It's okay Papa. It's okay? They're already there. I dont want you to look. They'll be there. He stopped and leaned on the cart. He looked down the road and he looked at the boy. So strangely untroubled. Why dont we just go on, the boy said. Yes. Okay. They were trying to get away werent they Papa? Yes. They were. Why didnt they leave the road? They couldnt. Everything was on fire. They picked their way among the mummied figures. The black skin stretched upon the bones and their faces split and shrunken on their skulls. Like victims of some ghastly envacuuming. Passing them in silence down that silent corridor through the drifting ash they struggled forever in the road's cold coagulate. They passed through the site of a roadside hamlet burned to nothing. Some metalstorage tanks, a few standing flues of blackened brick. There were gray slagpools of melted in the ditches and the raw lightwires lay in rusting skeins for miles along the edge of the roadway. He was coughing step of it. He saw the boy watching him. He was what the boy thought about. Well should he. They sat in the road and ate leftover skilletbread hard as biscuit and their last can of tunafish. He opened a can of prunes and they passed it between them. The boy held the tin up and drained the last of the juice and then sat with the tin in his lap and passed his forefinger around the inside of it and put his finger in his mouth.
It's okay Papa. It's okay? They're already there. I dont want you to look. They'll be there. He stopped and leaned on the cart. He looked down the road and he looked at the boy. So strangely untroubled. Why dont we just go on, the boy said. Yes. Okay. They were trying to get away werent they Papa? Yes. They were. Why didnt they leave the road? They couldnt. Everything was on fire. They picked their way among the mummied figures. The black skin stretched upon the bones and their faces split and shrunken on their skulls. Like victims of some ghastly envacuuming. Passing them in silence down that silent corridor through the drifting ash they struggled forever in the road's cold coagulate. They passed through the site of a roadside hamlet burned to nothing. Some metalstorage tanks, a few standing flues of blackened brick. There were gray slagpools of melted in the ditches and the raw lightwires lay in rusting skeins for miles along the edge of the roadway. He was coughing step of it. He saw the boy watching him. He was what the boy thought about. Well should he. They sat in the road and ate leftover skilletbread hard as biscuit and their last can of tunafish. He opened a can of prunes and they passed it between them. The boy held the tin up and drained the last of the juice and then sat with the tin in his lap and passed his forefinger around the inside of it and put his finger in his mouth.
The%20Road.docx