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No Country for Old Men Chapter VII Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Sheriff Bell thinks, "I wont talk about the war neither" (7.1.1). Then he thinks about the war for about half a page.
  • Then Bell wonders why schools are so much more dangerous these days.
  • Finally, Bell remembers a conversation he had on an airplane with a woman.
  • The woman said she didn't like the way the country was headed. "I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion" (7.1.2), she said.
  • Bell responded, "Not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep" (7.1.2).
  • Try that next time you're on a plane with someone who won't shut up.
  • Chigurh limps up seventeen flights of stairs to the nameless man who sent Wells to kill him. He marches into the office and shoots the guy in the throat.
  • As the man is dying, Chigurh introduces himself: "I'm the man you sent Carson Wells to kill" (7.2.7). Tell us something we don't know. Like this other guy's name? Pretty please?
  • Chigurh watches the man die. Then he leaves.
  • In Odessa, Carla Jean tells her mam to pack up: they're going to El Paso.
  • Mam adjusts her teeth. A bus comes. She and Carla Jean get on.
  • Just in time, too. Chigurh shows up at the house that night. The world's worst houseguest, he lets himself in and drinks all the orange soda.
  • Chigurh rifles through all the belongings and eventually finds a pile of mail. He opens the bills, hoping they'll tell him where Carla Jean and her mam went.
  • On the border, Llewelyn gets a cab to take him to the river, where he climbs in and gets the sack of money.
  • Llewelyn generously pays the cab driver, who then takes him to the Rodeway Inn west of town.
  • Llewelyn buys a gun advertised in the paper, and the seller delivers it. Talk about room service.
  • Llewelyn takes a bath, dresses his wounds, and sets out to buy a new pickup truck.
  • After purchasing a 1978 Ford pickup, Llewelyn sets off, heading for Carla Jean, we guess.
  • But Llewelyn finds a young redheaded hitchhiking girl first. He picks her up.
  • Back at Bell's house, there's a phone call from Carla Jean.
  • Carla Jean offers to tell Bell where Llewelyn called her from—if he promises that "no harm will come to him" (7.2.161).
  • "I can give my word that no harm will come to him from me" (7.2.162), says Bell.
  • Um, it's not Sheriff Bell Carla Jean should be worried about.
  • Someone seems to have wiretapped Bell's phone, because elsewhere, someone listening in on the line gets the address and hands it off to a man with a machinegun, who jumps into a black Plymouth Barracuda and burns rubber out of the parking lot.