Encounter with old Ely

The encounter with the old man Ely is a pivotal episode in which the man and the boy meet a frail, blind, and deeply cynical wanderer on the road, leading to a night of conversation that exposes the philosophical chasm between the boy's innate compassion and the man's hardened pragmatism, and that forces the man to confront the possibility that the boy may be something more than human.

Meeting the Traveler

Rounding a bend in the road late in the day, the boy stopped and put his hand on the grocery cart. A small figure was distant on the road, bent and shuffling. The man, leaning on the handle of the cart, considered the possibility of a decoy. They followed the traveler, who was not one for looking back, and eventually overtook him. He was an old man, small and bent, carrying an old army rucksack with a blanket roll tied across the top and tapping along with a peeled stick for a cane. When he saw them, he veered to the side of the road and turned warily. He had a filthy towel tied under his jaw as if he suffered from toothache, and even by their new world standards he smelled terrible. He wore no shoes at all; his feet were wrapped in rags and cardboard tied with green twine, and any number of layers of vile clothing showed through the tears and holes in it. He immediately declared he had nothing, but when the man said they were not robbers, the old man seemed to wilt further, leaning on his cane and lowering himself into the road where he sat among the ashes with one hand over his head, looking like a pile of rags fallen off a cart.

The Boy's Compassion and the Man's Reluctance

The boy squatted and put a hand on the old man's shoulder, saying, "He's scared, Papa." The man, wary of an ambush, muttered that if this were a trap, the old man would go first. The boy insisted, "Tell him we wont hurt him." The old man shook his head from side to side, his fingers laced in his filthy hair. The boy looked up at his father, suggesting the old man might think they were not real. The man, looking off down the road, whispered, "Damn." He relented. He untied the tarp, rummaged through the canned goods, and came up with a tin of fruit cocktail. He opened it and handed it to the boy, who squatted and offered it to the old man. The boy whispered, "Take it. Here." The old man raised his eyes and looked at the boy, then reached with his scrawny claws and took the tin, holding it to his chest. He tipped it and drank, the juice running down his filthy beard. The boy turned to his father and said, "I know what the question is." The man answered, "The answer is no." The boy asked, "Can we keep him?" The man said, "We cant." The boy then asked if they could give him something else, and the man, after a pause, agreed to stop for the night and cook a meal, but insisted that tomorrow they would go on alone.

The Night's Conversation

They bivouacked in the woods near the road, built a fire, and ate. The old man, who gave his name as Ely, sat wrapped in his solitary quilt, gripping his spoon like a child. He drank his coffee from the bowl he'd eaten from, his thumbs hooked over the rim, sitting like a starved and threadbare buddha staring into the coals. The man told him he could not go with them. Ely nodded. When asked how long he had been on the road, he said, "I was always on the road." He claimed he had always believed this end was coming, but had not tried to get ready for it. "People were always getting ready for tomorrow," he said. "I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them." The man asked how he would know if he were the last man on earth. Ely replied, "I dont guess you would know it. You'd just be it." When the man said, "I guess God would know it," Ely answered, "There is no God." He then added, "There is no God and we are his prophets." The man pressed him on how he survived, and Ely admitted that people gave him things, but when the man pointed out that he himself had not given anything—the boy had—Ely grew evasive. He refused to give his real name, saying he could not trust the man with it. "I could be anybody," he said. He then looked at the boy across the fire and said, "When I saw that boy I thought that I had died." The man asked, "You thought he was an angel?" Ely replied, "I didnt know what he was. I never thought to see a child again." The man then asked, "What if I said that he's a god?" The old man shook his head. "I'm past all that now. Have been for years. Where men cant live gods fare no better. You'll see. It's better to be alone. So I hope that's not true what you said because to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing so I hope it's not true." He went on to say that things would be better when everybody was gone. "When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too."

The Parting

In the morning, they stood in the road and argued about what to give the old man. The boy wanted to give more, but in the end Ely received only some cans of vegetables and fruit. The boy went to the edge of the road and sat in the ashes. The man told Ely he should thank the boy, but Ely said, "Maybe I should and maybe I shouldnt." When the man asked why the boy had done it, Ely said, "Maybe he believes in God." The man said, "He'll get over it," but Ely replied, "No he wont." The man asked if Ely would wish them luck, but Ely said he did not know what that would mean. Then all went on. When the man looked back, Ely had set out with his cane, tapping his way, dwindling slowly on the road behind them like some storybook peddler from an antique time, dark and bent and spider thin and soon to vanish forever. The boy never looked back at all.

Aftermath and Significance

Later, the boy was unhappy, and the man knew it was about the old man. The boy said, "I know. But I wont remember it the way you do." The man told him not to make fun of Ely, and the boy said, "He's going to die." The man acknowledged it. The encounter left a deep mark on the boy, who had seen in Ely a suffering he could not ignore, and it forced the man to articulate the limits of his own mercy. The old man's words—that the boy might be a god, and that to be on the road with the last god would be a terrible thing—echoed the man's own earlier thought that the child was his warrant, and deepened the novel's central question about what, if anything, remains sacred in a world that has lost all its referents.