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by Cormac McCarthy: Pages 21 - 40 Go to the beginning. (Brought to you by jat impatientreader.com) Moss tells her that he has some cigarettes for her in the truck. He goes out and gets them and gets the guns in the truck. She asks where he got the gun from, but he doesn't tell her. She says she doesn't want to know where he's been all day. Later on, Moss wakes up and takes the briefcase out and estimates that he has over two million dollars. He starts getting dressed and Carla wakes up and asks him what he's doing. He tells her that he's going out. She starts getting scared when he won't tell her what he's up to, but he reassures her that he'll be back. He starts off on the road in his truck but then studies a map and decides to go off-road to the place where the trucks and the dead bodies were at. He drives for a long time, navigating by moonlight and his memory, until he finally gets close to the location. Taking some water and a gun with him, he gets out of the truck and starts walking towards the scene of the crime. Suddenly he notices that a door that he closed yesterday on one of the trucks is open. He drops to the ground. He maneuvers to the truck and notices that the man who had been alive yesterday is now dead and the heroin gone. He looks around a little more, notices that a shotgun that he failed to pick up yesterday is also gone now. Turning to head back to the truck, Moss sees that there is someone now standing beside it. He starts moving toward some cover when he hears another truck start and lights come on. The truck starts moving towards him down the ridge. Desperate to hide, he throws himself flat on his stomach and waits for them to pass. They do, and he tries to make his way up towards his own truck. He can see the other truck moving back and forth, using the spotlight to search the lava rocks, and he also notes that it's becoming daylight. Finally, the truck seems to have moved off, and he starts moving towards the river. Suddenly, he hears the truck start up again and start towards him with its lights on. He takes off on a dead run towards the riverbed. He hears a rifle shot and knows it passed just over him. He jumps over a ridge towards the bank and falls onto a gravel bank. He sees two men and fires blindly at them, and then jumps into the river. It carries him downstream away from the truck. He looks back and sees the two men, and then suddenly feels buckshot hit his upper arm. He inspects it, sees that it's OK, and starts moving through a cane field to the other side of the river. He stops to rest for a moment, and hears the truck faintly on the far side of the river. He thinks that they'll be on his trail in minutes, so he sets out across a stand of cottonwood. He realizes that his truck is out there, and that anyone could look up his name and address from the records at the courthouse. Moss thinks about leaving the state and going to his brother in California, but he knows that they'll be after anyone associated with him. In the start of the next chapter, the lawman from our first chapter is remembering how he'd have to fight against people, even when he didn't want to, because sometimes they were just set on doing violence. He laments that this is the case, and that any traffic stop you make could be your last, and thinks about how it's become harder to keep bad people out. |
