“Alright then. Two of ’em. Both had my father in ’em . It’s peculiar. I’m older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he’s the younger man. Anyway, first one I don’t remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he’s gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin’ through the mountains of a night. Goin’ through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up…”– Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.
This was Ed Tom Bell’s soliloquy to his wife of decades over morning coffee, one of many to come with her post-retirement. He is a lifetime small town lawman and tells the story at her insistence–which seems born of a patient, enduring and very rare love. Their union evokes an aura of selfless, unconditional acceptance despite their inherent differences. Their polarity appears to have evolved into this marriage: Her doting homemaker and lover of horses; he, a gruff, contemplative and sardonic sheriff.
Remember Ed Tom Bell tells us at the beginning of the film how law enforcement ran in the family–as a trade or skill passed on through the ages once was. It’s simple, Texan, and American through and through. He also tells us that the crime we are about to see defies comprehension. And the story unfolds with demons and crimes that he can’t even begin to fathom—he struggles with it throughout the story. His wisdom permeates the story. It’s the kind born of a man who’s years have been measured as if he was allowed to live them—as cop’s usually are. Earlier in the film, his younger counterpart, a boot* really, asks him, “It’s a mess aint it sheriff?” and Ed Tom Bell prophesies: “If not, it’ll do ‘till the mess gets here.” He tells Carla Jean the story about how the contest between man and steer isn’t even fair or predetermined. He’s trying to save a stubborn, persistent Llewelyn from the inevitable and he fails. The story unfolds as the very bad man getting what he came for and the overwhelmed sheriff wandering through the detritus of it all–outgunned, outmanned and overshadowed by a world and power he no longer recognizes or feels equipped to contain. He retires, hangs it up and settles into his ranch life with his wife and all his pretty horses. She asks him about his dreams. He tells her. They’re both about his father. The first one was about meeting him in town and getting some money—“I think I lost it.” This was the whole story—the missing 2 million dollars Chigurh is after. In the second one his father carries The Fire, which in Cormac McCarthy’s novels has always been akin to Light, Hope and Salvation. The fire is the only real weapon against the bad guys, the shadow people, the cannibals, the savages, the henchmen and Anton Chigurhs of the universe. The Fire. His father was going ahead out there in all that dark and cold and that whenever he died, his father would be there waiting for him with the fire. His reward would be in the afterlife. His salvation would ultimately be in how he lived his life and what he did to combat the dark—not whether he was able to eradicate it.
[From the archives. This was a letter/explanation to someone via “social” media from a few years ago about the film/book’s ending, which left many in the lurch, for lack of a better term, and wanting for something more definitive and packaged. I should have just reminded the recipient of this communique that since when is life like that? The neat little endings. Everything tidy and logical. Yeah fuck all that. It’s actually a beautiful, hopeful ending. One of the themes Cormac McCarthy tends to etch in his hopeless, apocalyptic works like The Road suggest that The Fire and those who carry it represent the true 1% of humanity. Those with pure intentions. Who talk the talk and walk the walk. The Good Guys. Who don’t always wear white. And who most certainly meander philosophical like Ed Tom Bell with arcane stories that alienates him from people. But in a good way: Maybe it scares away those who think they’re all about the light and awareness, but really just masquerading and biding their time in hopes for an easier, softer way.]
– Matthew A. Barraza
Difficult To Cure 
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