No Country for Old Men (9 page)

He loped wincing down the sidewalk past the Aztec Theatre. As he passed the little round ticket kiosk all the glass fell out of it. He never even heard that shot. He spun with the shotgun and thumbed back the hammer and fired. The buckshot rattled off the second storey balustrade and took the glass out of some of the windows. When he turned again a car coming down Main Street picked him up in the lights and slowed and then speeded up again. He turned up Adams Street and the car skidded sideways through the intersection in a cloud of rubbersmoke and stopped. The engine had died and the driver was trying to start it. Moss turned with his back to the brick wall of the building. Two men had come from the car and were crossing the street on foot at a run. One of them opened fire with a small caliber machinegun and he fired at them twice with the shotgun and then loped on with the warm blood seeping into his crotch. In the street he heard the car start up again.

By the time he got to Grande Street a pandemonium of gunfire had broken out behind him. He didnt think he could run any more. He saw himself limping along in a storewindow across the street, holding his elbow to his side, the bag slung over his shoulder and carrying the shotgun and the leather document case, dark in the glass and wholly unaccountable. When he looked again he was sitting on the sidewalk. Get up you son of a bitch, he said. Dont you set there and die. You get the hell up.

He crossed Ryan Street with blood sloshing in his boots. He pulled the bag around and unzipped it and shoved the shotgun in and zipped it shut again. He stood tottering. Then he crossed to the bridge. He was cold and shivering and he thought he was going to vomit.

There was a changewindow and a turnstile on the American side of the bridge and he put a dime in the slot and pushed through and staggered out onto the span and eyed the narrow walk ahead of him. Just breaking first light. Dull and gray above the floodplain along the east shore of the river. God’s own distance to the far side.

Half way he met a party returning. Four of them, young boys, maybe eighteen, partly drunk. He set the case on the sidewalk and took a pack of the hundreds from his pocket. The money was slick with blood. He wiped it on his trouserleg and peeled off five of the bills and put the rest in his back pocket.

Excuse me, he said. Leaning against the chainlink fence. His bloody footprints on the walk behind him like clues in an arcade.

Excuse me.

They were stepping off the curb into the roadway to go around him.

Excuse me I wondered if you all would sell me a coat.

They didnt stop till they were past him. Then one of them turned. What’ll you give? he said.

That man behind you. The one in the long coat.

The one in the long coat stopped with the others.

How much?

I’ll give you five hundred dollars.

Bullshit.

Come on Brian.

Let’s go, Brian. He’s drunk.

Brian looked at them and he looked at Moss. Let’s see the money, he said.

It’s right here.

Let me see it.

Let me hold the coat.

Let’s go, Brian.

You take this hundred and let me hold the coat. Then I’ll give you the rest.

All right.

He slipped out of the coat and handed it over and Moss handed him the bill.

What’s this on it?

Blood.

Blood?

Blood.

He stood holding the bill in one hand. He looked at the blood on his fingers. What happened to you?

I’ve been shot.

Let’s go, Brian. Goddamn.

Let me have the money.

Moss handed him the bills and unshouldered the zipper bag to the sidewalk and struggled into the coat. The boy folded the bills and put them in his pocket and stepped away.

He joined the others and they went on. Then they stopped. They were talking together and looking back at him. He got the coat buttoned and put his money in the inside pocket and shouldered the bag and picked up the leather case. You all need to keep walkin, he said. I wont tell you twice.

They turned and went on. There were only three of them. He shoved at his eyes with the heel of his hand. He tried to see where the fourth one had gone. Then he realized that there was no fourth one. That’s all right, he said. Just keep puttin one foot in front of the other.

When he reached the place where the river actually passed beneath the bridge he stopped and stood looking down at it. The Mexican gateshack was just ahead. He looked back down the bridge but the three were gone. A grainy light to the east. Over the low black hills beyond the town. The water moved beneath him slow and dark. A dog somewhere. Silence. Nothing.

There was a stand of tall carrizo cane growing along the American side of the river below him and he set the zipper bag down and took hold of the case by the handles and swung it behind him and then heaved it over the rail and out into space.

Whitehot pain. He held his side and watched the bag turn slowly in the diminishing light from the bridgelamps and drop soundlessly into the cane and vanish. Then he slid to the pavement and sat there in the puddling blood, his face against the wire. Get up, he said. Damn you, get up.

When he reached the gatehouse there was no one there. He pushed through and into the town of Piedras Negras, State of Coahuila.

He made his way up the street to a small park or zocalo where the grackles in the eucalyptus trees were waking and calling. The trees were painted white to the height of a wainscot and from a distance the park seemed set with white posts arrayed at random. In the center a wrought-iron gazebo or bandstand. He collapsed on one of the iron benches with the bag on the bench beside him and leaned forward holding himself. Globes of orange light hung from the lampstands. The world receding. Across from the park was a church. It seemed far away. The grackles creaked and swayed in the branches overhead and day was coming.

He put out one hand on the bench beside him. Nausea. Dont lie down.

No sun. Just the gray light breaking. The streets wet. The shops closed. Iron shutters. An old man was coming along pushing a broom. He paused. Then he moved on.

Señor, Moss said.

Bueno, the old man said.

You speak english?

He studied Moss, holding the broom handle in both hands. He shrugged his shoulders.

I need a doctor.

The old man waited for more. Moss pushed himself up. The bench was bloody. I’ve been shot, he said.

The old man looked him over. He clucked his tongue. He looked away toward the dawn. The trees and buildings taking shape. He looked at Moss and gestured with his chin. Puede andar? he said.

What?

Puede caminar? He made walking motions with his fingers, his hand hanging loosely at the wrist.

Moss nodded. A wave of blackness came over him. He waited till it passed.

Tiene dinero? The sweeper rubbed his thumb and fingers together.

Sí, Moss said. Sí. He rose and stood swaying. He took the packet of bloodsoaked bills from the overcoat pocket and separated a hundred dollar note and handed it to the old man. The old man took it with great reverence. He looked at Moss and then he stood the broom against the bench.

When Chigurh came down the steps and out the front door of the hotel he had a towel wrapped around his upper right leg and tied with sections of window blind cord. The towel was already wet through with blood. He was carrying a small bag in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The Cadillac was crossways in the intersection and there was gunfire in the street. He stepped back into the doorway of the barbershop. The clatter of automatic riflefire and the deep heavy slam of a shotgun rattling off the facades of the buildings. The men in the street were dressed in raincoats and tennis shoes. They didnt look like anybody you would expect to meet in this part of the country. He limped back up the steps to the porch and laid the pistol over the balustrade and opened fire on them.

By the time they’d figured out where the fire was coming from he’d killed one and wounded another. The wounded man got behind the car and opened up on the hotel. Chigurh stood with his back to the brick wall and fitted a fresh clip into the pistol. The rounds were taking out the glass in the doors and splintering up the sashwork. The foyer light went out. It was still dark enough in the street that you could see the muzzleflashes. There was a break in the firing and Chigurh turned and pushed his way through into the hotel lobby, the bits of glass crackling under his boots. He went gimping down the hallway and down the steps at the rear of the hotel and out into the parking lot.

He crossed the street and went up Jefferson keeping to the north wall of the buildings, trying to hurry and swinging the bound leg out at his side. All of this was one block from the Maverick County Courthouse and he figured he had minutes at best before fresh parties began to arrive.

When he got to the corner there was only one man standing in the street. He was at the rear of the car and the car was badly shot up, all of the glass gone or shot white. There was at least one body inside. The man was watching the hotel and Chigurh leveled the pistol and shot him twice and he fell down in the street. Chigurh stepped back behind the corner of the building and stood with the pistol upright at his shoulder, waiting. A rich tang of gunpowder on the cool morning air. Like the smell of fireworks. No sound anywhere.

When he limped out into the street one of the men he’d shot from the hotel porch was crawling toward the curb. Chigurh watched him. Then he shot him in the back. The other one was lying by the front fender of the car. He’d been shot through the head and the dark blood was pooled all about him. His weapon was lying there but Chigurh paid it no mind. He walked to the rear of the car and jostled the man there with his boot and then bent and picked up the machinegun he’d been firing. It was a shortbarreled Uzi with the twenty-five round clip. Chigurh rifled the dead man’s raincoat pockets and came up with three more clips, one of them full. He put them in the pocket of his jacket and stuck the pistol down in the front of his belt and checked the rounds in the clip that was in the Uzi. Then he slung the piece over his shoulder and hobbled back to the curb. The man he’d shot in the back was lying there watching him. Chigurh looked up the street toward the hotel and the courthouse. The tall palm trees. He looked at the man. The man was lying in a spreading pool of blood. Help me, he said. Chigurh took the pistol from his waist. He looked into the man’s eyes. The man looked away.

Look at me, Chigurh said.

The man looked and looked away again.

Do you speak english?

Yes.

Dont look away. I want you to look at me.

He looked at Chigurh. He looked at the new day paling all about. Chigurh shot him through the forehead and then stood watching. Watching the capillaries break up in his eyes. The light receding. Watching his own image degrade in that squandered world. He shoved the pistol in his belt and looked back up the street once more. Then he picked up the bag and slung the Uzi over his shoulder and crossed the street and went limping on toward the hotel parking lot where he’d left his vehicle.

V

We come here from Georgia. Our family did. Horse and wagon. I pretty much know that for a fact. I know they’s a lots of things in a family history that just plain aint so. Any family. The stories gets passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. But I dont believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it dont change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that’s what it is. It’s the thing you’re talkin about. I’ve heard it compared to the rock—maybe in the bible—and I wouldnt disagree with that. But it’ll be here even when the rock is gone. I’m sure they’s people would disagree with that. Quite a few, in fact. But I never could find out what any of them did believe.

You always tried to be available for your social events and I would always go to things like cemetery cleanins of course. That was all right. The women would fix dinner on the ground and of course it was a way of campaignin but you were doin somethin for folks that couldnt do it for theirselves. Well, you could be cynical about it I reckon and say that you just didnt want em comin around at night. But I think it goes deeper than that. It is community and it is respect, of course, but the dead have more claims on you than what you might want to admit or even what you might know about and them claims can be very strong indeed. Very strong indeed. You get the feelin they just dont want to turn loose. So any little thing helps, in that respect.

What I was sayin the other day about the papers. Here last week they found this couple out in California they would rent out rooms to old people and then kill em and bury em in the yard and cash their social security checks. They’d torture em first, I dont know why. Maybe their television was broke. Now here’s what the papers had to say about that. I quote from the papers. Said: Neighbors were alerted when a man run from the premises wearin only a dogcollar. You cant make up such a thing as that. I dare you to even try.

But that’s what it took, you’ll notice. All that hollerin and diggin in the yard didnt bring it.

That’s all right. I laughed myself when I read it. There aint a whole lot else you can do.

I
t was almost a three hour drive to Odessa and dark when he got there. He listened to the truckers on the radio. Has he got jurisdiction up here? Come on. Hell if I know. I think if he sees you committin a crime he does. Well I’m a reformed criminal then. You got that right old buddy.

He got a city map at the quickstop and spread it out on the seat of the cruiser while he drank coffee out of a styrofoam cup. He traced his route on the map with a yellow marker from the glovebox and refolded the map and laid it on the seat beside him and switched off the domelight and started the engine.

When he knocked at the door Llewelyn’s wife answered it. As she opened the door he took off his hat and he was right away sorry he’d done it. She put her hand to her mouth and reached for the doorjamb.

I’m sorry mam, he said. He’s all right. Your husband is all right. I just wanted to talk to you if I could.

You aint lyin to me are you?

No mam. I dont lie.

You drove up here from Sanderson?

Yes mam.

What did you want.

I just wanted to visit with you a little bit. Talk to you about your husband.

Well you cant come in here. You’ll scare Mama to death. Let me get my coat.

Yes mam.

They drove down to the Sunshine Cafe and sat in a booth at the rear and ordered coffee.

You dont know where he’s at, do you.

No I dont. I done told you.

I know you did.

He took off his hat and laid it in the booth beside him and ran his hand through his hair. You aint heard from him?

No I aint.

Nothin.

Not word one.

The waitress brought the coffee in two heavy white china mugs. Bell stirred his with his spoon. He raised the spoon and looked into the smoking silver bowl of it. How much money did he give you?

She didnt answer. Bell smiled. What did you start to say? he said. You can say it.

I started to say that’s some more of your business, aint it.

Why dont you just pretend I aint the sheriff.

And pretend you’re what?

You know he’s in trouble.

Llewelyn aint done nothin.

It’s not me he’s in trouble with.

Who’s he in trouble with then?

Some pretty bad people.

Llewelyn can take care of hisself.

Do you care if I call you Carla?

I go by Carla Jean.

Carla Jean. Is that all right?

That’s all right. You dont care if I keep on callin you Sheriff do you?

Bell smiled. No, he said. That’s fine.

All right.

These people will kill him, Carla Jean. They wont quit.

He wont neither. He never has.

Bell nodded. He sipped his coffee. The face that lapped and shifted in the dark liquid in the cup seemed an omen of things to come. Things losing shape. Taking you with them. He set the cup down and looked at the girl. I wish I could say that was in his favor. But I have to say I dont think it is.

Well, she said, he’s who he is and he always will be. That’s why I married him.

But you aint heard from him in a while.

I didnt expect to hear from him.

Were you all havin problems?

We dont have problems. When we have problems we fix em.

Well, you’re lucky people.

Yes we are.

She watched him. How come you to ask me that, she said.

About havin problems?

About havin problems.

I just wondered if you were.

Has somethin happened that you know about and I dont?

No. I could ask you the same thing.

Except I wouldnt tell you.

Yes.

You think he’s left me, dont you.

I dont know. Has he?

No. He aint. I know him.

You used to know him.

I know him yet. He aint changed.

Maybe.

But you dont believe that.

Well, I guess in all honesty I would have to say that I never knew nor did I ever hear of anybody that money didnt change. I’d have to say he’d be the first.

Well he’ll be the first then.

I hope that’s true.

Do you really hope that, Sheriff?

Yes. I do.

He aint been charged with nothin?

No. He aint been charged with nothin.

That dont mean he wont be.

No. It dont. If he lives that long.

Well. He aint dead yet.

I hope that’s more comfort to you than it is to me.

He sipped the coffee and set the mug down on the table. He watched her. He needs to turn the money in, he said. They’d put it in the papers. Then maybe these people would leave him alone. I cant guarantee that they will. But they might. It’s the only chance he’s got.

You could put it in the papers anyway.

Bell studied her. No, he said. I couldnt.

Or wouldnt.

Wouldnt then. How much money is it?

I dont know what you’re talkin about.

All right.

You care if I smoke? she said.

I think we’re still in America.

She got her cigarettes out and lit one and turned her face and blew the smoke out into the room. Bell watched her. How do you think this is goin to end? he said.

I dont know. I dont know how nothin is goin to end. Do you?

I know how it aint.

Like livin happily ever after?

Somethin like that.

Llewelyn’s awful smart.

Bell nodded. You ought to be more worried about him I guess is what I’m sayin.

She took a long pull on the cigarette. She studied Bell. Sheriff, she said, I think I’m probably just about as worried as I need to be.

He’s goin to wind up killin somebody. Have you thought about that?

He never has.

He was in Vietnam.

I mean as a civilian.

He will.

She didnt answer.

You want some more coffee?

I’m coffeed out. I didnt want none to start with.

She looked off across the cafe. The empty tables. The night cashier was a boy about eighteen and he was bent over the glass counter reading a magazine. My mama’s got cancer, she said. She aint got all that long to live.

I’m sorry to hear that.

I call her mama. She’s really my grandmother. She raised me and I was lucky to have her. Well. Lucky dont even say it.

Yes mam.

She never did much like Llewelyn. I dont know why. No reason in particular. He was always good to her. I thought after she got diagnosed she’d be easier to live with but she aint. She’s got worse.

How come you live with her?

I dont live with her. I aint that ignorant. This is just temporary.

Bell nodded.

I need to get back, she said.

All right. Have you got a gun?

Yeah. I got a gun. I guess you think I’m just bait settin up here.

I dont know.

But that’s what you think.

I cant believe it’s all that good a situation.

Yeah.

I just hope you’ll talk to him.

I need to think about it.

All right.

I’d die and live in hell forever fore I’d turn snitch on Llewelyn. I hope you understand that.

I do understand that.

I never did learn no shortcuts about things such as that. I hope I never do.

Yes mam.

I’ll tell you somethin if you want to hear it.

I want to hear it.

You might think I’m peculiar.

I might.

Or you might think it anyway.

No I dont.

When I got out of high school I was still sixteen and I got a job at Wal-Mart. I didnt know what else to do. We needed the money. What little it was. Anyway, the night before I went down there I had this dream. Or it was like a dream. I think I was still about half awake. But it come to me in this dream or whatever it was that if I went down there that he would find me. At the Wal-Mart. I didnt know who he was or what his name was or what he looked like. I just knew that I’d know him when I seen him. I kept a calendar and marked the days. Like when you’re in jail. I mean I aint never been in jail, but like you would probably. And on the ninety-ninth day he walked in and he asked me where sportin goods was at and it was him. And I told him where it was at and he looked at me and went on. And directly he come back and he read my nametag and he said my name and he looked at me and he said: What time do you get off? And that was all she wrote. There was not no question in my mind. Not then, not now, not ever.

That’s a nice story, Bell said. I hope it has a nice endin.

It happened just like that.

I know it did. I appreciate you talkin to me. I guess I’d better cut you loose, late as it is.

She stubbed out her cigarette. Well, she said. I’m sorry you come all this way not to do no better than what you done.

Bell picked up his hat and put it on and squared it. Well, he said. You do the best you can. Sometimes things turns out all right.

Do you really care?

About your husband?

About my husband. Yes.

Yes mam. I do. The people of Terrell County hired me to look after em. That’s my job. I get paid to be the first one hurt. Killed, for that matter. I’d better care.

You’re askin me to believe what you say. But you’re the one sayin it.

Bell smiled. Yes mam, he said. I’m the one sayin it. I just hope you’ll think about what I did say. I aint makin up a word about the kind of trouble he’s in. If he gets killed then I got to live with that. But I can do it. I just want you to think about if you can.

All right.

Can I ask you somethin?

You can ask.

I know you aint supposed to ask a woman her age but I couldnt help but be a bit curious.

That’s all right. I’m nineteen. I look younger.

How long have you all been married?

Three years. Almost three years.

Bell nodded. My wife was eighteen when we married. Just had turned. Marryin her makes up for ever dumb thing I ever done. I even think I still got a few left in the account. I think I’m way in the black on that. Are you ready?

She got her purse and rose. Bell picked up the check and squared his hat again and eased up from the booth. She put her cigarettes in her purse and looked at him. I’ll tell you somethin, Sheriff. Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it’s all that more likely it’ll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter. I think about that.

Bell nodded. I aint a stranger to them thoughts, Carla Jean. Them thoughts is very familiar to me.

He was asleep in his bed and it still mostly dark out when the phone rang. He looked at the old radium dial clock on the night table and reached and picked up the phone. Sheriff Bell, he said.

He listened for about two minutes. Then he said: I appreciate you callin me. Yep. It’s just out and out war is what it is. I dont know no other name for it.

He pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office in Eagle Pass at nine-fifteen in the morning and he and the sheriff sat in the office and drank coffee and looked at the photos taken in the street two blocks away three hours earlier.

There’s days I’m in favor of givin the whole damn place back to em, the sheriff said.

I hear you, said Bell.

Dead bodies in the street. Citizens’ businesses all shot up. People’s cars. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Can we go over and take a look?

Yeah. We can go over.

The street was still roped off but there wasnt much to see. The front of the Eagle Hotel was all shot up and there was broken glass in the sidewalk down both sides of the street. Tires and glass shot out of the cars and holes in the sheetmetal with the little rings of bare steel around them. The Cadillac had been towed off and the glass in the street swept up and the blood hosed away.

Who was it in the hotel do you reckon?

Some Mexican dopedealer.

The sheriff stood smoking. Bell walked off a ways down the street. He stood. He came back up the sidewalk, his boots grinding in the glass. The sheriff flipped his cigarette into the street. You go up Adams there about a half a block you’ll see a blood trail.

Goin yon way, I reckon.

If he had any sense. I think them boys in the car got caught in a crossfire. It looks to me like they was shootin towards the hotel and up the street yonder both.

What do you reckon their car was doin in the middle of the intersection thataway?

I got no idea, Ed Tom.

They walked up to the hotel.

What kind of shellcasins did you all pick up?

Mostly nine millimeter with some shotgun hulls and a few .380’s. We got a shotgun and two machineguns.

Fully automatic?

Sure. Why not?

Why not.

They walked up the stairs. The porch of the hotel was covered in glass and the woodwork shot up.

The nightclerk got killed. About as bad a piece of luck as you could have, I reckon. Caught a stray round.

Where’d he catch it?

Right between the eyes.

They walked into the lobby and stood. Somebody had thrown a couple of towels over the blood in the carpet behind the desk but the blood had soaked through the towels. He wasnt shot, Bell said.

Who wasnt shot.

The nightclerk.

He wasnt shot?

No sir.

What makes you say that?

You get the lab report and you’ll see.

What are you sayin Ed Tom? That they drilled his brains out with a Black and Decker?

That’s pretty close. I’ll let you think about it.

Driving back to Sanderson it began to snow. He went to the courthouse and did some paperwork and left just before dark. When he pulled up in the driveway behind the house his wife was looking out from the kitchen window. She smiled at him. The falling snow drifted and turned in the warm yellow light.

They sat in the little diningroom and ate. She’d put on music, a violin concerto. The phone didnt ring.

Did you take it off the hook?

No, she said.

Wires must be down.

She smiled. I think it’s just the snow. I think it makes people stop and think.

Bell nodded. I hope it comes a blizzard then.

Do you remember the last time it snowed here?

No, I cant say as I do. Do you?