How It All Goes Down
- In the first-person italicized opening section, a Sheriff recalls the time he sent a nineteen-year-old boy to the gas chamber.
- It was the only time the Sheriff's testimony led someone to death.
- The boy had killed a fourteen-year-old girl, and he said that if he got out of jail, "he'd do it again" (1.1.1). Sheriff went to the boy's execution.
- The boy said he didn't have a soul and would go to hell.
- The Sheriff didn't know what to say to that, but he tells us that kid "wasnt nothin compared to what was comin down the pike" (1.1.1).
- Someone named Chigurh is in handcuffs while a deputy calls Lamar, whoever that is, on the phone.
- The deputy describes Chigurh's weapon as "one of them oxygen tanks for emphysema or whatever [attached to] one of them stunguns like they use at the slaughterhouse" (1.2.2).
- While the deputy is chatting on the phone, Chigurh plays jump rope with his handcuff chain, which brings his hands to the front of his body. He strangles the deputy with the chain.
- It's gross.
- After the deputy dies, Chigurh takes the keys and unlocks his cuffs.
- Then Chigurh takes the deputy's gun and his own crazy weapon.
- Chigurh washes his hands and leaves… taking the deputy's cruiser along with him.
- Pretending to be an officer, Chigurh pulls a man over. He has the guy step away from the vehicle, and then he kills him with his weapon, putting "a round hole in his forehead" (1.2.11).
- Why did Chigurh take the dude out of the car first? "I just didnt want you to get blood on the car" (1.2.11). How considerate.
- Someone named Llewelyn Moss is hunting antelope.
- Even though Llewelyn is on a ridge hundreds of yards away from the antelope, the animals see him and move farther away.
- Llewelyn shoots and misses, and he has to move to a new position in order to follow the antelope when they run.
- While tracking the antelope, Llewelyn stumbles across an unexpected scene: a cluster of vehicles and dead men on the ground. Maybe the antelope were really angry?
- Llewelyn moves closer and sees that all the men have been shot to death. Maybe the antelope were armed.
- In one of the vehicles, Llewelyn finds "loose brown powder" (1.3.22) in some parcels. Mexican brown-sugar smugglers, no doubt.
- There's a man who is still alive. He asks Moss for agua, but Llewelyn no tiene agua.
- Llewelyn shuts the man inside the vehicle to protect him from wolves and continues to investigate. He takes some of the weapons and a heavy leather case overflowing with American cash, "several million dollars" (1.3.49).
- Llewelyn carries the leather case back to his own truck and drives to Desert Aire, the trailer park where he lives with a girl who doesn't seem to have a name. Oh, it's his wife. She calls Moss Llewelyn and wonders where he's been all day. Also, where'd he get that gun?
- Llewelyn evades all his wife's questions, saying he went to buy her cigarettes.
- In the middle of the night, Llewelyn gets up and inspects the case. Then he gets dressed to go back out. He's going to bring agua to the last survivor.
- But when Llewelyn gets there, the man is dead. Shot through the head.
- Uh oh.
- Llewelyn heads back to his truck… but in the moonlight, he sees the silhouette of someone standing beside it.
- Double uh oh.
- Basically, there are eight pages of running and shooting to close this chapter.
- To summarize, since that's what you're here for: bang bang, footsteps footsteps, bang bang, hide behind a cactus, bang bang, crawl, bang, run, splash.
- Llewelyn gets blisters on his feet and buckshot in his arm, but he manages to reach a river and swim away by sunrise.