Excerpt from Suttree by Cormac McCarthy.

The lightest rain of

soot was falling and a handful of small birds flared suddenly about him, moving through the bitter air with a faint rasping sound. Suttree looked down at the blackwater creek swirling below, the gray panes of scalloped ice. He went on toward the town, a colorless world this winter afternoon where all things bear that grainy look of old films and the buildings rise into an obscurity prophetic and profound.