The novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorites. This image reminded me of that story, which I haven’t revisited for some time. I didn’t attempt to capture his style of writing or storytelling, but what I appreciate most about his writing is the simple relationships between people that have so much weight.
Thanks for reading.
Artwork by Adam B.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kDRNDz
The Story
The scent of a campfire drifted through the broken window of the broken building Abe had spent the last two nights in. Breaking his own rules, but he was tired and hadn’t seen a soul in weeks. A man needed luxuries in a world that had none. Funny thing, calling himself a man. But Billy wasn’t here to tell him otherwise. He would be soon, though, or rather, Abe would be there. Why did grown men choose to keep their boy names into adulthood? He’d never asked Billy, never dared ask, because Billy had always said boys didn’t have the right to ask questions, just to listen, to learn, and when they became men, all the questions they’d been saving up for all those years, they’d know the answers to. From listening.
Abe listened. To the sigh of the building, of the wind, of himself. It was too loud. At least the snowflake the wind carried was silent, tumbling and twirling on air that Samantha might have breathed a few days ago. The direction was right. The smell was right. Pine and flowers. Abe didn’t know much about flowers, just that she was as pretty as they smelled. Soon he’d smell her again, pretending to dodge the smoke of the campfire that he smelled stronger and stronger, his memory of the clearing outside the cabin split by the creek with the unecessary bridge they’d built together, the three of them. So narrow that stream was. Barely a trickle, but that bridge had added a sense of home, a symbol of welcome for anyone passing by, saying “This is a home where we care so much if a stranger’s boots get wet that we built a silly little bridge across a dribble of a creek.”
Abe went to the window. The light was nice, so he took out his journal of questions he didn’t have the answers to, a dried flower pressed right in the center of it he didn’t dare use as a bookmark, even though it kind of was one. Blue and yellow with white flecks at the ends of the petals as if it were wise. Maybe it was. Maybe it had the answers to the questions he had. It would tell them to Samantha when he saw her, and maybe she’d tell him if Billy still gave him shit about having so many questions.
All this thinking, all this remembering, all this dreaming filled his mind with answers. Ones he was about to see come true, when he got through the city to that open space where there should have been roads but weren’t. A rare thing the people were who constructed it, leaving that picturesque slice of untouched nature untouched.
Abe closed the journal and drummed his fingers on it, then gave it a good luck pat after stashing it in his front pocket, where he always kept it, on the left side of his chest. Billy would call him a sentimental bastard. Samantha probably would, too. He smiled, hearing them enact a scene that had never been. Abe looked forward to the ones that would soon be.
His pack packed and his rifle shouldered, Abe left the building he’d called home for too long. He waved to it, sad to go, and it seemed sad to see him go. He turned to look at it again after he’d walked for some time, and it looked like all the rest.
He stuck to the middle of the road, which seemed like a bad idea, considering he stuck out like whatever stuck out most in a gray city growing a coat of white snow. Billy would say a thumb, because he didn’t have much imagination, and Samantha would say a fox, not a white one, but a red one, her favorite animal. Abe liked to imagine there was hidden meaning there about him being handsome even though usually women were referred to as foxes, at some point in history, anyway. He thought about jotting that question down in his journal, but he had enough for Billy to make fun of him.
He caught his reflection in an intact window. The very fact he’d found a window to see his reflection at the moment he thought about his appearance in a city of shattered windows gave him hope. Not that he needed it. The smell of smoke was stronger, the smell of pine. The sky was clear. He couldn’t wait to round the corner up ahead and see what he’d smelled since waking, streaming straight up from the trees until it disappated into a scribble.
He continued at a liesurely pace, because he wanted to savor that moment. Still, his heart beat faster. Would they remember him? Of course they would. It had only been a few months. Hadn’t it? He hadn’t kept track, something he hated himself for, but by the time days turned into weeks, weeks turned into meaningless cycles of hiding and scavenging for food, but always thinking of them and that silly little bridge across the stream to a cabin big enough for the three of them plus anyone who needed a roof for a night to give them the courage to go on. It was hard to go on, Abe knew. He was done with it.
Abe stepped around a barracade of shopping carts, logoed with the market he knew so well, through the parking lot of what had been his favorite burger joint, down a sidewalk Billy’d taught him to ride a bike on, because he told him learning on grass wasn’t for any blood of his, and that girls liked scars way more than tattoos. He’d see what Samantha had to say about that.
When Abe rounded the corner where the city opened up, he knew he’d never have the answer to that question, nor the one filling his journal. All he could do was watch as smoke flooded the sky, belched by flames that weren’t from a campfire at all.
Leave a Reply