No Country for Old Men (15 page)

When he came out of the dressing room he had the coat over his arm. He walked up and down
the creaking wooden aisle. The clerk stood looking down at the boots. The lizard takes
longer to break in, he said.

Yeah. Hot in the summer too. These are all right. Let's try that hat. I aint been duded up
like this since I got out of the army.

The sheriff sipped his coffee and set the cup back down in the same ring on the glass
desktop that he'd taken it from. They're fixin to close the hotel, he said.

Bell nodded. I aint surprised.

They all quit. That feller hadnt pulled but two shifts. I blame myself. Never occurred to
me that the son of a bitch would come back. I just never even imagined such a thing.

He might never of left.

I thought about that too.

The reason nobody knows what he looks like is that they dont none of em live long enough
to tell it.

This is a goddamned homicidal lunatic, Ed Tom.

Yeah. I dont think he's a lunatic though.

Well what would you call him?

I dont know. When are they fixin to close it?

It's done closed, as far as that goes.

You got a key?

Yeah. I got a key. It's a crime scene.

Why dont we go over there and look around some more.

All right. We can do that.

The first thing they saw was the transponder unit sitting on a windowsill in the hallway.
Bell picked it up and turned it in his hand, looking at the dial and the knobs.

That aint a goddamn bomb is it Sheriff?

No.

That's all we need.

It's a trackin device.

So whatever it was they was trackin they found.

Probably. How long has it been settin there do you reckon?

I dont know. I think I might be able to guess what they were trackin, though.

Maybe, Bell said. There's somethin about this whole deal that dont rattle right.

It aint supposed to.

We got a ex-army colonel here with most of his head gone that you had to ID off of his
fingerprints. What fingers wasnt shot off. Regular army. Fourteen years service. Not a
piece of paper on him.

He'd been robbed.

Yeah.

What do you know about this that you aint tellin, Sheriff?

You got the same facts I got.

I aint talkin about facts. Do you think this whole mess has moved south?

Bell shook his head. I dont know.

You got a dog in this hunt?

Not really. A couple of kids from my county that might be sort of involved that ought not
to be.

Sort of involved.

Yeah.

Are we talkin kin?

No. Just people from my county. People I'm supposed to be lookin after.

He handed the transponder unit to the sheriff.

What am I supposed to do with this?

It's Maverick County property. Crime scene evidence.

The sheriff shook his head. Dope, he said.

Dope.

They sell that shit to schoolkids.

It's worse than that.

How's that?

Schoolkids buy it.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I wont talk about the war neither. I was supposed to be a war hero and I lost a whole
squad of men. Got decorated for it. They died and I got a medal. I dont even need to know
what you think about that. There aint a day I dont remember it. Some boys I know come back
they went on to school up at Austin on the GI Bill, they had hard things to say about
their people. Some of em did. Called em a bunch of rednecks and all such as that. Didnt
like their politics. Two generations in this country is a long time. You're talkin about
the early settlers. I used to tell em that havin your wife and children killed and scalped
and gutted like fish has a tendency to make some people irritable but they didnt seem to
know what I was talkin about. I think the sixties in this country sobered some of em up. I
hope it did. I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey
that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this
questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come
across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answer in
these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class
and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they
got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to
the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson,
murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of the time ever when I say
anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of
smile and tell me I'm gettin old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that
is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin
gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got. Forty years is not a long
time neither. Maybe the next forty of it will bring some of em out from under the ether.
If it aint too late.

Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got
set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about
the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The
people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her
that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of
course that's a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally
told me, said: I dont like the way this country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be
able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the
way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she'll be
able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an
abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the
conversation.

Chigurh limped up the seventeen flights of concrete steps in the cool concrete well and
when he got to the steel door on the landing he shot the cylinder out of the lock with the
plunger of the stungun and opened the door and stepped into the hallway and shut the door
behind him. He stood leaning against the door with the shotgun in both hands, listening.
Breathing no harder than if he'd just got up out of a chair. He went down the hallway and
picked the crushed cylinder out of the floor and put it in his pocket and went on to the
elevator and stood listening again. He took off his boots and stood them by the elevator
door and went down the hallway in his sockfeet, walking slowly, favoring his wounded leg.

The doors to the office were open onto the hallway. He stopped. He thought that perhaps
the man did not see his own shadow on the outer hallway wall, illdefined but there.
Chigurh thought it an odd oversight but he knew that fear of an enemy can often blind men
to other hazards, not least the shape which they themselves make in the world. He slipped
the strap from his shoulder and lowered the airtank to the floor. He studied the stance of
the man's shadow framed there by the light from the smoked glass window behind him. He
pushed the shotgun's follower slightly back with the heel of his hand to check the
chambered round and pushed the safety off.

The man was holding a small pistol at the level of his belt. Chigurh stepped into the
doorway and shot him in the throat with a load of number ten shot. The size collectors use
to take bird specimens. The man fell back through his swivel-chair knocking it over and
went to the floor and lay there twitching and gurgling. Chigurh picked up the smoking
shotgun shell from the carpet and put it in his pocket and walked into the room with the
pale smoke still drifting from the canister fitted to the end of the sawed-off barrel. He
walked around behind the desk and stood looking down at the man. The man was lying on his
back and he had one hand over his throat but the blood was pumping steadily through his
fingers and out onto the rug. His face was full of small holes but his right eye seemed
intact and he looked up at Chigurh and tried to speak from out of his bubbling mouth.
Chigurh dropped to one knee and leaned on the shotgun and looked at him. What is it? he
said. What are you trying to tell me?

The man moved his head. The blood gurgled in his throat.

Can you hear me? Chigurh said.

He didnt answer.

I'm the man you sent Carson Wells to kill. Is that what you wanted to know?

He watched him. He was wearing a blue nylon runningsuit and a pair of white leather shoes.
Blood was starting to pool about his head and he was shivering as if he were cold.

The reason I used the birdshot was that I didnt want to break the glass. Behind you. To
rain glass on people in the street. He nodded toward the window where the man's upper
silhouette stood outlined in the small gray pockmarks the lead had left in the glass. He
looked at the man. The man's hand had gone slack at his throat and the blood had slowed.
He looked at the pistol lying there. He rose and pushed the safety back on the shotgun and
stepped past the man to the window and inspected the pockings the lead had made. When he
looked down at the man again the man was dead. He crossed the room and stood at the
doorway listening. He went out and down the hall and collected his tank and the stungun
and got his boots and stepped into them and pulled them up. Then he walked down the
corridor and went out through the metal door and down the concrete steps to the garage
where he'd left his vehicle.

When they got to the bus station it was just breaking daylight, gray and cold and a light
rain falling. She leaned forward over the seat and paid the driver and gave him a two
dollar tip. He got out and went around to the trunk and opened it and got their bags and
set them in the portico and brought the walker around to her mother's side and opened the
door. Her mother turned and began to struggle out into the rain.

Mama will you wait? I need to get around there.

I knowed this is what it would come to, the mother said. I said it three year ago.

It aint been three years.

I used them very words.

Just wait till I get around there.

In the rain, her mother said. She looked up at the cab-driver. I got cancer, she said. Now
look at this. Not even a home to go to.

Yes mam.

We're goin to El Paso Texas. You know how many people I know in El Paso Texas?

No mam.

She paused with her arm on the door and held up her hand and made an O with her thumb and
forefinger. That's how many, she said.

Yes mam.

They sat in the coffeeshop surrounded by their bags and parcels and stared out at the rain
and at the idling buses. At the gray day breaking. She looked at her mother. Did you want
some more coffee? she said.

The old woman didnt answer.

You aint speakin, I reckon.

I dont know what there is to speak about.

Well I dont guess I do either.

Whatever you all done you done. I dont know why I ought to have to run from the law.

We aint runnin from the law, Mama.

You couldnt call on em to help you though, could you?

Call on who?

The law.

No. We couldnt.

That's what I thought.

The old woman adjusted her teeth with her thumb and stared out the window. After a while
the bus came. The driver stowed her walker in the luggage bay under the bus and they
helped her up the steps and put her in the first seat. I got cancer, she told the driver.

Carla Jean put their bags in the bin overhead and sat down. The old woman didnt look at
her. Three years ago, she said. You didnt have to have no dream about it. No revelation
nor nothin. I dont give myself no credit. Anybody could of told you the same thing.

Well I wasnt askin.

The old woman shook her head. Looking out through the window and down at the table they'd
vacated. I give myself no credit, she said. I'd be the last in the world to do that.

Chigurh pulled up across the street and shut off the engine. He turned off the lights and
sat watching the darkened house. The green diode numerals on the radio put the time at
1:17. He sat there till 1:22 and then he took the flashlight from the glovebox and got out
and closed the truck door and crossed the street to the house.

He opened the screen door and punched out the cylinder and walked in and shut the door
behind him and stood listening. There was a light coming from the kitchen and he walked
down the hallway with the flashlight in one hand and the shotgun in the other. When he got
to the doorway he stopped and listened again. The light came from a bare bulb on the back
porch. He went on into the kitchen.

A bare formica and chrome table in the center of the room with a box of cereal standing on
it. The shadow of the kitchen window lying on the linoleum floor. He crossed the room and
opened the refrigerator and looked in. He put the shotgun in the crook of his arm and took
out a can of orange soda and opened it with his forefinger and stood drinking it,
listening for anything that might follow the metallic click of the can. He drank and set
the half-empty can on the counter and shut the refrigerator door and walked through the
diningroom and into the livingroom and sat in an easy chair in the corner and looked out
at the street.

After a while he rose and crossed the room and went up the stairs. He stood listening at
the head of the stairwell. When he entered the old woman's room he could smell the sweet
musty odor of sickness and he thought for a moment she might even be lying there in the
bed. He switched on the flashlight and went into the bathroom. He stood reading the labels
of the pharmacy bottles on the vanity. He looked out the window at the street below, the
dull winter light from the streetlamps. Two in the morning. Dry. Cold. Silent. He went out
and down the hallway to the small bedroom at the rear of the house.

He emptied her bureau drawers out onto the bed and sat sorting through her things, holding
up from time to time some item and studying it in the bluish light from the yardlamp. A
plastic hairbrush. A cheap fairground bracelet. Weighing these things in his hand like a
medium who might thereby divine some fact concerning the owner. He sat turning the pages
in a photo album. School friends. Family. A dog. A house not this one. A man who may have
been her father. He put two pictures of her in his shirtpocket.

There was a ceiling fan overhead. He got up and pulled the chain and lay down on the bed
with the shotgun alongside him, watching the wooden blades wheel slowly in the light from
the window. After a while he got up and took the chair from the desk in the corner and
tilted it and pushed the top backladder up under the doorknob. Then he sat on the bed and
pulled off his boots and stretched out and went to sleep.

In the morning he walked through the house again upstairs and down and then returned to
the bathroom at the end of the hall to shower. He left the curtain pulled back, the water
spraying onto the floor. The hallway door open and the shotgun lying on the vanity a foot
away.

He dried the dressing on his leg with a hairdryer and shaved and dressed and went down to
the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal and milk, walking through the house as he ate. In the
livingroom he stopped and looked at the mail lying in the floor beneath the brass slot in
the front door. He stood there, chewing slowly. Then he set bowl and spoon on the
coffeetable and crossed the room and bent over and picked up the mail and stood sorting
through it. He sat in a chair by the door and opened the phone bill and cupped the
envelope and blew into it.

He glanced down the list of calls. Halfway down was the Terrell County Sheriff's
Department. He folded the bill and put it back in the envelope and put the envelope in his
shirt-pocket. Then he looked through the other pieces of mail again. He rose and went into
the kitchen and got the shotgun off the table and came back and stood where he'd stood
before. He crossed to a cheap mahogany desk and opened the top drawer. The drawer was
stuffed with mail. He laid the shotgun down and sat in the chair and pulled the mail out
and piled it on the desk and began to go through it.

Moss spent the day in a cheap motel on the edge of town sleeping naked in the bed with his
new clothes on wire hangers in the closet. When he woke the shadows were long in the motel
courtyard and he struggled up and sat on the edge of the bed. A pale bloodstain the size
of his hand on the sheets. There was a paper bag on the night table that held things he'd
bought from a drugstore in town and he picked it up and limped into the bathroom. He
showered and shaved and brushed his teeth for the first time in five days and then sat on
the edge of the tub and taped fresh gauze over his wounds. Then he got dressed and called
a cab.