Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child
sleeping beside him.

Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.

His hand rose and fell softly
with each precious breath.

He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes
and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.

He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes
and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.

In the dream from which he'd
wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand.

Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some
granitic beast.

Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some
granitic beast.

Tolling in the silence the minutes of
the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease.

Until they stood in a great stone
room where lay a black and ancient lake.

And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth
from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of
spiders.

And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth
from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of
spiders.

It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see.

Crouching
there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it.

Crouching
there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it.

The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell.

The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell.

The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell.

It swung its head from side to side
and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

It swung its head from side to side
and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and
squatted and studied the country to the south.

With the first gray light he rose and left the boy sleeping and walked out to the road and
squatted and studied the country to the south.

Barren, silent, godless.

He hadnt kept a calendar for years.

There'd be no
surviving another winter here.

When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below.

The segments of road down there among the dead trees.

Any trace of standing smoke.

Then he
just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land.

Then he
just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land.

He knew
only that the child was his warrant.

In the knapsacks were essential things.

In case they had to abandon the cart and make a run
for it.

Clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome motorcycle mirror that he used to watch the road
behind them.

He shifted the pack higher on his shoulders and looked out over the wasted country.

The
road was empty.

Below in the little valley the still gray serpentine of a river.

Motionless and precise.

Along the shore a burden of dead reeds.

Then they set out
along the blacktop in the gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.

They crossed the river by an old concrete bridge and a few miles on they came upon a
roadside gas station.

The weeds they forded fell to dust about them.

The cap was gone and the man dropped to his elbows to smell the pipe
but the odor of gas was only a rumor, faint and stale.

The cap was gone and the man dropped to his elbows to smell the pipe
but the odor of gas was only a rumor, faint and stale.

The windows intact.

The door to the service bay
was open and he went in.

Some old automotive manuals, swollen and sodden.

Some old automotive manuals, swollen and sodden.

Some old automotive manuals, swollen and sodden.

The linoleum was stained and curling from the leaking roof.

He pushed the cart off the road and tilted it over where it could not be seen and they
left their packs and went back to the station.

Then they sat in the floor decanting them of
their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they
had almost a half quart of motor oil.

Then they sat in the floor decanting them of
their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they
had almost a half quart of motor oil.

Then they sat in the floor decanting them of
their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they
had almost a half quart of motor oil.

Then they sat in the floor decanting them of
their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they
had almost a half quart of motor oil.

Then they sat in the floor decanting them of
their dregs one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan until at the end they
had almost a half quart of motor oil.

Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray
dawns.

Oil for their little slutlamp to light the long gray dusks, the long gray
dawns.

On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn.

Charred and
limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side.

Charred and
limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side.

Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands
of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind.

A burned house in a
clearing and beyond that a reach of meadow-lands stark and gray and a raw red mudbank where a
roadworks lay abandoned.

A burned house in a
clearing and beyond that a reach of meadow-lands stark and gray and a raw red mudbank where a
roadworks lay abandoned.

Farther along were billboards advertising motels.

Everything as it once had
been save faded and weathered.

He got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the road
and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal
drawing sketched across the waste.

He got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the road
and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal
drawing sketched across the waste.

The boy leaned on the cart and adjusted the wheel.

They left the cart in a gully covered with the tarp and made their way up the slope through
the dark poles of the standing trees to where he'd seen a running ledge of rock and they sat under the
rock overhang and watched the gray sheets of rain blow across the valley.

They sat
huddled together wrapped each in a blanket over their coats and after a while the rain stopped and there
was just the dripping in the woods.

The gray shape of the
city vanished in the night's onset like an apparition and he lit the little lamp and set it back out of the
wind.

The gray shape of the
city vanished in the night's onset like an apparition and he lit the little lamp and set it back out of the
wind.

Then they walked out to the road and he took the boy's hand and they went to the top of the hill
where the road crested and where they could see out over the darkening country to the south, standing
there in the wind, wrapped in their blankets, watching for any sign of a fire or a lamp.

The lamp in the rocks on the side of the hill was little more than a mote of light and after a
while they walked back.

He'd brought the boy's book but the boy was too tired for
reading.

His face
in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian.

His face
in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian.

The
ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void.

The
ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void.

The
ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void.

Carried forth and
scattered and carried forth again.

Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief.

Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief.

Slow and half opaque.

He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time.

Are you there? he whispered.

Have you a neck by which to throttle you?

Fossil tracks in the dried
sludge.

Fossil tracks in the dried
sludge.

A corpse in a doorway dried to leather.

Grimacing at the day.

The old man's feet in their black kid shoes braced against the uprights.

He turned to take a sight on the far
shore, cradling the oarhandles, taking the pipe from his mouth to wipe his chin with the back of his
hand.

The edge of the lake a riprap of twisted stumps, gray and weathered, the windfall trees of a
hurricane years past.

The edge of the lake a riprap of twisted stumps, gray and weathered, the windfall trees of a
hurricane years past.

His
uncle turned the boat and shipped the oars and they drifted over the sandy shallows until the transom
grated in the sand.

His
uncle turned the boat and shipped the oars and they drifted over the sandy shallows until the transom
grated in the sand.

His
uncle turned the boat and shipped the oars and they drifted over the sandy shallows until the transom
grated in the sand.

A dead perch lolling belly up in the clear water.

A dead perch lolling belly up in the clear water.

They left their shoes
on the warm painted boards and dragged the boat up onto the beach and set out the anchor at the end of
its rope.

A lardcan poured with concrete with an eyebolt in the center.

He
picked one out and they turned it over, using the roots for leverage, until they got it half floating in the
water.

Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks.

This was the
perfect day of his childhood.

They bore on south in the days and weeks to follow.

Solitary and dogged.

At times they could see stretches of the interstate highway below them
through the bare stands of secondgrowth timber.

Just beyond the high gap in
the mountains they stood and looked out over the great gulf to the south where the country as far as
they could see was burned away, the blackened shapes of rock standing out of the shoals of ash and
billows of ash rising up and blowing downcountry through the waste.

Just beyond the high gap in
the mountains they stood and looked out over the great gulf to the south where the country as far as
they could see was burned away, the blackened shapes of rock standing out of the shoals of ash and
billows of ash rising up and blowing downcountry through the waste.

Just beyond the high gap in
the mountains they stood and looked out over the great gulf to the south where the country as far as
they could see was burned away, the blackened shapes of rock standing out of the shoals of ash and
billows of ash rising up and blowing downcountry through the waste.

Just beyond the high gap in
the mountains they stood and looked out over the great gulf to the south where the country as far as
they could see was burned away, the blackened shapes of rock standing out of the shoals of ash and
billows of ash rising up and blowing downcountry through the waste.

They were days fording that cauterized terrain.

They were days fording that cauterized terrain.

The boy had found some crayons and
painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining.

The boy had found some crayons and
painted his facemask with fangs and he trudged on uncomplaining.

Where all was burnt to ash before them no fires were to
be had and the nights were long and dark and cold beyond anything they'd yet encountered.

He held the boy shivering against him and counted each frail breath
in the blackness.

He woke to the sound of distant thunder and sat up.

The faint light all about, quivering and
sourceless, refracted in the rain of drifting soot.

If they got wet they would probably die.

The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable.

He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the
vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.

He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the
vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.

An old chronicle.

No fall but preceded by a declination.

Something nameless in
the night, lode or matrix.

Something nameless in
the night, lode or matrix.

To which he and the stars were common satellite.

Like the great pendulum in
its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows
nothing and yet know it must.

Like the great pendulum in
its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows
nothing and yet know it must.

Like the great pendulum in
its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows
nothing and yet know it must.

Like the great pendulum in
its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows
nothing and yet know it must.

The road beyond ran along the crest of a ridge
where the barren woodland fell away on every side.

A
single gray flake sifting down.

He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of

He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of

He thought the bloodcults must have all consumed one
another.

No road-agents, no marauders.

No road-agents, no marauders.

They collected some old boxes and built a fire in the floor and he found some tools and
emptied out the cart and sat working on the wheel.

He pulled the bolt and bored out the collet with a
hand drill and resleeved it with a section of pipe he'd cut to length with a hacksaw.

He pulled the bolt and bored out the collet with a
hand drill and resleeved it with a section of pipe he'd cut to length with a hacksaw.

He pulled the bolt and bored out the collet with a
hand drill and resleeved it with a section of pipe he'd cut to length with a hacksaw.

Desolate country.

Inside the barn three bodies hanging from the rafters, dried and dusty among the wan
slats of light.

Mostly he worried about their shoes.

In an old batboard
smokehouse they found a ham gambreled up in a high corner.

It looked like something fetched from a
tomb, so dried and drawn.

They fried it that night over their fire, thick slices of it, and put the slices to simmer with a tin of beans.

In dreams his pale bride came to him out of a green and leafy canopy.

He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril
and all else was the call of languor and of death.

He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril
and all else was the call of languor and of death.

He dreamt of
walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching
blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds.

Lying there in the dark with
the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth.

Lying there in the dark with
the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth.

Lying there in the dark with
the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth.

Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it
slowly fading from memory.

Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it
slowly fading from memory.

She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of
her summer dress.

He fashioned sweeps from two old brooms he'd found and wired them to the cart to clear
the limbs from the road in front of the wheels and he put the boy in the basket and stood on the rear rail
like a dogmusher and they set off down the hills, guiding the cart on the curves with their bodies in the
manner of bobsledders.

He fashioned sweeps from two old brooms he'd found and wired them to the cart to clear
the limbs from the road in front of the wheels and he put the boy in the basket and stood on the rear rail
like a dogmusher and they set off down the hills, guiding the cart on the curves with their bodies in the
manner of bobsledders.

Cold and gray and heavy in the scavenged bowl of the
countryside.

The dam used
the water that ran through it to turn big fans called turbines that would generate electricity.

In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long
blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes
and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the
still autumn air.

In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long
blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes
and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the
still autumn air.

In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long
blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes
and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the
still autumn air.

Their feet were wet and cold
and their shoes were being ruined.

Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to
the day.

Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to
the day.

Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to
the day.

Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to
the day.

The weather lifted and the cold and they came at last into the broad lowland river valley,
the pieced farmland still visible, everything dead to the root along the barren bottomlands.

The weather lifted and the cold and they came at last into the broad lowland river valley,
the pieced farmland still visible, everything dead to the root along the barren bottomlands.

A log barn in a field
with an advertisement in faded ten-foot letters across the roofslope.

The roadside hedges were gone to rows of black and twisted brambles.

He
left the boy standing in the road holding the pistol while he climbed an old set of limestone steps and
walked down the porch of the farmhouse shading his eyes and peering in the windows.

There was an antique pumporgan
in the corner.

He stripped back the beds and came away with two good woolen blankets and went back down
the stairs.

Someone before him had not trusted them and in the end neither did he and he walked
out with the blankets over his shoulder and they set off along the road again.

On the outskirts of the city they came to a supermarket.

They left the cart in the lot and walked the littered aisles.

In the produce section in the
bottom of the bins they found a few ancient runner beans and what looked to have once been apricots,
long dried to wrinkled effigies of themselves.

In the alleyway behind the store a few shopping carts, all badly rusted.

By the door were two softdrink
machines that had been tilted over into the floor and opened with a prybar.

He sat and ran his hand around in the works of the gutted machines and in the second one it closed
over a cold metal cylinder.

He withdrew his hand slowly and sat looking at a Coca Cola.

He leaned his nose to
the slight fizz coming from the can and then handed it to the boy.

It's because I wont ever get to drink another one, isnt it?

The long concrete sweeps of the
interstate exchanges like the ruins of a vast funhouse against the distant murk.

The long concrete sweeps of the
interstate exchanges like the ruins of a vast funhouse against the distant murk.

The flesh cloven
along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires.

The flesh cloven
along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires.

Shriveled and drawn like latterday
bogfolk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth.

He kept constant watch behind him in the mirror.

The day following some few miles south of the city at a bend in the road and half lost in the
dead brambles they came upon an old frame house with chimneys and gables and a stone wall.

The rotted screening from the
back porch lay on the concrete terrace.

I'm scared.

The pine paneling was gone
from the walls leaving just the furring strips.

A tangle
of dead lilac.

Watched
shapes claiming him he could not see.

In the livingroom the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile.

In the livingroom the bones of a small animal dismembered and placed in a pile.

Small cones of damp plaster standing in the floor.

It was an earthquake.

In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing.

In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing.

Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators.

Their
barrows heaped with shoddy.

Towing wagons or carts.

Creedless shells
of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland.

The frailty of everything revealed at
last.

Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night.

The last instance of a thing takes the
class with it.

The curious news.

The quaint concerns.

The quaint concerns.

Already beginning to ferment.

He said that everything depended on reaching the coast, yet waking in
the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it.

He said that everything depended on reaching the coast, yet waking in
the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it.

He said that everything depended on reaching the coast, yet waking in
the night he knew that all of this was empty and no substance to it.

They passed through the ruins of a resort town and took the road south.

The fireblackened boulders like the shapes of bears on the starkly wooded slopes.

Where
once he'd watched trout swaying in the current, tracking their perfect shadows on the stones beneath.

Where
once he'd watched trout swaying in the current, tracking their perfect shadows on the stones beneath.

They camped against a boulder and he made a shelter of poles with the tarp.

They'd
piled a mat of dead hemlock boughs over the snow and they sat wrapped in their blankets watching the
fire and drinking the last of the cocoa scavenged weeks before.

He dozed in the wonderful warmth.

He watched him stoke the flames.

He watched him stoke the flames.

Everything was alight.

A
forest fire was making its way along the tinder-box ridges above them, flaring and shimmering against
the overcast like the northern lights.

Recite a litany.

Recite a litany.

He'd no notion how far the
summit might be.

He'd no notion how far the
summit might be.

The dream bore the look of sacrifice but he
thought differently.

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Dark of the invisible moon.

By day the banished
sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

By day the banished
sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.

People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn half immolate and smoking in their clothes.

Like
failed sectarian suicides.

Within a year there were fires on the ridges
and deranged chanting.

The screams of the murdered.

By day the dead impaled on spikes along the
road.

He thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was
more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.

It didnt snow again but the snow in the road was six inches deep and
pushing the cart up those grades was exhausting work.

It didnt snow again but the snow in the road was six inches deep and
pushing the cart up those grades was exhausting work.

At every curve it looked as though the pass lay just ahead and then one evening he stopped
and looked all about and he recognized it.

The empty parking lot at the
overlook.

You promised not to do that, the boy said.

Still they came to trees across the road where they were forced to unload the cart and carry
everything over the trunks and then repack it all on the far side.

They camped in a bench of land on the far side of a frozen roadside creek.

I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers.

I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers.

I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers.

It took four more days to come down out of the snow and even then there were patches of
snow in certain bends of the road and the road was black and wet from the up-country runoff even
beyond that.

They came out along the rim of a deep gorge and far down in the darkness a river.

High rock bluffs on the far side of the canyon with thin black trees clinging to the
escarpment.

High rock bluffs on the far side of the canyon with thin black trees clinging to the
escarpment.

High rock bluffs on the far side of the canyon with thin black trees clinging to the
escarpment.

They left the cart in a parking area and walked out through the woods.

Polished round and smooth as marbles or lozenges of stone veined and striped.

Polished round and smooth as marbles or lozenges of stone veined and striped.

They stood side by
side calling to each other over the din.

He dove
headlong and came up gasping and turned and stood, beating his arms.

They walked out along
the rocks to where the river seemed to end in space and he held the boy while he ventured out to the
last ledge of rock.

The river went sucking over the rim and fell straight down into the pool below.

He stooped and cleared it away.

A small colony of them, shrunken,
dried and wrinkled.

He picked one and held it up and sniffed it.

They pulled the morels from the ground, small alien-looking things that he piled in the
hood of the boy's parka.

They ate the little mushrooms together with the beans and drank tea and had tinned pears
for their desert.

He banked the fire against the seam of rock where he'd built it and he strung the tarp
behind them to reflect the heat and they sat warm in their refuge while he told the boy stories.

He banked the fire against the seam of rock where he'd built it and he strung the tarp
behind them to reflect the heat and they sat warm in their refuge while he told the boy stories.

He banked the fire against the seam of rock where he'd built it and he strung the tarp
behind them to reflect the heat and they sat warm in their refuge while he told the boy stories.

Old
stories of courage and justice as he remembered them until the boy was asleep in his blankets and then
he stoked the fire and lay down warm and full and listened to the low thunder of the falls beyond them
in that dark and threadbare wood.

Old
stories of courage and justice as he remembered them until the boy was asleep in his blankets and then
he stoked the fire and lay down warm and full and listened to the low thunder of the falls beyond them
in that dark and threadbare wood.

Old
stories of courage and justice as he remembered them until the boy was asleep in his blankets and then
he stoked the fire and lay down warm and full and listened to the low thunder of the falls beyond them
in that dark and threadbare wood.

He stood
watching the river where it swung loping into a pool and curled and eddied.

And the waterfall is an attraction.

The tattered oilcompany roadmap had once been taped together but now it was just sorted
into leaves and numbered with crayon in the corners for their assembly.

The tattered oilcompany roadmap had once been taped together but now it was just sorted
into leaves and numbered with crayon in the corners for their assembly.

He sorted through the limp pages and spread out those that answered to their location.

He sorted through the limp pages and spread out those that answered to their location.

When the bridge came in sight below them there was a tractor-trailer jackknifed sideways
across it and wedged into the buckled iron railings.

The bridge spanned the river above a rapids.

The bridge spanned the river above a rapids.

The truck had been there for years, the tires flat and crumpled under the rims.

There was a raw damp mattress on the bunk and a small refrigerator with the door standing open.

He took off his parka and laid it across the top of the cart and climbed on to the fender of
the tractor and on to the hood and clambered up over the windscreen to the roof of the cab.

He shielded the glare of it with his hand and when he did he
could see almost to the rear of the box.

He shielded the glare of it with his hand and when he did he
could see almost to the rear of the box.

Sprawled in every attitude.

The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out
leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose.

The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out
leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose.

In the night a storm broke in the mountains above them and came
cannonading downcountry cracking and booming and the stark gray world appeared again and again
out of the night in the shrouded flare of the lightning.

A brief
rattle of hail and then the slow cold rain.

Sited there in the darkness
the frail blue shape of it looked like the pitch of some last venture at the edge of the world.

Sited there in the darkness
the frail blue shape of it looked like the pitch of some last venture at the edge of the world.

Something
all but unaccountable.

In the draws
the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like stands of
heathen candles.

Someone had come out of the woods in the night and
continued down the melted roadway.

They came upon him shuffling along the road before them, dragging one leg slightly and
stopping from time to time to stand stooped and uncertain before setting out again.

He was as
burntlooking as the country, his clothing scorched and black.

His shoes were bound up with wire and coated with roadtar and he sat there in
silence, bent over in his rags.

The standing water in the roadside ditches
black with the runoff.

They crossed a river by a concrete bridge where
skeins of ash and slurry moved slowly in the current.

Then one day
he sat by the roadside and took it out and went through the contents.

His
driver's license.

He
pitched the sweatblackened piece of leather into the woods and sat holding the photograph.

Trekking the dried floor of a mineral sea where it lay cracked and broken like a
fallen plate.

Trekking the dried floor of a mineral sea where it lay cracked and broken like a
fallen plate.

Paths of feral fire in the coagulate sands.

Paths of feral fire in the coagulate sands.

The figures faded in the distance.

A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.

A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.

She was standing in the doorway in her nightwear, clutching the jamb, cradling her belly in
one hand.

Once in those early years he'd wakened in a barren wood and lay listening to flocks of
migratory birds overhead in that bitter dark.

Once in those early years he'd wakened in a barren wood and lay listening to flocks of
migratory birds overhead in that bitter dark.

Once in those early years he'd wakened in a barren wood and lay listening to flocks of
migratory birds overhead in that bitter dark.

Their half muted crankings miles above where they circled
the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl.

Their half muted crankings miles above where they circled
the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl.

He'd a deck of cards he found in a bureau drawer in a house and the cards were worn and
spindled and the two of clubs was missing but still they played sometimes by firelight wrapped in their
blankets.

Some version of Whist.

Abnormal Fescue or Catbarf.

The child had his own fantasies.

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common
provenance in pain.

All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common
provenance in pain.

Their birth in grief and ashes.

Following a stone wall in the dark, wrapped in his blanket, kneeling in the ashes like a
penitent.

We're survivors he told her across the flame of the lamp.

You cant protect us.

Holding it with a certain elegance, her other hand across her knees
where she'd drawn them up.

My heart was ripped out of me the night he was born so dont ask for
sorrow now.

I doubt it, but who knows.

The one thing I
can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself.

A
person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost.

Breathe it into
being and coax it along with words of love.

As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

You have no argument because there is none.

She would do it with a flake of
obsidian.

The edge an atom thick.

The hundred nights they'd sat up arguing the pros and cons of self destruction with
the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall.

Always so deliberate, hardly surprised by the most outlandish advents.

Always so deliberate, hardly surprised by the most outlandish advents.

Always so deliberate, hardly surprised by the most outlandish advents.

Always so deliberate, hardly surprised by the most outlandish advents.

A creation perfectly
evolved to meet its own end.

A creation perfectly
evolved to meet its own end.

The improbable appearance of the small crown of the
head.

The improbable appearance of the small crown of the
head.

Streaked with blood and lank black hair.

Beyond the window just the gathering cold, the fires on the horizon.

Beyond the window just the gathering cold, the fires on the horizon.

He held aloft the scrawny red body
so raw and naked and cut the cord with kitchen shears and wrapped his son in a towel.

They were all day on the long black road, stopping in the afternoon to eat sparingly from
their meager supplies.

They were all day on the long black road, stopping in the afternoon to eat sparingly from
their meager supplies.

Stained and filthy.

They could hear the thing
rattle and flap to a halt.

Lumbering and creaking like a ship.

The holes in it marked the progress of his
emaciation and the leather at one side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping the
blade of his knife.

The holes in it marked the progress of his
emaciation and the leather at one side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping the
blade of his knife.

He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a bird on
his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance.

Dressed in a pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo of some vanished enterprise
embroidered across the front of it.

Dressed in a pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo of some vanished enterprise
embroidered across the front of it.

Diesel fuel.

There's three fifty-five gallon drums in the bed.

Do you have ammunition for those guns?

Do I look like an imbecile to you?

He let go of the belt and it fell in the roadway with the gear hanging from it.

An
old canvas army pouch.

A leather sheath for a knife.

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.

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.

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.

He spoke into a blackness without depth or dimension.

He spoke into a blackness without depth or dimension.

He held the boy's hand as they stumbled through the woods.

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 he rose and walked out and cut a perimeter about their siwash camp
looking for sign but other than their own faint track through the ash he saw nothing.

A cleared plot of ground perhaps once a truckgarden.

No way to know how long they
might be willing to lie in ambush.

Then he handed the bottle back and the man drank and
screwed the cap back on and rummaged through the pack.

It was still lying there but it
had been plundered.

By the time they got to the bridge
there was scarcely light at all.

He was close to losing his temper with him and then he realized that
he was shaking his head in the dark.

He was close to losing his temper with him and then he realized that
he was shaking his head in the dark.

There
was wood everywhere, dead limbs and branches scattered over the ground.

He piled on more wood and bent and blew gently at the base of the little blaze and arranged the
wood with his hands, shaping the fire just so.

He piled on more wood and bent and blew gently at the base of the little blaze and arranged the
wood with his hands, shaping the fire just so.

He sat in the sand and inventoried the contents of the knapsack.

There were five small tins of food and he chose a can of sausages and one of corn and he
opened these with the little army can opener and set them at the edge of the fire and they sat watching
the labels char and curl.

They moved down the gravel to find fresh water and he
washed his hair again as well as he could and finally stopped because the boy was moaning with the
cold of it.

The man watched him that he not topple into the flames.

Evoke the
forms.

Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

The
shapes of the small tree-limbs burning incandescent orange in the coals.

Heavy
limestone blocks laid up without mortar.

He sat beside him and stroked his pale and tangled hair.

He sat beside him and stroked his pale and tangled hair.

Golden
chalice, good to house a god.

The reptilian calculations in those cold and shifting eyes.

They stood listening in the utter silence.

They used to play quoits in the
road with four big steel washers they'd found in a hardware store but these were gone with everything
else.

That night they camped in a ravine and built a fire against a small stone bluff and ate their last tin
of food.

He'd put it by because it was the boy's favorite, pork and beans.

They watched it bubble slowly
in the coals and he retrieved the tin with the pliers and they ate in silence.

I should have been more careful, he said.

I was appointed to do that by God.

He was lost in concentration.

The man thought he seemed
some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and
village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.

The man thought he seemed
some sad and solitary changeling child announcing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and
village who does not know that behind him the players have all been carried off by wolves.

The boy handed the glasses back and he refocused them.

If it's a commune they'll have
barricades.

We'll have to take a risk.

They left the cart in the woods and crossed a railroad track and came down a steep bank
through dead black ivy.

They went through the trash and rubble.

He scoured the
shelves looking for vitamins.

The boy was exhausted.

Scrolls of fallen wallpaper lying in the floor like ancient
documents.

Remnants of rotted hair on the pillow.

In the darkness and the silence he could see bits of light that appeared random on the night grid.

In the darkness and the silence he could see bits of light that appeared random on the night grid.

By the time it had
slacked a good part of the day was gone.

They left the coats and the blanket in the floor of the back seat
and went up the road to search through more of the houses.

They found some utensils and a few pieces of clothing.

He wrapped the few remaining in a paper and put them in the knapsack.

He was standing there crying when his father came
sprinting across the road and seized him by the arm.

I dont care, the boy said, sobbing.

He sat
studying the twisted matrix of routes in red and black with his finger at the junction where he thought
that they might be.

In the evening they tramped out across a field trying to find a place where their fire would
not be seen.

Night overtook them on a muddy road.

He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair.

The world
shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities.

The world
shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities.

The world
shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities.

The names of things slowly following those things
into oblivion.

More fragile than he would have thought.

The sacred idiom shorn
of its referents and so of its reality.

The sacred idiom shorn
of its referents and so of its reality.

The sacred idiom shorn
of its referents and so of its reality.

Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat.

The trees in their ordered rows
gnarled and black and the fallen limbs thick on the ground.

Shapes of dried blood in the stubble grass and gray coils of viscera where the slain had been field-
dressed and hauled away.

Shapes of dried blood in the stubble grass and gray coils of viscera where the slain had been field-
dressed and hauled away.

The wall beyond held a frieze of human heads, all faced alike, dried and
caved with their taut grins and shrunken eyes.

They wore gold rings in their leather ears and in the wind
their sparse and ratty hair twisted about on their skulls.

The teeth in their sockets like dental molds, the
crude tattoos etched in some homebrewed woad faded in the beggared sunlight.

Spiders, swords,
targets.

Runic slogans, creeds misspelled.

Runic slogans, creeds misspelled.

Runic slogans, creeds misspelled.

Old scars with old motifs stitched along their
borders.

Old scars with old motifs stitched along their
borders.

Old scars with old motifs stitched along their
borders.

The heads not truncheoned shapeless had been flayed of their skins and the raw skulls painted
and signed across the forehead in a scrawl and one white bone skull had the plate sutures etched
carefully in ink like a blueprint for assembly.

The heads not truncheoned shapeless had been flayed of their skins and the raw skulls painted
and signed across the forehead in a scrawl and one white bone skull had the plate sutures etched
carefully in ink like a blueprint for assembly.

He walked along the wall passing
the masks in a last review and through a stile and on to where the boy was waiting.

He'd come to see a message in each such late history, a message and a warning, and so this
tableau of the slain and the devoured did prove to be.

He'd come to see a message in each such late history, a message and a warning, and so this
tableau of the slain and the devoured did prove to be.

He'd come to see a message in each such late history, a message and a warning, and so this
tableau of the slain and the devoured did prove to be.

He'd come to see a message in each such late history, a message and a warning, and so this
tableau of the slain and the devoured did prove to be.

He woke in the morning and turned over in the
blanket and looked back down the road through the trees the way they'd come in time to see the
marchers appear four abreast.

Dressed in clothing of every description, all wearing red scarves at their
necks.

Some of the pipes were threaded through with
lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon.

Some of the pipes were threaded through with
lengths of chain fitted at their ends with every manner of bludgeon.

They clanked past, marching with a
swaying gait like wind-up toys.

The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of
trucksprings in some crude forge up-country.

The phalanx following carried spears or lances tasseled with ribbons, the long blades hammered out of
trucksprings in some crude forge up-country.

Behind them came wagons
drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in
number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the
cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

Behind them came wagons
drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in
number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the
cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

Behind them came wagons
drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in
number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the
cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

Behind them came wagons
drawn by slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in
number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the
cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each.

They pulled the cart from the brush with which they'd covered it and he raised it up and
piled the blankets in and the coats and they pushed on out to the road and stood looking where the last
of that ragged horde seemed to hang like an afterimage in the disturbed air.

They pulled the cart from the brush with which they'd covered it and he raised it up and
piled the blankets in and the coats and they pushed on out to the road and stood looking where the last
of that ragged horde seemed to hang like an afterimage in the disturbed air.

They stood watching the pale gray flakes sift
down out of the sullen murk.

A frail slush forming over the dark surface of the road.

They settled under a tree and piled the blankets and coats on the ground and he wrapped the
boy in one of the blankets and set to raking up the dead needles in a pile.

He floundered out through the trees
pulling up the fallen branches where they stuck out of the snow and by the time he had an armload and
made his way back to the lire it had burned down to a nest of quaking embers.

He fought back the rage.

Useless.

Even if it stopped snowing the road would be all but impassable.

He was half asleep when he heard a crashing in the woods.

The
dull bedlam dying in the distance.

He dug a tunnel under one of the fallen trees, scooping away the snow with his arms, his
frozen hands clawed inside his sleeves.

When day broke he pushed his way out of their den, the tarp heavy with snow.

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.

Concentrate, he said.

He struggled on a few more feet and then turned and looked back.

Taut face and hollow eyes.

Some sort
of wheeled vehicle.

Something with rubber tires by the narrow treadmarks.

He looked at the sky out of old habit but there was nothing to see.

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'd had no food and little sleep in five days and in this condition on the outskirts of a
small town they came upon a once grand house sited on a rise above the road.

The house was tall and stately with white doric columns across the front.

They approached slowly up the drive.

They stood in the yard
studying the facade.

The peeling
paint hanging in long dry sleavings down the columns and from the buckled soffits.

Chattel slaves had once trod those boards bearing food and drink on silver
trays.

Chattel slaves had once trod those boards bearing food and drink on silver
trays.

Chattel slaves had once trod those boards bearing food and drink on silver
trays.

It swung slowly in on its great brass
hinges.

Then they stepped into a broad foyer floored in a domino of black and
white marble tiles.

A broad staircase ascending.

The plaster ceiling was bellied in great swags and the yellowed dentil molding was bowed and
sprung from the upper walls.

To the left through the doorway stood a large walnut buffet in what must
have been the diningroom.

He would have ample time later to
think about that.

A fireplace with raw brick showing where the wooden mantel and surround had been pried away and
burned.

A fireplace with raw brick showing where the wooden mantel and surround had been pried away and
burned.

In the floor of this room was a door or hatch and it was locked with a large padlock made of
stacked steel plates.

In the yard was an old iron harrow propped up on piers of
stacked brick and someone had wedged between the rails of it a forty gallon castiron cauldron of the
kind once used for rendering hogs.

In the yard was an old iron harrow propped up on piers of
stacked brick and someone had wedged between the rails of it a forty gallon castiron cauldron of the
kind once used for rendering hogs.

We're starving.

He ducked his head and then flicked the lighter
and swung the flame out over the darkness like an offering.

An ungodly stench.

The smell
was hideous.

Then one by one they turned and blinked in the pitiful light.

He stood and got hold of the
door and swung it over and let it slam down and he turned to grab the boy but the boy had gotten up
and was doing his little dance of terror.

He had to concentrate to stifle the cough and at the
same time he was trying to listen.

Curse God and die.

Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?

Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?

In the night he heard hideous shrieks coming from the house and he tried to put his hands
over the boy's ears and after a while the screaming stopped.

Lying in wait and ringing the bell in the house for their companions to come.

He'd no idea what direction they might have taken and his fear was that they might circle
and return to the house.

In what direction did lost men veer?

Perhaps it changed with hemispheres.

His mind was betraying
him.

Phantoms not heard from in a thousand years rousing slowly from their sleep.

He asked to be carried, stumbling and slurring his words, and the
man did carry him and he fell asleep on his shoulder instantly.

He steadied himself and tried to see about him in the gray woods.

He walked to the top of a rise and crouched and watched the day accrue.

The chary dawn,
the cold illucid world.

It was desperation that had led him to such carelessness and he knew that
he could not do that again.

Coarse and dry and dusty.

They had to contain some nutrition.

Collapsing into the
room.

He took a broom from the corner
and poked about with the handle.

He held it to the light and looked at the rusty blade and put it
back.

He took out the old blade and laid it on the shelf and put in one of the new
ones and screwed the handle back together and retracted the blade and put the cutter in his pocket.

He had a piece of cloth that he intended to use to collect
seeds from the haybales but when he got to the barn he stopped and stood listening to the wind.

There was yet a lingering odor of cows in the
barn and he stood there thinking about cows and he realized they were extinct.

There was yet a lingering odor of cows in the
barn and he stood there thinking about cows and he realized they were extinct.

He dumped them in a
pile at the door of the barn and sat there and wrapped up his numb feet.

The dark serpentine of a dead
vine running down it like the track of some enterprise upon a graph.

A single bit of sediment coiling in the jar on some slow hydraulic axis.

A single bit of sediment coiling in the jar on some slow hydraulic axis.

It was as long a night as he could remember out of a great plenty of such nights.

He slept and woke and the rain slackened and
after a while it stopped.

Then they set out upon the road again, slumped and cowled and shivering in their rags like mendicant
friars sent forth to find their keep.

He stood at a rise in the road and tried to take his bearings in the twilight.

The billboards had been whited out with thin coats of paint in order to write on them and
through the paint could be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements for goods which no longer existed.

The billboards had been whited out with thin coats of paint in order to write on them and
through the paint could be seen a pale palimpsest of advertisements for goods which no longer existed.

The country was looted, ransacked, ravaged.

The country was looted, ransacked, ravaged.

Like a dawn before battle.

They squatted in a bleak wood and drank ditchwater strained through a rag.

Soggy volumes in a bookcase.

He walked out in the
gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world.

The cold relentless
circling of the intestate earth.

Darkness implacable.

The
crushing black vacuum of the universe.

Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

At the edge of a small town they sat in the cab of a truck to rest, staring out a glass washed
clean by the recent rains.

Dont pay any attention.

Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from.

He thought each memory recalled must do
some violence to its origins.

He thought each memory recalled must do
some violence to its origins.

He thought each memory recalled must do
some violence to its origins.

What you
alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

On the patio was a barbeque pit made from a fifty-five gallon drum slit
endways with a torch and set in a welded iron frame.

Morning glory.

He knew it couldnt have
gas in it yet when he tilted it with his foot and let it fall back again there was a gentle slosh.

He got the pliers out of
his coat pocket and extended the jaws and tried it.

He
tried to explain to the boy that there was no one buried in the yard but the boy just started crying.

He took a piece of flint from his pocket and got the pair of pliers and
struck the flint against the serrated jaw.

He found a box of batteries and dry cells and
went through them.

He found a box of batteries and dry cells and
went through them.

Mostly corroded and leaking an acid goo but some of them looked okay.

The man thought he had probably not fully committed himself to any of this.

A stainless steel basin and sponges and bars of soap.

In the
corner a chemical toilet.

There were vent pipes in the walls covered with wire mesh and there were
drains in the floor.

The
vague gray light was in the west.

He lowered
the door and secured it again and climbed back down and sat on the bunk.

Finally he rose and
went to the table and hooked up the little two burner gas stove and lit it and got out a frying pan and a
kettle and opened the plastic box of kitchen implements.

He pointed with the spatula toward the low steel door.

It wasnt
much of a ruse but it was better than nothing.

While the boy slept he sat on the bunk and by the light of
the lantern he whittled fake bullets from a treebranch with his knife, fitting them carefully into the
empty bores of the cylinder and then whittling again.

The primers would probably fit if he
could get them out without ruining them.

He got up and
made a last tour of the stores.

Then he turned down the lamp until the flame puttered out and he kissed
the boy and crawled into the other bunk under the clean blankets and gazed one more time at this tiny
paradise trembling in the orange light from the heater and then he fell asleep.

Then he turned down the lamp until the flame puttered out and he kissed
the boy and crawled into the other bunk under the clean blankets and gazed one more time at this tiny
paradise trembling in the orange light from the heater and then he fell asleep.

Then he turned down the lamp until the flame puttered out and he kissed
the boy and crawled into the other bunk under the clean blankets and gazed one more time at this tiny
paradise trembling in the orange light from the heater and then he fell asleep.

The charred meat and bones under the damp ash might have been anonymous save for the
shapes of the skulls.

Well, I dont think we're likely to meet any good guys on the road.

To be
cautious.

They ate a sumptuous meal by candlelight.

He'd found four quarts of bonded whiskey still in the paper bags in which they'd
been purchased and he drank a little of it in a glass with water.

He'd found four quarts of bonded whiskey still in the paper bags in which they'd
been purchased and he drank a little of it in a glass with water.

They ate peaches and cream over biscuits for dessert and drank
coffee.

The yard was already flooded and
the rain was slashing down.

He thought
that they'd been crouching by the side of his cot as he slept and then had skulked away on his
awakening.

A being from a planet that no longer existed.

The tales of which were suspect.

He unscrewed the bottom panel and he removed
the burner assembly and disconnected the two burners with a small crescent wrench.

He unscrewed the bottom panel and he removed
the burner assembly and disconnected the two burners with a small crescent wrench.

He unscrewed the bottom panel and he removed
the burner assembly and disconnected the two burners with a small crescent wrench.

He unscrewed the bottom panel and he removed
the burner assembly and disconnected the two burners with a small crescent wrench.

He connected the hose from the tank and held the little potmetal burner up in his hand, small
and lightweight.

He connected the hose from the tank and held the little potmetal burner up in his hand, small
and lightweight.

He'd planned to leave but the rain was justification
enough to stay.

They sorted through the stores and set out what they could take, making of it a measured cube in the
corner of the shelter.

They sorted through the stores and set out what they could take, making of it a measured cube in the
corner of the shelter.

By dark the rain had ceased and they
opened the hatch and began to carry boxes and parcels and plastic bags across the wet yard to the shed
and to pack the cart.

The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark of the yard like a grave yawning at
judgment day in some old apocalyptic painting.

The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark of the yard like a grave yawning at
judgment day in some old apocalyptic painting.

The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark of the yard like a grave yawning at
judgment day in some old apocalyptic painting.

Sketched upon the pall of soot downstream the
outline of a burnt city like a black paper scrim.

What are our long term goals? he said.

It could be a decoy.

When he saw them he
veered to the side of the road and turned and stood warily.

He had a filthy towel tied under his jaw as if
he suffered from toothache and even by their new world standards he smelled terrible.

He had a filthy towel tied under his jaw as if
he suffered from toothache and even by their new world standards he smelled terrible.

He had no shoes at all and his feet were wrapped in rags and cardboard tied with green
twine and any number of layers of vile clothing showed through the tears and holes in it.

He had no shoes at all and his feet were wrapped in rags and cardboard tied with green
twine and any number of layers of vile clothing showed through the tears and holes in it.

The boy gestured at him with the tin.

He made tipping motions with his hands.

It doesnt mean we negotiate another deal tomorrow.

He didnt weigh a hundred
pounds.

He nodded and reached out with his cane and tapped tentatively at the road.

They bivouacked in the woods much nearer to the road than he would have liked.

He had to
drag the cart while the boy steered from behind and they built a fire for the old man to warm himself
though he didnt much like that either.

Anyway, it's foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these.

It wouldnt make any difference.

Where men cant
live gods fare no better.

He knelt in the dry leaves and ash with the blanket wrapped
about his shoulders and after a while the coughing began to subside.

He
tried both valves again in their combinations.

They ate a cold supper of cornbread and beans and franks from a tin.

They plodded on, thin and filthy as street addicts.

Cowled in their blankets against the cold
and their breath smoking, shuffling through the black and silky drifts.

The land was gullied and eroded and barren.

All of it shadowless and without feature.

The road
descended through a jungle of dead kudzu.

A marsh where the dead reeds lay over the water.

The alien sun commencing its
cold transit.

The alien sun commencing its
cold transit.

They pushed into the cab and he blew away the ash
from the engineer's seat and put the boy at the controls.

They pushed into the cab and he blew away the ash
from the engineer's seat and put the boy at the controls.

The controls were very simple.

After a while they just looked out through the silted glass to where the
track curved away in the waste of weeds.

That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity and that no train would ever run
again.

That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity and that no train would ever run
again.

The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea
floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep
canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.

The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea
floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep
canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.

He'd pored over maps as a child, keeping one finger on the town where he lived.

Expensive electronic equipment sat unmolested on the shelves.

Expensive electronic equipment sat unmolested on the shelves.

Sucking out of an iron culvert into a pool.

Emaciated, clothed in rags.

One wheel on the cart had
developed a periodic squeak but there was nothing to be done about it.

He'd come down with a fever and they lay in the woods like fugitives.

Kin long dead washed up and cast fey
sidewise looks upon him.

Kin long dead washed up and cast fey
sidewise looks upon him.

He'd not have thought the value of the
smallest thing predicated on a world to come.

He'd not have thought the value of the
smallest thing predicated on a world to come.

That the space which these things
occupied was itself an expectation.

That the space which these things
occupied was itself an expectation.

In the past when he
walked out like that and sat looking over the country lying in just the faintest visible shape where the
lost moon tracked the caustic waste he'd sometimes see a light.

The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for
evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be.

The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for
evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be.

The men poured gasoline on them and burned them alive, having no remedy for
evil but only for the image of it as they conceived it to be.

The burning snakes twisted horribly and
some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses.

The burning snakes twisted horribly and
some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses.

The burning snakes twisted horribly and
some crawled burning across the floor of the grotto to illuminate its darker recesses.

As they were mute
there were no screams of pain and the men watched them burn and writhe and blacken in just such
silence themselves and they disbanded in silence in the winter dusk each with his own thoughts to go
home to their suppers.

As they were mute
there were no screams of pain and the men watched them burn and writhe and blacken in just such
silence themselves and they disbanded in silence in the winter dusk each with his own thoughts to go
home to their suppers.

He looked at the boy out of his sunken haggard eyes.

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of
travelers abandoned in the road years ago.

Beyond a crossroads in that wilderness they began to come upon the possessions of
travelers abandoned in the road years ago.

Here and there the imprint of things wrested out of the tar by
scavengers.

Figures half mired in the blacktop,
clutching themselves, mouths howling.

The black skin stretched upon the
bones and their faces split and shrunken on their skulls.

Like victims of some ghastly envacuuming.

Like victims of some ghastly envacuuming.

Passing them in silence down that silent corridor through the drifting ash where they struggled forever
in the road's cold coagulate.

They passed through the site of a roadside hamlet burned to nothing.

He opened a can of prunes and they passed it between them.

All of them wretched
looking beyond description.

They left the cart in the woods and he checked the rotation of the rounds in the cylinder.

It wasnt a safe place because the sound of the river masked
any other but he thought it would cheer the boy up.

They ate the last of their provisions and he sat
studying the map.

He looked a straw man set out to announce some holiday.

Things
abandoned long ago by pilgrims enroute to their several and collective deaths.

It's possible.

The sloughs by the roadside motionless and gray.

The water was little more than a seep.

He could see it moving slightly where it drew down
into a concrete tile under the roadway and he spat into the water and watched to see if it would move.

More than once they woke sprawled in the road like traffic
victims.

It would cost them some effort to get there.

Or a button.

Deep crust of verdigris.

He took out his knife and chiseled at it with care.

An imported chandelier.

An imported chandelier.

Their own shapes sectioned in the thin and watery glass of
the window there.

They wandered through the rooms like skeptical
housebuyers.

These may be poison, he said.

He fanned the blaze with
a magazine and soon the flue began to draw and the fire roared in the room lighting up the walls and
the ceiling and the glass chandelier in its myriad facets.

He fanned the blaze with
a magazine and soon the flue began to draw and the fire roared in the room lighting up the walls and
the ceiling and the glass chandelier in its myriad facets.

The flames lit the darkening glass of the
window where the boy stood in hooded silhouette like a troll come in from the night.

The flames lit the darkening glass of the
window where the boy stood in hooded silhouette like a troll come in from the night.

The man pulled the sheets off the long Empire table in the center of the room and
shook them out and made a nest of them in front of the hearth.

He carried ajar of
green beans and one of potatoes to the front door and by the light of a candle standing in a glass he
knelt and placed the first jar sideways in the space between the door and the jamb and pulled the door
against it.

It smelled delicious.

They ate slowly out of bone china bowls, sitting at opposite sides of the table with a single
candle burning between them.

The warming
house creaked and groaned.

The teeth
were rusty and dull and he sat in front of the fire with a rattail file and tried to sharpen them but to little
purpose.

They had clothes and blankets and pillows
from the upstairs rooms and they fitted themselves out in new attire, the boy's trousers cut to length
with his knife.

He found a wheelbarrow and
pulled it out and tipped it over and turned the wheel slowly, examining the tire.

The rubber was glazed
and cracked but he thought it might hold air and he looked through old boxes and jumbles of tools and
found a bicycle pump and screwed the end of the hose to the valvestem of the tire and began to pump.

He'd once found a lightmeter in a camera store that he thought he might use to average out
readings for a few months and he carried it around with him for a long time thinking he might find
some batteries for it but he never did.

Like those disinterred dead from his
childhood that had been relocated to accommodate a highway.

Like those disinterred dead from his
childhood that had been relocated to accommodate a highway.

Like those disinterred dead from his
childhood that had been relocated to accommodate a highway.

Many had died in a cholera epidemic
and they'd been buried in haste in wooden boxes and the boxes were rotting and falling open.

Many had died in a cholera epidemic
and they'd been buried in haste in wooden boxes and the boxes were rotting and falling open.

Like the
desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of.

Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat
of slag and then the gray squall line of ash.

Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat
of slag and then the gray squall line of ash.

He could see the disappointment in
his face.

The wind blew and
dry seedpods scampered down the sands and stopped and then went on again.

So we have to be vigilant.

Running naked and leaping and screaming into the slow roll of the surf.

The seething hiss of it washing over the
beach and drawing away again.

Great squid propelling themselves over the floor of the sea in the
cold darkness.

And perhaps beyond those shrouded
swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands.

Slept but a sea apart on another
beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.

No gulls or shorebirds.

Charred and
senseless artifacts strewn down the shoreline or rolling in the surf.

Charred and
senseless artifacts strewn down the shoreline or rolling in the surf.

At the end of the strand their way was blocked by a
headland and they left the beach and took an old path up through the dunes and through the dead
seaoats until they came out upon a low promontory.

At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching
along the shore as far as eye could see like an isocline of death.

You have to stand guard.

Amidships the sheer-rail was just awash.

He got hold of the rail and pulled himself aboard and turned and crouched on the
slant of the wood deck shivering.

A few lengths of braided cable snapped off at the turnbuckles.

A stagnant bilge along the lower bulkhead filled with wet papers and trash.

Damp and clammy.

He stood up in alarm and the man
realized that in his new clothes he made an uncertain figure.

In the second stateroom there were drawers under the berth that were still in place and he
lifted them free and slid them out.

He found a rubberized canvas seabag and he prowled the rest of the ship in his boots,
pushing himself off the bulkheads against the tilt, the yellow slicker pants rattling in the cold.

He filled
the bag with odds and ends of clothing.

Still there was something perverse in his
searching.

There were lockers built into the benches in the cockpit that
held cushions, sailcanvas, fishing gear.

In a locker behind the wheel pedestal he found coils of nylon
rope and steel bottles of gas and a toolbox made of fiberglass.

Inside was a brass
sextant, possibly a hundred years old.

A moment
of panic before he saw him walking along the bench downshore with the pistol hanging in his hand, his
head down.

The cans in the galley floor did not look in any way salvable and even in the locker there
were some that were badly rusted and some that wore an ominous bulbed look.

Not all of which he
knew, had burst free of their labels.

He sorted through them, shaking them, squeezing them in his hand.

He thought there must be crates of
foodstuffs packed somewhere in the hold but he didnt think any of it would be edible.

In any case there
was a limit to what they could take in the cart.

It occurred to him that he took this windfall in a fashion
dangerously close to matter of fact but still he said what he had said before.

There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead.

When he had
carried everything into the saloon and stacked it against the companionway he went back into the
galley and opened the toolbox and set about removing one of the burners from the little gimballed
stove.

He
aligned the cylinder for the true cartridge to come up and he let the hammer down and put the pistol in
his parka and stood up.

He held out one hand before
him although there was nothing on that salt heath to collide with.

The surf sounded more distant but he
took his bearings by the wind as well and after tottering on for the better part of an hour they emerged
from the grass and seaoats and stood again on the dry sand of the upper beach.

He slung the tarp of goods up over his shoulder and took the boy's hand and they went on,
tramping in the sand like parade horses against tripping over some piece of driftwood or seawrack.

The
weird gray light broke over the beach again.

They came upon
the tarp almost at once and he knelt and dropped the bindle and groped about for the rocks he'd
weighed the plastic with and pushed them beneath it.

He walked up and eased himself down beside him and they sat watching the leaden sea
lift and fall beyond the breakers.

He kept a fire going and he'd wade
ashore naked and shivering and drop the towrope and stand in the warmth of the blaze while the boy
towed in the seabag through the slack swells and dragged it onto the beach.

He woke coughing and rose and took a drink of water and dragged
more wood onto the fire, whole logs of it that sent up a great cascade of sparks.

The slow surf crawled and seethed in the
dark and he thought about his life but there was no life to think about and after a while he walked back.

He went over the ship from bow to stern again.

And behind that was a composite toolbox, the opening of the lid sealed with black electrical tape.

Inside was a yellow plastic flashlight, an electric strobebeacon
powered by a drycell, a first-aid kit.

He depressed
the lever and broke it open.

The chamber was empty but there were eight rounds of flares fitted in a
plastic container, short and squat and newlooking.

It's to signal with.

It could be like a celebration.

But the odds are not in their favor.

He cocked the gun and aimed it out over the bay and pulled the trigger.

He pressed his
hand to his forehead, conjuring up a coolness that would not come.

Some antibiotics but they had a short shelflife.

But you have a really high temperature and we have to get you cooled off.

He
spread them by the fire on sticks angled into the sand and piled on more wood and went and sat by the
boy again, smoothing his matted hair.

He crushed aspirins in a cup and dissolved them in water and put in some
sugar and sat and lifted the boy's head and held the cup while he drank.

He
was staggering with fatigue.

He
was staggering with fatigue.

He held the boy and bent to hear the labored suck of air.

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.

The road bent its way along the coast, dead sheaves of saltgrass
overhanging the pavement.

A sound without cognate
and so without description.

Something imponderable shifting out there in the dark.

The earth itself
contracting with the cold.

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.

The arrow had cut a gash just above his knee about three
inches long.

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 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.

A steel dock half collapsed and submerged in the bay.

The pitted iron hardware deep lilac in color, smeltered in some bloomery in Cadiz or Bristol
and beaten out on a blackened anvil, good to last three hundred years against the sea.

Are you real brave?

Just medium.

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely
askew.

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely
askew.

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely
askew.

In the evening the murky shape of another coastal city, the cluster of tall buildings vaguely
askew.

In some other world
the child would already have begun to vacate him from his life.

The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on
the bare springs of the seats.

He'd stop and lean on the cart and the boy would go on and
then stop and look back and he would raise his weeping eyes and see him standing there in the road
looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle.

A dead swamp.

Dead trees standing out of the gray water trailing gray and relic hagmoss.

The
ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be.

The wreckage of buildings strewn over the landscape and skeins of wire from the
roadside poles garbled like knitting.

The wreckage of buildings strewn over the landscape and skeins of wire from the
roadside poles garbled like knitting.

The road was littered with debris and it was work to get the cart
through.

Standing with his suitcase like an orphan waiting for a bus.

It was altogether derelict.

He scuffled together a pile of the
bonecolored wood that lay along the shore and got a fire going and they sat in the dunes with the tarp
over them and watched the cold rain coming in from the north.

The man pulled the plastic over himself in a hood and watched the gray sea shrouded
away out there in the rain and watched the surf break along the shore and draw away again over the
dark and stippled sand.

Their progress was a torture.

Downcountry a storm had
passed over the isthmus and leveled the dead black trees from east to west like weeds in the floor of a
stream.

There is no prophet in the earth's long chronicle who's not honored here today.

There is no prophet in the earth's long chronicle who's not honored here today.

You have to make it like talk that you imagine.

You
have to practice.

Old dreams encroached upon the waking
world.

Tracks of unknown creatures in the mortified loess.

In that
cold corridor they had reached the point of no return which was measured from the first solely by the
light they carried with them.

A
veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye
wandering.

A
veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye
wandering.

A
veteran of old skirmishes, bearded, scarred across his cheek and the bone stoven and the one eye
wandering.

He squatted on one knee and swung the
shotgun up from under his arm and stood it in the road and leaned on the fore-stock.

There was some discussion about whether to
even come after you at all.

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.

You could see them standing
in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow.

In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they
hummed of mystery.