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I WONT TALK ABOUT the war her. 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. I dont eveo know what you think about that. There aint a day I dont remember it. Some boys I know e 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 geions in this try 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 tendenake some people irritable but they dido know what I was talkin about. I think the sixties in this try sobered some of em up. I hope it did. I read in the papers here a while bae teachers e across a survey that was sent out ba the thirties to a number of schools around the try. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with tea in the schools. And they e across these forms, theyd been filled out a in from around the try 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 bun a em back out to the same schools. Forty years later.Well, here e 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 t tell the differeween 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 her. Maybe the forty of it will bring some of em out from uhe ether. If it aint too late.
Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a feren Corpus Christi and I got set o this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it.
The people I know are mostly just on people. on 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 pliment in my part of the world. She kept o on.
Finally told me, said: I dont like the way this try 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 try 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 ehe versation.
CHIGURH LIMPED UP THE seventeen flights of crete steps in the cool crete well and whe to the steel door on the landing he shot the der out of the lock with the plunger of the stungun and opehe 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 hallicked the crushed der out of the floor and put it in his pocket a on to the elevator and stood listening agaiook off his boots and stood them by the elevator door a down the hallway in his sockfeet, walking slowly, fav 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 oer hallway wall, illdefined but there. Chigurh thought it an odd ht but he khat fear of an enemy often blio 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 pushed the safety off.
The man was holding a small pistol at the level of his belt. Chigurh stepped into the doorway and shot him ihroat with a load of en shot. The size collectors use to take bird spes. The man fell back through his swivel-chair knog it over ao the floor and lay there twitg 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 ister 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 bad he had one hand over his throat but the blood umping steadily through his fingers and out onto the rug. His face was full of small holes but his right eye seemed intad 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 y to tell me?
The man moved his head. The blood gurgled in his throat.
you hear me? Chigurh said.
He didnt answer.
Im the man you sent Carson Wells to kill. Is that what you wao 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 ireet. He oward 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 ba the shotgun and stepped past the man to the window and ied the pogs the lead had made. When he looked down at the man again the man was dead. He crossed the room a.nd stood at the doorway listening. He went out and down the hall and collected his tank and the stungun and got his boots and stepped into them and pulled them up.
Then he walked down the corridor a out through the metal door and down the crete 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 a around to the trunk and ope and got their bags and set them in the portid brought the walker around to her mothers side and opehe door. Her mother turned and began tle out into the rain.
Mama will you wait? I o get around there.
I khis is what it would e to, the mother said. I said it three year ago.
It aihree 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 cer, she said. Now look at this. Not even a home to go to.
Yes mam.
Were goin to El Paso Texas. You know hoeople 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 forefihats 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? she said.
The old woman didnt answer.
You aint speakin, I re.
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 couldnt call oo help you though, could you?
Call on who?
The law.
No. We couldnt.
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 uhe bus and they helped her up the steps and put her in the first seat. I got cer, 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. No revelation nor nothin. I dont give myself no credit. Anybody could of told you the same thing.
Well I wasnt 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 watg the darkened house. The green diode numerals on the radio put the time at 1:17. He sat there till 1:22 and theook the flashlight from the glovebox and got out and closed the truck door and crossed the street to the house.
He opehe s door and punched out the der and walked in and shut the door behind him and stood listening. There was a light ing from the kit and he walked down the hallway with the flashlight in one hand and the shotgun iher.
Whe to the doorway he stopped and listened again. The light came from a bare bulb on the back porch. He went on into the kit.
A bare formid e table in the ter of the room with a box of cereal standing on it. The shadow of the kit window lying on the linoleum floor. He crossed the room and opehe refrigerator and looked i the shotgun in the crook of his arm and took out a e soda and ope with his forefinger and stood drinking it, listening for anything that might follow the metallic click of the . He drank ahe half-empty on the ter and shut the refrigerator door and walked through the diningroom and into the livingroom and sat in an easy chair in the er and looked out at the street.
After a while he rose and crossed the room a up the stairs. He stood listening at the head of the stairwell. Wheered the old womans room he could smell the sweet musty odor of siess ahought for a moment she might even be lying there in the bed. He switched on the flashlight a 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 m. 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 s 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 ing 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 and lay down on the bed with the shotgun alongside him, watg 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 er and tilted it and pushed the top backladder up uhe doorknob. The on the bed and pulled off his boots and stretched out ao sleep.
In the m he walked through the house again upstairs and down and theuro 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 a down to the kit 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 beh the brass slot in the front door. He stood there, chewing slowly. The bowl and spoon on the coffeetable and crossed the room a over and picked up the mail and stood s through it. He sat in a chair by the door and opehe phone bill and cupped the envelope and blew into it.
He glanced down the list of calls. Halfway down was the Terrell ty Sheriffs Department. He folded the bill and put it ba the envelope and put the envelope in his shirt-pocket. Then he looked through the other pieail again. He rose and went into the kit and got the shotgun off the table and came bad stood where hed stood before. He crossed to a cheap mahogany desk and opehe 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 gh 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 aruggled up and sat on the edge of the bed. A pale bloodstain the size of his hand on the sheets. There er bag on the night table that held things hed bought from a drugstore in town and he picked it up and limped into the bathroom. He showered and sha<dfn></dfn>ved 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.
The 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 tassed one half across the back of the seat to the driver. The driver ted the torn bills and put them in his shirtpocket and looked at Moss in the mirror and waited.
Whats your name?
Paul, said the driver.
You got the right attitude, Paul. I wo 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.
Youre the man, Moss said.
Where are we going.
Down the river road.
I aint pi nobody up.
Were not pi anybody up.
The driver watched him in the mirror. Nas, he said.
Nas.
The driver waited.
Im goin to pick up a briefcase. It belongs to me. You look inside if you want.
Nothin illegal.
I look inside.
Yes you .
I hope youre not jerkin me around.
No.
I like money but I like stayin out of jail eveer.
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 uhe bridge, he said.
All right.
Im goin to uhe 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 plastis and ha across the seat to the driver and opehe door. I should be ba just a few minutes, he said.
The e 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 ba the dark, taking his sight by the span of the bridge overhead. Whe to the cab he opehe door ahe case in the seat and got in carefully and shut the door. He hahe flashlight to the driver and leaned ba the seat. Lets go, he said.
Whats 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 turhe 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 hen how about the other half of these five caesars I already got.
Moss took the bills from his pocket and hahem across the back of the seat.
What if the Migra stop us.
They wont 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 youre right.
Trust me, Moss said.
I hate hearin them words, the driver said. I always did.
Have you ever said them?
Yeah. Ive said em. Thats how e I know what theyre worth.
He spent the night in a Rodeway Inn on highway 90 just west of town and in the m 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 turhe pie 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 doher.
After he left Moss walked out onto the prairie behind the motel with one of the motel pillows under his arm and he ed the pillow about the muzzle of the gun and fired off three rounds and then stood there in the cold sunlight watg the feathers drift across the gray chaparral, thinking about his life, what ast and what was to e.
Theurned 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 agaihed iub and looked at the exit hole in his lower ba the bathroom mirror. It looked pretty ugly.
There were drains in both holes that he wao 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 ated the pistol and the magazines into the case and closed it and called a cab and picked up the dot case a out and dowairs.
He bought a 1978 Ford pickup with four wheel drive and a 460 engine from a lot on North Broadaid the man in cash and got the title notarized in the offid put the title in the glovebox and drove away. He drove back to the motel and checked out a, the Tec-9 uhe seat and the dot case and his bag of clothes sitting in the floor on the passenger side of the truck.
At the onramp at Boerhere 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 irud looked at him. Fifteen, sixteen. Red hair. How far are you goin? she said.
you drive?
Yeah. I drive. It aint no stick shift is it?
No. Get out and e around.
She left her knapsa the seat and got out of the trud crossed in front of it.
Moss pushed the knapsato the floor and eased himself across and she got in and put the tru drive and they pulled out onto the iate.
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 bad 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.
I ask you somethin? she said.
You 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 at 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 er of her eye. Moss studied the passing try. 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 whe last.
All right. When did you eat last?
I knowed you was a smart-ass from the time I got iruck.
Yeah. Pull off up here at this exit. Its supposed to be four miles. And reach me that maegun from uhe seat.
Bell drove slowly across the cattleguard and got out and closed the gate and got ba the trud drove across the pasture and parked at the well and got out and walked over to the tank. He put his hand ier and raised a palmful a 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 wi 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.
Whe home she had supper waiting. He dropped the keys to the pickup in the kit drawer ao the sink to wash his hands. His wife laid a piece of paper on the ter aood 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 wood?
Yes it is.
Even to me?
Id say especially to you.
He could hear her breathing in the receiver. Traffi the distance.
Sheriff?
Yes mam.
If I tell you where he called from do you give your word that no harm will e to him.
I give my word that no harm will e to him from me. I 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 oable 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 sean 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 ha to him and he read it and folded it and put it into his shirtpocket. Then he reached up and opened one of the kit ets and took out a camouflage-finished submaegun 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 arked and opehe door and pitched the maegun in on the far seat and lowered himself in and shut the door anbbr></abbr>d 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 sed gear a 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.
百度搜索 No Country for Old Men 天涯 或 No Country for Old Men 天涯在线书库 即可找到本书最新章节.