No Country for Old Men

  Chigurh pulled in to the Desert Aire shortly before noon and parked just below Moss's trailer and shut off the engine. He got out and walked across the raw dirt yard and climbed the steps and tapped at the aluminum door. He waited. Then he tapped again. He turned and stood with his back to the trailer and studied the little park. Nothing moved. Not a dog. He turned and put his wrist to the doorlock and shot out the lock cylinder with the cobalt steel plunger of the cattlegun and opened the door and went in and shut the door behind him.

  He stood, the deputy's revolver in his hand. He looked in the kitchen. He walked back into the bedroom. He walked through the bedroom and pushed open the bathroom door and went into the second bedroom. Clothes on the floor. The closet door open. He opened the top dresser drawer and closed it again. He put the gun back in his belt and pulled his shirt over it and walked back out to the kitchen.

  He opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk and opened it and smelled it and drank. He stood there holding the carton in one hand and looking out the window. He drank again and then he put the carton back in the refrigerator and shut the door.

  He went into the livingroom and sat on the sofa. There was a perfectly good twenty-one inch television on the table. He looked at himself in the dead gray screen.

  He rose and got the mail off the floor and sat back down and went through it. He folded three of the envelopes and put them in his shirtpocket and then rose and went out.

  He drove down and parked in front of the office and went in. Yessir, the woman said.

  I'm looking for Llewelyn Moss.

  She studied him. Did you go up to his trailer?

  Yes I did.

  Well I'd say he's at work. Did you want to leave a message?

  Where does he work?

  Sir I aint at liberty to give out no information about our residents.

  Chigurh looked around at the little plywood office. He looked at the woman.

  Where does he work.

  Sir?

  I said where does he work.

  Did you not hear me? We cant give out no information.

  A toilet flushed somewhere. A doorlatch clicked. Chigurh looked at the woman again. Then he went out and got in the Ramcharger and left.

  He pulled in at the cafe and took the envelopes out of his shirtpocket and unfolded them and opened them and read the letters inside. He opened the phone bill and looked at the charges. There were calls to Del Rio and to Odessa.

  He went in and got some change and went to the payphone and dialed the Del Rio number but there was no answer. He called the Odessa number and a woman answered and he asked for Llewelyn. The woman said he wasnt there.

  I tried to reach him in Sanderson but I dont believe he's there anymore.

  There was a silence. Then the woman said: I dont know where he's at. Who is this?

  Chigurh hung up the phone and went over to the counter and sat down and ordered a cup of coffee. Has Llewelyn been in? he said.

  When he pulled up in front of the garage there were two men sitting with their backs to the wall of the building eating their lunches. He went in. There was a man at the desk drinking coffee and listening to the radio. Yessir, he said.

  I was looking for Llewelyn.

  He aint here.

  What time do you expect him?

  I dont know. He aint called in or nothin so your guess is as good as mine. He leaned his head slightly. As if he'd get another look at Chigurh. Is there somethin I can help you with?

  I dont think so.

  Outside he stood on the broken oilstained pavement. He looked at the two men sitting at the end of the building.

  Do you know where Llewelyn is?

  They shook their heads. Chigurh got into the Ramcharger and pulled out and went back toward town.

  The bus pulled into Del Rio in the early afternoon and Moss got his bags and climbed down. He walked down to the cabstand and opened the rear door of the cab parked there and got in. Take me to a motel, he said.

  The driver looked at him in the mirror. You got one in mind?

  No. Just someplace cheap.

  They drove out to a place called the Trail Motel and Moss got out with his bag and the document case and paid the driver and went into the office. A woman was sitting watching television. She got up and went around behind the desk.

  Do you have a room?

  I got more than one. How many nights?

  I dont know.

  We got a weekly rate is the reason I ask. Thirty-five dollars plus a dollar seventy-five tax. Thirty-six seventy-five.

  Thirty-six seventy-five.

  Yessir.

  For the week.

  Yessir. For the week.

  Is that your best rate?

  Yessir. There's not no discounts on the weekly rate.

  Well let's just take it one day at a time.

  Yessir.

  He got the key and walked down to the room and went in and shut the door and set the bags on the bed. He closed the curtains and stood looking out through them at the squalid little court. Dead quiet. He fastened the chain on the door and sat on the bed. He unzipped the duffel bag and took out the machinepistol and laid it on the bedspread and lay down beside it.

  When he woke it was late afternoon. He lay there looking at the stained asbestos ceiling. He sat up and pulled off his boots and socks and examined the bandages on his heels. He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror and he took off his shirt and examined the back of his arm. It was discolored from shoulder to elbow. He walked back into the room and sat on the bed again. He looked at the gun lying there. After a while he climbed up onto the cheap wooden desk and with the blade of his pocketknife set to unscrewing the airduct grille, putting the screws in his mouth one by one. Then he pulled the grille loose and laid it on the desk and stood on his toes and looked into the duct.

  He cut a length from the venetian blind cord at the window and tied the end of the cord to the case. Then he unlatched the case and counted out a thousand dollars and folded the money and put it in his pocket and shut the case and fastened it and fastened the straps.

  He got the clothes pole out of the closet, sliding the wire hangers off onto the floor, and stood on the dresser again and pushed the case down the duct as far as he could reach. It was a tight fit. He took the pole and pushed it again until he could just reach the end of the rope. He put the grille back with its rack of dust and fastened the screws and climbed down and went into the bathroom and took a shower. When he came out he lay on the bed in his shorts and pulled the chenille spread over himself and over the submachinegun at his side. He pushed the safety off. Then he went to sleep.

  When he woke it was dark. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat listening. He rose and walked to the window and pulled the curtain back slightly and looked out. Deep shadows. Silence. Nothing.

  He got dressed and put the gun under the mattress with the safety still off and smoothed down the dustskirt and sat on the bed and picked up the phone and called a cab.

  He had to pay the driver an extra ten dollars to take him across the bridge to Ciudad Acuna. He walked the streets, looking into the shopwindows. The evening was soft and warm and in the little alameda grackles were settling in the trees and calling to one another. He went into a boot shop and looked at the exotics--crocodile and ostrich and elephant--but the quality of the boots was nothing like the Larry Mahans that he wore. He went into a farmacia and bought a tin of bandages and sat in the park and patched his raw feet. His socks were already bloody. At the corner a cabdriver asked him if he wanted to go see the girls and Moss held up his hand for him to see the ring he wore and kept on walking.

  He ate in a restaurant with white tablecloths and waiters in white jackets. He ordered a glass of red wine and a porterhouse steak. It was early and the restaurant was empty save for him. He sipped the wine and when the steak came he cut into it and chewed slowly and thought about his life.

  He got back to the motel a littl
e after ten and sat in the cab with the motor running while he counted out money for the fare. He handed the bills across the seat and he started to get out but he didnt. He sat there with his hand on the doorhandle. Drive me around to the side, he said.

  The driver put the shifter in gear. What room? he said.

  Just drive me around. I want to see if somebody's here.

  They drove slowly past his room. There was a gap in the curtains he was pretty sure he hadnt left there. Hard to tell. Not that hard. The cab tolled slowly past. No cars in the lot that hadnt been there. Keep going, he said.

  The driver looked at him in the mirror.

  Keep going, said Moss. Dont stop.

  I dont want to get in some kind of a jackpot here, buddy.

  Just keep going.

  Why dont I let you out here and we wont argue about it.

  I want you to take me to another motel.

  Let's just call it square.

  Moss leaned forward and held a hundred dollar bill across the seat. You're already in a jackpot, he said. I'm tryin to get you out of it. Now take me to a motel.

  The driver took the bill and tucked it into his shirtpocket and turned out of the lot and into the street.

  He spent the night at the Ramada Inn out on the highway and in the morning he went down and ate breakfast in the diningroom and read the paper. Then he just sat there.

  They wouldnt be in the room when the maids came to clean it.

  Checkout time is eleven oclock.

  They could have found the money and left.

  Except of course that there were probably at least two parties looking for him and whichever one this was it wasnt the other and the other wasnt going away either.

  By the time he got up he knew that he was probably going to have to kill somebody. He just didnt know who it was.

  He took a cab and went into town and went into a sporting goods store and bought a twelve gauge Winchester pump gun and a box of double ought buckshot shells. The box of shells contained almost exactly the firepower of a claymore mine. He had them wrap the gun and he left with it under his arm and walked up Pecan Street to a hardware store. There he bought a hacksaw and a flat millfile and some miscellaneous items. A pair of pliers and a pair of sidecutters. A screwdriver. Flashlight. A roll of duct tape.

  He stood on the sidewalk with his purchases. Then he turned and walked back down the street.

  In the sporting goods store again he asked the same clerk if he had any aluminum tentpoles. He tried to explain that he didnt care what kind of tent it was, he just needed the poles.

  The clerk studied him. Whatever kind of tent it is, he said, we'd still have to special order poles for it. You need to get the manufacturer and the model number.

  You sell tents, right?

  We got three different models.

  Which one has got the most poles in it?

  Well, I guess that would be our ten foot walltent. You can stand up in it. Well, some people could stand up in it. It's got a six foot clearance at the ridge.

  Let me have one.

  Yessir.

  He brought the tent from the stockroom and laid it on the counter. It came in an orange nylon bag. Moss laid the shotgun and the bag of hardware on the counter and untied the strings and pulled the tent from the bag together with the poles and cords.

  It's all there, the clerk said.

  What do I owe you.

  It's one seventy-nine plus tax.

  He laid two of the hundred dollar bills on the counter. The tentpoles were in a separate bag and he pulled this out and put it with his other things. The clerk gave him his change and the receipt and Moss gathered up the shotgun and his hardware purchases together with the tentpoles and thanked him and turned and left. What about the tent? the clerk called.

  In the room he unwrapped the shotgun and wedged it in an open drawer and held it and sawed the barrel off just in front of the magazine. He squared up the cut with the file and smoothed it and wiped out the muzzle of the barrel with a damp facecloth and set it aside. Then he sawed off the stock in a line that left it with a pistol grip and sat on the bed and dressed the grip smooth with the file. When he had it the way he wanted it he slid the forearm back and slid it forward again and let the hammer down with his thumb and turned it sideways and looked at it. It looked pretty good. He turned it over and opened the box of shells and fed the heavy waxed loads into the magazine one by one. He jacked the slide back and chambered a shell and lowered the hammer and then put one more round in the magazine and laid the gun across his lap. It was less than two feet long.

  He called the Trail Motel and told the woman to hold his room for him. Then he shoved the gun and the shells and the tools under the mattress and went out again.

  He went to Wal-Mart and bought some clothes and a small nylon zipper bag to put them in. A pair of jeans and a couple of shirts and some socks. In the afternoon he went for a long walk out along the lake, taking the cut-off gunbarrel and the stock with him in the bag. He slung the barrel out into the water as far as he could throw it and he buried the stock under a ledge of shale. There were deer moving away through the desert scrub. He heard them snort and he could see them where they came out on a ridge a hundred yards away to stand looking back at him. He sat on a gravel beach with the empty bag folded in his lap and watched the sun set. Watched the land turn blue and cold. An osprey went down the lake. Then there was just the darkness.

  IV

  I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five. Hard to believe. My father was not a lawman. Jack was my grandfather. Me and him was sheriff at the same time, him in Plano and me here. I think he was pretty proud of that. I know I was. I was just back from the war. I had some medals and stuff and of course people had got wind of that. I campaigned pretty hard. You had to. I tried to be fair. Jack used to say that any time you're throwin dirt you're losin ground but I think mostly it just wasnt in him. To speak ill of anybody. And I never did mind bein like him. Me and my wife has been married thirty-one years. No children. We lost a girl but I wont talk about that. I served two terms and then we moved to Denton Texas. Jack used to say that bein sheriff was one of the best jobs you could have and bein a ex-sheriff one of the worst. Maybe lots of things is like that. We stayed gone and stayed gone. I done different things. Was a detective on the railroad for a while. By that time my wife wasnt all that sure about us comin back here. About me runnin. But she seen I wanted to so that's what we done. She's a better person than me, which I will admit to anybody that cares to listen. Not that that's sayin a whole lot. She's a better person than anybody I know. Period.

  People think they know what they want but they generally dont. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways. Me I was always lucky. My whole life. I wouldnt be here otherwise. Scrapes I been in. But the day I seen her come out of Kerr's Mercantile and cross the street and she passed me and I tipped my hat to her and got just almost a smile back, that was the luckiest.

  People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things. I dont recall that I ever give the good Lord all that much cause to smile on me. But he did.

  When Bell walked into the cafe on Tuesday morning it was just daylight. He got his paper and went to his table in the corner. The men he passed at the big table nodded to him and said Sheriff. The waitress brought him his coffee and went back to the kitchen and ordered his eggs. He sat stirring the coffee with his spoon although there was nothing to stir since he drank it black. The Haskins boy's picture was on the front page of the Austin paper. Bell read, shaking his head. His wife was twenty years old. You know what you could do for her? Not a damn thing. Lamar had never lost a man in twenty some odd years. This is what he would remember. This is what he'd be remembered for.

  She came with his eggs and he folded the paper and laid it by.

  He took Wendell with him and they drove down to the Desert Aire and stood at the door while W
endell knocked.

  Look at the lock, Bell said.

  Wendell drew his pistol and opened the door. Sheriff's department, he called.

  There aint nobody here.

  No reason not to be careful.

  That's right. No reason in the world.

  They walked in and stood. Wendell would have holstered his pistol but Bell stopped him. Let's just keep to that careful routine, he said.

  Yessir.

  He walked over and picked up a small brass slug off of the carpet and held it up.

  What's that? said Wendell.

  Cylinder out of the lock.

  Bell passed his hand over the plywood of the room-divider. Here's where it hit at, he said. He balanced the piece of brass in his palm and looked toward the door. You could weigh this thing and measure the distance and the drop and calculate the speed.

  I expect you could.

  Pretty good speed.

  Yessir. Pretty good speed.

  They walked through the rooms. What do you think, Sheriff?

  I believe they've done lit a shuck.

  I do too.

  Kindly in a hurry about it, too.

  Yep.

  He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and looked in and shut it again. He looked in the freezer.

  So when was he here, Sheriff?

  Hard to say. We might of just missed him.

  You think this boy has got any notion of the sorts of sons of bitches that are huntin him?

  I dont know. He ought to. He seen the same things I seen and it made a impression on me.

  They're in a world of trouble, aint they?

  Yes they are.

  Bell walked back into the livingroom. He sat on the sofa. Wendell stood in the doorway. He was still holding the revolver in his hand. What are you thinkin? he said.

  Bell shook his head. He didnt look up.

  By Wednesday half of the State of Texas was on its way to Sanderson. Bell sat at his table in the cafe and read the news. He lowered the paper and looked up. A man about thirty years old that he'd never seen before was standing there. He introduced himself as a reporter for the San Antonio Light. What's all this about, Sheriff? he said.