Luck.

In Cormac McCarthy's interview with Oprah he discusses the luck in his own life and how he would randomly get lucky during times when he really needed it. He brings up an example of a time when he had no money at all, and then received an unexpected check in the mail for a substantial amount of money. These experiences with luck in McCarthy's life are reflected in the novel in the way that the protagonists, while not lucky, encounter enough random luck on their journey in order to stay alive. An example of this is how just when the man and the boy are on the verge of death from starvation and they encounter the barn with the orchard. In this place the man found "more apples than he could carry" and "a cistern filled with water so sweet that he could smell it." (121, 122) They had been lost and wandering and the man just happened to stumble upon this area that supplied enough nutrition for the two to carry on with their journey, much like the way Cormac McCarthy just happened to receive that check when he was in dire need of money.