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This chapter-by-chapter summary contains plot spoilers!
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No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy: Pages 181 - 200
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(Brought to you by jat impatientreader.com) Carla just wants Moss to come back home without the money, but Moss wants to continue on. After he asks her if she'll do what he asks if he tries to fix everything, he tells her that he has the number of someone to call that may be able to fix things.
After he hangs up, he calls the number that Wells gave him. Instead, he gets Chigurh. Chigurh asks him what kind of deal he had made with Wells; Moss says he didn't make any kind of deal. Chigurh asks Moss if he knows where he's going next. Moss knows he is going to find Carla. Chigurh says he can turn it around if he just gives him the money, although he can't do anything for himself. Moss says he's going to go to meet him, boasting that he is going to make Chigurh a "special project". Chigurh says he'd be disappointed if he didn't.
Moss decides to go back over the bridge into the US. He gets a cab driver to take him over, even though he's barely dressed in his hospital gown and overcoat and no shoes. They get stopped by the border patrol, who takes him into the office and questions him about why he looks the way he does. The officer asks him if he was in the service, and Moss says he was in Vietnam for two tours. After a while the officers let him go. He walks into town and finds a clothing store and gets the owner to open it up for him. He buys some clothes for himself and a hat.
Bell is drinking coffee while looking at the scene of the latest incident at the hotel where Wells and the clerk were killed. He and his deputy find the tracking device and Wells, who was an ex-army colonel. The sheriff in the town asks him if he has a personal stake in the whole thing, and Bell says no, only that he has some people from his county involved.
In the next scene, Bell is thinking about how he lost a squad in Vietnam and how he got a medal. He then talks about school-kids in his generation and how their biggest worries were talking in class and running in the hallway, and now it's things like drugs, arson, and murder. He thinks about a woman who sat next to him at a convention and said she was worried about what direction the country was headed, and how she wanted her granddaughter to be able to have an abortion, and Bell replied that the way the country is going, her granddaughter is going to be able to have her grandmother put to sleep, and how that put an end to the conversation.
Chigurh shows up at the office building where Wells received his assignment. He goes up the stairs to prevent taking the security elevator. He sees the man who assigned Wells behind a smoked glass window. Chigurh steps into a doorway and shoots the man in the throat. He tries in vain to get the man to answer some questions before dying. Chigurh leaves the building and gets back into his car. Go to the next part in the summary of No Country for Old Men Go to the beginning Go to the end Go to the Index of Summaries What to Read Next! Go to the current novel on Twenty Pages a Day
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