No Country for Old Men (8 page)

He climbed down and sat on the bed and wiped the dust from the case and unfastened the
latch and the straps and opened it and looked at the packets of bills. He took one of them
from the case and riffled it. Then he fitted it back and undid the length of cord he'd
tied to the strap and turned off the flashlight and sat listening. He stood and reached up
and shoved the poles down the duct and then he put back the grid and gathered up his
tools. He laid the key on the desk and put the shotgun and the tools in the bag and took
it and the case and walked out the door leaving everything just as it was.

Chigurh drove slowly along the row of motel rooms with the window down and the receiver in
his lap. He turned at the end of the lot and came back. He slowed to a stop and put the
Ramcharger in reverse and backed slightly down the blacktop and stopped again. Finally he
drove around to the office and parked and went in.

The clock on the motel office wall said twelve forty-two. The television set was on and
the woman looked like she'd been asleep. Yessir, she said. Can I help you?

He left the office with the key in his shirtpocket and got into the Ramcharger and drove
around to the side of the building and parked and got out and walked down to the room
carrying the bag with the receiver and the guns in it. In the room he dropped the bag onto
the bed and pulled off his boots and came back out with the receiver and the battery pack
and the shotgun from the truck. The shotgun was a twelve gauge Remington automatic with a
plastic military stock and a parkerized finish. It was fitted with a shopmade silencer
fully a foot long and big around as a beercan. He walked down the ramada in his sockfeet
past the rooms listening to the signal.

He came back to the room and stood in the open door under the dead white light from the
parking lot lamp. He walked into the bathroom and turned the light on there. He took the
measure of the room and looked to see where everything was. He measured where the
lightswitches were. Then he stood in the room taking it all in once again. He sat and
pulled on his boots and got the airtank and slung it across his shoulder and caught up the
cattlegun where it swung from the rubber airhose and walked out and down to the room.

He stood listening at the door. Then he punched out the lock cylinder with the airgun and
kicked open the door.

A Mexican in a green guayabera had sat up on the bed and was reaching for a small
machinegun beside him. Chigurh shot him three times so fast it sounded like one long
gunshot and left most of the upper part of him spread across the headboard and the wall
behind it. The shotgun made a strange deep chugging sound. Like someone coughing into a
barrel. He snapped on the light and stepped out of the doorway and stood with his back to
the outside wall. He looked in again quickly. The bathroom door had been shut. Now it was
open. He stepped into the room and fired two loads through the standing door and another
through the wall and stepped out again. Down toward the end of the building a light had
come on. Chigurh waited. Then he looked into the room once more. The door was blown into
shredded plywood hanging off the hinges and a thin stream of blood had started across the
pink bathroom tiles.

He stepped into the doorway and fired two more rounds through the bathroom wall and then
walked in with the shotgun leveled at his waist. The man was lying slumped against the tub
holding an AK-47. He was shot in the chest and the neck and he was bleeding heavily. No me
mate, he wheezed. No me mate. Chigurh stepped back to avoid the spray of ceramic chips off
the tub and shot him in the face.

He walked out and stood on the sidewalk. No one there. He went back in and searched the
room. He looked in the closet and he looked under the bed and he pulled all the drawers
out into the floor. He looked in the bathroom. Moss's H&K machinepistol was lying on the
sink. He left it there. He wiped his feet back and forth on the carpet to get the blood
off the soles of his boots and he stood looking at the room. Then his eye fell on the
airduct.

He took the lamp from beside the bed and jerked the cord free and climbed up onto the
dresser and stove in the grate with the metal lampbase and pulled it loose and looked in.
He could see the dragmarks in the dust. He climbed down and stood there. He'd got blood
and matter on his shirt from off the wall and he took the shirt off and went back into the
bathroom and washed himself and dried with one of the bath-towels. Then he wet the towel
and wiped off his boots and folded the towel again and wiped down the legs of his jeans.
He picked up the shotgun and came back into the room naked to the waist, the shirt balled
in one hand. He wiped his bootsoles on the carpet again and looked around the room a last
time and left.

When Bell walked into the office Torbert looked up from his desk and then rose and came
over and laid a paper down in front of him.

Is this it? Bell said.

Yessir.

Bell leaned back in his chair to read, tapping his lower lip slowly with his forefinger.
After a while he put the report down. He didnt look at Torbert. I know what's happened
here, he said.

All right.

Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?

Yessir. I believe so.

You'd know it if you had.

I think I went once when I was a kid.

Funny place to take a kid.

I think I went my own self. Snuck in.

How did they kill the beef?

They had a knocker straddled the chute and they'd let the beeves through one at a time and
he'd knock em in the head with a maul. He done that all day.

That sounds about right. They dont do it thataway no more. They use a airpowered gun that
shoots a steel bolt out of it. Just shoots it out about so far. They put that thing
between the beef's eyes and pull the trigger and down she goes. It's that quick.

Torbert was standing at the corner of Bell's desk. He waited a minute for the sheriff to
continue but the sheriff didnt continue. Torbert stood there. Then he looked away. I wish
you hadnt of even told me, he said.

I know, said Bell. I knowed what you'd say fore you said it.

Moss pulled into Eagle Pass at a quarter till two in the morning. He'd slept a good part
of the way in the back of the cab and he only woke when they slowed coming off the highway
and down Main Street. He watched the pale white globes of the streetlamps pass along the
upper rim of the window. Then he sat up.

You goin across the river? the driver said.

No. Just take me downtown.

You are downtown.

Moss leaned forward with his elbows on the back of the seat.

What's that right there.

That's the Maverick County Courthouse.

No. Right there where the sign is.

That's the Hotel Eagle.

Drop me there.

He paid the driver the fifty dollars they'd agreed on and picked up his bags off the curb
and walked up the steps to the porch and went in. The clerk was standing at the desk as if
he'd been expecting him.

He paid and put the key in his pocket and climbed the stairs and walked down the old hotel
corridor. Dead quiet. No lights in the transoms. He found the room and put the key in the
door and opened it and went in and shut the door behind him. Light from the streetlamps
coming through the lace curtains at the window. He set the bags on the bed and went back
to the door and switched on the overhead light. Old fashioned pushbutton switchplate. Oak
furniture from the turn of the century. Brown walls. Same chenille bedspread.

He sat on the bed thinking things over. He got up and looked out the window at the parking
lot and he went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and came back and sat on the
bed again. He took a sip and set the water on the glass top of the wooden bedside table.
There is no goddamn way, he said.

He undid the brass latch and the buckles on the case and began to take the packets of
money out and to stack them on the bed. When the case was empty he checked it for a false
bottom and he checked the back and sides and then he set it aside and began to go through
the stacks of bills, riffling each of the packets and stacking them back in the case. He'd
packed it about a third full before he found the sending unit.

The middle of the packet had been filled in with dollar bills with the centers cut out and
the transponder unit nested there was about the size of a Zippo lighter. He slid back the
tape and took it out and weighed it in his hand. Then he put it in the drawer and got up
and took the cut-out dollar bills and the banktape to the bathroom and flushed them down
the toilet and came back. He folded the loose hundreds and put them in his pocket and then
packed the rest of the banknotes into the case again and set the case in the chair and sat
there looking at it. He thought about a lot of things but the thing that stayed with him
was that at some point he was going to have to quit running on luck.

He got the shotgun out of the bag and laid it on the bed and turned on the bedside lamp.
He went to the door and turned off the overhead light and came back and stretched out on
the bed and stared at the ceiling. He knew what was coming. He just didnt know when. He
got up and went into the bathroom and pulled the chain on the light over the sink and
looked at himself in the mirror. He took a washcloth from the glass towelbar and turned on
the hot water and wet the cloth and wrung it out and wiped his face and the back of his
neck. He took a leak and then switched off the light and went back and sat on the bed. It
had already occurred to him that he would probably never be safe again in his life and he
wondered if that was something that you got used to. And if you did?

He emptied out the bag and put the shotgun in and zipped it shut and took it together with
the satchel down to the desk. The Mexican who'd checked him in was gone and in his place
was another clerk, thin and gray. A thin white shirt and a black bow tie. He was smoking a
cigarette and reading Ring magazine and he looked up at Moss with no great enthusiasm,
squinting in the smoke. Yessir, he said.

Did you just come on?

Yessir. Be here till ten in the mornin.

Moss laid a hundred dollar bill on the counter. The clerk put down the magazine.

I aint askin you to do nothin illegal, Moss said.

I'm just waitin to hear your description of that, the clerk said.

There's somebody lookin for me. All I'm askin you to do is to call me if anybody checks
in. By anybody I mean any swingin dick. Can you do that?

The nightclerk took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it over a small glass ashtray
and tipped the ash from the end of it with his little finger and looked at Moss. Yessir,
he said. I can do that.

Moss nodded and went back upstairs.

The phone never rang. Something woke him. He sat up and looked at the clock on the table.
Four thirty-seven. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached and got his
boots and pulled them on and sat listening.

He went over and stood with his ear to the door, the shotgun in one hand. He went in the
bathroom and pulled back the plastic showercurtain where it hung on rings over the tub and
turned on the tap and pulled the plunger to start the shower. Then he pulled the curtain
back around the tub and went out and closed the bathroom door behind him.

He stood at the door listening again. He dragged out the nylon bag from where he'd pushed
it under the bed and set it in the chair in the corner. He went over and switched on the
light at the bedside table and stood there trying to think. He realized that the phone
might ring and he took the receiver from the cradle and laid it on the table. He pulled
back the covers and rumpled the pillows on the bed. He looked at the clock. Four
forty-three. He looked at the phone lying there on the table. He picked it up and pulled
the cord out of it and put it back in the cradle. Then he went over and stood at the door,
his thumb on the hammer of the shotgun. He dropped to his stomach and put his ear to the
space under the door. A cool wind. As if a door had opened somewhere. What have you done.
What have you failed to do.

He went to the far side of the bed and dropped down and pushed himself underneath it and
lay there on his stomach with the shotgun pointed at the door. Just space enough beneath
the wooden slats. Heart pumping against the dusty carpet. He waited. Two columns of dark
intersected the bar of light beneath the door and stood there. The next thing he heard was
the key in the lock. Very softly. Then the door opened. He could see out into the hallway.
There was no one there. He waited. He tried not even to blink but he did. Then there was
an expensive pair of ostrichskin boots standing in the doorway. Pressed jeans. The man
stood there. Then he came in. Then he crossed slowly to the bathroom.

At that moment Moss realized that he was not going to open the bathroom door. He was going
to turn around. And when he did it would be too late. Too late to make any more mistakes
or to do anything at all and that he was going to die. Do it, he said. Just do it.

Dont turn around, he said. You turn around and I'll blow you to hell.

The man didnt move. Moss was walking forward on his elbows holding the shotgun. He could
see no higher than the man's waist and he didnt know what kind of gun he was carrying.
Drop the gun, he said. Do it now.

A shotgun clattered to the floor. Moss pulled himself up. Get your hands up, he said. Step
back from the door.

He took two steps back and stood, his hands at shoulder level. Moss came around the end of
the bed. The man was no more than ten feet away. The whole room was pulsing slowly. There
was an odd smell in the air. Like some foreign cologne. A medicinal edge to it. Everything
humming. Moss held the shotgun at his waist with the hammer cocked. There was nothing that
could happen that would have surprised him. He felt as if he weighed nothing. He felt as
if he were floating. The man didnt even look at him. He seemed oddly untroubled. As if
this were all part of his day.