by The Road
He tried to stay awake all night but he could not. He woke endlessly and sat and slapped himself or rose to put wood on the fire. He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air. His hand on the thin and laddered ribs. He walked out on the beach to the edge of the light and stood with his clenched fists on top of his skull and fell to his knees sobbing in rage.
It rained briefly in the night, a light patter on the tarp. He pulled it over them and turned and lay holding the child, watching the blue flames through the plastic. He fell into a dreamless sleep.
When he woke again he hardly knew where he was. The fire had died, the rain had ceased. He threw back the tarp and pushed himself up on his elbows. Gray daylight. The boy was watching him. Papa, he said.
Yes. I’m right here.
Can I have a drink of water?
Yes. Yes, of course you can. How are you feeling?
I feel kind of weird.
Are you hungry?
I’m just really thirsty.
Let me get the water.
He pushed back the blankets and rose and walked out past the dead fire and got the boy’s cup and filled it out of the plastic water jug and came back and knelt and held the cup for him. You’re going to be okay, he said. The boy drank. He nodded and looked at his father. Then he drank the rest of the water. More, he said.
He built a fire and propped the boy’s wet clothes up and brought him a can of apple juice. Do you remember anything? he said.
About what?
About being sick.
I remember shooting the flaregun.
Do you remember getting the stuff from the boat?
He sat sipping the juice. He looked up. I’m not a retard, he said.
I know.
I had some weird dreams.
What about?
I dont want to tell you.
That’s okay. I want you to brush your teeth.
With real toothpaste.
Yes.
Okay.
He checked all the foodtins but he could find nothing suspect. He threw out a few that looked pretty rusty. They sat that evening by the fire and the boy drank hot soup and the man turned his steaming clothes on the sticks and sat watching him until the boy became embarrassed. Stop watching me, Papa, he said.
Okay.
But he didnt.
In two day’s time they were walking the beach as far as the headland and back, trudging along in their plastic bootees. They ate huge meals and he put up a sailcloth leanto with ropes and poles against the wind. They pruned down their stores to a manageable load for the cart and he thought they might leave in two more days. Then coming back to the camp late in the day he saw bootprints in the sand. He stopped and stood looking down the beach. Oh Christ, he said. Oh Christ.
What is it, Papa?
He pulled the pistol from his belt. Come on he said. Hurry.
The tarp was gone. Their blankets. The waterbottle and their campsite store of food. The sailcloth was blown up into the dunes. Their shoes were gone. He ran up through the swale of seaoats where he’d left the cart but the cart was gone. Everything. You stupid ass, he said. You stupid ass.
The boy was standing there wide-eyed. What happened, Papa?
They took everything. Come on.
The boy looked up. He was beginning to cry.
Stay with me, the man said. Stay right with me.
He could see the tracks of the cart where they sloughed up through the loose sand. Bootprints. How many? He lost the track on the better ground beyond the bracken and then picked it up again. When they got to the road he stopped the boy with his hand. The road was exposed to the wind from the sea and it was blown free of ash save for patches here and there. Dont step in the road, he said. And stop crying. We need to get all the sand off of our feet. Here. Sit down.
He untied the wrappings and shook them out and tied them back again. I want you to help, he said. We’re looking for sand. Sand in the road. Even just a little bit. To see which way they went. Okay?
Okay.
They set off down the blacktop in opposite directions. He’d not gone far before the boy called out. Here it is, Papa. They went this way. When he got there the boy was crouched in the road. Right here, he said. It was a half teaspoon of beachsand tilted from somewhere in the understructure of the grocery cart. The man stood and looked out down the road. Good work, he said. Let’s go.
They set off at a jogtrot. A pace he thought he’d be able to keep up but he couldnt. He had to stop, leaning over and coughing. He looked up at the boy, wheezing. We’ll have to walk, he said. If they hear us they’ll hide by the side of the road. Come on.
How many are there, Papa?
I dont know. Maybe just one.
Are we going to kill them?
I dont know.
They went on. It was already late in the day and it was another hour and deep into the long dusk before they overtook the thief, bent over the loaded cart, trundling down the road before them. When he looked back and saw them he tried to run with the cart but it was useless and finally he stopped and stood behind the cart holding a butcher knife. When he saw the pistol he stepped back but he didnt drop the knife.
Get away from the cart, the man said.
He looked at them. He looked at the boy. He was an outcast from one of the communes and the fingers of his right hand had been cut away. He tried to hide it behind him. A sort of fleshy spatula. The cart was piled high. He’d taken everything.
Get away from the cart and put down the knife.
He looked around. As if there might be help somewhere. Scrawny, sullen, bearded, filthy. His old plastic coat held together with tape. The pistol was a double action but the man cocked it anyway. Two loud clicks. Otherwise only their breathing in the silence of the salt moorland. They could smell him in his stinking rags. If you dont put down the knife and get away from the cart, the man said, I’m going to blow your brains out. The thief looked at the child and what he saw was very sobering to him. He laid the knife on top of the blankets and backed away and stood.
Back. More.
He stepped back again.
Papa? the boy said.
Be quiet.
He kept his eyes on the thief. Goddamn you, he said.
Papa please dont kill the man.
The thief’s eyes swung wildly. The boy was crying.
Come on, man. I done what you said. Listen to the boy.
Take your clothes off.
What?
Take them off. Every goddamned stitch.
Come on. Dont do this.
I’ll kill you where you stand.
Dont do this, man.
I wont tell you again.
All right. All right. Just take it easy.
He stripped slowly and piled his vile rags in the road.
The shoes.
Come on, man.
The shoes.
The thief looked at the boy. The boy had turned away and put his hands over his ears. Okay, he said. Okay. He sat naked in the road and began to unlace the rotting pieces of leather laced to his feet. Then he stood up, holding them in one hand.
Put them in the cart.
He stepped forward and placed the shoes on top of the blankets and stepped back. Standing there raw and naked, filthy, starving. Covering himself with his hand. He was already shivering.
Put the clothes in.
He bent and scooped up the rags in his arms and piled them on top of the shoes. He stood there holding himself. Dont do this, man.
You didnt mind doing it to us.
I’m begging you.
Papa, the boy said.
Come on. Listen to the kid.
You tried to kill us.
I’m starving, man. You’d have done the same.
You took everything.
Come on, man. I’ll die.
I’m going to leave you the way you left us.
Come on. I’m begging you.
He pulled the cart back and swung it around and put the
pistol on top and looked at the boy. Let’s go, he said. And they set out along the road south with the boy crying and looking back at the nude and slatlike creature standing there in the road shivering and hugging himself. Oh Papa, he sobbed.
Stop it.
I cant stop it.
What do you think would have happened to us if we hadnt caught him? Just stop it.
I’m trying.
When they got to the curve in the road the man was still standing there. There was no place for him to go. The boy kept looking back and when he could no longer see him he stopped and then he just sat down in the road sobbing. The man pulled up and stood looking at him. He dug their shoes out of the cart and sat down and began to take the wrappings off the boy’s feet. You have to stop crying, he said.
I cant.
He put on their shoes and then stood and walked back up the road but he couldnt see the thief. He came back and stood over the boy. He’s gone, he said. Come on.
He’s not gone, the boy said. He looked up. His face streaked with soot. He’s not.
What do you want to do?
Just help him, Papa. Just help him.
The man looked back up the road.
He was just hungry, Papa. He’s going to die.
He’s going to die anyway.
He’s so scared, Papa.
The man squatted and looked at him. I’m scared, he said. Do you understand? I’m scared.
The boy didnt answer. He just sat there with his head bowed, sobbing.
You’re not the one who has to worry about everything.
The boy said something but he couldnt understand him. What? he said.
He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.
They wheeled the tottering cart back up the road and stood there in the cold and the gathering dark and called but no one came.
He’s afraid to answer, Papa.
Is this where we stopped?
I dont know. I think so.
They went up the road calling out in the empty dusk, their voices lost over the darkening shorelands. They stopped and stood with their hands cupped to their mouths, hallooing mindlessly into the waste. Finally he piled the man’s shoes and clothes in the road. He put a rock on top of them. We have to go, he said. We have to go.
They made a dry camp with no fire. He sorted out cans for their supper and warmed them over the gas burner and they ate and the boy said nothing. The man tried to see his face in the blue light from the burner. I wasnt going to kill him, he said. But the boy didnt answer. They rolled themselves in the blankets and lay there in the dark. He thought he could hear the sea but perhaps it was just the wind. He could tell by his breathing that the boy was awake and after a while the boy said: But we did kill him.
In the morning they ate and set out. The cart was so loaded it was hard to push and one of the wheels was giving out. The road bent its way along the coast, dead sheaves of saltgrass overhanging the pavement. The leadcolored sea shifting in the distance. The silence. He woke that night with the dull carbon light of the crossing moon beyond the murk making the shapes of the trees almost visible and he turned away coughing. Smell of rain out there. The boy was awake. You have to talk to me, he said.
I’m trying.
I’m sorry I woke you.
It’s okay.
He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and so without description. Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.
He went through the cans again one by one, holding them in his hand and squeezing them like a man checking for ripeness at a fruitstand. He sorted out two he thought questionable and packed away the rest and packed the cart and they set out upon the road again. In three days they came to a small port town and they hid the cart in a garage behind a house and piled old boxes over it and then sat in the house to see if anyone would come. No one did. He looked through the cabinets but there was nothing there. He needed vitamin D for the boy or he was going to get rickets. He stood at the sink and looked out down the driveway. Light the color of washwater congealing in the dirty panes of glass. The boy sat slumped at the table with his head in his arms.
They walked through the town and down to the docks. They saw no one. He had the pistol in the pocket of his coat and he carried the flaregun in his hand. They walked out on the pier, the rough boards dark with tar and fastened down with spikes to the timbers underneath. Wooden bollards. Faint smell of salt and creosote coming in off the bay. On the far shore a row of warehouses and the shape of a tanker red with rust. A tall gantry crane against the sullen sky. There’s no one here, he said. The boy didnt answer.
They wheeled the cart through the back streets and across the railroad tracks and came into the main road again at the far edge of the town. As they passed the last of the sad wooden buildings something whistled past his head and clattered off the street and broke up against the wall of the block building on the other side. He grabbed the boy and fell on top of him and grabbed the cart to pull it to them. It tipped and fell over spilling the tarp and blankets into the street. In an upper window of the house he could see a man drawing a bow on them and he pushed the boy’s head down and tried to cover him with his body. He heard the dull thwang of the bowstring and felt a sharp hot pain in his leg. Oh you bastard, he said. You bastard. He clawed the blankets to one side and lunged and grabbed the flaregun and raised up and cocked it and rested his arm on the side of the cart. The boy was clinging to him. When the man stepped back into the frame of the window to draw the bow again he fired. The flare went rocketing up toward the window in a long white arc and then they could hear the man screaming. He grabbed the boy and pushed him down and dragged the blankets over the top of him. Dont move, he said. Dont move and dont look. He pulled the blankets out into the street looking for the case for the flarepistol. It finally slid out of the cart and he snatched it up and opened it and took out the shells and reloaded the pistol and breeched it shut and put the rest of the loads in his pocket. Stay just like you are, he whispered. He patted the boy through the blankets and rose and ran limping across the street.
He entered the house through the back door with the flaregun leveled at his waist. The house was stripped out to the wall studs. He stepped through into the livingroom and stood at the stair landing. He listened for movement in the upper rooms. He looked out the front window to where the cart lay in the street and then he went up the stairs.
A woman was sitting in the corner holding the man. She’d taken off her coat to cover him. As soon as she saw him she began to curse him. The flare had burned out in the floor leaving a patch of white ash and there was a faint smell of burnt wood in the room. He crossed the room and looked out the window. The woman’s eyes followed him. Scrawny, lank gray hair.
Who else is up here?
She didnt answer. He stepped past her and went through the rooms. His leg was bleeding badly. He could feel his trousers sticking to the skin. He went back into the front room. Where’s the bow? he said.
I dont have it.
Where is it?
I dont know.
They left you here, didnt they?
I left myself here.
He turned and went limping down the stairs and opened the front door and went out into the street backward watching the house. When he got to the cart he pulled i
t upright and piled their things back in. Stay close, he whispered. Stay close.
They put up in a store building at the end of the town. He wheeled the cart through and into a room at the rear and shut the door and pushed the cart against it sideways. He dug out the burner and the tank of gas and lit the burner and set it in the floor and then he unbuckled his belt and took off the bloodstained trousers. The boy watched. The arrow had cut a gash just above his knee about three inches long. It was still bleeding and his whole upper leg was discolored and he could see that the cut was deep. Some homemade broadhead beaten out of strapiron, an old spoon, God knows what. He looked at the boy. See if you can find the first-aid kit, he said.
The boy didnt move.
Get the first-aid kit, damn it. Dont just sit there.
He jumped up and went to the door and began digging under the tarp and the blankets piled in the cart. He came back with the kit and gave it to the man and the man took it without comment and set it in the concrete floor in front of him and unsnapped the catches and opened it. He reached and turned up the burner for the light. Bring me the water bottle, he said. The boy brought the bottle and the man unscrewed the lid and poured water over the wound and held it shut between his fingers while he wiped away the blood. He swabbed the wound with disinfectant and opened a plastic envelope with his teeth and took out a small hooked suture needle and a coil of silk thread and sat holding the silk to the light while he threaded it through the needle’s eye. He took a clamp from the kit and caught the needle in the jaws and locked them and set about suturing the wound. He worked quickly and he took no great pains about it. The boy was crouching in the floor. He looked at him and he bent to the sutures again. You dont have to watch, he said.