No Country For Old Men

Do you want some water? Wells said.

If I want somethin from you you'll be the first son of a bitch to know about it.

It's called a transponder, Wells said.

I know what it's called.

It's not the only way he has of finding you.

Yeah.

I could tell you some things that would be useful for you to know.

Well, I go back to what I just said. I dont need no favors.

You're not curious to know why I'd tell you?

I know why you'd tell me.

Which is?

You'd rather deal with me than with this sugar guy.

Yes. Let me get you some water.

You go to hell.

Wells sat quietly with his legs crossed. Moss looked at him. You think you can scare me with this guy. You dont know what you're talkin about. I'll take you out with him if that's what you want.

Wells smiled. He gave a little shrug. He looked down at the toe of his boot and uncrossed his legs and passed the toe under his jeans to dust it and recrossed his legs again. What do you do? he said.

What?

What do you do.

I'm retired.

What did you do before you retired?

I'm a welder.

Acetylene? Mig? Tig?

Any of it. If it can be welded I can weld it.

Cast iron?

Yes.

I dont mean braze.

I didnt say braze.

Pot metal?

What did I say?

Were you in Nam?

Yeah. I was in Nam.

So was I.

So what does that make me? Your buddy?

I was in special forces.

I think you have me confused with somebody who gives a shit what you were in.

I was a lieutenant colonel.

Bullshit.

I dont think so.

And what do you do now.

I find people. Settle accounts. That sort of thing.

You're a hit man.

Wells smiled. A hit man.

Whatever you call it.

The sort of people I contract with like to keep a low profile. They dont like to get involved in things that draw attention. They dont like things in the paper.

I'll bet.

This isnt going to go away. Even if you got lucky and took out one or two people – which is unlikely – they'd just send someone else. Nothing would change. They'll still find you. There's nowhere to go. You can add to your troubles the fact that the people who were delivering the product dont have that either. So guess who they're looking at? Not to mention the DEA and various other law enforcement agencies. Everybody's list has got the same name on it. And it's the only name on it. You need to throw me a bone. I dont really have any reason to protect you.

Are you afraid of this guy?

Wells shrugged. Wary is the word I'd use.

You didnt mention Bell.

Bell. All right?

I take it you dont think much of him.

I dont think of him at all. He's a redneck sheriff in a hick town in a hick county. In a hick state. Let me get the nurse. You're not very comfortable. This is my number. I want you to think it over. What we talked about.

He stood and put a card on the table next to the flowers. He looked at Moss. You think you wont call me but you will. Just dont wait too long. That money belongs to my client. Chigurh is an outlaw. Time's not on your side. We can even let you keep some of it. But if I have to recover the funds from Chigurh then it will be too late for you. Not to mention your wife.

Moss didnt answer.

All right. You might want to call her. When I talked to her she sounded pretty worried.

When he was gone Moss turned up the photographs lying on the bed. Like a player checking his hole cards. He looked at the pitcher of water but then the nurse came in.

VI

Young people anymore they seem to have a hard time growin up. I dont know why. Maybe it's just that you dont grow up any faster than what you have to. I had a cousin was a deputized peace officer when he was eighteen. He was married and had a kid at the time. I had a friend that I grew up with was a ordained Baptist preacher at the same age. Pastor of a little old country church. He left there to go to Lubbock after about three years and when he told em he was leavin they just set there in that church and blubbered. Men and women alike. He'd married em and baptized em and buried em. He was twenty-one years old, maybe twenty-two. When he preached they'd be standin out in the yard listenin. It surprised me. He was always quiet in school. I was twenty-one when I went in the army and I was one of the oldest in our class at boot camp. Six months later I was in France shootin people with a rifle. I didnt even think it was all that peculiar at the time. Four years later I was sheriff of this county. I never doubted but what I was supposed to be neither. People anymore you talk about right and wrong they're liable to smile at you. But I never had a lot of doubts about things like that. In my thoughts about things like that. I hope I never do.

Loretta told me that she had heard on the radio about some percentage of the children in this country bein raised by their grandparents. I forget what it was. Pretty high, I thought. Parents wouldnt raise em. We talked about that. What we thought was that when the next generation come along and they dont want to raise their children neither then who is goin to do it? Their own parents will be the only grandparents around and they wouldnt even raise them. We didnt have a answer about that. On my better days I think that there is somethin I dont know or there is somethin that I'm leavin out. But them times are seldom. I wake up sometimes way in the night and I know as certain as death that there aint nothin short of the second comin of Christ that can slow this train. I dont know what is the use of me layin awake over it. But I do.

I dont believe you could do this job without a wife. A pretty unusual wife at that. Cook and jailer and I dont know what all. Them boys dont know how good they've got it. Well, maybe they do. I never worried about her bein safe. They get fresh garden stuff a good part of the year. Good cornbread. Soupbeans. She's been known to fix em hamburgers and french fries. We've had em to come back even years later and they'd be married and doin good. Bring their wives. Bring their kids even. They didnt come back to see me. I've seen em to introduce their wives or their sweethearts and then just go to bawlin. Grown men. That had done some pretty bad things. She knew what she was doin. She always did. So we go over budget on the jail ever month but what are you goin to do about that? You aint goin to do nothin about it. That's what you're goin to do.

Chigurh pulled off of the highway at the junction of 131 and opened the telephone directory in his lap and folded over the bloodstained pages till he got to veterinarian. There was a clinic outside Bracketville about thirty minutes away. He looked at the towel around his leg. It was soaked through with blood and blood had soaked into the seat. He threw the directory in the floor and sat with his hands at the top of the steering wheel. He sat there for about three minutes. Then he put the vehicle in gear and pulled out onto the highway again.

He drove to the crossroads at La Pryor and took the road north to Uvalde. His leg was throbbing like a pump. On the highway outside of Uvalde he pulled up in front of the Cooperative and undid the sashcord from around his leg and pulled away the towel. Then he got out and hobbled in.

He bought a sack full of veterinary supplies. Cotton and tape and gauze. A bulb syringe and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. A pair of forceps. Scissors. Some packets of four inch swabs and a quart bottle of Betadine. He paid and went out and got in the Ramcharger and started the engine and then sat watching the building in the rearview mirror. As if he might be thinking of something else he needed, but that wasnt it. He put his fingers inside the cuff of his shirt and carefully blotted the sweat from his eyes. Then he put the vehicle in gear and backed out of the parking space and pulled out onto the highway headed toward town.