NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Written by
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Based on the Novel by
Cormac McCarthy
FADE IN:
EXT. MOUNTAINS - NIGHT
Snow is falling in a gusting wind. The voice of an old man:
VOICE OVER
I was sheriff of this county when I
was twenty-five. Hard to believe.
Grandfather was a lawman. Father
too. Me and him was sheriff at the
same time, him in Plano and me here.
I think he was pretty proud of that.
I know I was.
EXT. WEST TEXAS LANDSCAPE - DAWN/DAY
We dissolve to another West Texas landscape. Sun is rising.
VOICE OVER
Some of the old-time sheriffs never
even wore a gun. A lot of folks find
that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough
never carried one. That's the younger
Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear
one. Up in Comanche County.
We dissolve through more landscapes, bringing us to full
day. None of them show people or human habitation.
VOICE OVER
I always liked to hear about the old-
timers. Never missed a chance to do
so. Nigger Hoskins over in Bastrop
County knowed everbody's phone number
off by heart. You can't help but
compare yourself against the old-
timers. Can't help but wonder how
they would've operated these times.
There was this boy I sent to the gas
chamber at Huntsville here a while
back. My arrest and my testimony. He
killed a fourteen-year-old girl.
Papers said it was a crime of passion
but he told me there wasn't any
passion to it.
EXT. WEST TEXAS ROAD - DAY
The last landscape, hard sunbaked prairie, is surveyed in a
long slow pan.
2
VOICE OVER
Told me that he'd been planning to
kill somebody for about as long as
he could remember. Said that if they
turned him out he'd do it again.
The pan has brought into frame the flashing light bars of a
police car stopped on the shoulder. A young sheriff's deputy
is opening the rear door on the far side of the car.
VOICE OVER
Said he knew he was going to hell.
Be there in about fifteen minutes. I
don't know what to make of that. I
surely don't.
Close on a pair of hands manacled behind someone's back. A
hand enters to take the prisoner by one arm.
VOICE OVER
The crime you see now, it's hard to
even take its measure. It's not that
I'm afraid of it.
Back to the shot over the light bars: the deputy, with a
hand on top of the prisoner's head to help him clear the
door frame, eases the prisoner into the backseat. All we see
of the prisoner is his dark hair disappearing into the car.
VOICE OVER
I always knew you had to be willing
to die to even do this job -- not to
be glorious. But I don't want to
push my chips forward and go out and
meet something I don't understand.
The deputy closes the back door. He opens the front passenger
door and reaches down for something-apparently heavy-at his
feet.
VOICE OVER
You can say it's my job to fight it
but I don't know what it is anymore.
The deputy swings the heavy object into the front passenger
seat. Matching inside the car: it looks like an oxygen tank
with a petcock at the top and tubing running off it.
VOICE OVER
...More than that, I don't want to
know. A man would have to put his
soul at hazard.
The deputy slams the door.
3
On the door slam we cut to Texas highway racing under the
lens, the landscape flat to the horizon. The siren whoops.
VOICE OVER
...He would have to say, okay, I'll
be part of this world.
INT. SHERIFF LAMAR'S OFFICE - DAY
THE DEPUTY
Seated in the sheriff's office, on the phone. The prisoner
stands in the background. Focus is too soft for us to see
his features but his posture shows that his arms are still
behind his back.
DEPUTY
Yessir, just walked in the door.
Sheriff he had some sort of a thing
on him like one of them oxygen tanks
for emphysema or somethin'. And a
hose from it run down his sleeve...
Behind him we see the prisoner seat himself on the floor
without making a sound and scoot his manacled hands out under
his legs. Hands in front of him now, he stands.
DEPUTY
...Well you got me, sir. You can see
it when you get in...
The prisoner approaches. As he nears the deputy's back he
grows sharper but begins to crop out of the top of the frame.
DEPUTY
...Yessir I got it covered.
As the deputy reaches forward to hang up, the prisoner is
raising his hands out of frame just behind him. The manacled
hands drop back into frame in front of the deputy's throat
and jerk back and up.
Wider: the prisoner's momentum brings both men crashing
backward to the floor, face-up, deputy on top.
The deputy reaches up to try to get his hands under the
strangling chain.
The prisoner brings pressure. His wrists whiten around the
manacles.
4
The deputy's legs writhe and stamp. He moves in a clumsy
circle, crabbing around the pivot-point of the other man's
back arched against the floor.
The deputy's flailing legs kick over a wastebasket, send
spinning the castored chair, slam at the desk.
Blood creeps around the friction points where the cuffs bite
the prisoner's wrists. Blood is being spit by the deputy.
The prisoner feels with his thumb at the deputy's neck and
averts his own face. A yank of the chain ruptures the carotid
artery. It jets blood.
The blood hits the office wall, drumming hollowly.
INT. SHERIFF LAMAR'S BATHROOM - DAY
The prisoner walks in, runs the water, and puts his wrists,
now freed, under it.
INT. OFFICE - DAY
Close on the air tank. One hand, a towel wrapped at the wrist,
reaches in to hoist it.
EXT. ROAD - LATE DAY
Road rushes under the lens. Point-of-view through a windshield
of taillights ahead, the only pair in sight.
A siren bloop.
The car pulls over. A four-door Ford sedan.
The police car pulls over behind.
The prisoner -- his name is Anton Chigurh -- gets out of the
police car and slings the tank over his shoulder. He walks
up the road to the man cranking down his window, groping for
his wallet.
MAN
What's this about?
CHIGURH
Step out of the car please, sir.
The motorist squints at the man with the strange apparatus.
MAN
Huh? What is...
5
CHIGURH
I need you to step out of the car,
sir.
The man opens his door and emerges.
MAN
Am I...
Chigurh reaches up to the man's forehead with the end of the
tube connected to the air tank.
CHIGURH
Would you hold still please, sir.
A hard pneumatic sound. The man flops back against the car.
Blood trickles from a hole in the middle of his forehead.
Chigurh waits for the body to slide down the car and crumple,
clearing the front door. He opens it and hoists the air tank
over into the front seat.
EXT. ARID PLAIN - DAY
Seen through an extreme telephoto lens. Heat shimmer rises
from the desert floor.
A pan of the horizon discovers a distant herd of antelope.
The animals are grazing.
Reverse on a man in blue jeans and cowboy boots sitting on
his heels, elbows on knees, peering through a pair of
binoculars. A heavy-barreled rifle is slung across his back.
This is Moss.
He lowers the binoculars, slowly unslings the rifle and looks
through its sight.
The view through the sight swims for a moment to refind the
herd. One animal is staring directly at us, its motion
arrested as if it's heard or seen something.
Close on Moss's eyes, one at the sight, the other closed.
HE MUTTERS:
MOSS
Hold still.
He opens the free eye and rolls his head off the sight to
give himself stereo.
Close on the hatch-marked range dial on the sight. Moss
delicately thumbs it.
6
He eases the one eye back onto the sight.
Point-of-view through the sight: Moss adjusts to bring the
cross-hairs back down to the staring animal.
Moss's finger tightens on the trigger.
Shot: gunbuck swishes the point-of-view upward.
Moss fights it back down.
The point-of-view through the sight finds the beast again,
still staring at us.
The sound of the gunshot rings out across the barial.
Short beat.
The bullet hits the antelope: not a kill. The animal recoils
and runs, packing one leg.
The other animals are off with it.
MOSS
Shit.
He stands and jacks out the spent casing which jangles against
the rocks. He stoops for it and puts it in his shirt pocket.
EXT. ARID PLAIN - LATER
Moss is on foot, rifle again slung over his shoulder,
binoculars around his neck. He is looking at the ground.
An intermittent trail of blood.
Moss's pace is brisk. Distances are long.
He suddenly stops, staring.
On the ground is the fresh trail of blood, the glistening
drops already dry at the periphery. But this trail is crossed
by another trail of blood. Drier.
Moss looks one way along this older trail:
His point-of-view: flatlands. Scrub. No movement.
He looks the other way.
A distant range of mountains. No movement.
He stoops to examine the trail.
7
He paces it 'til he finds a print clear enough to give him
the animal's orientation.
He stands and looks again toward the distant mountains. He
brings up the binoculars.
His point-of-view: landscape, swimming into focus, heat waves
exaggerated by the compression of the lens.
Panning, looking for the animal.
Movement, very distant. The animal is brought into focus: a
black tailless dog, huge head, limping badly, phantasmal by
virtue of the rippling heat waves and the silence.
Moss lowers the glass. A moment of thought as he gazes off.
He turns and heads in the direction from which the dog came.
EXT. RISE NEAR BASIN - MINUTES LATER
Moss tops a rise. He scans the landscape below.
Not much to see except-distant glints, off something not
native to the environment.
Moss brings up the binoculars.
Parked vehicles: three of them, squat, Broncos or other off-
road trucks with fat tires, winches in the bed and racks of
roof lights.
On the ground near the trucks dark shapes lie still.
EXT. BASIN - MINUTES LATER
Moss is walking cautiously up to the site, unslung rifle at
the ready.
Flies drone.
He circles two dead bodies lying in the grass, covered with
blood. A gut-shot dog of the same kind we saw limping toward
the mountains lies beside them. A sawed-off shotgun with a
pistol stock lies in the grass.
The tires and most of the window glass are shot out of the
first pickup Moss approaches.
He opens the door and looks inside.
The driver is dead, leaning over the wheel. Moss shuts the
door.
8
He opens the door of the second truck.
The driver, sitting upright, still in shoulder harness, is
staring at him.
Moss stumbles back, raising the rifle.
The man does not move. The front of his shirt is covered
with blood.
MAN
Agua.
Moss stares at him
MAN
...Agua. Por Dios.
MOSS
Ain't got no water.
On the seat next to the man is an HK machine pistol. Moss
looks at it. He looks back at the man. The man is still
staring at him. Without lowering his eyes Moss reaches in
and takes the pistol.
Moss straightens up out of the truck and slings the rifle
back over his shoulder. He snaps the clip off the machine
pistol, checks it and snaps it back on.
Moss crosses to the back of the truck and lifts the tarp
that covers the truck bed.
A load of brick-sized brown parcels each wrapped in plastic.
He throws the tarp back over the load and crosses back to
the open cab door.
MAN
Agua.
MOSS
I told you I ain't got no agua. You
speak English?
A blank look.
MOSS
...Where's the last guy?
The injured man stares, unresponsive. Moss persists:
9
MOSS
Ultimo hombre. Last man standing,
must've been one. Where'd he go?
MAN
...Agua.
Moss turns to scan the horizon. He looks at the tire tracks
extending back from the truck. He thinks for a beat.
MOSS
(TO HIMSELF)
I reckon I'd go out the way I came
in...
He starts off.
Through the truck's open door:
MAN
La puerta... Hay lobos...
MOSS
(WALKING OFF)
Ain't no lobos.
EXT. FLATLAND NEAR THE BASIN - LATER
Moss stops to look out at a new prospect. Flatland, no cover.
He raises the binoculars.
MOSS
If you stopped... to watch your
backtrack... you're gonna shoot my
dumb ass.
He doesn't see anything. He lowers the glass, thinking.
He raises the glass again.
MOSS
...But. If you stopped... you stopped
in shade.
He sets off.
EXT. NEAR THE ROCK SHELF - DAY
A POINT-OF-VIEW
Through the binoculars, some time later. One lone shelf of
rock throws shade toward us. Heat shimmers in between.
10
Hard sun makes the rock shadow impenetrable. But there is a
booted foot sticking into the sun toe-up like the nub on a
sundial.
Moss lowers the binoculars.
He looks at his watch.
11:30.
He sits down.
FAST FADE
EXT. NEAR THE ROCK SHELF - DAY
THE WATCH
12:30.
Moss lowers the wristwatch and raises the binoculars again.
The shadow has shifted. The foot hasn't moved.
Moss gets up and walks toward it.
EXT. ROCK SHELF - MINUTES LATER
Moss arrives at the rock shelf.
The man's body is tipped to one side. His nose is in the
dirt but his eyes are open, as if he is examining something
quite small on the ground.
One hand holds a .45 automatic.
Next to the body is a boxy leather document case.
Moss looks at the man. He takes the gun, looks at it, sticks
it in his belt.
He drags the document case away from the body and opens it.
Bank-wrapped hundreds fill it. Each packet is stamped
"$10,000."
Moss stares. He reaches in to rifle the stacks, either to
confirm that the bag is full or to estimate the amount.
He stands, looks around, looks back the way he came.
11
EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - DAY
HIS TRUCK
Moss's pickup is parked by a cattleguard off a paved but
little-used road.
Moss is just arriving. He throws in the document case, the
rifle and the machine pistol, climbs into the cab and slams
the door.
EXT. DESERT AIRE TRAILER PARK - TWILIGHT
Moss's truck pulls into a trailer park that sits alongside
the highway on the outskirts of Sanderson, Texas. An old
sign with a neon palm tree identifies the park as the Desert
Aire.
Moss gets out of the truck next to a double-wide. Lights
glow inside. He takes the case and machine pistol, gets down
on his back next to the trailer and scoots underneath it.
His point-of-view: plywood and plastic pipes. He pulls some
insulation aside and crams the machine pistol up under the
pipes.
INT. TRAILER - NIGHT
Moss enters carrying the document case. A twentysomething
woman in cutoff jeans and a halter top watches TV. This is
Carla Jean.
CARLA JEAN
What's in the satchel?
MOSS
It's full a money.
CARLA JEAN
That'll be the day.
Moss is crossing to a back bedroom. Before he disappears
inside Carla Jean sees the pistol stuck in the back of his
waistband.
CARLA JEAN
...Where'd you get the pistol?
MOSS
At the gettin' place.
He emerges without the case or the gun and crosses to the
refrigerator. He takes a beer from the refrigerator and peels
its pulltab.
12
CARLA JEAN
Did you buy that gun?
MOSS
No. I found it.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn!
MOSS
What? Quit hollerin'.
He walks back sipping the beer and sprawls on the couch.
CARLA JEAN
What'd you give for that thing?
MOSS
You don't need to know everthing,
Carla Jean.
CARLA JEAN
I need to know that.
MOSS
You keep running that mouth I'm gonna
take you in the back and screw you.
CARLA JEAN
Big talk.
MOSS
Just keep it up.
CARLA JEAN
Fine. I don't wanna know. I don't
even wanna know where you been all
day.
MOSS
That'll work.
INT. TRAILER BEDROOM - NIGHT
We are drifting down toward Moss as he lies in bed next to
Carla Jean. He lies still, eyes closed, but he is shaking
his head. As the camera stops he opens his eyes, grimacing.
MOSS
All right.
He looks at the bedside clock.
13
Its LED display: 1:06.
He swings his legs off the bed, looks back at Carla Jean,
and pulls the blanket up over her shoulder.
INT. TRAILER KITCHEN - NIGHT
Close on a gallon jug as Moss hold it under the tap, filling
it with water.
Carla Jean appears in the doorway, looking sleepy.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn.
MOSS
Yeah.
CARLA JEAN
What're you doin', baby?
MOSS
Goin' out.
CARLA JEAN
Goin' where?
MOSS
Somethin' I forgot to do. I'll be
back.
CARLA JEAN
What're you goin' to do?
Moss turns from the sink, screwing the top onto the jug.
MOSS
I'm fixin' to do somethin' dumbern
hell but I'm goin' anyways.
He starts toward the front door.
MOSS
...If I don't come back tell Mother
I love her.
CARLA JEAN
Your mother's dead, Llewelyn.
MOSS
Well then I'll tell her myself.
INT. TRUCK/EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - NIGHT
14
A MAP
A detailed topographical survey map, illuminated by a
flashlight.
Moss is studying it in the cab of his truck.
After a beat he folds the map.
He checks the .45 taken off the corpse with the money.
Wider: the pickup truck parked outside the cattle guard.
After a beat, the truck drives over the grate onto the unpaved
part of the road, jogging up the uneven terrain.
Through the windshield, the view is pitch black except for
the boulders and scrub picked out by the crazily bouncing
headlights.
EXT. BASIN - NIGHT
DOOR SLAM
We are close on the water jug slapping against Moss's leg as
we pull him through the darkness. The shape of his parked
truck is just visible behind him, silhouetted on the crest
by the glow of the moon already set.
Walking across the basin to the near truck Moss freezes,
NOTICING:
Its driver's-side door: closed.
Moss scans the horizon. Its only blemish remains his own
pickup.
He jogs the few remaining paces to the pickup. He sets down
the gallon jug. Softly:
MOSS
Hello?...
No answer.
He opens the door.
The man's body is still held upright by the shoulder harness
but his head, flayed by buckshot, is tipped away.
Moss glances at the bed of the truck.
Empty.
He again looks at the horizon.
15
Now another pickup stands in silhouette next to his own.
Two men are there.
Moss covers behind the dead man's truck. He eases his head
out for another look.
Only one man visible now.
Sounds hard to identify. Something airy. Up on the crest his
pickup rocks and settles. Its tires are being slashed.
The other pickup's engine coughs to life. Headlights and
roof lights go on.
Moss again covers behind the vehicle.
A search-spot sweeps back and forth across the basin tableau
of bodies and trucks. After a few trips back and forth
something happens to the spot: its weaving light begins to
bounce. We can hear the jouncing suspension of the pickup as
it trundles down the incline.
But the light tells the perspective of the slowly approaching
truck. Moss stays in the lee of his sheltering vehicle as he
runs, doubled over, directly away from the light, keeping to
the shadow that wipes on and off.
A gunshot. Its impact kicks up dirt just ahead of Moss to
his right.
Moss turns to see:
Two jogging men flanking the truck like infantry escorting a
tank. One has just halted to fire; the other is now raising
his gun.
Moss tacks and sprints and rolls under a second abandoned
pickup to his left. Another shot sounds and misses.
Bullets plunk into the metal of the truck body. One bullet
skips off the dirt in front of the truck and pings up into
the undercarriage.
Moss is elbowing out the far side, next to a body lying by
the truck's passenger door.
The firing has stopped: Moss steals a look over the hood:
The pursuing pickup is slowing so that the two gunmen can
swing onto the running boards.
The truck accelerates and as it veers around the first
abandoned pickup its lights swing off Moss's cover truck.
16
Moss sprints off, doubled over, at a perpendicular to his
previous path. He hits the ground, pressing himself into the
earth, head between his forearms.
He elbows away as the truck bears on his former cover.
EXT. RIVER GORGE - DAWN
He tops the small rise and straightens and flat-out runs.
We hear the pickup's engine racing and see, behind Moss, its
spot sweeping backlight across the crest.
Moss is running towards the declivity of a river gorge. Sky
there is pink from unrisen sun.
Moss bears on the gorge, panting.
The pickup bounces up into view on the crest behind him,
roof lights blazing. It is pointed off at an angle. Its
spotlight sweeps the river plain.
It finds Moss. The truck reorients as it bounces down in
pursuit. A muzzle flash precedes the dull whump of the
shotgun.
Moss races on toward the river. Another shotgun whump.
Moss stumbles, turns to look behind him.
The truck, gaining ground. A man stands up out of the sunroof,
one hand on top of the cab, the other holding a shotgun.
Moss is almost to the steep riverbank. Another whump of the
shotgun.
Shot catches Moss on the right shoulder. It tears the back
of his shirt away and sends him over the crest of the river
bank.
Moss airborne, ass over elbows, hits near the bottom of the
sandy slope with a loud fhump.
He rolls to a stop and looks up.
We hear a skidding squeal and see dirt and dust float over
the lip of the ridge, thrown by the truck's hard stop.
As Moss pulls off his boots we hear voices from the men in
the truck.
There is the clank of its tailgate being dropped and sounds
of activity on the hollow metal of its bed.
17
Moss tucks his boots into his belt and runs splashing into
the fast-moving water. A look back:
Something shakes the scrub down the steep slope.
Moss backpedals deeper.
Bursting out of the scrub at the foot of the slope: a huge
black dog with a large head and clipped ears. It bounds toward
Moss.
Moss turns and half stumbles, half dives into the river.
Underwater a very dull whump followed by the fizz of buckshot.
Moss breaks the surface of the water, gasping, and looks
BACK:
Figures on the ridge. Below, the dog hitting the water.
Another gunshot from the bank. Where it hits we don't know.
River current and Moss's strokes speed him away.
EXT. RIVER BEND - DAWN
He sweeps around a bend. He finds his feet under him and
staggers onto a sandbar and then splashes through some outwash
to the far bank.
The pursuing dog's head bobs rhythmically in the water.
Moss pulls the gun from his belt. He takes the clip out and
ejects the chamber round.
The dog finds his stumpy legs much closer to the sandbar:
his massive head dips and waggles as he lurches out of his
swim. He emerges from the river and bounds across the sand.
Moss shakes the gun and blows into the barrel.
The dog splashes through the riverwash that separates him
from the human.
Moss reinserts the clip. He chambers a round as the dog runs
snarling and as the dog leaps he fires.
Moss fires twice more quickly, not waiting to see whether
the first round told.
The dog lands, stopped but not dead. It jerks and gurgles.
MOSS
Goddamnit.
He is looking out at the river. His boots are drifting by.
18
EXT. RIVER BANK - DAY
Moss has climbed the far bank and found a seat on a rock.
It is now full day. Moss has taken off his shirt and has his
neck craned round and his back upper arm twisted toward him.
Where the buckshot hit, his arm is purpled and pinpricked.
He meticulously picks shirt fiber out from where buckshot
packed it into the flesh.
He finishes. He rips swatches from his shirt. He starts
wrapping his bare feet as he gazes off.
His point-of-view: a lot of landscape, a highway in the
distance. An eighteen-wheeler shimmies along in the heat.
EXT. GAS STATION/GROCERY - SHEFFIELD - DAY
At an isolated dusty crossroad. It is twilight. The Ford
sedan that Chigurh stopped is parked alongside the pump.
INT. GAS STATION/GROCERY - DAY
Chigurh stands at the counter across from the elderly
proprietor. He holds up a bag of cashews.
CHIGURH
How much?
PROPRIETOR
Sixty-nine cent.
CHIGURH
This. And the gas.
PROPRIETOR
Y'all getting any rain up your way?
CHIGURH
What way would that be?
PROPRIETOR
I seen you was from Dallas.
Chigurh tears open the bag of cashews and pours a few into
his hand.
CHIGURH
What business is it of yours where
I'm from, friendo?
PROPRIETOR
I didn't mean nothin' by it.
19
CHIGURH
Didn't mean nothin'.
PROPRIETOR
I was just passin' the time.
CHIGURH
I guess that passes for manners in
your cracker view of things.
A beat.
PROPRIETOR
Well sir I apologize. If you don't
wanna accept that I don't know what
else I can do for you.
Chigurh stands chewing cashews, staring while the old man
works the register and puts change on the counter.
PROPRIETOR
...Will there be somethin' else?
CHIGURH
I don't know. Will there?
Beat.
The proprietor turns and coughs. Chigurh stares.
PROPRIETOR
Is somethin' wrong?
CHIGURH
With what?
PROPRIETOR
With anything?
CHIGURH
Is that what you're asking me? Is
there something wrong with anything?
The proprietor looks at him, uncomfortable, looks away.
PROPRIETOR
Will there be anything else?
CHIGURH
You already asked me that.
PROPRIETOR
Well... I need to see about closin'.
20
CHIGURH
See about closing.
PROPRIETOR
Yessir.
CHIGURH
What time do you close?
PROPRIETOR
Now. We close now.
CHIGURH
Now is not a time. What time do you
close.
PROPRIETOR
Generally around dark. At dark.
Chigurh stares, slowly chewing.
CHIGURH
You don't know what you're talking
about, do you?
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
I said you don't know what you're
talking about.
Chigurh chews.
CHIGURH
...What time do you go to bed.
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
You're a bit deaf, aren't you? I
said what time do you go to bed.
PROPRIETOR
Well...
A pause.
PROPRIETOR
...I'd say around nine-thirty.
Somewhere around nine-thirty.
21
CHIGURH
I could come back then.
PROPRIETOR
Why would you be comin' back? We'll
be closed.
CHIGURH
You said that.
He continues to stare, chewing.
PROPRIETOR
Well... I need to close now --
CHIGURH
You live in that house behind the
store?
PROPRIETOR
Yes I do.
CHIGURH
You've lived here all your life?
A beat.
PROPRIETOR
This was my wife's father's place.
Originally.
CHIGURH
You married into it.
PROPRIETOR
We lived in Temple Texas for many
years. Raised a family there. In
Temple. We come out here about four
years ago.
CHIGURH
You married into it.
PROPRIETOR
...If that's the way you wanna put
it.
CHIGURH
I don't have some way to put it.
That's the way it is.
22
He finishes the cashews and wads the packet and sets it on
the counter where it begins to slowly unkink. The proprietor's
eyes have tracked the packet. Chigurh's eyes stay on the
proprietor.
CHIGURH
...What's the most you've ever lost
on a coin toss?
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
The most. You ever lost. On a coin
toss.
PROPRIETOR
I don't know. I couldn't say.
Chigurh is digging in his pocket. A quarter: he tosses it.
He slaps it onto his forearm but keeps it covered.
CHIGURH
Call it.
PROPRIETOR
Call it?
CHIGURH
Yes.
PROPRIETOR
For what?
CHIGURH
Just call it.
PROPRIETOR
Well -- we need to know what it is
we're callin' for here.
CHIGURH
You need to call it. I can't call it
for you. It wouldn't be fair. It
wouldn't even be right.
PROPRIETOR
I didn't put nothin' up.
CHIGURH
Yes you did. You been putting it up
your whole life. You just didn't
know it. You know what date is on
this coin?
23
PROPRIETOR
No.
CHIGURH
Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been
traveling twenty-two years to get
here. And now it's here. And it's
either heads or tails, and you have
to say. Call it.
A long beat.
PROPRIETOR
Look... I got to know what I stand
to win.
CHIGURH
Everything.
PROPRIETOR
How's that?
CHIGURH
You stand to win everything. Call
it.
PROPRIETOR
All right. Heads then.
Chigurh takes his hand away from the coin and turns his arm
to look at it.
CHIGURH
Well done.
He hands it across.
CHIGURH
...Don't put it in your pocket.
PROPRIETOR
Sir?
CHIGURH
Don't put it in your pocket. It's
your lucky quarter.
PROPRIETOR
...Where you want me to put it?
24
CHIGURH
Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it'll
get mixed in with the others and
become just a coin. Which it is.
He turns and goes.
The proprietor watches him.
EXT. DESERT AIRE - NIGHT
It is full night.
Moss is pushing open the door to his trailer. We see Carla
Jean inside.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn? What the hell?
Moss enters and the door closes.
INT. MOSS' TRAILER - LATER
Carla Jean is finishing bandaging his arm.
MOSS
Odessa.
CARLA JEAN
Why would we go to Odessa?
MOSS
Not we, you. Stay with your mother.
CARLA JEAN
Well -- how come?
MOSS
Right now it's midnight Sunday. When the courthouse opens
nine hours from now someone's gonna be callin in the vehicle
number off the inspection plate on my truck. And around nine-
thirty they'll show up here.
CARLA JEAN
So... for how long do we have to...
MOSS
Baby, at what point would you quit
botherin' to look for your two million
dollars?
Carla Jean stares, thinking.
25
CARLA JEAN
What'm I supposed to tell Mama?
MOSS
Try standin' in the door and hollerin:
Mama I'm home.
CARLA JEAN
LLEWELYN --
MOSS
C'mon, pack your things. Anything
you leave you ain't gonna see again.
Carla Jean begins peevishly tossing things into a bag:
CARLA JEAN
Well thanks for fallin' all over and
apologizing.
MOSS
Things happened. I can't take 'em
back.
EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - NIGHT
POINT-OF-VIEW THROUGH WINDSHIELD
It is night. No other vehicles on this paved road.
Our car turns off and rattles over a cattleguard.
Parked on the other side is a Ramcharger. Its passenger door
starts to open.
Outside: Chigurh emerges from his Ford.
The man emerging from the truck wears a Western-cut suit.
MAN
Mind ridin' bitch?
EXT. BASIN - NIGHT
THE RAMCHARGER
Bouncing through ungraded terrain.
It stops and discharges the three men-the driver and his
partner, both in suits, from either side, and then Chigurh
from the middle seat.
They have pulled over at Moss's truck.
26
CHIGURH
This his truck?
He is opening the door and looking at the plate riveted
inside.
MAN
Mm-hm.
CHIGURH
Screwgie.
The man reaches into a pocket and hands over a screwdriver.
As Chigurh works it under the plate:
CHIGURH
...Who slashed his tires?
DRIVER
Wudden us.
EXT. BASIN - NIGHT
A flashlight beam picks out the dog carcass.
DRIVER
That's a dead dog.
CHIGURH
Thank you.
Chigurh plays the flashlight around the scene. Dead bodies
on the ground.
CHIGURH
...Where's the transponder?
MAN
In the truck. I'll get it.
DRIVER
These are some ripe petunias.
Chigurh gives his flashlight to the driver.
CHIGURH
Hold this please.
He bends down and takes a 9 mm. Glock off of one of the dead
bodies and checks the clip. The other man is returning from
the truck. He hands Chigurh a small electronic receiver.
CHIGURH
...You getting anything on this?
27
MAN
Not a bleep.
CHIGURH
All right...
Chigurh stands and holds his hand out for his flashlight.
The driver hands it to him. Chigurh shines it in his face
and shoots him through the forehead. As the man falls Chigurh
pans the light to the other man who has watched his partner
drop. He looks up, puzzled, and is shot as well.
EXT. BELL'S RANCH - MORNING
A horse trailer is backed up to a small stable with its gate
down.
Sheriff Bell, sixties, in uniform, slaps a horse on the ass
and gives it a "Hyah!" to send it clattering up the ramp and
into the trailer.
His wife, Loretta, appears. She wears a heavy robe and holds
a coffee mug.
LORETTA
I thought it was a car afire.
BELL
It is a car afire. But Wendell said
there was something back country
too.
LORETTA
When is the county gonna start payin'
a rental on my horse.
BELL
Hyah!
He is sending a second horse up into the trailer.
BELL
...I love you more'n more, ever day.
LORETTA
(UNMOVED)
That's very nice.
Sheriff Bell puts up the gate and pins it. She watches.
LORETTA
...Be careful.
28
BELL
I always am.
LORETTA
Don't get hurt.
BELL
I never do.
LORETTA
Don't hurt no one.
BELL
Well. If you say so.
EXT. CATTLEGUARD ROAD - DAY
The pickup with horse trailer rattles up next to a parked
squad car. Just beyond the cattle guard the Ford sedan is
blazing. Sheriff Bell gets out of the truck and joins his
deputy, Wendell, looking at the car. After a beat of staring:
BELL
You wouldn't think a car would burn
like that.
WENDELL
Yessir. We should a brought wieners.
Sheriff Bell takes his hat off and mops his brow.
BELL
Does that look to you like about a
'77 Ford, Wendell?
WENDELL
It could be.
BELL
I'd say it is. Not a doubt in my
mind.
WENDELL
The old boy shot by the highway?
BELL
Yessir, his vehicle. Man killed
Lamar's deputy, took his car, killed
someone on the highway, swapped for
his car, and now here it is and he's
swapped again for god knows what.
29
WENDELL
That's very linear Sheriff.
Bell stares at the fire.
BELL
Well. Old age flattens a man.
WENDELL
Yessir. But then there's this other.
He nods up the ridge away from the
highway.
BELL
Uh-huh.
He walks back toward the trailer.
BELL
...You ride Winston.
WENDELL
You sure?
BELL
Oh, I'm more than sure. Anything
happens to Loretta's horse I can
tell you right now you don't wanna
be the party that was aboard.
EXT. BASIN - DAY
The two men on horseback pick their way through the scrub
approaching Moss's truck. Sheriff Bell is studying the ground.
BELL
It's the same tire tread comin back
as goin'. Made about the same time.
You can see the sipes real clear.
Wendell is standing in the stirrups, looking up the ridge.
WENDELL
Truck's just yonder. Somebodies pried
the inspection plate off the door.
Bell looks up, circling the truck.
BELL
I know this truck. Belongs to a feller
named Moss.
WENDELL
Llewelyn Moss?
30
BELL
That's the boy.
WENDELL
You figure him for a dope runner?
Bell sits his horse looking at the slashed tires.
BELL
I don't know but I kindly doubt it.
BASIN - DAY
BY THE BODIES
The two lawmen are dismounting.
WENDELL
Hell's bells, they even shot the
dog.
They walk towards the near truck.
WENDELL
...Well this is just a deal gone
wrong.
Sheriff Bell stoops to look at casings.
BELL
Yes, appears to have been a glitch
or two.
WENDELL
What calibers you got there, Sheriff?
BELL
Nine millimeter. Couple of .45 ACP's.
He stands, looking at the truck.
BELL
...Somebody unloaded on this thing
with a shotgun.
WENDELL
Mm.
Bell opens the door of the truck. Looks at the dead driver.
WENDELL
...How come do you reckon the coyotes
ain't been at 'em?
31
BELL
I don't know...
He shuts the door softly with two hands.
BELL
...Supposedly they won't eat a
Mexican.
Wendell is looking at the two corpses close together, wearing
suits.
WENDELL
These boys appear to be managerial.
Bell walks back toward the bed of the truck as Wendell
APPRAISES:
WENDELL
...I think we're lookin' at more'n
one fracas.
A gesture toward the scattered bodies.
WENDELL
...Wild West over there...
A nod down at the two men in suits with head wounds.
WENDELL
...Execution here.
Bell, at the back of the truck, wets a finger and runs it
against the bed and looks at it.
BELL
That Mexican brown dope.
Wendell strolls among the bodies.
WENDELL
These boys is all swole up. So this
was earlier: gettin set to trade.
Then, whoa, differences... You know:
might not of even been no money.
BELL
That's possible.
WENDELL
But you don't believe it.
32
BELL
No. Probably I don't.
WENDELL
It's a mess, ain't it Sheriff?
Bell is remounting.
BELL
If it ain't it'll do til a mess gets
here.
EXT. MOSS' TRAILER - DAY
AIR TANK
We follow it being toted along a gravel path and up three
shallow steps to a trailer door.
A hand rises to knock. Tubing runs out of the sleeve and
into the fist clenched to knock. The door rattles under the
knock. A short beat.
The hand opens to press the nozzle at the end of the tube
against the lock cylinder. A sharp report.
INSIDE
A cylinder of brass from the door slams into the far wall
denting it and drops to the floor and rolls.
Reverse on the door. Daylight shows through the lock.
The door swings slowly in and Chigurh, hard backlit, enters.
He sets the tank down by the door. He looks around.
He ambles in. He opens a door.
The bedroom, a messy aftermath of hasty packing.
The main room. Mail is stacked on the counter that separates
a kitchen area.
Chigurh flips unhurriedly through the pieces. One of them is
a phone bill. He puts it in his pocket.
He goes to the refrigerator. He opens it. He looks for a
still beat. He decides.
He reaches out a quart of milk. He goes to the main room
sofa and sits. He pinches the spout open and drinks.
33
He looks at himself in the dead gray-green screen of the
facing television.
INT. DESERT AIRE OFFICE - DAY
Chigurh enters. Old plywood paneling, gunmetal desk, litter
of papers. A window air-conditioner works hard.
A fifty-year-old woman with a cast-iron hairdo sits behind
the desk.
WOMAN
Yessir?
CHIGURH
I'm looking for Llewelyn Moss.
WOMAN
Did you go up to his trailer?
CHIGURH
Yes I did.
WOMAN
Well I'd say he's at work. Do you
want to leave a message?
CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
I can't say.
CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
Sir I ain't at liberty to give out
no information about our residents.
Chigurh looks around the office. He looks at the woman.
CHIGURH
Where does he work?
WOMAN
Did you not hear me? We can't give
out no information.
A toilet flushes somewhere. A door unlatches. Footsteps in
back.
Chigurh reacts to the noise. He looks at the woman. He turns
and opens the door and leaves.
34
INT. TRAILWAYS BUS - DAY
Some of the passengers are getting out. Moss is up in the
aisle reaching a bag down from the overhead rack. He lifts
the document case from the floor where Carla Jean still sits
next to the window.
CARLA JEAN
Why all the way to Del Rio?
MOSS
I'm gonna borrow a car. From Eldon.
Carla Jean nods at the document case.
CARLA JEAN
You can't afford one?
MOSS
Don't wanna register it. I'll call
you in a couple days.
CARLA JEAN
Promise?
MOSS
Yes I do.
CARLA JEAN
I got a bad feelin', Llewelyn.
MOSS
Well I got a good one. So they ought
to even out. Quit worrying about
everthing.
CARLA JEAN
Mama's gonna raise hell.
MOSS
Uh-huh.
CARLA JEAN
She is just gonna cuss you up'n down.
MOSS
You should be used to that.
CARLA JEAN
I'm used to lots of things, I work
at Wal-Mart.
35
MOSS
Not any more, Carla Jean. You're
retired.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn?
MOSS
Yes ma'am?
CARLA JEAN
You are comin back, ain't ya?
MOSS
I shall return.
EXT. MOSS'S TRAILER - DAY
Wendell is knocking at its door. Sheriff Bell stands one
step behind him.
WENDELL
Sheriff's Department!
No answer.
BELL
Look at the lock.
They both look. A beat.
WENDELL
We goin' in?
BELL
Gun out and up.
Wendell unholsters his gun but hesitates.
WENDELL
What about yours?
BELL
I'm hidin' behind you.
Wendell eases the door open.
WENDELL
Sheriff's Department!
INT. MOSS' TRAILER - DAY
The men cautiously enter, Wendell leading.
36
WENDELL
...Nobody here.
He lowers his gun and starts to holster it.
BELL
No reason not to stay safe.
Wendell keeps the gun out.
WENDELL
No sir.
He goes to the bedroom door as Sheriff Bell, seeing the lock
cylinder on the floor, stoops and hefts it.
He looks up at the wall opposite the door: the small dent.
Wendell pulls his head out of the bedroom.
WENDELL
...I believe they've done lit a shuck.
BELL
Believe you're right.
WENDELL
That from the lock?
Sheriff Bell stands and wanders, looking around.
BELL
Probably must be.
WENDELL
So when was he here?
BELL
I don't know. Oh.
He is at the counter staring at something.
BELL
...Now that's aggravating.
WENDELL
Sheriff?
Sheriff Bell points at the carton of milk.
BELL
Still sweating.
Wendell is agitated.
37
WENDELL
Whoa! Sheriff!
Sheriff Bell unhurriedly opens a cabinet. He looks closes
it, opens another.
WENDELL
...Sheriff, we just missed him! We
gotta circulate this! On the radio!
Sheriff Bell takes a glass from the cabinet.
BELL
Well, okay...
He pours milk into the glass.
BELL
...What do we circulate?
He sits on the sofa and takes a sip from the milk.
BELL
...Lookin' for a man who has recently
drunk milk?
Wendell stares at him.
WENDELL
Sheriff, that's aggravating.
BELL
I'm ahead of you there.
Wendell gazes around the trailer, shaking his head.
WENDELL
You think this boy Moss has got any
notion of the sorts of sons of bitches
that are huntin' him?
BELL
I don't know. He ought to...
Sheriff Bell takes another sip.
BELL
...He seen the same things I seen
and it made an impression on me.
EXT. BUS STATION CAB STAND - DEL RIO - DAY
Moss emerges from the station and goes to a cab.
38
As he sits in:
MOSS
Take me to a motel.
CABBIE
You got one in mind?
MOSS
Just someplace cheap.
INT. DEL RIO MOTEL LOBBY - DAY
RATE CARD
The rates for Charlie Goodnight's Del Rio Motor Court are
under its address of Highway 84 East and an ovalled AAA logo:
Single Person $24.00
Double Bed/Couple $27.00
2 Double Bed/Couple $28.00
2 Double Bed/3 People $32.00
Voices play off:
WOMAN
You tell me the option.
MOSS
The what?
WOMAN
The option.
Wider shows that we are in a motel lobby. A woman faces Moss
across a Formica counter top She has handed him the framed
rate card.
WOMAN
...You pick the option with the
applicable rate.
MOSS
I'm just one person. Don't matter
the size of the bed.
INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY
39
Wide on the room. Twin-bed headboards are fixed to the wall
but only the far one has a bed parked beneath it. Moss sits
on the bed, phone to his ear. It rings a couple times.
He gives up, hangs up, rises.
INT. BATHROOM - DAY
Moss stands in front of the mirror, twisted around to examine
the buckshot wound. He shrugs his shirt back on.
Holding on the mirror we see him walk back into the main
room and stop, looking around. He looks slowly up to the
ceiling.
INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY
CLOSE ON A SCREW
Being unscrewed. Wider shows us Moss, standing on the bed,
unscrewing the vent on an overhead airduct.
He gets down off the bed, unzips his duffle bag and takes
the document case out of it. He opens the case, takes out a
packet of bills, counts out some money and puts it in his
pocket. He refastens the case.
He goes to the window and cuts off a length of the curtain
cord. He ties the curtain cord to the handle of the document
case. He goes to the closet, leaving the case on the bed.
He reaches into the empty closet, lifts the coat rail off
its supports and lets the hangers slide off onto the floor.
INT. LOOKING DOWN THE AIRDUCT - DAY
The duct hums with a low, airy compressor sound. The
galvanized metal stretches away to a distant elbow. The
document case is plunked down in the foreground and then
gently pushed down the length of the tube by the coat pole.
The free end of the cord trails off the handle for retrieval.
INT. MOTEL ROOM - DAY
THE DUFFLE
Moss unzips it and pulls out the machine pistol and the .45
that he took off the dead man. He lifts the mattress and
stashes the machine pistol underneath. He checks the chamber
of the .45 and stuffs it in his belt.
40
INT. MOTEL ROOM/EXT. PARKING LOT - DAY
THE WINDOW
Moss pulls back one curtain to look out at the lot.
Nothing there disturbs him.
He closes the curtains, crossing one over the other.
He goes out the door, shutting it softly behind him.
INT. ROADSIDE DINER - DAY
PHONE BILL
A pencil taps at a Del Rio number that repeats on the bill.
We hear phone-filtered rings.
The rings are cut off by the clatter of a hang-up. The pencil
moves to an Odessa number, the only other repeat on the short
list of toll calls.
We cut up to Chigurh as he finishes dialing, in the booth of
a roadside diner. Dusk.
Phone-filtered rings. Connection; a woman's voice:
WOMAN
Hello?
CHIGURH
Is Llewelyn there?
WOMAN
Llewelyn?! No he ain't.
CHIGURH
You expect him?
The woman's voice is old, querulous:
WOMAN
Now why would I expect him? Who is
this?
Chigurh stares for a short beat, then prongs the phone.
INT. A SMALL GENERAL STORE - DAY
Moss is standing in front of a rack of cowboy boots at the
back of the store. He looks up at an approaching salesman, a
bow-legged old man in a white shirt.
41
SALESMAN
Hep you?
MOSS
I need the Larry Mahan's in black,
size 11.
SALESMAN
Okay.
MOSS
You sell socks?
SALESMAN
Just white.
He gathers up a brown paper bag from a pharmacy.
MOSS
White is all I wear. You got a
bathroom?
INT. BATHROOM - DAY
Moss is sitting on the toilet taking off socks with bloody
soles. Sneakers sit on the floor. The pharmacy bag sits next
to them.
He sprays disinfectant on his feet. He takes out bandages.
INT. SHOE STORE - DAY
Moss is returning. The bowlegged salesman stands in the aisle
holding aloft a pair of boots.
SALESMAN
Ain't got Larries in black but I got
'em in osta-rich. Break in easy.
INT. CAB/EXT. DEL RIO MOTEL - NIGHT
It is rolling to a stop in front of Charlie Goodnight's Del
Rio Motor Hotel.
Moss fishes for his wallet but stops, looking.
Parked in the street in front of the motel is an offroad
truck with roof lights.
MOSS
Don't stop. Just ride me up past the
rooms.
42
DRIVER
What room?
MOSS
Just drive me around. I want to see
if someone's here.
The cab rolls slowly up the lot.
MOSS
...Keep going.
His pivoting point-of-view of his room. The window shows a
part between the curtains.
MOSS
...Keep going. Don't stop.
DRIVER
I don't want to get in some kind of
a jackpot here, buddy.
MOSS
It's all right.
DRIVER
Why don't I set you down here and we
won't argue about it.
MOSS
I want you to take me to another
motel.
DRIVER
Let's just call it square.
Moss reaches a hundred-dollar bill up to the driver.
MOSS
You're already in a jackpot. I'm
trying to get you out of it. Now
take me to a motel.
The driver reaches up for the bill then turns the cab out of
the parking lot onto the hiway. Moss turns to look at the
receding lights of the motel.
EXT. THROUGHWAY INTERCHANGE - NIGHT
PAVEMENT
Rushing under the lens, lit by headlights.
43
From high up we see a throughway interchange as Chigurh's
Ramcharger takes the right fork of the highway under a green
sign for Del Rio.
INT. THE RAMCHARGER - NIGHT
Chigurh looks down at the passenger seat. On it lies the
transponder, powered on but silent. Next to it is a machine
pistol with a can-shaped silencer sweated onto the barrel.
The transponder beeps once.
Chigurh looks up. We are approaching a steel bridge. The
headlights pick up a large black bird perched on the aluminum
bridge rail.
The passenger window hums down.
Chigurh picks up the pistol and levels the barrel across the
window frame.
The truck bumps onto the bridge, its tires skipping over the
seams in the asphalt. As it draws even the bird spreads its
wings and Chigurh fires-a muted thump like a whoosh of air.
From high overhead: the bullet hits the guardrail making it
hum as the Ramcharger recedes and the bird lifts into the
darkness, heavily flapping its wings.
INT. CAFE - MORNING
Morning. Bell sits drinking coffee. Wendell stands in the
aisle handing something over.
WENDELL
He labs from Austin on the man by
the highway.
Bell takes the papers and starts to look at them.
BELL
What was the bullet?
WENDELL
Wasn't no bullet.
This brings Bell's look up.
BELL
Wasn't no bullet?
WENDELL
Yessir. Wasn't none.
44
BELL
Well, Wendell, with all due respect,
that don't make a whole lot of sense.
WENDELL
No sir.
BELL
You said entrance wound in the
forehead, no exit wound.
WENDELL
Yes sir.
BELL
Are you telling me he shot this boy
in the head and then went fishin'
around in there with a pocket knife?
WENDELL
Sir, I don't want to picture that.
BELL
Well I don't either!
A beat during which both men picture it, ended by an arriving
waitress.
WAITRESS
Can I freshen that there for you
Sheriff?
The Sheriff's distressed look swings on to her.
BELL
Yes Noreen you better had. Thank
you.
WENDELL
The Rangers and DEA are heading out
to the desert this morning. You gonna
join 'em?
BELL
I don't know. Any new bodies
accumulated out there?
WENDELL
No sir.
BELL
Well then I guess I can skip it.
Heavens to Betsy, Wendell, you already
put me off my breakfast.
45
EXT. SPORTING GOODS STORE - DAY
Moss pushes off from the wall he was leaning against: someone
inside the glass double doors is stooping to unlock them.
INT. SPORTING GOODS STORE - GUN COUNTER - DAY
The clerk is handing a shotgun across the counter.
CLERK
Twelve gauge. You need shells? Moss
looks the gun over.
MOSS
Uh-huh. Double ought.
CLERK
They'll give you a wallop.
He pushes the shells across.
MOSS
You have camping supplies?
ANOTHER COUNTER
A clerk stares at Moss.
CLERK
Tent poles.
MOSS
Uh-huh.
CLERK
You already have the tent?
MOSS
Somethin' like that.
CLERK
Well you give me the model number of
the tent I can order you the poles.
MOSS
Never mind. I want a tent.
CLERK
What kind of tent?
MOSS
The kind with the most poles.
46
CLERK
Well I guess that'd be our ten-foot
backyard Per-Gola. You can stand up
in it. Well, some people could stand
up in it. Six foot clearance at the
ridge. You might just could.
MOSS
Let me have that one. Where's the
nearest hardware store?
INT. MOSS' NEW MOTEL ROOM - DAY
He has the shotgun wedged in an open drawer and is sawing
off its barrel with a hacksaw.
MINUTES LATER
Moss sits on the bed dressing the barrel with a file.
He puts down the file, looks at the barrel. He slides the
forearm back and forward again and lets the hammer down with
his thumb. He looks the gun over, appraising, and then opens
the box of shells and starts feeding in the heavy waxed loads.
INT. FIRST MOTEL LOBBY - DAY
Moss enters carrying a new duffle bag. The same woman is
behind the counter.
MOSS
Could I get another room.
WOMAN
You want to change rooms?
MOSS
No, I want to keep my room, and get
another one.
WOMAN
Another additional.
MOSS
Uh-huh.You got a map of the rooms?
She inclines her head to look under the counter.
WOMAN
Yeah we had a sorta one.
She finds a brochure and hands it across. It shows a car
from the fifties parked in front of the hotel in hard
sunlight.
47
Moss unfolds the brochure and studies.
MOSS
What about one forty-two.
WOMAN
You can have the one next to yours
if you want. One twenty. It ain't
took.
MOSS
No, one forty-two.
WOMAN
That's got two double beds.
EXT. MOTEL PARKING LOT - DAY
An arcing point of view on the window of Moss's old room.
The curtain still slightly open.
A reverse shows Moss crossing the lot from the office carrying
his long nylon duffle bag, studying the room. He looks
further down the street.
The truck with the roof lights is still parked there.
INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM
Two double beds. Moss is listening at the wall. He goes to
the bed and unzips the duffle bag and pulls out the sawed-
off shotgun. He lays it on the bed. He pulls the tent poles
and some duct tape out of the duffle.
INT. CHIGURH'S TRUCK/TWO LANE HIGHWAY - LATE DAY
CHIGURH
Driving slowly down the street with frequent glances down at
the receiver on the seat next to him. The receiver lights
ups and bleeps one time.
Chigurh slows and looks around at the buildings that line
the two-lane highway.
INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM - LATE DAY
Moss is standing on a desk chair unscrewing the plate from
the overhead airduct. He lays it aside and raises a flashlight
and peers into the airduct.
48
INT. MOTEL DUCT - LATE DAY
Down the length of the duct we see an elbow junction ten
feet away. The end of the document case is just visible
sticking out into the elbow.
CHIGURH
The receiver is bleeping slowly as the car creeps along. Up
at a distant intersection is Charlie Goodnight's Del Rio
Motel.
INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM
Moss rips off a length of duct tape. He wraps it around two
tent poles placed end-to-end but an inch apart, not butting.
He gives the tape several winds.
EXT. MOTEL PARKING LOT - LATE DAY
CHIGURH
He is slowly driving the parking lot, the receiver now in
his lap.
The beeping frequency peaks and then starts to fall off.
Chigurh puts the truck in reverse and eases back to the peak.
His point-of-view: window with parted curtains.
INT. 2ND MOTEL ROOM - LATE DAY
Moss experiments with the tape-joint, angling then
straightening the two poles. Satisfied, he starts taping on
a third length of pole.
INT. MOTEL LOBBY - NIGHT
Chigurh stands across the counter from the clerk who looks
at him, waiting.
He is frowning at the rate card.
INT. CHIGURH'S MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
DOOR
It swings slowly in toward us. Chigurh stands in the doorway.
The room-number bangle hangs off the key in the knob.
He stares in for a beat.
49
He enters slowly and reaches up for the light switch. He
doesn't turn it on. He drops his hand. He reaches up again,
feeling it.
He looks around the room. He takes the key and closes the
door behind him.
MOSS
Moss pulls three wire hangers off the closet rack. He takes
them to the bureau and picks up a sidecutter.
CHIGURH
He walks over to the bathroom.
He turns on its light, looks.
He leaves the door open. He goes to a closet, opens it, looks.
He goes to the door of the room but doesn't open it. He stands
with his back against it and looks at the room.
The bathroom door.
The closet door.
Chigurh goes to the bed and sits to take off his boots.
MOSS
Moss snips the last of the wire hangers' hooks off with the
sidecutter. He wraps the three hooks with duct tape to make
a sturdier one.
He wraps more tape to attach this hook to the end of the
three-link pole.
CHIGURH
From a bag he withdraws a twelve-gauge automatic shotgun
fitted with a silencer big around as a beer can.
He checks the loads.
He picks up the regularly beeping receiver, turns it off,
and slips it into his pocket.
He hoists the air tank.
50
MOSS
He is standing on the chair below the airduct, stooping to
pick up the jury-rigged pole leaning nearby. He straightens
and feeds the length of the pole into the duct, using the
joints to angle it in.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT
Inside the duct: he watches the pole play in, illuminated by
the flashlight he has left resting inside.
EXT. MOTEL WALKWAY - NIGHT
STOCKINGED FEET
We track on the feet padding down the exterior walkway.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT
MOSS
Peering along the airduct, both hands up next to one ear
awkwardly maneuvering the pole.
He lays the far, hooked end over the protruding corner of
the document case. He pulls.
The pole slides off the case.
EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH
He stands at the door of Moss's first room. He eases an ear
against it.
He steps back.
He punches out the lock cylinder with the airgun and kicks
in the door, raising the shotgun.
A Mexican in a guyabera reclines on one of the two double
beds.
He is scrabbling for a machine pistol on the nightstand.
Chigurh fires three times quickly. The damped blasts have
the low resonance of chugs into a bottle.
MOSS
Head still in the airduct, frozen, listening.
51
EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH
Also frozen, back against the wall outside the room, to one
side of the open door.
After a beat he steps back into the open doorway leveling
the gun.
Inside the room: no movement. Much of the man on the bed is
spattered against the chewed-up headboard.
The bathroom door is ajar, its light on.
A long beat.
Movement in the wedge of light.
Immediately, chugs from the shotgun chew up bathroom door
and nearby wallboard.
A cry from inside. A brief chatter of machine pistol.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT
MOSS'S POV
Along the air vent.
The machine-pistol chatter crosses the cut.
We hear bullets snap through metal. The sound brings on
indirect light as holes are punched in the duct somewhere
around the bend.
Moss holds still as the galvanized metal faintly thunders.
The flashlight resting on it wobbles.
EXT./INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH
Gun leveled, at the open door.
Again, no movement.
He advances into the room, gun pointing at the bathroom door.
As he advances he swings the gun briefly over at the closet
door and fires. The splintered-in door reveals no occupant.
Chigurh angles around the double bed to get a view of that
wedge of bathroom floor visible through its door. Blood is
pooling out from the right.
52
Chigurh fires at the baseboard to the right of the door.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT
Moss makes another attempt to hook the bag. The hook takes.
Moss drags the case inches out into the duct's bend before
the hook slides off again.
INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM BATHROOM - NIGHT
CHIGURH
He uses the shotgun barrel to push open what's left of the
bathroom door.
The mirror over the facing sink gives a view of most of the
hidden side of the bedroom/ bathroom party wall. Partial
view of a man pressed against the wall, standing in the tub
in the corner. From his posture and the one visible hand he
seems unarmed.
Chigurh enters the bathroom.
The cornered man is unhurt but terrified. He holds up his
hands.
MAN
No me mate.
The man on the floor is quite dead. A machine pistol lies in
one out-flung hand.
Chigurh looks back up at the survivor.
CHIGURH
How'd you find it?
MAN
No me mate.
Chigurh walks unhurriedly to the tub. The man watches him,
hands up, vibrating.
Chigurh reaches with his free hand and pulls the shower
curtain most of the way round, hiding the man. He angles the
nose of the shotgun in and fires.
MOSS
The hook again snags a strap on the case. Moss pulls,
carefully.
53
INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - MAIN ROOM - NIGHT
Chigurh emerges from the bathroom. His socks are sodden with
gore. He sits on the bed and peels them off. He rubs the
bottom of each foot with the ankle of each sock and drops
the socks to the floor.
He rises and opens three bureau drawers, which are empty,
and leaves them open.
He pulls open what remains of the closet door. Empty.
He looks under the bed.
He stands, looks around.
He looks up. His look lingers.
Close on the airduct grille: it is dusty. Rub-marks have
made four dark bands across the dusty slats. Chigurh's fingers
rise into frame and meet the grille, roughly aligning with
the finger marks in the dust.
Close on a screwhead: a dime enters and engages the screw
and starts turning it.
INT. MOTEL DUCT - NIGHT
From inside the duct: fingers reach through the grille and
Chigurh's hand pushes it up into the duct, then angles it
and withdraws it. Faintly, under the distant airy drone of
the compressor, we hear the grate clatter to the floor.
The back of Chigurh's head appears. He aims a flashlight
away down the far length of the duct. A beat.
He pivots to face us.
His point-of-view: the length of the duct, empty, with a
drag-mark through the middle of the dust.
Back to Chigurh. His look holds.
He ducks out.
INT. 1ST MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
In the room: Chigurh steps down from the chair and pulls the
receiver from his pocket and turns it on.
It beeps once.
Silence.
54
Frowning, looking down at the receiver, Chigurh makes a slow
sweep with it. The silence holds-snapped off by car steady
as we cut to:
INT. STATION WAGON - NIGHT
Moss, with his duffle bag and document case, sits in the
passenger seat of an old station wagon. The driver is an
elderly man in a yoked shirt.
After a beat, eyes fixed on the road, the old man shakes his
head.
OLD MAN
Shouldn't be doin' that. Even a young
man like you.
Moss gives him a look. A beat.
MOSS
Doin' what. The old man gazes at the
road.
OLD MAN
Hitchhikin'.
He shakes his head again. Silent driving. The old man murmurs:
OLD MAN
Dangerous.
EXT. DOWNTOWN HOUSTON - DAY
BOOMING UP
We are looking out as a foreground building slips by and we
rise to get an ever-higher perspective on downtown Houston,
hazy under a noon sun.
INT. OFFICE - DAY
A man standing behind a large desk-behind him, floor-to-
ceiling windows-has no small talk for Carson Wells, the man
entering.
MAN
You know Anton Chigurh by sight, is
that correct?
Carson Wells sits in front of the desk, his manner affable.
He rests a booted foot across one knee.
55
WELLS
Yessir, that's correct. I know 'em
when I see 'em.
MAN
When did you last see him.
WELLS
November the 28th, last year.
MAN
You seem pretty sure of the date.
Did I ask you to sit?
WELLS
No sir but you struck me as a man
who wouldn't want to waste a chair.
I remember dates. Names. Numbers. I
saw him on November 28th.
The man gazes. He nods.
MAN
We got a loose cannon here. And we're
out a bunch of money, and the other
party is out his product.
WELLS
Yessir. I understand that.
The man looks at him, appraising. He nods again and slides a
bank card across the table.
MAN
This account will only give up twelve
hundred dollars in any twenty-four
hour period. That's up from a
thousand.
Wells rises to take the card and then reseats himself.
WELLS
Yessir.
MAN
If your expenses run higher I hope
you'll trust us for it.
WELLS
Okay.
MAN
How well do you know Chigurh.
56
WELLS
Well enough.
MAN
That's not an answer.
WELLS
What do you want to know?
MAN
I'd just like to know your opinion
of him. In general. Just how dangerous
is he?
Wells shrugs.
WELLS
Compared to what? The bubonic plague?
He's bad enough that you called me.
He's a psychopathic killer but so
what? There's plenty of them around.
A beat.
MAN
He killed three men in a motel in
Del Rio yesterday. And two others at
that colossal goatfuck out in the
desert.
WELLS
Okay. We can stop that.
MAN
You seem pretty sure of yourself.
You've led something of a charmed
life haven't you Mr. Wells?
Wells rises.
WELLS
In all honesty I can't say that charm
has had a whole lot to do with it.
He thumps once at his chest.
WELLS
...I'm wondering...
MAN
Yes?
WELLS
Can I get my parking ticket validated?
57
The man gazes.
MAN
...An attempt at humor, I suppose.
WELLS
I'm sorry.
MAN
Goodbye, Mr. Wells.
EXT. EAGLE PASS TOWN SQUARE - DUSK
Moss is getting out of the station wagon with his duffle and
document case.
It is a town square. Among the old buildings is the Hotel
Eagle, identified by a neon above the front door.
INT. HOTEL EAGLE LOBBY - NIGHT
Moss enters. Behind the front desk an older man sits reading
Ring magazine. He has a hand-rolled cigarette.
MOSS
One room, one night.
CLERK
That's twenty-six dollars.
MOSS
You on all night?
CLERK
Yessir, be here til ten tomorrow
morning.
Moss pushes a hundred along with smaller bills across the
desk.
MOSS
For you. I ain't asking you to do
anything illegal.
The clerk looks at the hundred-dollar bill without reaching.
CLERK
I'm waitin' to hear your description
of that.
58
MOSS
There's somebody lookin' for me. Not
police. Just call me if anyone else
checks in tonight.
INT. SECOND-FLOOR HALLWAY - NIGHT
Moss is mounting the stairs from the lobby. The carpeted
hallway is lined by transom-topped doors. Moss goes to a
door halfway down on his left.
INT. HOTEL ROOM - NIGHT
Moss enters a room with old oak furniture and high ceilings.
He sets the document case next to the bed.
He unzips the duffel and takes out the shotgun which he lays
on the bed, and then goes to the window. He parts the curtain
to look down.
The street is empty. Mexican music floats up faintly from a
bar somewhere not far away.
INT. HOTEL ROOM - LATER
The room is dark. The music is gone.
We are looking straight down on Moss lying, clothed, on the
bed. We are booming straight down toward him.
After a beat he shakes his head. He opens his eyes,
grimacing.
MOSS
There just ain't no way.
He sits up and turns on the bedside lamp.
The shot gun and document case are on the floor by the bed.
Moss swings the document case onto the bed and unclasps it
and upends the money onto the bed. He feels the bottom of
the case, squeezing it with one hand inside and one hand
out, looking for a false bottom. He eyeballs the case, turning
it over and around.
He starts riffling money packets.
He finds one that binds. It has hundreds on the outside but
ones inside with the centers cut out. In the hollow is a
sending unit the size of a Zippo lighter.
He holds the sender, staring at it.
A long beat.
59
From somewhere, a dull chug. The sound is hard to read-a
compressor going on, a door thud, maybe something else.
The sound has brought Moss's look up. He sits listening. No
further sound.
Moss reaches to uncradle the rotary phone by the bed. He
dials 0.
We hear ringing filtered through the handset. Also, faintly,
offset, we hear the ring direct from downstairs.
After five rings Moss cradles the phone.
He goes to the door, reaches for the knob, but hesitates.
He gets down on his hands and knees and listens at the crack
under the door.
An open airy sound like a seashell put to your ear.
Moss rises and turns to the bed. He piles money back into
the document case but freezes suddenly-for no reason we can
see.
A long beat on his motionless back. We gradually become aware
of a faint high-frequency beeping, barely audible. Its source
is indeterminate.
Moss clasps the document case, picks up his shotgun and eases
himself to a sitting position on the bed, facing the door.
He looks at the line of light under it.
The beeps approach, though still not loud. A long wait.
At length a soft shadow appears in the line of light below
the door. It lingers there. The beeping-stops.
A beat. Now the soft shadow becomes more focused. It resolves
into two columns of dark: feet planted before the door.
Moss raises his shotgun toward the door.
A long beat.
Moss adjusts his grip on the shotgun and his finger tightens
on the trigger.
The shadow moves, unhurriedly, rightward. The band of light
beneath the door is once again unshadowed.
Quiet. Moss stares.
60
The band of light under the door.
Moss stares.
Silently, the light goes out.
Something for Moss to think about. He stares.
The hallway behind the door is now dark. The door is defined
only from his side, by streetlight-spill through the window.
Moss stares. He shifts, starts to rise, doesn't. A beat.
A report -- not a gunshot, but a stamping sound, followed by
a pneumatic hiss.
It brings a dull impact and Moss recoils, hit.
He winces, feeling his chest.
The door is shuddering creakily in.
It is all strange. Moss gropes in his lap and picks something
up. The lock cylinder.
The creaking door comes to rest, ajar.
Moss fires. The shotgun blast roars in the confined space
and for an instant turns the room orange. The chewed-up door
wobbles back against the jamb and creakily bounces in again.
Moss has already risen and is hoisting the document case.
FROM OUTSIDE HIS WINDOW
Moss finishes draping his shotgun by its strap across his
back and climbs out onto the ledge with the document case.
He swings the document case out and drops it.
The bracketing for the hotel's sign gives Moss a handhold.
He grabs it as inside the room the door is kicked open. Moss
swings down as, with a muted thump, orange muzzleflash strobes
the room.
Moss drops.
EXT. HOTEL EAGLE SIDEWALK - NIGHT
Moss lands and grabs the document case and straightens. He
is at the hotel entrance, standing in the light coming through
the etched glass of the double doors.
61
He looks at his own shadow thrown onto the street. He plunges
through the doors into the lobby as a gun thumps and crackling
shot chews the sidewalk.
INT. LOBBY - NIGHT
Moss hurries across the lobby. A glance to one side:
A booted foot sticks out from behind the front desk.
Moss slows approaching the stairway. He risks a look around
the stairway wall.
Ascending balusters fade off into the blackness of the second-
story hallway.
Moss sags. He looks back across the lobby at the front door.
He unhitches his shotgun. He remains still for a moment
holding the shotgun, back against the protected side of the
wall.
He quickly swings out and with shotgun aimed up the stairs
he crosses to the back lobby.
He quietly pushes open the back door.
EXT. SERVICE ALLEY - NIGHT
OUTSIDE
Moss emerges into a shallow service alley, dark and dirty.
He is at a run when we hear soft tock and a garbage can in
front of him snaps and wobbles.
He turns looking up, backpedaling. Another tock accompanies
a muzzleflash in a dark second-story window.
Moss fires his shotgun: loud. Chips fly off the brickface
and the window shatters.
Moss rounds the alley corner. He stops and squats.
EXT. DOWNTOWN EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT
Wide: dark, deserted downtown Eagle Pass, Moss a lone figure
resting at a corner.
Close on Moss panting. He takes stock, painfully feeling at
his upper chest where the lock hit, then touching gingerly
at his side, beneath the ribs, newly bloody. He sighs.
62
He listens. No noise. He gets to his feet with the document
case in one hand and shotgun in the other. He waits a beat,
back against the wall.
He swings out and fires the shotgun into the alley and then
spins back and runs a short block and rounds the next corner
and stops to rest.
EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT
He waits for his breath to slow. He brings up the shotgun
and readies himself.
He swings out to look back around the corner.
The street is empty.
He waits, at the ready for whatever might emerge from the
alley mouth a short block away.
Long beat. Stillness.
A panicky thought brings his look and the shotgun swinging
back around: the man could round the block the other way.
Empty street.
Two empty streets: Moss doesn't know which way to cover,
which way to go.
He stands looking each way, trying to devise a plan. No basis
for a plan.
Quiet hesitation.
Now, a sound: engine noise.
An old pickup rounds a corner two blocks up. It rattles toward
him.
Moss lowers the shotgun. He keeps it to the hidden side of
his body.
The pickup dutifully stops at a flashing red traffic light.
It comes on through the intersection.
Moss strides out into the street. He swings the shotgun up
and gives the driver a raised palm to halt.
INT. PICKUP/EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT
The truck stops and Moss opens the passenger door and swings
the case in and climbs in after.
63
The driver, an older man, gapes at him, frightened.
MOSS
I'm not going to hurt you. I need
you to --
The windshield stars.
A quick second round pushes part of the windshield in.
Rounds come in without pause, cracking sheet metal, blowing
the cab's rear window into the truckbed, twisting the rear-
view.
A round seems to have caught the driver in the throat: a
gurgling scream as he claws at his windpipe, blowing out
blood.
Moss, quicker to react, has already ducked below the dash.
A snap of the driver's head and a new freshet of blood from
a shot to the head. The screams turn to low gurgles.
Moss, jammed almost in to the driver's lap, frantically gropes
for the shift.
He throws the pickup into drive and stamps at the accelerator,
driving blind as bullets continue to pour in.
He raises his head enough to see his side-view. It shows
sluing, bouncing, empty street, rough guide for steering.
A tremendous jounce up onto the curb then off it, the driver's
body swaying in its restraint.
The passenger side window shatters: we are passing the gunman.
Now Moss sits up to steer looking out front. Behind him
through the shot-out back window the dark street is suddenly
punctured by muzzleflash. It comes, for the first time, with
a report: the low chug of the muted shotgun.
Rattle of shot against sheet metal.
Moss floors the gas to roar into a turn. The street sweeping
out of view behind him produces one more chugging muzzleflash.
EXT. EAGLE PASS STREET - NIGHT
The pickup bounces but Moss, sitting fully up, can now steer.
64
He goes half the length of the block and then yanks the wheel
hard, braking. The pickup smashes a parked car and jacks
around to a halt.
Moss emerges from the pickup with his shotgun and goes to
the sidewalk and backtracks. He covers behind a parked car.
He sits leaning back against the car, waiting.
His point-of-view: his own reflection in the facing
storefront, a lot of the driver's blood on him.
He sinks lower.
A long beat.
Footsteps. They approach without hurry.
A gritty boot turn at the corner. The footsteps come closer
still.
They pass and recede toward the pickup.
We cut to Chigurh approaching the pickup, shotgun held at
ease across his body.
He slows.
Moss: he hears the slowing steps. He tightens his grip on
his shotgun and tenses.
Chigurh: slowing further, he sees:
Bloody boot prints outside the passenger door.
Moss rises.
Chigurh is turning.
He dives as, behind him, Moss fires.
Shot peppers two parked cars -- the one Moss rammed and the
one behind.
Chigurh dived between them: hit or not?
Moss advances down the middle of the street. He angles his
head: anything under the cars?
He fires twice. Buckshot claws up the pavement and the car
bodies and tires, and the cars sink hissing to their rims.
Moss crosses to the far curb, still advancing. No one behind
the cars.
65
He looks up and down the street.
Nothing to see.
He goes to the pickup truck, driver's side. He opens the
door and reaches over the driver's corpse for his lap belt.
EXT. EAGLE PASS BORDER AREA - NIGHT
Deserted.
The pickup truck rattles into frame.
Moss emerges. He hoists out the case. He leaves the shotgun.
It is very quiet.
He looks around.
The Rio Grande bridge.
Moss walks unsteadily toward it, pressing his free hand to
his side.
A thought stops him. He turns.
His bloody boot prints point at him like comic book clues.
His shoulders sag.
EXT. RIO GRANDE BRIDGE - NIGHT
Minutes later. Moss heads down the right-hand walkway in
stockinged feet, boots tucked into his belt.
He turns and looks back toward the U.S. side.
Empty walkway.
He proceeds on. Three youths are approaching from the Mexican
side. Fart types, they are laughing and walking unsteadily.
As they approach they gape at Moss, covered with blood.
The lead boy, holding a beer, wears a light coat.
MOSS
I'll give you five hundred bucks for
your shirt and your coat.
The three boys stare at him.
AT LENGTH:
66
YOUTH
Let's see the money.
Moss unpeels bills from a moist wad. The top one is bloody.
SECOND YOUTH
...Were you in a car accident?
MOSS
Yeah.
YOUTH
Okay, lemme have the money.
MOSS
It's right here. Give me the coat.
YOUTH
Lemme hold the money.
Moss does.
MOSS
Gimme the clothes.
The youth starts to peel them.
MOSS
...And let me have your beer.
YOUTH
...How much?
SECOND YOUTH
Brian. Give him the beer.
MINUTES LATER
The boys are receding. Moss pours the beer over his head,
rubbing blood away.
He opens his shirt. He inspects the wounds in his midriff,
entrance and exit. Pulsing blood laps weakly out. He shrugs
off his shirt, wraps it around his waist and knots it.
He starts to put on the new shirt. Something stops him. He
pauses.
He vomits into the roadbed.
He straightens slowly and puts on the new shirt.
He looks out.
67
He is not yet over the river: wind stirs the cane on the
bank.
He looks up: Chain-link fence encloses the walkway to a height
of about twelve feet, curling inward at the top.
He looks down the walkway. The three boys are distant figures.
He looks up the walkway.
A few paces up a light pole stanchion stands flush to the
guardrail that separates road and walkway.
He goes to the stanchion and uses it to hoist himself onto
the guardrail, his free hand holding the case.
Standing on top of the curved metal rail and holding the
post for balance, he kneebends down and up and heaves the
case.
It sails clear of the chain-link fence. A short beat and we
hear a thump.
Moss pants for a moment, recovering from the strain of the
toss. He eases himself off the guardrail and goes to the
fence and looks at the bank below. One gnarled tree stands
out in the cane. The case, wherever it landed, is not visible.
EXT. GUARDSHACK MEXICAN SIDE - NIGHT
There is a lighted guardshack at the end of the walkway.
Inside, a uniformed guard.
Moss walks unsteadily up. He tilts the beer bottle in salute
at the guard.
The guard impassively lets him proceed.
EXT. MEXICAN SQUARE - DAWN
BLACK
In black, an insanely cheerful mariachi song.
Fade in on the mariachis. We are looking steeply up at them,
dutch-angled. They beam down at us, energetically thumping
their oversized guitars and bajo sextos.
We boom woozily up and start to un-dutch.
Reverse on Moss struggling to a sitting position on the park
bench where he'd been lying. A public square.
68
Back to the mariachis. Beaming, singing.
Their smiles gradually fade.
The playing falls off to silence.
In the silence, birds chirp. The musicians are looking
quizzically down.
Moss's arm swings up in the foreground, extending a bloody
hundred-dollar bill.
On Moss. His coat has swung open to expose his bloody midriff.
His look up is glazed.
MOSS
Doctor.
The mariachis stare. Moss waggles the bill.
MOSS
...Medico. Por favor.
INT. RAMCHARGER/EXT. WAL-MART - DAY
We are close on a patch of its front seat. Day. The pickup
is parked. The piece of upholstery we are looking at has
blood soaked into it.
On the sound of the door opening we cut wider. We are in the
parking lot of a Wal-Mart. Chigurh, climbing in, tosses a
brown paper bag onto the passenger side. He has a dark towel
wrapped around one leg. As he slides behind the wheel the
wrapped part of his leg slides over the bloodstain.
INT. RAMCHARGER/EXT. PHARMACY - DAY
TRAVELING POINT OF VIEW
A small-town main street. We are driving past a pharmacy.
Chigurh, looking.
He parks.
He takes a scissors from the Wal-Mart bag and a box of cotton.
He opens the box and cuts a little disc out of the cardboard.
He takes a new shirt out of the bag and begins to cut through
one sleeve.
69
EXT. PHARMACY - DAY
SHOOTING PAST A PARKED CAR
Chigurh limps toward us. He holds a coat hanger bent straight
with the balled-up shirtsleeve hooked at one end.
Chigurh arrives, looks up and down the street.
He unscrews the gas cap, feeds the coat hanger in to soak
the shirt, pulls it back out. He tapes the cardboard disc
over the open gas tank. He unhooks the wet shirtsleeve and
jams it up over the disk. He lights it and exits.
INSIDE THE PHARMACY - DAY
A beat pulling Chigurh limping up the aisle, and then the
car explodes out front. The plate glass storefront blows in.
The few people inside rush out; Chigurh doesn't react.
The pharmacy counter in back is deserted. Chigurh lifts a
hinged piece of counter to enter and starts looking through
the stock.
He pulls out a packet of syringes, Hydrocodone tablets,
penicillin.
INT. SMALL TOWN MOTEL ROOM - DAY
Chigurh dumps the pharmaceuticals into the bathroom sink.
In the room outside he sits on the bed and takes off his
boots. He unknots the towel from around his leg and stands
and unbuttons his pants and starts cutting from the crotch
down with a heavy scissors. One thigh is a mess of clotted
blood and torn fabric.
INT. MOTEL BATHROOM - DAY
BATH
Chigurh lowers himself into bath water that quickly turns
pink. He laves water over his bloody thigh. There is a dark
red hole, one half inch across, pulsing blood into the bath
water Torn pieces of fabric from his pants are embedded in
the bleeding skin.
A SHAVING MIRROR
We are looking at the wound in a magnifying mirror. Forceps
enter and pluck a tiny piece of blood-soaked fabric from the
skin.
70
RUNNING WATER
A bathroom tap. The forceps enter. They are rinsed, shaken
off.
Wider: Chigurh sits on the closed toilet with the mirror
sitting on the edge of the tub, angled toward the wound.
Chigurh works on cleaning it.
INT. SMALL TOWN MOTEL ROOM - DAY
The main room. The TV is on now. Chigurh enters from the
bathroom with his leg bandaged. He sits on the bed and tears
open the packaging of a syringe.
He plunges it into an ampule of penicillin.
He injects himself.
INT. SHERIFF'S OFFICE - DAY
Sheriff Bell sits writing in a large leatherette checkbook.
HE PROJECTS:
BELL
Anything on those vehicles yet?
A raised female voice from the front office:
VOICE
Sheriff I found out everything there
was to find. Those vehicles are titled
and registered to deceased people.
Molly, the secretary, appears at the doorway.
VOICE
...The owner of that Blazer died
twenty years ago. Did you want me to
see what I could find out about the
Mexican ones?
BELL
No. Lord no.
He holds out the checkbook.
BELL
...This month's checks.
MOLLY
That DEA agent called again. You
don't want to talk to him?
71
BELL
I'm goin' to try and keep from it as
much as I can.
MOLLY
He's goin' back out there and he
wanted to know if you wanted to go
with him.
Sheriff Bell is putting things away.
BELL
Well that's cordial of him. I guess
he can go wherever he wants. He's a
certified agent of the United States
Government.
He rises.
BELL
...Could I get you to call Loretta
and tell her I've gone to Odessa?
goin' to visit with Carla Jean Moss.
MOLLY
Yes Sheriff.
BELL
I'll call Loretta when I get there.
I'd call now but she'll want me to
come home and I just might.
MOLLY
You want me to wait til you've quit
the building?
BELL
Yes I do. You don't want to lie
without what it's absolutely
necessary.
Molly trails him into the front office.
BELL
...What is it that Torbert says?
About truth and justice?
MOLLY
We dedicate ourselves daily anew.
Something like that.
72
BELL
I think I'm goin' to commence
dedicatin' myself twice daily. It
may come to three times before it's
over...
A loud truck-by from the street outside. Sheriff Bell's eyes
track the passing vehicle.
BELL
...What the hell?
EXT. STREET - DAY
Sanderson outskirts.
Sheriff Bell passes a flatbed truck with a flapping tarp and
briefly blurps his siren to pull it over. He parks on the
shoulder in front of the truck and then walks back to the
driver who watches his approach, chewing gum with blithe
unconcern.
DRIVER
Sheriff.
BELL
Have you looked at your load lately?
A MINUTE LATER
Both men are at the back of the truck.
BELL
That's a damned outrage.
DRIVER
Oh. One of the tiedowns worked lose.
Bell whips the tarp back to expose eight corpses wrapped
blue sheeting bound with tape.
BELL
How many did you leave with?
The driver is still smiling.
DRIVER
I ain't lost none of 'em, Sheriff.
BELL
Couldn't you all of took a van out
there?
73
DRIVER
Didn't have no van with four-wheel
drive.
Sheriff Bell pulls the tarp down and ties it. The driver
watches without helping.
DRIVER
...You going to write me up for
improperly secured load?
Sheriff Bell cinches the knot tight.
BELL
You get your ass out of here.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - DAY
Moss, in bed, stirs at an off screen voice:
VOICE
I'm guessin'... this is not the future
you pictured for yourself when you
first clapped eyes on that money.
Moss blearily focuses on:
A fancy crocodile boot.
His look rises from the boot, crossed on his visitor's knee,
up to the man's face.
Carson Wells smiles at him from the bedside chair.
WELLS
...Don't worry. I'm not the man that's
after you.
MOSS
I know, I've seen him. Sort of.
Wells is surprised.
WELLS
You've seen him. And you're not dead.
He nods, impressed.
WELLS
...But that won't last.
MOSS
What is he supposed to be, the
ultimate bad-ass?
74
WELLS
I don't think that's how I would
describe him.
MOSS
How would you describe him?
WELLS
I guess I'd say... that he doesn't
have a sense of humor. His name is
Chigurh.
MOSS
Sugar?
WELLS
Chigurh. Anton Chigurh. You know how
he found you?
MOSS
I know how he found me.
WELLS
It's called a transponder.
MOSS
I know what it is. He won't find me
again.
WELLS
Not that way.
MOSS
Not any way.
WELLS
Took me about three hours.
MOSS
I been immobile.
WELLS
No. You don't understand.
Wells sits back and studies Moss.
WELLS
...What do you do?
MOSS
I'm retired.
75
WELLS
What did you do?
MOSS
I'm a welder.
WELLS
Acetylene? Mig? Tig?
MOSS
Any of it. If it can be welded I can
weld it.
WELLS
Cast iron?
MOSS
Yes.
WELLS
I don't mean braze.
MOSS
I didn't say braze.
WELLS
Pot metal?
MOSS
What did I say?
WELLS
Were you in Nam?
MOSS
Yeah. I was in Nam.
WELLS
So was I.
MOSS
So what does that make me? Your buddy?
Wells sits smiling at him.
A beat.
WELLS
Look. You need to give me the money.
I've got no other reason to protect
you.
76
MOSS
Too late. I spent it -- about a
million and a half on whores and
whiskey and the rest of it I just
sort of blew it in.
Wells' smile stays in place.
WELLS
How do you know he's not on his way
to Odessa?
Moss stares at him. A beat.
MOSS
Why would he go to Odessa?
WELLS
To kill your wife.
Another beat.
MOSS
Maybe he should be worried. About
me.
WELLS
He isn't. You're not cut out for
this. You're just a guy that happened
to find those vehicles.
Moss doesn't respond.
WELLS
...You didn't take the product, did
you?
MOSS
What product.
WELLS
The heroin. You don't have it.
MOSS
No I don't have it.
WELLS
No. You don't.
He rises.
77
WELLS
...I'm across the river. At the Hotel
Eagle. Carson Wells. Call me when
you've had enough. I can even let
you keep a little of the money.
MOSS
If I was cuttin' deals, why wouldn't
I go deal with this guy Chigurh?
WELLS
No no. No. You don't understand. You
can't make a deal with him. Even if
you gave him the money he'd still
kill you. He's a peculiar man. You
could even say that he has principles.
Principles that transcend money or
drugs or anything like that. He's
not like you. He's not even like me.
MOSS
He don't talk as much as you, I give
him points for that.
INT. COFFEE SHOP - ODESSA - DAY
Sheriff Bell rises from a booth, taking off his hat.
BELL
Carla Jean, I thank you for comin'.
She sits. He sits.
CARLA JEAN
Don't know why I did. I told you, I
don't know where he is.
BELL
You ain't heard from him?
CARLA JEAN
No I ain't.
BELL
Nothin'?
CARLA JEAN
Not word one.
BELL
Would you tell me if you had?
78
CARLA JEAN
Well, I don't know. He don't need
any trouble from you.
BELL
It's not me he's in trouble with.
CARLA JEAN
Who's he in trouble with then?
BELL
Some pretty bad people.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn can take care of hisself.
BELL
These people will kill him, Carla
Jean. They won't quit.
CARLA JEAN
He won't neither. He never has.
BELL
I wish I could say that was in his
favor. But I have to say I don't
think it is.
CARLA JEAN
He can take all comers.
Bell looks at her. After a beat:
BELL
You know Charlie Walser? Has the
place east of Sanderson?
She shakes her head, shrugs.
BELL
...Well you know how they used to
slaughter beeves, hit 'em with a
maul right here to stun 'em...
Indicates between his own eyes.
79
BELL
...and then truss 'em up and slit
their throats? Well here Charlie has
one trussed up and all set to drain
him and the beef comes to. It starts
thrashing around, six hundred pounds
of very pissed-off livestock if you'll
pardon my... Charlie grabs his gun
there to shoot the damn thing in the
head but what with the swingin' and
twistin' it's a glance-shot and
ricochets around and comes back hits
Charlie in the shoulder. You go see
Charlie, he still can't reach up
with his right hand for his hat...
Point bein', even in the contest
between man and cow the issue is not
certain.
He takes a sip of coffee, leaving room for Carla Jean to
argue if inclined.
She does not.
Sheriff Bell hands a card across.
BELL
...When Llewelyn calls, just tell
him I can make him safe.
She takes the card. Sheriff Bell sips.
BELL
...Course, they slaughter beeves
different now. Use a air gun. Shoots
out a rod, about this far into the
brain...
He holds thumb and forefinger a couple inches apart.
BELL
...Sucks back in. Animal never knows
what hit him.
Another beat. Carla Jean stares at him.
CARLA JEAN
Why you tellin' me that, Sheriff?
BELL
I don't know. My mind wanders.
80
EXT. RIO GRANDE BRIDGE - AFTERNOON
Late Day.
Carson Wells grabs a light pole stanchion to hoist himself
onto the guardrail. He stands atop it, eyeing the chain-link
fence across the walkway.
He climbs down and crosses to the fence and looks down:
The brown, sluggish water of the Rio Grande.
LOOKING DOWN THE WALKWAY
Carson Wells enters frame and recedes down the walkway.
When he draws even with the next stanchion he looks down
through the fence:
Cane on the riverbank, and one gnarled tree.
INT. HOTEL EAGLE LOBBY - NIGHT
Twilight. Carson Wells enters the hotel and crosses the lobby.
INT. STAIRWAY - NIGHT
Carson Wells appears around the corner and we pull him as he
mounts the stairs. When he is about halfway up a figure --
focus does not hold him -- rounds the corner behind and
silently follows, holding a fat-barreled shotgun loosely at
his side.
After a few steps Carson Wells stops, frowning, cued by we
don't know what. Focus drops back as he turns. Chigurh raises
the shotgun.
CHIGURH
Hello Carson. Let's go to your room.
2ND HOTEL EAGLE ROOM - NIGHT
Chigurh sits into a chair drawn up to face the armchair where
Carson Wells sits.
WELLS
We don't have to do this. I'm a
daytrader. I could just go home.
CHIGURH
Why would I let you do that?
WELLS
I know where the money is.
81
CHIGURH
If you knew, you would have it with
you.
WELLS
I need dark. To get it. I know where
it is.
CHIGURH
I know something better.
WELLS
What's that.
CHIGURH
I know where it's going to be.
WELLS
And where is that.
CHIGURH
It will be brought to me and placed
at my feet.
Wells wipes his mouth with his hand.
WELLS
You don't know to a certainty. Twenty
minutes it could be here.
CHIGURH
I do know to a certainty. And you
know what's going to happen now. You
should admit your situation. There
would be more dignity in it.
WELLS
You go to hell.
A beat.
CHIGURH
Let me ask you something. If the
rule you followed brought you to
this, of what use was the rule?
Another beat.
WELLS
Do you have any idea how goddamn
crazy you are?
82
CHIGURH
You mean the nature of this
conversation?
WELLS
I mean the nature of you.
Chigurh looks at him equably. Wells holds his look.
WELLS
...You can have the money. Anton.
The phone rings.
Wells looks at the phone. Chigurh hasn't moved.
Wells looks at Chigurh, waiting for a decision.
The low chug of the shotgun.
Aside from his finger on the trigger, Chigurh hasn't moved.
He sits staring at Wells's remains for a beat.
Now his look swings onto the phone. He watches it ring twice
more.
He picks it up and listens without speaking.
After a beat:
MOSS'S VOICE
...Hello?
CHIGURH
Yes?
Another beat.
MOSS'S VOICE
Is Carson Wells there.
A longer beat.
CHIGURH
Not in the sense that you mean.
Moss doesn't answer. Chigurh gives him a beat, and then:
CHIGURH
...You need to come see me.
83
MEXICAN HOSPITAL WARD - NIGHT
We intercut Moss, in his hospital robe, at a public phone on
the ward. He stands tensed with the phone to his ear. Finally:
MOSS
Who is this.
CHIGURH
You know who it is.
A beat.
CHIGURH
...You need to talk to me.
MOSS
I don't need to talk to you.
CHIGURH
I think that you do. Do you know
where I'm going?
MOSS
Why would I care where you're going.
CHIGURH
Do you know where I'm going?
No answer.
INT. 2ND HOTEL EAGLE ROOM - NIGHT
Chigurh cocks his head, noticing something on the floor. He
adjusts to sit back and raise his boots onto the bed.
On the floor where his feet were, blood is pooling out from
Wells's chair.
CHIGURH
...I know where you are.
MOSS
Yeah? Where am I?
CHIGURH
You're in the hospital across the
river. But that's not where I'm going.
Do you know where I'm going?
MOSS
Yeah. I know where you're going.
84
CHIGURH
All right.
MOSS
You know she won't be there.
CHIGURH
It doesn't make any difference where
she is.
MOSS
So what're you goin' up there for.
A beat.
CHIGURH
You know how this is going to turn
out, don't you?
MOSS
No. Do you?
CHIGURH
Yes, I do. I think you do too. So
this is what I'll offer. You bring
me the money and I'll let her go.
Otherwise she's accountable. The
same as you. That's the best deal
you're going to get. I won't tell
you you can save yourself because
you can't.
MOSS
Yeah I'm goin' to bring you somethin'
all right. I've decided to make you
a special project of mine. You ain't
goin' to have to look for me at all.
Moss slams the phone onto its hook, then slams it twice more
for good measure.
Chigurh, in the hotel room, cradles his phone.
INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY
Sheriff Bell sits at his usual booth, but with an unaccustomed
look: reading glasses. He has been looking at a newspaper
but is now peering over his glasses up at Wendell who
apparently interrupted his reading.
BELL
The motel in Del Rio?
Wendell nods.
85
WENDELL
Yessir. None of the three had ID on
'em but they're tellin' me all three
is Mexicans. Was Mexicans.
BELL
There's a question. Whether they
stopped bein'. And when.
WENDELL
Yessir.
BELL
Now, Wendell, did you inquire about
the cylinder lock?
WENDELL
Yessir. It was punched out.
BELL
Okay.
WENDELL
You gonna drive out there?
BELL
No, that's the only thing I would've
looked for. And it sounds like these
boys died of natural causes.
WENDELL
How's that, Sheriff?
BELL
Natural to the line of work they was
in.
WENDELL
Yessir.
BELL
My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out
war. I don't know any other word
for it. Who are these folks? I don't
know...
He rattles the paper.
86
BELL
...Here last week they found this
couple out in California they would
rent out rooms to old people and
then kill em and bury em in the yard
and cash their social security checks.
They'd torture em first, I don't
know why. Maybe their television set
was broke. And this went on until,
and here I quote...
He looks through his glasses at the paper.
BELL
..."Neighbors were alerted when a
man ran from the premises wearing
only a dog collar." You can't make
up such a thing as that. I dare you
to even try.
He peers over his glasses at Wendell who respectfully shakes
his head and tsks.
Sheriff Bell rattles the paper again.
BELL
...But that's what it took, you'll
notice. Get someone's attention.
Diggin graves in the back yard didn't
bring any.
Wendell bites back a smile. Sheriff Bell gazes at him over
his glasses for a long beat, deadpan.
BELL
...That's all right. I laugh myself
sometimes.
He goes back to the paper.
BELL
...There ain't a whole lot else you
can do.
EXT. BORDER SHACK - DAY
Moss, a coat thrown over his hospital robe, is standing before
a uniformed INS official on the Rio Grande bridge.
The official, who looks like a marine drill instructor, is
chewing. He chews for a long beat, staring at Moss.
He finally spits tobacco juice and pats his lower lip with a
handkerchief.
87
OFFICIAL
Who do you think gets through this
gate into the United States of
America?
MOSS
I don't know. American citizens.
OFFICIAL
Some American citizens. Who do you
think decides?
MOSS
You do, I reckon.
OFFICIAL
That is correct. And how do I decide?
MOSS
I don't know.
OFFICIAL
I ask questions. If I get sensible
answers then they get to go to
America. If I don't get sensible
answers they don't. Is there anything
about that that you don't understand?
MOSS
No sir.
OFFICIAL
Then I ask you again how you come to
be out here with no clothes.
MOSS
I got an overcoat on.
OFFICIAL
Are you jackin' with me?
MOSS
No sir.
OFFICIAL
Don't jack with me.
MOSS
Yes sir.
OFFICIAL
Are you in the service?
88
MOSS
No sir. I'm a veteran.
OFFICIAL
Nam?
MOSS
Yes sir. Two tours.
OFFICIAL
What outfit.
MOSS
Twelfth Infantry Batallion. August
seventh nineteen and sixty-six to
July second nineteen and sixty-eight.
The official stares at him, chewing, sour.
OFFICIAL
Wilson!
GUARD
Yessir.
OFFICIAL
Get someone to help this man. He
needs to get into town.
INT. GENERAL STORE - DAY
The clerk who earlier sold him the boots:
CLERK
How those Larries holdin' up?
Moss is walking up in his boots and overcoat and hospital
robe.
MOSS
Good. I need everything else.
CLERK
Okay.
MOSS
You get a lot of people come in here
with no clothes on?
CLERK
No sir, it's unusual.
89
EXT. RIVER BANK - DAY
We are looking across the Rio Grande. Moss appears over the
near edge of the river bank, newly clothed, and holding the
document case.
As he reaches the top of the bank he frowns and twists his
neck, responding to an irritation. He feels around with his
free hand inside the back of the shirt collar. A sharp yank.
His hand comes away with a small tag.
INT. GREYHOUND STATION - DEL RIO - DAY
The document case is resting on a small foreground counter.
Moss is at a pay phone, one hand holding the phone to his
ear, the other resting on the case.
The voice on the phone is old, female, and querulous:
VOICE
She don't want to talk to you.
MOSS
Yes she does. Put her on.
VOICE
Do you know what time it is?
MOSS
I don't care what time it is. Don't
you hang up this phone.
VOICE
I told her what was going to happen,
didn't I. Chapter and verse. I said:
This is what will come to pass. And
now it has come to pass --
Scuffing sounds, a sharp "Mama!", and then, into the phone:
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn?
MOSS
Hey.
CARLA JEAN
What should I do?
MOSS
You know what's goin' on?
90
CARLA JEAN
I don't know, I had the sheriff here
from Terrell County --
MOSS
What did you tell him?
CARLA JEAN
What did I know to tell him. You're
hurt, ain't you?
MOSS
What makes you say that?
CARLA JEAN
I can hear it in your voice.
MOTHER
(DISTANT)
There is falseness in his voice!
MOSS
Meet me at the Heart of Texas motel
in El Paso. I'm gonna give you the
money and put you on a plane.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn, I ain't gonna leave you in
the lurch.
MOSS
No. This works better. With you gone
and I don't have the money, he can't
touch me. But I can sure touch him.
After I find him I'll come and join
you.
CARLA JEAN
Find who? What am I supposed to do
with Mother?
MOSS
She'll be all right.
CARLA JEAN
She'll be all right?
MOTHER
(DISTANT)
Be all right! I've got the cancer!
MOSS
I don't think anybody'll bother her.
91
OFFICE HALLWAY - DAY
A LOCK CYLINDER
It blows in. The hole shows a brightly lit cinderblock wall
behind.
The door swings open and the air tank is swung in and
deposited on carpet.
Wider: Chigurh enters the carpeted hallway from the
cinderblock stairwell, holding the tricked-out shotgun.
The hallway is white wallboard, doors opening off it at long
intervals. Chigurh stands still and listens. Nothing but the
hum of ventilation.
He walks quietly to the one open door twenty feet away.
INT. OFFICE - DAY
He enters.
The man who hired Carson Wells is behind his desk, in front
of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He looks up from papers,
slipping off his reading glasses. On seeing the shotgun he
opens a desk drawer and starts to rise.
Chung -- the shotgun blast knocks him back. Shot pits but
doesn't break the window.
A man in a suit rises and turns from the chair opposite the
desk, very slowly, as if to advertise that he is not a threat.
Chigurh ignores him and rounds the desk to look at the man
gurgling on the floor.
After a beat, still looking down at the man he has shot:
CHIGURH
Who are you?
A long beat.
MAN AT CHAIR
...Me?
CHIGURH
Yes.
MAN AT CHAIR
Nobody. Accounting.
Chigurh finally looks up at him.
92
CHIGURH
He gave Acosta's people a receiver.
MAN AT CHAIR
He feels... he felt... the more people
looking...
CHIGURH
That's foolish. You pick the one
right tool.
Chigurh inclines his head toward the pocked glass of the
picture window.
CHIGURH
...For instance. I used birshot. So
as not to blow the window.
MAN AT CHAIR
I see.
He still has not moved, one hand still touching the armrest.
MAN AT CHAIR
...Are you going to shoot me?
Chigurh looks at him.
CHIGURH
That depends. Do you see me?
The man stares at him for a beat.
MAN AT CHAIR
No.
INT. CAB - ODESSA - DAY
EYES IN A REAR-VIEW MIRROR
Eyes in a weathered face shift back and forth between road
and mirror, where they give nodding acknowledgment to the
passenger.
MOTHER'S VOICE
And I always seen this is what it
would come to. Three years ago I pre-
visioned it.
Wider shows Carla Jean and her mother in the back of the
moving cab.
93
CARLA JEAN
It ain't even three years we been
married.
MOTHER
Three years ago I said them very
words. No and Good.
DRIVER
Yes ma'am.
MOTHER
Now here we are. Ninety degree heat.
I got the cancer. And look at this.
Not even a home to go to.
DRIVER
Yes ma'am.
MOTHER
We're goin' to El Paso Texas. You
know how many people I know in El
Paso Texas?
DRIVER
No ma'am.
She holds up thumb and forefinger curled to make an 0.
MOTHER
That's how many. Ninety degree heat.
EXT. BUS STATION - ODESSA - DAY
The cab is stopped outside the depot. Carla Jean and her
mother and the driver are at the trunk struggling over bags.
CARLA JEAN
I got it Mama.
MOTHER
I didn't see my Prednizone.
CARLA JEAN
I put it in, Mama.
MOTHER
Well I didn't see it.
CARLA JEAN
Well I put it in. That one. You just
set there. I'll get tickets and a
cart for the bags.
94
As Carla Jean goes to the station a man emerges from a car
pulled up behind. He is a well-dressed Mexican of early middle
age.
MEXICAN
Do you need help with the bags, madam?
MOTHER
Well thank god there's one gentleman
left in West Texas. Yes thank you. I
am old and I am not well.
MEXICAN
Which bus are you taking?
MOTHER
We're going to El Paso, don't ask me
why. Discombobulated by a no-account
son-in-law. Thank you. You don't
often see a Mexican in a suit.
MEXICAN
You go to El Paso? I know it. Where
are you staying?
INT. BUS STATION - DAY
Carla Jean is at a phone booth.
After a short wait, a pickup and a filtered:
SHERIFF BELL
Carla Jean, how are you.
CARLA JEAN
Sheriff, was that a true story about
Charlie Walser?
BELL
Who's Charlie Walser. Oh! Well, I,
uh... True story? I couldn't swear
to ever detail but... it's certainly
true that it is a story.
CARLA JEAN
Yeah, right. Sheriff, can you give
me your word on somethin'?
SHERIFF BELL'S OFFICE - DAY
We intercut Sheriff Bell in his office.
BELL
Yes ma'am?
95
CARLA JEAN
If I tell you where Llewelyn's headed,
you promise it'll be just you goes
and talks with him -- you and nobody
else?
BELL
Yes ma'am, I do.
CARLA JEAN
Llewelyn would never ask for help.
He never thinks he needs any.
BELL
Carla Jean, I will not harm your
man. And he needs help, whether he
knows it or not.
EXT. ROAD - DAY
CHIGURH
A driving point-of-view approaching Chigurh, who leans against
his Ramcharger, its hood up, stopped on the shoulder on the
opposite side of the road.
Reverse shows a man in an El Camino. Chickens in stacked
cages squawk and flutter in the bed.
The man slows and rolls his window down to lean out.
MAN
What's the problem there, neighbor.
MINUTES LATER
The man has pulled his vehicle over nose-to-nose with
Chigurh's. He is rummaging in the car behind the seat. His
voice comes out muffled:
MAN
Yeah, that'll suck some power. Over
time.
CHIGURH
You from around here?
The man emerges with jumper cables.
MAN
Alpine. Born 'n bred. Here ya go.
He hands one pair of leads to Chigurh.
96
CHIGURH
What airport would you use.
MAN
Huh? Airport or airstrip?
CHIGURH
Airport.
MAN
Well -- where ya goin'?
CHIGURH
I don't know.
MAN
Just lightin' out for the territories,
huh. Brother, I been there... Well...
He takes off his hat and draws a sleeve across his brow,
thinking.
MAN
...There's airstrips.
He turns with his pair of leads to clamp them onto his
battery. On his back:
MAN
...The airport is El Paso. You want
some place specific you might could
be better off just drivin' to Dallas.
Not have to connect.
He turns back around to face Chigurh who stands there, still
holding his pair of leads.
MAN
...You gonna clamp them, buddy?
Chigurh is looking at him blandly.
CHIGURH
Can you get those chicken crates out
of the bed.
The man stares at him.
MAN
What're you talkin' about?
97
EXT. CAR WASH - DAY
COIN SLOT
Quarters are fed in. Wider as Chigurh unholsters the wand at
a self-service car wash.
He sprays the spatter-pattern rust-colored stain off the
roof of the cab of the El Camino.
Water drums as he sprays chicken feathers out of the bed.
EXT. MOTEL - EL PASO - DAY
Moss is turning the key in his room door, a new vinyl gun
bag slung over his shoulder.
At the cut the roar of a plane climbing overhead recedes.
Out of it, a voice:
WOMAN
Hey Mr. Sporting Goods.
Moss looks.
A woman sunbathes at the central court swimming pool. A lot
of hard light.
MOSS
Hey yourself.
The woman is pretty in a roadhouse-veteran sort of way. Her
voice carries a flat echo, slapping off the surface of the
pool.
WOMAN
You a sport?
Moss slings the bag into the room onto the bed and then turn
and leans against a veranda post.
MOSS
That's me.
WOMAN
I got beers in my room.
Moss holds up his left hand to show the ring.
MOSS
Waitin' for my wife.
98
WOMAN
Oh. That's who you keep lookin' out
the window for?
MOSS
Half.
WOMAN
What else then?
MOSS
Lookin' for what's comin'.
WOMAN
Yeah but no one ever sees that. I
like a man that'll tell you he's
married.
MOSS
Then you'll like me.
WOMAN
I do like you.
A beat. Lapping water.
WOMAN
...Beer. That's what's comin', I'll
bring the ice chest out here. You
can stay married.
Building jet roar from another climbing plane.
MOSS
Ma'am I know what beer leads to.
The woman laughs. Before the plane overwhelms it:
WOMAN
Beer leads to more beer.
INT. SHERIFF BELL'S CRUISER - DAY
SHERIFF BELL
Driving.
As he drives he refers to one side of the road, a commercial
strip, looking for something. We hear the fading roar of a
large airplane.
The tock tock of distant gunfire brings his look around. A
beat. Another tock. The chatter of machine-gun fire. Another
single shot.
99
Sheriff Bell stamps the accelerator and hits his siren.
EXT. MOTEL STREET - DAY
Point-of-view racing toward the motel: a pickup with a rack
of roof lights roars out. Tire squeals, machine-gun chatter
and dog barks. The truck turns toward us, then slews around
and speeds away, fishtailing.
EXT. MOTEL COURTYARD - DAY
Point-of-view turning into the central court: a man is
crawling on his belly along the veranda toward the street.
Sheriff Bell skids to a halt and gets out. We hear screams,
a child crying.
Sheriff Bell jogs toward the crawling man, one hand on his
holstered gun.
Behind the man on the veranda is his abandoned machine pistol.
He is a Mexican in a guyabera.
Sheriff Bell yells at a scared face in a cracked door:
BELL
Call police.
He is still jogging. A glance to the side:
Rough point-of-view of a woman's body, belly-down at the lip
of the pool, head and upper torso in the water.
Rough point-of-view forward: an open room door. Booted feet
stick out.
Sheriff Bell arrives. Moss is face-up, mostly inside the
room. The new gun bag is next to him. The gun is in hand.
He is still.
Voices. Sheriff Bell glances off.
BELL
...Call your local law enforcement.
I'm not on their radio.
EXT. MOTEL - NIGHT
Night. The entrance is blocked by police vehicles.
People stand around in knots. Sheriff Bell is talking to the
local sheriff. A door slam attracts his look.
100
Carla Jean has gotten out of the far side of a cab. On the
near side the driver is leaning in to help her mother out.
After a couple of rocking attempts she has enough inertia to
come to her feet outside the vehicle.
Carla Jean is advancing slowly toward Sheriff Bell, taking
in the scene.
Sheriff Bell steps toward her.
Her eyes track his hand as he raises it to his hat. He takes
it off.
BELL
Carla Jean...
CARLA JEAN
No.
INT. HOSPITAL/MORGUE - NIGHT
Looking down a long corridor flanked by a wall of stainless
steel drawers. At the far end stands Bell, hat in hand,
staring down into an open drawer just in front of him. A
long beat.
EXT. HOSPITAL / MORGUE - NIGHT
The local sheriff, Roscoe Giddins, stands smoking under the
port cochere in front of the hospital. Sheriff Bell emerges
from the building.
A long beat.
BELL
I don't know who she is.
He puts his hat back on.
ROSCOE
I thought maybe she was with your
boy there.
BELL
No ID in her room?
ROSCOE
Not hardly nothin' in her room. And
that establishment was no stickler
on registration. Well...
The two men start walking.
101
ROSCOE
...County'll bury her. Here Lies
Female, Unknown. Her Number Was Up.
A walking beat.
ROSCOE
...Buy you a cup of coffee before
you drive home?
COFFEE SHOP - EL PASO - NIGHT
Roscoe and Sheriff Bell face each other over coffee.
BELL
No money in his room there?
ROSCOE
Couple hundred on his person. Those
hombres would've taken the stash.
BELL
I suppose. Though they was leavin'
in a hurry.
ROSCOE
It's all the goddamned money, Ed
Tom. The money and the drugs. It's
just goddamned beyond everything.
What is it mean? What is it leading
to?
BELL
Yes.
ROSCOE
If you'd a told me twenty years ago
I'd see children walkin' the streets
of our Texas towns with green hair
and bones in their noses I just flat
out wouldn't of believed you.
BELL
Signs and wonders. But I think once
you stop hearin' sir and madam the
rest is soon to follow.
ROSCOE
It's the tide. It's the dismal tide.
It is not the one thing.
102
BELL
Not the one thing. I used to think I
could at least some way put things
right. I don't feel that way no more.
A beat.
BELL
...I don't know what I do feel like.
ROSCOE
Try "old" on for size.
BELL
Yessir. It may be that. In a nutshell.
EXT. COFFEE SHOP PARKING LOT - NIGHT
The two men are walking out.
ROSCOE
None of that explains your man though.
BELL
Uh-huh.
ROSCOE
He is just a goddamn homicidal
lunatic, Ed Tom.
BELL
I'm not sure he's a lunatic.
ROSCOE
Well what would you call him.
BELL
I don't know. Sometimes I think he's
pretty much a ghost.
ROSCOE
He's real all right.
BELL
Oh yes.
ROSCOE
All that at the Eagle Hotel. It's
beyond everything.
BELL
Yes, he has some hard bark on him.
103
ROSCOE
That don't hardly say it. He shoots
the desk clerk one day, and walks
right back in the next and shoots a
retired army colonel.
They have reached Sheriff Bell's cruiser and he sits in.
BELL
Hard to believe.
ROSCOE
Strolls right back into a crime scene.
Who would do such a thing? How do
you defend against it?
Roscoe closes the door for Sheriff Bell.
ROSCOE
...Good trip Ed Tom. I'm sorry we
couldn't help your boy.
He is walking away.
Sheriff Bell sits thinking in the cruiser. He makes no move
for the ignition.
A long beat.
EXT. MOTEL
Now very late, empty of onlookers and emergency vehicles.
Sheriff Bell's cruiser pulls up just inside the courtyard.
He cuts his engine.
Sheriff Bell sits looking at the motel.
Very quiet. After a long beat he gets out of the car. He
pushes its door shut quietly, with two hands.
He looks up the veranda.
The one door, most of the way up, has yellow tape across it.
Its loose ends wave in a light breeze.
Sheriff Bell looks up the street.
Nothing much to attract his attention.
EXT. MOTEL VERANDA
Sheriff Bell steps up onto the veranda. He takes slow, quiet
steps.
104
We intercut his point-of-view, nearing the door marked by
police tape.
As he draws close to the door he slows.
The yellow tape is about chest high. Above it is the lock
cylinder. It has been punched hollow.
Sheriff Bell stands staring at the lock.
Very quiet. The chick, chick, of the tape-ends against the
door frame.
Still.
INT. MOTEL ROOM
INSIDE
Chigurh is still also. Just on the other side of the door,
he stands holding his shotgun.
From inside, the tap of the breeze-blown tape is dulled but
perceptible. It counts out beats.
Chigurh is also looking at the lock cylinder.
The curved brass of its hollow interior holds a reflection
of the motel room exterior. Lights and shapes. The curvature
distorts to unrecognizability what is reflected, but we see
the color of Sheriff Bell's uniform.
The reflection is very still. Then, slow movement.
OUTSIDE
Sheriff Bell finishes bringing his hand to his holstered
gun. It rests there.
Still once again.
His point-of-view of the lock. The reflection from here,
darker, is hard to read.
INSIDE
Chigurh, still.
OUTSIDE
Sheriff Bell, his hand on his holstered gun. A long beat.
His hand drops.
105
He extends one booted toe. He nudges the door inward.
As the lock cylinder slowly recedes, reflected shapes scramble
inside it and slide up its curve. Before the door is fully
open we cut around:
FROM INSIDE
The door finishes creaking open. Sheriff Bell is a silhouette
in the doorway.
A still beat.
At length Sheriff Bell ducks under the chest-high police
tape to enter.
The worn carpet has a large dark stain that glistens near
the door. Sheriff Bell steps over it, advancing slowly. The
room is dimly lit shapes.
There is a bathroom door in the depth of the room. Sheriff
Bell advances toward it. He stops in front of it.
He toes the door. It creaks slowly open.
INT. MOTEL BATHROOM
The bathroom, with no spill light from outside, is pitch
black.
Sheriff Bell reaches slowly up with one hand. He gropes at
the inside wall.
The light goes on: bright. White tile. Sheriff Bell squints.
A beat.
He takes a step in.
He looks at the small window.
He looks at the window's swivel-catch, locked.
INT. MAIN ROOM
Sheriff Bell emerges from the bathroom. He sits heavily onto
the bed.
He looks around, not for anything in particular. His look
catches on something low, just in front of him:
A ventilation duct near the baseboard. Its opening is exposed;
its grille lies on the floor before it.
106
Sheriff Bell stares.
At length he leans forward. He nudges the grille aside. On
the floor, a couple of screws. A coin.
EXT. WEST TEXAS CABIN - DAY
A CAT
Licking itself on a plank floor, stiffened leg pointing out.
It suddenly stops and looks up, ears perked.
A frozen beat, and then it bolts.
The camera booms up to frame the barren west Texas landscape
outside the window of this isolated cabin. A pickup truck is
approaching, trailing dust. The cat reenters frame outside,
running across the rutted gravel in front of the house as
the pickup slows.
INT. WEST TEXAS CABIN - KITCHEN - DAY
Ellis, an old man in a wheelchair, has one clouded eye.
ELLIS
Min back!
Sheriff Bell enters.
BELL
How'd you know I was here.
ELLIS
Who else'd be in your truck.
BELL
You heard it?
ELLIS
How's that?
BELL
You heard my -- you havin' fun with
me?
ELLIS
What give you that idea. I seen one
of the cats heard it.
BELL
But -- how'd you know it was mine?
107
ELLIS
I deduced it. Once you walked in.
Sheriff Bell stares at him.
BELL
How many a those things you got now?
ELLIS
Cats? Several. Wal. Depends what you
mean by got. Some are half-wild, and
some are just outlaws.
BELL
How you been, Ellis?
ELLIS
You lookin' at it. I got to say you
look older.
BELL
I am older.
ELLIS
Got a letter from your wife. She
writes pretty regular, tells me the
family news.
BELL
Didn't know there was any.
ELLIS
She just told me you was quittin'.
Sit down.
Sheriff Bell lifts an electric percolator off the counter.
BELL
Want a cup?
ELLIS
'Predate it.
BELL
How fresh is this coffee?
ELLIS
I generally make a fresh pot ever
week even if there's some left over.
Sheriff Bell pours some.
BELL
That man that shot you died in prison.
108
ELLIS
In Angola. Yeah.
BELL
What would you a done if he'd been
released?
ELLIS
I don't know. Nothin'. Wouldn't be
no point to it.
BELL
I'm kindly surprised to hear you say
that.
ELLIS
All the time you spend tryin' to get
back what's been took from you there's
more goin' out the door. After a
while you just try and get a
tourniquet on it.
He taps a cigarette ash into a mason jar lid on the table in
front of him.
ELLIS
...Your granddad never asked me to
sign on as deputy. I done that my
own self. Loretta says you're
quittin'.
BELL
Yes, you've circled round.
ELLIS
How come're you doin that?
BELL
I don't know. I feel overmatched.
A beat.
BELL
...I always thought when I got older
God would sort of come into my life
in some way. He didn't. I don't blame
him. If I was him I'd have the same
opinion about me that he does.
ELLIS
You don't know what he thinks.
109
BELL
Yes I do.
A beat.
ELLIS
I sent Uncle Mac's badge and his old
thumbbuster to the Rangers. For their
museum there. Your daddy ever tell
you how Uncle Mac come to his reward?
Sheriff Bell shrugs.
ELLIS
...Shot down on his own porch there
in Hudspeth County. There was seven
or eight of 'em come to the house.
Wantin' this and wantin' that. Mac
went back in and got his shotgun but
they was way ahead of him. Shot him
down in his own doorway. Aunt Ella
run out and tried to stop the
bleedin'. Him tryin to get hold of
the shotgun again. They just set
there on their horses watchin' him
die. Finally one of 'em says somethin'
in Injun and they all turned and
left out. Well Mac knew the score
even if Aunt Ella didn't. Shot through
the left lung and that was that. As
they say.
BELL
When did he die?
ELLIS
Nineteen zero and nine.
BELL
No, I mean was it right away or in
the night or when was it.
ELLIS
Believe it was that night. She buried
him the next mornin'. Diggin' in
that hard caliche.
A beat.
110
ELLIS
...What you got ain't nothin' new.
This country is hard on people. Hard
and crazy. Got the devil in it yet
folks never seem to hold it to
account.
BELL
Most don't.
ELLIS
You're discouraged.
BELL
I'm... discouraged.
ELLIS
You can't stop what's comin. Ain't
all waitin' on you.
The two men look at each other. Ellis shakes his head.
ELLIS
...That's vanity.
After a beat, a fast fade.
EXT. GRAVESITE - ODESSA - DAY
In black we hear the chink-chink-chink of chain being played
out and the hum of a motor.
We cut to a dark foreground shape being lowered in sync with
the clinking sound. As it drops it clears a tombstone
PROGRESSIVELY REVEALED:
The name, Agnes Kracik.
Her dates: 1922-1980.
The inscription: Beloved Mother.
Off that we cut to Carla Jean, standing by in a black dress
and dark veil.
EXT. A SMALL SUBURBAN HOUSE - DAY
A parched square of grass in front of the house. A rusty
station wagon pulls into the driveway and stops. Carla Jean
gets out.
111
INT. KITCHEN
Carla Jean enters and puts on the kettle. She opens the
cupboard looking for something.
KITCHEN - LATER
Carla Jean sits at the kitchen table drinking tea. She looks
out the window.
Across the street kids are running through a sprinkler that
chugs in the yard.
INT. BEDROOM
BEDROOM DOOR
The door opens and Carla Jean enters holding her hat and
veil. She throws the light switch and stops, hand frozen,
looking into the room.
After a beat:
CARLA JEAN
I knew this wasn't done with.
Chigurh sits at the far end of the room in the late-afternoon
shadows.
CHIGURH
No.
CARLA JEAN
I ain't got the money.
CHIGURH
No.
CARLA JEAN
What little I had is long gone and
they's bill aplenty to pay yet. I
buried my mother today. I ain't paid
for that neither.
CHIGURH
I wouldn't worry about it.
CARLA JEAN
...I need to sit down.
Chigurh nods at the bed and Carla Jean sits down, hugging
her hat and veil.
112
CARLA JEAN
...You got no cause to hurt me.
CHIGURH
No. But I gave my word.
CARLA JEAN
You gave your word?
CHIGURH
To your husband.
CARLA JEAN
That don't make sense. You gave your
word to my husband to kill me?
CHIGURH
Your husband had the opportunity to
remove you from harm's way. Instead,
he used you to try to save himself.
CARLA JEAN
Not like that. Not like you say.
CHIGURH
I don't say anything. Except it was
foreseen.
A beat.
CARLA JEAN
I knowed you was crazy when I saw
you settin' there. I knowed exactly
what was in store for me.
CHIGURH
Yes. Things fall into place.
EXT. HOUSE
Minutes later.
A beat.
The front door swings open and Chigurh emerges.
He pauses with one hand on the jamb and looks at the sole of
each boot in turn.
He goes to the pickup in the driveway.
113
INT. PICKUP/EXT. INTERSECTION - A MINUTE LATER
He is driving.
His point-of-view: coming upon an empty intersection, his
light green.
Back to Chigurh.
He just starts to turn his head to the right.
A huge crash.
EXT. INTERSECTION
Chigurh's pickup has been T-boned by an old crate of a
pickup. Both vehicles slide to a halt amid broken glass in
the middle of the intersection.
The windshield of the truck that ran the light is mostly
gone. The driver is draped dead on the wheel.
After a beat the door of Chigurh's truck is pushed open. He
staggers out, heavily favoring one leg where the jeans are
shredded and bloody at the thigh. One arm is also bloody and
hangs limp. Blood runs down his face from a scalp wound.
He staggers to a lawn and sits.
He looks up.
Two teenage boys have come out of somewhere. They goggle at
him.
BOY 1
Mister there's a bone stickin' out
of your arm.
CHIGURH
I'm all right. Let me just sit here
a minute.
BOY 2
There's an ambulance comin. Man over
yonder went to call.
CHIGURH
All right.
BOY 1
Are you all right? You got a bone
stickin' out of your arm.
114
CHIGURH
What will you take for that shirt?
The two boys look at each other. They look back.
BOY 2
What shirt?
CHIGURH
Any damn shirt. I need something to
wrap around my head and I need a
sling for this arm.
Boy 2 unbuttons his shirt.
BOY 2
Hell mister, I'll give you my shirt.
Chigurh uses his teeth to clamp the shirt and rips it and
wraps a swatch around his head. He twists the rest of the
shirt into a sling and puts the limp arm in.
BOY 1
Look at that fuckin' bone.
CHIGURH
Tie this for me.
The two boys look at each other.
CHIGURH
...Just tie it.
Boy 2, the one now wearing a T-shirt, ties it.
Chigurh pulls a bill clip from his pocket and draws a bill
out with his teeth. He holds it out to the boy.
BOY 2
Hell mister, I don't mind helpin'
somebody out. That's a lot of money.
CHIGURH
Take it. Take it and you didn't see
me. I was already gone.
BOY 2
Yessir.
Wide on Chigurh limping off.
We can just hear the boys, small:
115
BOY 1
Part of that's mine.
BOY 2
You still got your damn shirt.
BOY 1
That ain't what it was for.
BOY 2
Maybe, but I'm still out a shirt.
INT. BELL'S KITCHEN - DAY
Loretta pours Sheriff Bell and then herself morning coffee.
BELL
Maybe I'll go ridin.
LORETTA
Okay.
BELL
What do you think.
LORETTA
I can't plan your day.
BELL
I mean, would you care to join me.
LORETTA
Lord no. I'm not retired.
A beat.
Sheriff Bell sips his coffee.
BELL
Maybe I'll help here then.
A beat.
Loretta takes a sip.
LORETTA
Better not.
They both sip.
LORETTA
...How'd you sleep?
116
BELL
I don't know. Had dreams.
LORETTA
Well you got time for 'em now.
Anything interesting?
BELL
Well they always is to the party
concerned.
LORETTA
Ed Tom, I'll be polite.
BELL
Okay. Two of 'em. Both had my father.
It's peculiar. I'm older now'n he
ever was by twenty years. So in a
sense he's the younger man. Anyway,
first one I don't remember so well
but it was about meetin' him in town
somewheres and he give me some money
and I think I lost it. The second
one, it was like we was both back in
older times and I was on horseback
goin' through the mountains of a
night.
EXT. SNOWY MOUNTAIN PASS - NIGHT
We cut to night, and snow. It is the image that the movie
began with. Continuing in voice over:
VOICE OVER
...goin' through this pass in the
mountains. It was cold and snowin',
hard ridin'. Hard country. He rode
past me and kept on goin'. Never
said nothin' goin' by. He just rode
on past and he had his blanket wrapped
around him and his head down...
The rider passes as described, horses' hooves drumming and
scattering divots of earth and snow.
117
VOICE OVER
...and when he rode past I seen he
was carryin' fire in a horn the way
people used to do and I could see
the horn from the light inside of
it. About the color of the moon. And
in the dream I knew that he was goin'
on ahead and that he was fixin' to
make a fire somewhere out there in
all that dark and all that cold, and
I knew that whenever I got there he
would be there. Out there up ahead.
The rider recedes and the image fades, the horn bearing fire
going last.
THE END
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