Death of the man

The man's death is the culmination of his protracted physical decline and the central crisis of the novel, severing the bond that has defined the boy's entire existence and leaving him alone in a dead world. After years of pushing a grocery cart south through ash and snow, the man's body finally fails him. He has been coughing blood for months, his lungs ravaged by the poisoned air, and his strength has ebbed to the point where he can no longer walk. The boy, who has been his constant companion and his only reason for living, must now confront the loss of the one person who has kept him alive.

The Final Decline

The man's deterioration accelerates as they cross a vast low swale where ferns and hydrangeas and wild orchids live on in ashen effigies. Their progress becomes a torture. In two days they travel perhaps ten miles. When they come out upon a road, the man sets down his bag and sits bent over with his arms crossed at his chest, coughing until he can cough no more. They cross a river and a short ways on they come to a crossroads. Downcountry a storm has passed over the isthmus and leveled the dead black trees from east to west like weeds in the floor of a stream. Here they camp, and when the man lies down he knows that he can go no further and that this is the place where he will die. The boy sits watching him, his eyes welling. The man makes the boy eat the single tin of peaches they have left, refusing any for himself. He tells the boy he does not want anything covering him, wanting to be able to see. He lies watching the boy at the fire and speaks of prophets, saying that whatever form they spoke of, they were right.

The Last Conversation

The boy, desperate, scours the countryside for anything to eat but comes back empty-handed. The man takes his hand, wheezing, and tells the boy he must go on without him. The boy refuses, saying he wants to be with him. The man insists he cannot hold his son dead in his arms, that he thought he could but he cannot. He tells the boy he has his whole heart, that he was always the best guy. He instructs the boy to keep going south, to do everything the way they did it, to keep the gun with him at all times. The boy asks if the fire is real, and the man tells him it is inside him, that it was always there, and that he can see it. The boy pleads to be taken along, but the man says he cannot. He tells the boy that if he is not there, the boy can still talk to him, and he will talk back. The boy must make it like talk that he imagines, and he will hear him. He tells the boy not to give up. The boy says he is really scared, and the man says he knows, but that he will be okay, that he is going to be lucky.

The Death and Its Aftermath

The boy goes down the road as far as he dares and then comes back. His father is asleep. The boy sits with him under the plywood and watches him. He closes his eyes and talks to him, and keeps his eyes closed and listens. Then he tries again. He wakes in the darkness, coughing softly. He lies listening. The boy sits by the fire wrapped in a blanket watching him. The man asks if the boy remembers that little boy they saw, and the boy says yes. The man assures him the little boy is all right, that goodness will find him. The boy sleeps close to his father that night and holds him, but when he wakes in the morning his father is cold and stiff. He sits there a long time weeping, then gets up and walks out through the woods to the road. When he comes back he kneels beside his father and holds his cold hand and says his name over and over again. He stays three days, then walks out to the road and waits. A man appears, dressed in a gray and yellow ski parka, carrying a shotgun. The boy asks if he is one of the good guys. The man says he is, and the boy goes with him, after saying goodbye to his father one last time. The boy talks to his father every day and does not forget. The woman who takes him in says that the breath of God is his breath yet, though it pass from man to man through all of time.