Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Tuesday. Brother and Junior got out with me.

  Hoghead grinned. They started up the street. Old Junior, the cops brought him in one night and turned him over to Mrs Long, he was about three fourths drunk and been in some kind of trouble, I forget, and Mrs Long told the cops, said: I dont know what's wrong with him. My oldest boy Jimmy never causes me the least trouble. Next night here they come with Jim.

  Suttree smiled. I hear that old woman shot at you the other night.

  Old crazy nigger woman. She shot about four holes in the wall. Shot a picture down. I ducked behind the sofa and she shot a hole in that and John Clancy said they was a rat the size of a housecat come out from under it just a shittin and a gettin it. He was layin in the floor and he said it run right over the top of him.

  What did you do down there anyway?

  Aw, you dont have to do nothin to stir up a bunch of old crazy niggers.

  You know what she called you?

  What'd she call me?

  Called you a white pointedheaded motherfucker.

  Hoghead grinned. They had me in the paper one time, they're always callin anybody towheaded that's got lightcolored hair, they had me in there and I'd said somethin smart to this juvenile judge and they put: said the twoheaded youth.

  Suttree grinned. Where you going?

  Just up here with some punchboards. Come go with me.

  I pass.

  Well, I got to get on. Stay out of the jailhouse, you hear?

  I hear, said Suttree.

  When he crossed the porch of Howard Clevenger's store on Front Street there was an old woman rummaging through a basket of kale there as if she had lost something in it. Oceanfrog Frazer was standing at the screendoor. He patted Suttree on the ribs. What's shakin, baby.

  Hey, said Suttree.

  They pushed through the door together. Atop the drink cooler squatted a black and ageless androgyne in fool's silks. A purple shirt with bloused sleeves, striped fuchsia trousers and matching homedyed tennis shoes. A gold leather motorcycle belt about a vespine waist. A hat from the hand of a coked milliner. Hi sweetie, he said.

  Hello John.

  Trippin Through The Dew, said Oceanfrog.

  Hey baby.

  Hey Frog, called a black from the rear of the store.

  What you want?

  Come here baby. I got to talk to you.

  I aint got time to mess with you.

  Suttree poked among the loaves of bread.

  Oceanfrog lifted a carton of milk from the cooler and opened it and drank.

  Hey Gatemouth.

  Yeah baby.

  You hear about B L's old lady catchin him?

  No man, what happened?

  She come in over there Sunday caught him in bed with this old gal and started warpin him in the head with a shoe. This old gal raised straight up in the bed buck naked and hollered at her, said: Lay it to him honey, said: I was married to a son of a bitch just like him.

  A high whinny escaped the painted gaud perched at Oceanfrog's elbow. The mascaraed eyes sidled, the black and languid hands made draping motions about the elbows. Oceanfrog you is a mess, she said.

  Old B L's crazy, said Gatemouth.

  Suttree smiled among the rusting canisters of food at the back wall. He passed behind the hoglike bulk of Gatemouth in his chair. Hey baby, said Gatemouth. What's the haps?

  Hey, said Suttree, moving toward the meatcase.

  A discussion on the mating habits of possums ensued. A young black named Jabbo entered the store.

  Hey baby, called Gatemouth.

  Gate City, said Jabbo. Aint no town and it aint no city. He glared at Trippin Through The Dew. How about gettin your nelly ass off the dopebox.

  Ooh, said the invert, sliding to the floor like a neon eel.

  Gatemouth says a possum dont have a forked peter, Oceanfrog told the store.

  I never, said Gatemouth. I said he dont screw her in the nose.

  What's his peter forked for then?

  Cause he's a marsuperal, motherfucker.

  Oceanfrog laughed deep in the back of his throat. Shiny tombstone teeth, gums coral pink. Shit man, he said. You completely eat up with the dumb-ass.

  Ask Suttree.

  I dont know, said Suttree.

  He dont want the whole river to know what a fuckin dumb-ass you is, said Oceanfrog. He tipped the carton of milk and rifled a long drink down his dark throat.

  Who is that crazy motherfucker up in that house hollers at everbody? said Jabbo.

  Where at honey? The queen of Front Street was solicitous. Jabbo ignored her. Up here, he said, pointing. Crazy motherfucker hollers the craziest shit I ever heard.

  That's just the old crazy reverend up there, said Gatemouth. Hollers all the time: Are you warshed in the blood.

  He can talk some shit.

  I goin to slap his head sideways he dont get off of me.

  He hollers at everbody.

  I aint everbody.

  He's a cripple.

  He'll be crippled.

  They has to carry out his slops and everthing.

  He trimmed hisself, said Trippin Through The Dew.

  Done what?

  Trimmed hisself. With a razor. Just sliced em on off honey, what they tell me.

  That wouldnt cripple you.

  It would smart some, said Oceanfrog.

  He was done crippled fore he done it.

  I goin to trim his fuckin wig he dont quit that hollerin at me, said Jabbo.

  Suttree ducked the yardlong coil of dead flies that hung from the ceiling and came to the counter with his purchases.

  What else? said Howard.

  That's it.

  He totted with pencil on a scrap of paper.

  Forty-two cents.

  Suttree dredged up coins from his jeans.

  Where you goin, Sut?

  Home.

  Sure you is. Tell me. Slip off up here somewheres and dip your wick in somethin.

  Suttree grinned.

  Old Suttree, said Oceanfrog. He caint fade nothin.

  Why dont you put me on something?

  Shit. You got it all locked now.

  He aint interested in them nigger gals. Is you Suttree?

  Suttree looked at Jabbo but he didnt answer.

  Howard dropped the last of the groceries into the sack and slid it toward Suttree, He took it under his arm and nodded toward the dark idlers. See you, he said.

  Hang loose, said Oceanfrog.

  The screendoor clapped shut.

  Ooh that's a pretty thing, said Trippin Through The Dew.

  After he'd eaten his supper he snuffed the lamp and sat in the dark and watched the lights on the far shore standing long and wandlike in the trembling river. Down from Ab Jones's sounds of laughter carried over the black water like ghost voices, old dead revelers reminiscing in the night. After a while he rose and went out and up the river path to the door.

  He sat in the corner and sipped a beer. Oceanfrog was sitting in for the house in a light poker game and Ab lay sleeping in the back room. Suttree heard him breathing in the dark when he went past his bedroom, going on to the cubicle behind the torn and stained plastic showercurtain, standing there half holding his breath, the boards in the reeking gloom splotched with a greenish phosphorescence, a sinister mold that glowed faintly. A section of galvanized gutterpipe sluiced the urine down to a rathole in the corner and out into the passing river. There was a small lizard of some kind wet and pale that clung to a naked stud and Suttree pissed on it and it wriggled out through a crack in the wall. He buttoned his trousers and spat into the trough. Reassessing the agility of germs in a sequence of them climbing falling water like salmon he wiped his mouth and selected a clean place on the wall and spat again.

  He sat with the back of his head against the board wall and his mind drifted. Moths crossed the mouth of the lamp in its scroll iron sconce above his head, the shape of the flame steadfast in the pietin reflector. On the ceiling black curds. Where insect sha
dows war. The reflection of the lamp's glass chimney like a quaking egg, the zygote dividing. Giant spores addorsed and severing. Yawing toward separate destinies in their blind molecular schism. If a cell can be lefthanded may it not have a will? And a gauche will?

  In another part of the room Fred Cash was reciting poetry. Suttree heard the last of the Signifyin Monkey and then the ballad of Jack-Off Jake the poolroom snake who fucked his way north to Duluth. He rose and got another beer. Doll in her slippers collected bottles and shuffled off mutely through the smoke and the gloom. Suttree traced with one hand dim names beneath the table stone. Salvaged from the weathers. Whole families evicted from their graves downriver by the damming of the waters. Hegiras to high ground, carts piled with battered cookware, mattresses, small children. The father drives the cart, the dog runs after. Strapped to the tailboard the rotting boxes stained with earth that hold the bones of the elders. Their names and dates in chalk on the wormscored wood. A dry dust sifts from the seams in the boards as they jostle up the road ...

  The cards whispered along the table, the bottles clinked. Under the floor the muffled bong of a barrel shifting. Doll rocked and snored in her chair with the cat in her lap and beyond the little window the houseboat shadowed by the city lights ran darkly in the river among the tarnished stars.

  His subtle obsession with uniqueness troubled all his dreams. He saw his brother in swaddling, hands outheld, a scent of myrrh and lilies. But it was the voice of Gene Harrogate that called to him where he tossed on his bunk in the murmurous noon. Harrogate's hand in supplication from the tailgate of a truck, face waffled in the wire mesh, calling.

  Suttree sat up groggily. His hair lay matted on his skull and beads of sweat trickled on his face.

  Hey Sut.

  Just a minute.

  He pulled on his trousers and lurched toward the door and flung it open. Harrogate stood there amuck in his clothes, bright thin face, a frail apparition trembling and conceivably unreal in the heat of the day.

  How you doin, Sut?

  He leaned against the jamb, one hand over his eyes. God, he said.

  Was you asleep?

  Suttree retreated a step into shadow. He did not take his hand from his face. When did you get out?

  Harrogate entered with his country deference, looking about. I been out, he said.

  How did you find me?

  I ast around. I went to that yan'n first. They's niggers lives there. She told me where you was at. He looked about the little cabin. They was in bed up yonder too, he said. Boy.

  Wait a minute, said Suttree.

  What?

  He turned him about in the light from the window. What are you wearing? he said.

  Harrogate shuffled and flapped his arms. Aw, he said. Just some old clothes.

  Did they rig you out in these at the workhouse?

  Yeah. They lost my clothes what they give me at the hospital. I dont look funny do I?

  No. You look crazy. He pulled at Harrogate. What is this?

  Harrogate held his arms aloft. I dont know, he said.

  Suttree was turning him around. Good God, he said.

  The shirt was fashioned from an enormous pair of striped drawers, his neck stuck through the ripped seam of the crotch, his arms hanging from the capacious legholes like sticks.

  What size do you wear?

  What size what?

  Anything. Shirt to start with.

  I take a small.

  A small.

  Yeah.

  Take that damn thing off.

  He peeled out of the shirt and stood in a pair of outsize pastrycook's trousers with cuffs that reverted back nearly to his knees.

  Why the hell didnt you cut the legs off those?

  He spread his feet and looked down. I might not be done growin, he said.

  Take them off.

  He dropped them to the floor and stood naked save for his shoes. Suttree collected the trousers and hacked a foot or more from the legs with his fishknife and rummaged through his bureau until he found a shirt.

  The shoes is mine, Harrogate said.

  Suttree looked down at the enormous sneakers. I guess your feet might grow another four or five inches, he said.

  I caint stand a tight shoe, said Harrogate.

  Here, try this shirt. And turn these trousers up on the inside where it wont show.

  Okay.

  When he had dressed again he looked less like a clown and more like a refugee. Suttree shook his head.

  I got shot in the bottom of my shoe, Harrogate said. He held up one foot.

  Gene, said Suttree, what are your plans?

  I dont know. Find me a place here in town I reckon.

  Why dont you go back home?

  I aint goin back out there. I like it uptown.

  You could still come in when you took a notion.

  Naw. Hell Sut, I'm a city rat now.

  Where are you going to live?

  Well. I thought you might know a place.

  You did.

  That old codger up under the bridge has got him a slick place. Nobody never would find ye up in under there.

  Why dont you move in at the other end up here?

  I looked at it but it's open to the road where you aint got no privacy. Besides they's niggers lives next door.

  Oh well, said Suttree. Niggers.

  Do you not know of anyplace?

  How about the viaduct? Have you looked under there?

  Where's it at?

  You can see it right here. See?

  Harrogate followed his pointing finger, looking out the open door toward the city where a smaller replica of the river bridge stood astraddle of First Creek.

  You reckon it's not taken?

  I dont know. It may be just crammed with folks. Why dont you go see?

  Harrogate rose from the cot where he'd been sitting. He was eager to be off. Hell fire, he said. It'd really be slick if it wasnt took wouldnt it? I mean, bein uptown like it is and all.

  You bet, said Suttree

  The viaduct spanned a jungly gut filled with rubble and wreckage and a few packingcrate shacks inhabited by transient blacks and down through this puling waste the dark and leprous waters of First Creek threaded the sumac and poison ivy. Highwater marks of oil and sewage and condoms dangling in the branches like stranded leeches. Harrogate made his way through this derelict fairyland toward the final concrete arches of the viaduct where they ran to earth. He entered delicately, his eyes skittering about. There was no one in. The earth was cool and naked and dry. Here some bones. Broken glass. A few stray dogturds. Two bent and mangled parking meters with clots of concrete about their roots.

  Boy, whispered Harrogate.

  There was a little concrete pillbox filled with pipes and conduits where you could store things and with the weeds grown about outside there was never a retreat so secluded. Harrogate sat on his heels and hugged his knees and looked out. He watched the pigeons come and go up under the high arches and he studied the warren of shacks on the farther bank of the cut where they hung yoked by insubstantial brigades of torn gray wash. Dark and near vertical gardens visible among the tin or tarred rooftops and vast nets of kudzu across the blighted trees.

  Come evening he had accumulated some crates and aligned them in a sort of storage wall and he had made a firepit of old bricks and he had his eye on other goods which required but fall of dark to come by. By then he was uptown salvaging tins from trashcans for cook-ware. Appropriating the mattress from a lounge on a houseporch. All the redglobed lanterns from a ditchside where watermains were under repair.

  He sat by the fire a long time after he had boiled and eaten the vegetables pilfered from gardens across the creek. His little grotto glowed with a hellish red from the lanterns and he reclined on the mattress and scratched himself and picked his teeth with a long yellow fingernail.

  When Suttree came by next noon on his way to the market the city rat had just returned. He ushered in his guest expansively. How you like
it, Sut?

  Suttree looked around, shaking his head.

  What I like about it is they's plenty of room. Dont you?

  You better get rid of those parking meters, Suttree said.

  Yeah. I'll haul em off to the creek this evenin.

  What's in here? He was peering into the little concrete vault.

  I dont know. It's a slick place to keep your stuff though, aint it?

  Overhead in the arches there was a dull snap and a violent flapping of wings.

  Hot damn, said Harrogate, slapping his thigh.

  A pigeon fluttered down brokenly and landed in the dust and wobbled and flopped. It had a rat trap about its neck.

  That makes three, said Harrogate, scurrying to secure the bird.

  Suttree stared after him. Harrogate removed the trap and climbed up into the vaulted undercarriage of the viaduct and reset it, scooping the scattered grain over it with one hand. Boy, he called down, his voice sepulchral, them sons of bitches is really dumb.

  What are you going to do with them?

  I got two in the pot yonder stewin up with some taters and stuff but if this keeps up I'm goin to sell em.

  Who to?

  Harrogate hopped down, the dust pluming from under his sneakers. He gave his trousers a swipe with his hands. Niggers, he said. Shit, they'll buy anything.

  Well, said Suttree. I was going to ask you if you wanted some fish but I guess you've got enough to eat for a while.

  Hell, come take supper with me this evenin. They's enough for two.

  Suttree looked at the limp and downy bird, its pink feet. Thanks, he said, but I guess not. He nodded toward Harrogate's mattress. You need to get your bed up off the ground there, he said.

  I wanted to talk to you about that. I got my eye on some springs down here by the creek but I caint get em by myself.

  Suttree tucked his fish beneath his arm. I'll stop by later, he said. I've got to get on to town.

  I got to figure some way to keep these dogs out of here too.

  Well.

  I'll have her fixed up slick next time you see it.

  Okay.

  Livin uptown like this you can find pret near anything you need.

  Dont forget about the parking meters.

  Yeah. Okay.

  Suttree took a final look around and shook his head and went out through the weeds to the world.

  Sunday he set forth downriver in the warm midmorning, rowing and drifting by turns. He did not run his trotlines. He crossed below the bridge and swung close under the shadow of the bluffs, the dripping of the oars in the dark of the river like stones in a well. He passed under the last of the bridges and around the bend in the river, through peaceful farmland, high fields tilted on the slopes and rich turned earth in patches of black corrugation among the greening purlieus and small cultivated orchards like scenes of plenitude from picturebooks suddenly pasted over the waste he was a familiar of, the river like a giant trematode curling down out of the city, welling heavy and septic past these fine homes on the north shore. Suttree rested from time to time on the oars, studying from this late vantage old childhood scenes, gardens he knew or had known.