After reading a passage from The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, in a sermon, someone came up to me afterwards and said, ‘I couldn’t put that book down.’ But before you add it to your Amazon wish-list, listen to what he went on to say. ‘I had to finish it, to get through it.’ In the conversation that followed, he explained that he’d found The Road almost unbearable. When we say we couldn’t put a book down we usually mean it as a compliment—even though most page turners are instantly forgettable. But no one who’s persevered through McCarthy’s Road would categorise it among the effortless escapism that’s typically confused with literature today. It’s a harrowing slow-burn, slim on hope and humanity. But it also offers some beautiful glimpses of fatherhood, one in particular which I quote below.

The Road takes place in post-apocalyptic America, a devastated wasteland where people’s only thoughts are scavenging and survival, sometimes murder and cannibalism. The novel follows a father and his son, as they traverse the country in search of diminishing means and the warmer coastline. The days offer little more than a bleak, cold light, while the nights bring with them a “darkness implacable,” both literally and metaphorically. It’s during the latter that the father and his son are at their most vulnerable, threatened by the evils that lurk behind the impenetrable veil.

Towards the end of McCarthy’s novel we read that “the dark did catch them.” They’d been looting a boat when a storm enveloped the horizon. “By the time they reached the headland path it was too dark to see anything.” They’re engulfed by the darkness, desperately isolated from any shelter. McCarthy continues, “They stood in the wind from off the sea with the grass hissing about them, the boy holding onto his hand.” Of course the boy has his father’s hand. Only I don’t think it was because he’d clutched for it in terror at the darkness. Rather, I imagine that as the pitch black descended the father immediately took hold of his son. This would be consistent with the novel. For the man is never far away from his son—he’s always available.

“We just have to keep going,” says the man. “Come on.” But the boy is afraid. “I cant see,” he says.” Then, with his tender, tireless accommodation the father replies, “I know. We’ll just take it one step at a time.” Whenever I read from this passage of The Road I tear up. The father has his son’s hand, so that however dark the night he’s there to lead; however cold, he shares some warmth. Those steps the man takes match the wearied cadence of his son’s, however dire their situation. The son need not wander or worry—though its inevitable he does—for all of this is the responsibility of his father. A responsibility he readily accepts.

Their terrifying odyssey is made up of countless moments like this one. And there’s an irrepressible beauty in that, amid the horror of their lives. There’s an invitation too—a model.

After assuring his son, “We’ll just take it one step at a time,” the boy’s trust is unflagging. Not because of their prospects but only because of his father’s presence, which extended back in time across the boy’s conscious life. There hasn’t been a time when doubts over his father’s love could’ve crept in. The man provided no opportunities for those very human emotions. Here, as he’d told his boy countless times, he says, “Dont let go.” The boy doesn’t. “No matter what,” the father adds. “No matter what,” his son concurs.

Passages like this one from The Road—or the model fathers in Marilynne Robinson’s novels—prove a point most people are tired of me making: fiction is a terrific teacher, full of truth. Whether it was his intention or not, the father in Cormac McCarthy’s novel unsettles my own mediocre visions for fatherhood. He demonstrates so much I should aspire to be for my own son.