What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.
Perhaps not since Hemingway has an American writer been so visible on the big screen (I know…what about William Faulkner? Faulkner is different; he found lucrative work as a screenwriter).
There’s something of an industry these days for making movies based on the novels of, arguably, the greatest living American novelist, Cormac McCarthy: No Country For Old Men, All The Pretty Horses, and soon, The Road.
I first read The Road three years ago during a particularly difficult time: I was losing the closeness I had always enjoyed with my sons, and for the life of me I don’t know why (and I’m not sure that I ever will). The Road, with its description of a love between father and son so strong that each was the other’s “world entire” affected me to the depths of my soul; it was a love that I knew and lived for my entire adult life. That’s what made the tears flow so easily as I read: I know the sort of love where a parent feels that life has no meaning without children. I know: you can’t protect them forever. But still you feel the responsibility to prevent or bear any hurt. And so I wonder…will that feeling ever go away? I think not. Somehow, I think not.
So I bought a copy for my youngest son, the one who had seemingly withdrawn from me the most. I wanted him to read between the lines. I wanted him to know that as a father I wasn’t that much different from the man in the novel…that my love was deep enough to assume any sacrifice. I wanted him to know that, if I had to, I could learn to live without his love and respect. But I could not abide a world in which he no longer lived. The Road, as you may know, is a sort of “post-apocalyptic” novel in which the world has been burned over (apparently the result of nuclear war) and covered with ash that, years later, still swirls like snow. All food sources destroyed, the survivors are either scavengers or cannibals–good guys and bad guys, in the view of the boy, who struggles to understand why the pair can’t share their very limited supply of food with the few sympathetic people they encounter. They can’t, of course, because doing so means that they would die.
He looked at the boy but the boy had turned away and lay staring out at the river.
There’s nothing we could have done.
He didn’t answer.
He’s going to die. We can’t share what we have or we’ll die, too.
I know.
So when are you going to talk to me again?
I’m talking now.
Are you sure?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
So they constantly, and cautiously, search for food and supplies as they make their way south, toward the sea. They find a significant cache at one point in an underground shelter, but the man knows they can’t stay more than a night or two because others are looking as well–and for reasons both practical and sometimes sinister, aren’t willing to share either. After all, this is a world without life save for the nomads who wander the land. This is a world where some people have resorted to cannibalism, while others would kill for the sake of a few cans of food.
The Road, although filled with terror and tension, is at its core a love story: a love story of the best kind, that between a father and his son. And just like the man in the book, I’ll spend the rest of my life offering my love, whether it’s accepted or not. Just like him, I’ll spend the rest of my life “carrying the fire.”
