McCarthy is a master at keeping the reader on a level with his characters in time. If someone’s trudging down a road, we know how he’s walking, how long it’ll take him to get into town. And this, a fight that turns deadly between Marion Sylder and an obnoxious hitchhiker who tries to likely steal the car:
Sylder closed his eyes too and buried his face in his shoulder to protect it. The flailings grew violent, slowed, finally stopped altogether. When Sylder opened his eyes again the man was staring at him owlishly, the little tongue tipped just past the open lips. He relaxed his hand, the fingers contracted, shriveling into a tight claw, like a killed spider. He tried to open it again but could not. He looked at the man again and time was coming back, gaining, so that all the clocks would be right. (p. 40)
Yeah, we held our breath, watching, reading the image and thinking, that guy’s gotta be dead. And we wait for McCarthy to tell us. McCarthy waits for us to find out. Time stopped, then caught up again, and we’re all on that road looking down.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology