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 shirtpocket. 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.
He was standing in front of the motel office when the cab pulled up. He climbed into the rear seat, got his breath, then reached and shut the door. He regarded the face of the driver in the rearview mirror. Do you want to make some money? he said.
Yeah. I want to make some money.
Moss took five of the hundreds and tore them in two and passed one half across the back of the seat to the driver. The driver counted the torn bills and put them in his shirtpocket and looked at Moss in the mirror and waited.
What's your name?
Paul, said the driver.
You got the right attitude, Paul. I wont get you in trouble. I just dont want you to leave me somewheres that I dont want to be left.
All right.
Have you got a flashlight?
Yeah. I got a flashlight.
Let me have it.
The driver passed the flashlight to the back.
You're the man, Moss said.
Where are we going.
Down the river road.
I aint pickin nobody up.
We're not pickin anybody up.
The driver watched him in the mirror. No drogas, he said.
No drogas.
The driver waited.
I'm goin to pick up a briefcase. It belongs to me. You can look inside if you want. Nothin illegal.
I can look inside.
Yes you can.
I hope you're not jerkin me around.
No.
I like money but I like stayin out of jail even better.
I'm the same way myself, Moss said.
They drove slowly up the road toward the bridge. Moss leaned forward over the seat. I want you to park under the bridge, he said.
All right.
I'm goin to unscrew the bulb out of this domelight.
They watch this road round the clock, the driver said.
I know that.
The driver pulled off of the road and shut off the engine and the lights and looked at Moss in the mirror. Moss took the bulb from the light and laid it in the plastic lens and handed it across the seat to the driver and opened the door. I should be back in just a few minutes, he said.
The cane was dusty, the stalks close grown. He pushed his way through carefully, holding the light at his knees with his hand partly across the lens.
The case was sitting in the brake rightside up and intact as if someone had simply set it there. He switched off the light and picked it up and made his way back in the dark, taking his sight by the span of the bridge overhead. When he got to the cab he opened the door and set the case in the seat and got in carefully and shut the door. He handed the flashlight to the driver and leaned back in the seat. Let's go, he said.
What's in there, the driver said.
Money.
Money?
Money.
The driver started the engine and pulled out onto the road.
Turn the lights on, Moss said.
He turned the lights on.
How much money?
A lot of money. What will you take to drive me to San Antonio.
The driver thought about it. You mean on top of the five hundred.
Yes.
How about a grand all in.
Everthi
ng.
Yes.
You got it.
The driver nodded. Then how about the other half of these five caesars I already got.
Moss took the bills from his pocket and handed them across the back of the seat.
What if the Migra stop us.
They wont stop us, Moss said.
How do you know?
There's too much shit still down the road that I got to deal with. It aint goin to end here.
I hope you're right.
Trust me, Moss said.
I hate hearin them words, the driver said. I always did.
Have you ever said them?
Yeah. I've said em. That's how come I know what they're worth.
He spent the night in a Rodeway Inn on highway 90 just west of town and in the morning he went down and got a paper and climbed laboriously back to his room. He couldnt buy a gun from a dealer because he had no identification but he could buy one out of the paper and he did. A Tec-9 with two extra magazines and a box and a half of shells. The man delivered the gun to his door and he paid him in cash. He turned the piece in his hand. It had a greenish parkerized finish. Semiautomatic. When was the last time you fired it? he said.
I aint never fired it.
Are you sure it fires?
Why would it not?
I dont know.
Well I dont either.
After he left Moss walked out onto the prairie behind the motel with one of the motel pillows under his arm and he wrapped the pillow about the muzzle of the gun and fired off three rounds and then stood there in the cold sunlight watching the feathers drift across the gray chaparral, thinking about his life, what was past and what was to come. Then he turned and walked slowly back to the motel leaving the burnt pillow on the ground.
He rested in the lobby and then climbed up to the room again. He bathed in the tub and looked at the exit hole in his lower back in the bathroom mirror. It looked pretty ugly. There were drains in both holes that he wanted to pull out but he didnt. He pulled loose the plaster on his arm and looked at the deep furrow the bullet had cut there and then taped the dressing back again. He dressed and put some more of the bills into the back pocket of his jeans and he fitted the pistol and the magazines into the case and closed it and called a cab and picked up the document case and went out and down the stairs.
He bought a 1978 Ford pickup with four wheel drive and a 460 engine from a lot on North Broadway and paid the man in cash and got the title notarized in the office and put the title in the glovebox and drove away. He drove back to the motel and checked out and left, the Tec-9 under the seat and the document case and his bag of clothes sitting in the floor on the passenger side of the truck.
At the onramp at Boerne there was a girl hitchhiking and Moss pulled over and blew the horn and watched her in the rearview mirror. Running, her blue nylon knapsack slung over one shoulder. She climbed in the truck and looked at him. Fifteen, sixteen. Red hair. How far are you goin? she said.
Can you drive?
Yeah. I can drive. It aint no stick shift is it?
No. Get out and come around.
She left her knapsack on the seat and got out of the truck and crossed in front of it. Moss pushed the knapsack into the floor and eased himself across and she got in and put the truck in drive and they pulled out onto the interstate.
How old are you?
Eighteen.
Bullshit. What are you doin out here? Dont you know it's dangerous to hitchhike?
Yeah. I know it.
He took off his hat and put it on the seat beside him and leaned back and closed his eyes. Dont go over the speed limit, he said. You get us stopped by the cops and you and me both will be in a shitpot full of trouble.
All right.
I'm serious. You go over the speed limit and I'll set your ass out by the side of the road.
All right.
He tried to sleep but he couldnt. He was in a lot of pain. After a while he sat up and got his hat off the seat and put it on and looked over at the speedometer.
Can I ask you somethin? she said.
You can ask.
Are you runnin from the law?
Moss eased himself in the seat and looked at her and looked out at the highway. What makes you ask that?
On account of what you said back yonder. About bein stopped by the police.
What if I was?
Then I think I ought to just get out up here.
You dont think that. You just want to know where you stand.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Moss studied the passing country. If you spent three days with me, he said, I could have you holdin up gas stations. Be no trick at all.
She gave him a funny little half smile. Is that what you do? she said. Hold up gas stations?
No. I dont have to. Are you hungry?
I'm all right.
When did you eat last.
I dont like for people to start askin me when I eat last.
All right. When did you eat last?
I knowed you was a smart-ass from the time I got in the truck.
Yeah. Pull off up here at this next exit. It's supposed to be four miles. And reach me that machinegun from under the seat.
Bell drove slowly across the cattleguard and got out and closed the gate and got back in the truck and drove across the pasture and parked at the well and got out and walked over to the tank. He put his hand in the water and raised a palmful and let it spill again. He took off his hat and passed his wet hand through his hair and looked up at the windmill. He looked out at the slow dark elliptic of the blades turning in the dry and windbent grass. A low wooden trundling under his feet. Then he just stood there paying the brim of his hat slowly through his fingers. The posture of a man perhaps who has just buried something. I dont know a damn thing, he said.
When he got home she had supper waiting. He dropped the keys to the pickup in the kitchen drawer and went to the sink to wash his hands. His wife laid a piece of paper on the counter and he stood looking at it.
Did she say where she was? This is a West Texas number.
She just said it was Carla Jean and give the number.
He went to the sideboard and called. She and her grandmother were in a motel outside of El Paso. I need for you to tell me somethin, she said.
All right.
Is your word good?
Yes it is.
Even to me?
I'd say especially to you.
He could hear her breathing in the receiver. Traffic in the distance.
Sheriff?
Yes mam.
If I tell you where he called from do you give your word that no harm will come to him.
I can give my word that no harm will come to him from me. I can do that.
After a while she said: Okay.
The man sitting at the little plywood table that folded up from the wall onto a hinged leg finished writing on the pad of paper and took off the headset and laid it on the table in front of him and passed both hands backwards over the sides of his black hair. He turned and looked toward the rear of the trailer where the second man was stretched out on the bed. Listo? he said.
The man sat up and swung his legs to the floor. He sat there for a minute and then he rose and came forward.
You got it?
I got it.
He tore the sheet off the pad and handed it to him and he read it and folded it and put it into his shirtpocket. Then he reached up and opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took out a camouflage-finished submachinegun and a pair of spare clips and pushed open the door and stepped down into the lot and shut the door behind him. He crossed the gravel to where a black Plymouth Barracuda was parked and opened the door and pitched the machinegun in on the far seat and lowered himself in and shut the door and started the engine. He blipped the throttle a couple of times and then pulled out onto the blacktop and turned on the lights and shifted into second gear and went up the road with the car squatting on the big rear tir
es and fishtailing and the tires whining and unspooling clouds of rubbersmoke behind him.
VIII
I've lost a lot of friends over these last few years. Not all of em older than me neither. One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everbody is goin to get older with you. You try to help the people that're payin your salary and of course you cant help but think about the kind of record you leave. This county has not had a unsolved homicide in forty-one years. Now we got nine of em in one week. Will they be solved? I dont know. Ever day is against you. Time is not on your side. I dont know as it'd be any compliment if you was known for second guessin a bunch of dopedealers. Not that they have all that much trouble second guessin us. They dont have no respect for the law? That aint half of it. They dont even think about the law. It dont seem to even concern em. Of course here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge. I guess he concerned em. Add to that that there's peace officers along this border gettin rich off of narcotics. That's a painful thing to know. Or it is for me. I dont believe that was true even ten years ago. A crooked peace officer is just a damned abomination. That's all you can say about it. He's ten times worse than the criminal. And this aint goin away. And that's about the only thing I do know. It aint goin away. Where would it go to?
And this may sound ignorant but I think for me the worst of it is knowin that probably the only reason I'm even still alive is that they have no respect for me. And that's very painful. Very painful. It has done got way beyond anything you might of thought about even a few years ago. Here a while back they found a DC-4 over in Presidio County. Just settin out in the desert. They had come in there of a night and graded out a sort of landin strip and set out rows of tarbarrels for lights but there was no way you could of flown that thing back out of there. It was stripped out to the walls. Just had a pilot's seat in it. You could smell the marijuana, you didnt need no dog. Well the sheriff over there--and I wont say his name--he wanted to get set up and nail em when they come back for the plane and finally somebody told him that they wasnt nobody comin back. Never had been. When he finally understood what it was they was tellin him he just got real quiet and then he turned around and got in his car and left.
When they was havin them dope wars down across the border you could not buy a half quart masonjar nowheres. To put up your preserves and such. Your chow chow. They wasnt none to be had. What it was they was usin them jars to put handgrenades in. If you flew over somebody's house or compound and you dropped grenades on em they'd go off fore they hit the ground. So what they done was they'd pull the pin and stick em down in the jar and screw the lid back on. Then whenever they hit the ground the glass'd break and release the spoon. The lever. They would preload cases of them things. Hard to believe that a man would ride around at night in a small plane with a cargo such as that, but they done it.
No Country for Old Men Page 14
