It was harder going even than he would have guessed. In an hour they'd made perhaps a mile. He stopped and looked back at the boy. The boy stopped and waited.
[The Man:] You think we're going to die, dont you?
[The Boy:] I dont know.
[The Man:] We're not going to die.
[The Boy:] Okay.
[The Man:] But you dont believe me.
[. . .]
[The Man:] How long do you think people can go without food?
[The Boy:] I dont know.
[The Man:] But how long do you think?
[The Boy:] Maybe a few days.
[The Man:] And then what? You fall over dead?
[The Boy:] Yes.
[The Man:] Well you dont. It takes a long time. We have water. That's the most important thing. You dont last very long without water.
[. . .]
He [The Man] studied him. Standing there with his hands in the pockets of the outsized pinstriped suitcoat.
[The Man:] Do you think I might lie to you?
[The Boy:] No.
[The Man:] But you think I might lie to you about dying?
[The Boy:] Yes.
[The Man:] Okay. I might. But we're not dying.
[The Boy:] Okay. (155.1-155.32)
This is another example of the absurd discourse about death between The Boy and The Man (see previous quote). It's cool also to think of these dialogues as happening within one person. We all recognize the inevitability of death, and yet at some level we don't acknowledge it. It's normal to avoid thinking about what we fear the most.
[The Man:] There's no one here. There has been no one here for years. There are no tracks in the ash. Nothing disturbed. No furniture burned in the fireplace. There's food here.
[The Boy:] Tracks dont stay in the ash. You said so yourself. The wind blows them away. (291.17-291.18)
Erasure in The Road is pretty much total. Much of what once characterized the lives of the survivors has been incinerated into ash, and when they walk on that ash, the wind erases their footprints. So, imagine playing the song "Dust in the Wind" while parts of your stereo system crumbled and blew away. "Yeah," you would say. "McCarthy was right. This world is transient."
[The Man:] You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand? (120.5)
A little plot background might help here: the Man has just saved The Boy from a very scary-looking dude who probably would have killed him. (It's unclear why this scary-looking dude tries to kidnap The Boy. To get The Man's stuff? So he can get The Man and The Boy back to his truck and eat them?) It is clear, however, that The Man takes parenting – which, in this book, involves protecting kids from bloodcults – very seriously. Seriously enough, in fact, to say it's his God-given mission in life.