash.
He reached and shook the boy. Wake up, he said. We have to go. He rubbed the
sleep from his eyes with the backs of his hands. What is it? he said. What is
it, Papa? Come on. We have to move. What is it? It's the trees. They're falling
down. The boy sat up and looked about wildly. It's all right, the man said.
Come on. We need to hurry.
     
    He scooped up the bedding and he folded it and
wrapped the tarp around it. He looked up. The snow drifted into his eyes. The
fire was little more than coals and it gave no light and the wood was nearly
gone and the trees were falling all about them in the blackness. The boy clung
to him. They moved away and he tried to find a clear space in the darkness but
finally he put down the tarp and they just sat and pulled the blankets over
them and he held the boy against him. The whump of the falling trees and the
low boom of the loads of snow exploding on the ground set the woods to
shuddering. He held the boy and told him it would be all right and that it
would stop soon and after a while it did. The dull bedlam dying in the
distance. And again, solitary and far away. Then nothing. There, he said. I
think that's it. He dug a tunnel under one of the fallen trees, scooping away
the snow with his arms, his frozen hands clawed inside his sleeves. They
dragged in their bedding and the tarp and after a while they slept again for
all the bitter cold.
     
    When day broke he pushed his way out of their den,
the tarp heavy with snow. He stood and looked about. It had stopped snowing and
the cedar trees lay about in hillocks of snow and broken limbs and a few
standing trunks that stood stripped and burntlooking in that graying landscape.
He trudged out through the drifts leaving the boy to sleep under the tree like
some hibernating animal. The snow was almost to his knees. In the field the
dead sedge was drifted nearly out of sight and the snow stood in razor kerfs
atop the fencewires and the silence was breathless. He stood leaning on a post
coughing. He'd little idea where the cart was and he thought that he was
getting stupid and that his head wasnt working right. Concentrate, he said. You
have to think. When he turned to go back the boy was calling him.
     
    We have to go, he said. We cant stay here. The boy
stared bleakly at the gray drifts. Come on. They made their way out to the
fence. Where are we going? the boy said. We have to find the cart. He just
stood there, his hands in the armpits of his parka. Come on, the man said. You
have to come on.
     
    He waded out across the drifted fields. The snow
lay deep and gray. Already there was a fresh fall of ash on it. He struggled on
a few more feet and then turned and looked back. The boy had fallen. He dropped
the armload of blankets and the tarp and went back and picked him up. He was already
shivering. He picked him up and held him. I'm sorry, he said. I'm sorry.
     
    They were a long time finding the cart. He pulled
it upright out of the drifts and dug out the knapsack and shook it out and
opened it and stuffed in one of the blankets. He put the pack and the other
blankets and the coats in the basket and picked up the boy and set him on top
and unlaced his shoes and pulled them off. Then he got out his knife and set
about cutting up one of the coats and wrapping the boy's feet. He used the entire
coat and then he cut big squares of plastic out of the tarp