No Country for Old Men (13 page)

You dont have the wrong number. You need to come see me.

Who is this?

You know who it is.

Moss leaned on the counter, his forehead against his fist.

Where’s Wells?

He cant help you now. What kind of a deal did you cut with him?

I didnt cut any kind of a deal.

Yes you did. How much was he going to give you?

I dont know what you’re talkin about.

Where’s the money.

What did you do with Wells.

We had a difference of opinion. You dont need to concern yourself about Wells. He’s out of the picture. You need to talk to me.

I dont need to talk to you.

I think you do. Do you know where I’m going?

Why would I care where you’re goin?

Do you know where I’m going?

Moss didnt answer.

Are you there?

I’m here.

I know where you are.

Yeah? Where am I?

You’re in the hospital at Piedras Negras. But that’s not where I’m going. Do you know where I’m going?

Yeah. I know where you’re goin.

You can turn all this around.

Why would I believe you?

You believed Wells.

I didnt believe Wells.

You called him.

So I called him.

Tell me what you want me to do.

Moss shifted his weight. Sweat stood on his forehead. He didnt answer.

Tell me something. I’m waiting.

I could be waitin for you when you get there you know, Moss said. Charter a plane. You thought about that?

That would be okay. But you wont.

How do you know I wont?

You wouldnt have told me. Anyway, I have to go.

You know they wont be there.

It doesnt make any difference where they are.

So what are you goin up there for.

You know how this is going to turn out, dont you?

No. Do you?

Yes. I do. I think you do too. You just havent accepted it yet. So this is what I’ll do. You bring me the money and I’ll let her walk. Otherwise she’s accountable. The same as you. I dont know if you care about that. But that’s the best deal you’re going to get. I wont tell you you can save yourself because you cant.

I’m goin to bring you somethin all right, Moss said. I’ve decided to make you a special project of mine. You aint goin to have to look for me at all.

I’m glad to hear that. You were beginning to disappoint me.

You wont be disappointed.

Good.

You dont have to by god worry about bein disappointed.

He left before daylight dressed in the muslin hospital gown with the overcoat over it. The skirt of the overcoat was stiff with blood. He had no shoes. In the inside pocket of the coat was the money he’d folded away there, stiff and bloodstained.

He stood in the street looking toward the lights. He’d no notion where he was. The concrete cold under his feet. He made his way down to the corner. A few cars passed. He walked down to the lights at the next corner and stopped and leaned with one hand against the building. He had two white lozenges in his overcoat pocket that he’d saved and he took one now, swallowing it dry. He thought he was going to vomit. He stood there for a long time. There was a windowsill there he’d have sat on save that it was spiked with pointed iron bars to discourage loiterers. A cab went by and he raised one hand but it kept going. He was going to have to go out into the street and after a while he did. He’d been tottering there for some time when another cab passed and he raised his hand and it pulled to the curb.

The driver studied him. Moss leaned on the window. Can you take me across the bridge? he said.

To the other side.

Yes. To the other side.

You got monies.

Yes. I got monies.

The driver looked dubious. Twenty dollars, he said.

Okay.

At the gate the guard leaned down and regarded him where he sat in the dim rear of the cab. What country were you born in? he said.

The United States.

What are you bringing in?

Not anything.

The guard studied him. Would you mind stepping out here? he said.

Moss pushed down on the doorhandle and leaned on the front seat to ease himself out of the cab. He stood.

What happened to your shoes?

I dont know.

You dont have any clothes on, do you?

I got clothes on.

The second guard was waving the cars past. He pointed for the cabdriver. Would you please pull your cab over into that second space there?

The driver put the cab in gear.

Would you mind stepping away from the vehicle?

Moss stepped away. The cab pulled into the parking area and the driver cut the engine. Moss looked at the guard. The guard seemed to be waiting for him to say something but he didnt.

They took him inside and sat him in a steel chair in a small white office. Another man came in and stood leaning against a steel desk. He looked him over.

How much have you had to drink?

I aint had anything to drink.

What happened to you?

What do you mean?

What happened to your clothes.

I dont know.

Do you have any identification?

No.

Nothing.

No.

The man leaned back, his arms crossed at his chest. He said: Who do you think gets to go through this gate into the United States of America?

I dont know. American citizens.

Some American citizens. Who do you think decides that?

You do I reckon.

That’s correct. And how do I decide?

I dont know.

I ask questions. If I get sensible answers then they get to go to America. If I dont get sensible answers they dont. Is there anything about that that you dont understand?

No sir.

Then maybe you’d like to start over.

All right.

We need to hear more about why you’re out here with no clothes on.

I got a overcoat on.

Are you jackin with me?

No sir.

Dont jack with me. Are you in the service?

No sir. I’m a veteran.

What branch of the service.

United States Army.

Were you in Nam?

Yessir. Two tours.

What outfit.

Twelfth Infantry.

What were your dates of tour duty.

August seventh nineteen and sixty-six to September second nineteen and sixty-eight.

The man watched him for some time. Moss looked at him and looked away. He looked toward the door, the empty hall. Sitting hunched forward in the overcoat with his elbows on his knees.

Are you all right?

Yessir. I’m all right. I got a wife that’ll come and get me if you all will let me go on.

Have you got any money? You got change for a phone call?

Yessir.

He heard claws scrabbling on the tiles. A guard was standing there with a German Shepherd on a lead. The man jutted his chin at the guard. Get someone to help this man. He needs to get into town. Is the taxi gone?

Yessir. It was clean.

I know. Get someone to help him.

He looked at Moss. Where are you from?

I’m from San Saba Texas.

Does your wife know where you are?

Yessir. I talked to her here just a while ago.

Did you all have a fight?

Did who have a fight?

You and your wife.

Well. Somewhat of a one I reckon. Yessir.

You need to tell her you’re sorry.

Sir?

I said you need to tell her you’re sorry.

Yessir. I will.

Even if you think it was her fault.

Yessir.

Go on. Get your ass out of here.

Yessir.

Sometimes you have a little problem and you dont fix it and then all of a sudden it aint a little problem anymore. You understand what I’m tellin you?

Yessir. I do.

Go on.

Yessir.

It was almost daylight and the cab was long gone. He set out up the street. A bloody serum was leaking from his wound and it was running down the inside of his leg. People paid him little mind. He turned up Adams Street and stopped at a clothing store and peered in. Lights were on at the rear. He knocked at the door and waited and knocked again. Finally a small man in a white shirt and a black tie opened the door and looked out at him. I know you aint open, Moss said, but I need some clothes real bad. The man nodded and swung open the door. Come in, he said.

They walked side by side down the aisle toward the boot section. Tony Lama, Justin, Nocona. There were some low chairs there and Moss eased himself down and sat with his hands gripping the chair arms. I need boots and some clothes, he said. I got some medical problems and I dont want to walk around no more than what I can help.

The man nodded. Yessir, he said. Of course.

Do you carry the Larry Mahans?

No sir. We dont.

That’s all right. I need a pair of Wrangler jeans thirty-two by thirty-four length. A shirt size large. Some socks. And show me some Nocona boots in a ten and a half. And I need a belt.

Yessir. Did you want to look at hats?

Moss looked across the store. I think a hat would be good. You got any of them stockman’s hats with the small brim? Seven and three-eights?

Yes we do. We have a three X beaver in the Resistol and a little better grade in the Stetson. A five X, I think it is.

Let me see the Stetson. That silverbelly color.

All right sir. Are white socks all right?

White socks is all I wear.

What about underwear?

Maybe a pair of jockey shorts. Thirty-two. Or medium.

Yessir. You just make yourself comfortable. Are you all right?

I’m all right.

The man nodded and turned to go.

Can I ask you somethin? Moss said.

Yessir.

Do you get a lot of people come in here with no clothes on?

No sir. I wouldnt say a lot.

He carried the pile of new clothing with him to the dressingroom and slid off the coat and hung it from the hook on the back of the door. A pale dried blood was crusted across his sallow sunken paunch. He pushed at the edges of the tape but they wouldnt stick. He eased himself down on the wooden bench and pulled on the socks and he opened the package of shorts and took them out and pulled them over his feet and up to his knees and then stood and pulled them carefully up over the dressing. He sat again and undid the shirt from its cardboard forms and endless pins.

When he came out of the dressingroom 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.

VII

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 answerin 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.