Cormac McCarthy, The Road:
Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with its lamp.
In a pocket of his knapsack he’d found a last half packet of cocoa and he fixed it for the boy then poured his own cup with hot water and sat blowing at the rim.
You promised not to do that, the boy said.
What?
You know what, Papa.
He poured the hot water back into the pan and took the boy’s cup and poured some of the cocoa into his own and then handed it back.
If you break little promises you’ll break big ones. That’s what you said.
I know. But I won’t
They say that women dream of danger to those in their care and men of danger to themselves. The one thing I can tell you is that you won’t survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. 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. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body.
He was a big man but he was quick. He dove and grabbed the boy and rolled and came up holding him against his chest with a knife at his throat. The man had already dropped to the ground and he swung with him and leveled the pistol and fired from a two-handled position balanced on both knees at a distance of six feet. The man fell back instantly and lay with blood bubbling from the hole in his forehead. The boy was lying in his lap with no expression on his face at all. He shoved the pistol in his belt and slung the knapsack over his shoulder and picked up the boy and turned him around and lifted him up 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.
Are we still the good guys?, he said.
Yes. We’re still the good guys.
And we always will be.
Yes. We always will be.
Okay.
He died. Maybe in time not to see it all come true. Without the good guys part. 😪
