No Country for Old Men(52)

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 tires and fishtailing and the tires whining and unspooling clouds of rubbersmoke behind him.