Free The Road by Cormac McCarthy Page B

me.
    I dont know.
    Why do you think we’re going to die?
    I dont know.
    Stop saying I dont know.
    Okay.
    Why do you think we’re going to die?
    We dont have anything to eat.
    We’ll find something.
    Okay.
    How long do you think people can go without food?
    I dont know.
    But how long do you think?
    Maybe a few days.
    And then what? You fall over dead?
    Yes.
    Well you dont. It takes a long time. We have water. That’s the most important thing. You dont last very long without water.
    Okay.
    But you dont believe me.
    I dont know.
    He studied him. Standing there with his hands in the pockets of the outsized pinstriped suitcoat.
    Do you think I lie to you?
    No.
    But you think I might lie to you about dying.
    Yes.
    Okay. I might. But we’re not dying.
    Okay.
    He studied the sky. There were days when the ashen overcast thinned and now the standing trees along the road made the faintest of shadows over the snow. They went on. The boy wasnt doing well. He stopped and checked his feet and retied the plastic. When the snow started to melt it was going to be hard to keep their feet dry. They stopped often to rest. He’d no strength to carry the child. They sat on the pack and ate handfuls of the dirty snow. By afternoon it was beginning to melt. They passed a burned house, just the brick chimney standing in the yard. They were on the road all day, such day as there was. Such few hours. They might have covered three miles.
    He thought the road would be so bad that no one would be on it but he was wrong. They camped almost in the road itself and built a great fire, dragging dead limbs out of the snow and piling them on the flames to hiss and steam. There was no help for it. The few blankets they had would not keep them warm. He tried to stay awake. He would jerk upright out of his sleep and slap about him looking for the pistol. The boy was so thin. He watched him while heslept. Taut face and hollow eyes. A strange beauty. He got up and dragged more wood onto the fire.
    They walked out to the road and stood. There were tracks in the snow. A wagon. Some sort of wheeled vehicle. Something with rubber tires by the narrow treadmarks. Bootprints between the wheels. Someone had passed in the dark going south. In the early dawn at latest. Running the road in the night. He stood thinking about that. He walked the tracks carefully. They’d passed within fifty feet of the fire and had not even slowed to look. He stood looking back up the road. The boy watched him.
    We need to get out of the road.
    Why, Papa?
    Someone’s coming.
    Is it bad guys?
    Yes. I’m afraid so.
    They could be good guys. Couldnt they?
    He didnt answer. He looked at the sky out of old habit but there was nothing to see.
    What are we going to do, Papa?
    Let’s go.
    Can we go back to the fire?
    No. Come on. We probably dont have much time.
    I’m really hungry.
    I know.
    What are we going to do?
    We have to hole up. Get off the road.
    Will they see our tracks?
    Yes.
    What can we do about it?
    I dont know.
    Will they know what we are?
    What?
    If they see our tracks. Will they know what we are?
    He looked back at their great round tracks in the snow.
    They’ll figure it out, he said.
    Then he stopped.
    We need to think about this. Let’s go back to the fire.
    He’d thought to find some place in the road where the snow had melted off completely but then he thought that since their tracks would not reappear on the far side it would be no help. They kicked snow over the fire and went on through the trees and circled and came back. They hurried, leaving a maze of tracks and then they set out back north through the woods keeping the road in view.
    The site they picked was simply the highest ground they came to and it gave views north along the road and overlooked their backtrack. He spread the tarp in the wet snow and wrapped the boy in the blankets. You’re going to be cold, he said. But maybe we wont be here long. Within the hour two men came down the road almost at a lope.