McCarthy, Cormac - Child of God by McCarthy Cormac

Author:McCarthy, Cormac [McCarthy, Cormac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780679728740
Amazon: 0679728740
Publisher: Picador
Published: 1973-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

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without a sound. Ballard cradled the rifle in his arm and made his way down the slope toward the house. He crouched behind the barn listening for sound of Greer. There in the frozen mire of mud and dung deeply plugged with hoof prints. When he came through the barn it was empty. The loft was filled with hay. Ballard stood in the forebay door looking down through the falling snow at the gray shape of the house. He crossed to the chicken house and undid the wire that held the hasp and entered. A few white hens eyed him nervously from their cubby nests on the far wall. Ballard passed along a row of roosting rails and went through a chicken wire door to the feed room. There he loaded his pockets with shelled corn and came back. He surveyed the hens, clucked his tongue at them and reached for one. It erupted from the box with a long squawk and flapped past and lit in the floor and trotted off. Ballard cursed. In the uproar the other hens were following by ones and pairs. He lunged and grabbed one by the tail as it came soaring out. It set up an outraged shrieking until Ballard could get it by the neck. Holding the struggling bird in both hands and with his rifle between his knees he crow hopped to the small dust webbed window and peered out. Nothing stirred. You son of a bitch, said Ballard, to the chicken or Greer or both. He wrung the hen's neck and went quickly through the nesting boxes gathering up the few eggs and putting them in his pockets and then he went out again. IN THE SPRING OR WARMER weather when the snow thaws in the woods the tracks of winter reappear on slender pedestals and the snow reveals in palimpsest old buried wanderings, struggles, scenes of death. Tales of winter brought to light again like time turned back upon itself. Ballard went through the woods kicking down his old trails where they veered over the hill toward his onetime homeplace. Old comings and goings. The tracks of a fox raised out of the snow intaglio like little mushrooms and berry stains where birds shat crimson mutes upon the snow like blood. When he reached the overlook he stood his rifle against the stones and watched the house below him. There was no smoke coming from the chimney. Ballard watched with his arms folded. He asked Greer where he was today. A gray and colder day with all the melting snow ceased from its dripping and runneling. Ballard watched the first flakes fall like ash into the valley. Where are you, you bastard? he called. Two minute doilies of snow settled and perished on the crossed arms of his coat. He watched until the silent house grew dim below him in the gray snowfall. After a while he took up the rifle once again and crossed the ridge to where he could see the road.

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