Chapter 8 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. 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. Youre 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 wh at 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 Im gettin old. That its 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 Ive 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. 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 thats 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 shell be able to have an abortion. Im goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, shell 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 hed 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 mans shadow framed there by the light from the smoked glass window behind him. He pushed the shotguns follower slightly back with the heel of his hand to check the chambered round and push 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 t ell me?

The man moved his head. The blood gurgled in his throat. Can you hear me? Chigurh said. He didn't answer. Im 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 mans upper silhouette stood outlined in the small gray pockmarks the lead had left in the glass. He looked at the man. The mans 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 stuntun 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 hed 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 mothers 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 knew this is what it would come to, the mother said. I said it three years 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. Were 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. Thats 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?

The old woman didn't 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 couldn't call on em to help you though, could you? Call on who? The law. No. We couldn't. Thats 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. 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. Anybody could of told you the same thing. Well I wasn't askin. The old woman shook her head. Looking out through the window and down at the table theyd vacated. I give myself no credit, she said. Id 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 staircasewell. When he entered the old womans 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. 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 shirt pocket. 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. 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 Sheriffs 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. rose and went into the kitchen and got the shotgun off the table and came back and stood where hed 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 bought from a drugstore in town and he picked it up and limped into the bathroom. brushed his teeth for the first time in five days and then sat on the edge of the tub and taped fresh gauge 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 shirt pocket and looked at Moss in the mirror and waited. Whats 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 somewhere 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. Youre the man, Moss said. Where are we going. Down the river road. I aint pickin nobody up. Were not pickin anybody up. The driver watched him in the mirror. No drogas, he said. No drogas. The driver waited. Im 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. Im 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. Im 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. 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. Lets 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. Everthing. 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 won't stop us, Moss said. How do you know? Theres 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 hear them words, the driver said. I always did. Have you ever said them? Yeah. Ive said em. Thats how come I know what theyre 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 couldn't 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. 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. 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 its 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. Im serious. You go over the speed limit and Ill 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 being 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? Im 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 knew you was a smart-ass from the time I got in the truck. Yeah. Pull off up here at this next exit. Its 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? Id 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? 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 tires and fishtailing and the tires whining and unspooling clouds of rubbersmoke behind him.