Favorite Scenes - No Country for Old Men

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: How you doing, Ellis?

Ellis: You’re looking at it. I gotta say . . . you’re looking older.

Ed: I am older.

Ellis: Got a letter from your wife. She writes me pretty regular. Keeps me up on the family news.

Ed: Didn’t know there was any.

Ellis: Told me you’re quittin’.

Ed: (walks over to coffee pot) You want a cup?

Ellis: Appreciate it.

Ed: How fresh is that coffee?

Ellis: I generally make a fresh pot every week – even if there’s some left over.

Ed: That man who shot you died in prison.

Ellis: Angola. Yeah.

Ed: What you’d done he’d been released.

Ellis: Oh, I don’t know. Nothing. Wouldn’t be no point in it.

Ed: Kindly surprised to hear you say that.

Ellis: Well all the time you spend trying to get back what’s been took from you, more is going out the door. After a while, you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it. Your granddad never asked me to sign on as a deputy. (pause) Loretta tells me you’re quittin’. How come you’re doing that?

Ed: I don’t know. I feel overmatched. I always figured when I got older, God would sort of come into my life somehow. And He didn’t. I don’t blame Him. If I was Him, I’d have the same opinion of me that He does.

Ellis: You don’t know what He thinks. I sent Uncle Mac’s thumbbuster and badge over to the Rangers, put it in their museum. Your daddy ever tell you how Uncle Mac come to his reward? Gunned down on his own porch over in Hudspeth County. Seven or Eight of ‘em come up there, wanting this, wanting that. Uncle Mac went back in the house to get the shotgun. Well, they was ahead of him. Shot him in his doorway. Aunt Ella come out, try to stop the bleeding. Uncle Mac all the while trying to get that shotgun. They just sat there on their horses, watching him die. After a while, one of ‘em said something in Indian and they turned. Left out. Uncle Mac knew the score even if Aunt Ella didn’t. Shot through the left lung. And that was that – as they say.

Ed: When’d he die?

Ellis: Nineteen – zero and, uh, nine.

Ed: No, I mean was it right away, or in the night or – when was it?

Ellis: I believe it was that night. She buried him the next morning. Digging in that hard old caliche. (pause) What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.