A few dead bats or dying appeared in the streets. Roving bands of unclaimed dogs were herded off to the gas chamber. Harrogate kept himself attuned, somehow fearing that he might be next. One day by Suttree's he said he'd seen a bat.
A dead one?
Just up yander.
You'd better go get it, said Suttree. It's worth a dollar.
It's worth what?
A dollar. You have to take it to the Board of Health. It was in the paper.
You're shittin me.
No, it's worth a dollar.
Why would anybody want to give a dollar for a old dead bat?
They think they've got rabies. It says not to touch them, just scoop them up and put them in a bag.
Harrogate had already started out the door.
Hey Gene.
Yeah.
Do you know where to take it?
No, where do I go?
General Hospital. Out Central.
Yeah. I know where it's at. That's where they took me.
It was true. Legal tender for all debts public and private. He had the bill changed at Comer's, dropping it with a careless flourish onto the glass countertop. He took the change downstairs to Helm's and got a dollar for it and changed the dollar at the Sanitary Lunch but no one seemed to notice. Already schemes were clambering through his head. He bought a chocolate milk and sat wedged in the row of theatre seats at Comer's before a twodollar check game and pondered and sipped the milk.
Fucking rat poison, he said, suddenly looking up through the smoke and the din toward a far wall with wide eyes.
People turned to look at him. Cocky paused in midstroke at the table, the cue quivering in his old palsied hands. Harrogate rose and drained the carton of milk and dropped it in a spittoon and went out.
Ratlike himself, quietly in the dimestore aisles. A small box of pellets slid between the lowermost shirtbuttons to lay against his skin. Things to be done. The Ford hood that he portaged on his shoulders up the river path had sheltered chickens. He stopped often to rest. It had rained in the night and his clothes were soaked from the bushes.
Scarlet trumpets of cowitch overhung the little house and wildflowers bloomed up through the twisted shapes of steel by whatever miracle renders grease and cinders arable and the junkman's lot was a garden more lovely for the phantasm from which it sprang. Harrogate paused at the fence and leaned his hood there. He pushed open the weighted gate, starting a hummingbird from the flowers in the dooryard. Rainwater still dripped from the tarpaper eaves and it lay in bright pools and slashes on the gray and steaming backs of the autos where they reared above the grass and fronds like feeding bovines. He rapped at the open door. The cane at the corner of the shack rattled gently in the wind. Everything lay quiet and sundabbled in this quaint garden by the river.
What can I do for ye? said the junkman.
Harrogate stepped back and looked. The junkman was hanging half drunk from the one small window.
You remember me dont ye? said Harrogate.
No.
Well, listen. I need a car hood.
Just a minute.
He appeared at the door. With splayed fingers attacking the matter that webbed his eyes.
What kind? he said.
It's a Ford.
Any particular year?
I dont know. I got it out here if you could match it up.
The junkman spat and looked at him and started down the stoop past him.
Where's it at? He was standing in the yard with his palms in the small of his back, squinting about.
Right yonder leanin against the fence.
The junkman followed his pointing finger. I hope it dont lean too hard, he said. He sauntered over to the fence and looked down. He gave the hood a shove and it fell over in the dust with a sad bong. The junkman looked it over and he looked at Harrogate. Hell son, he said. What's the matter with thisn?
I hope they aint nothin the matter with it. I just need me one more.
The junkman looked at him for several minutes and then he went back across the little yard and entered the shack again.
When Harrogate peered in he was lying on the cot with one arm across his eyes.
Hey, said Harrogate.
I aint got time to mess with you, the junkman mumbled.
Listen, said Harrogate. I need two alike to make a boat out of.
The junkman removed his arm from his face and looked at the ceiling.
I wanted to get em welded together and tar up the holes so I could have me a boat.
A boat?
Yessir.
How do you sons of bitches find me?
It aint but just me.
All you crazy sons of bitches. I wish I could catch whoever it is keeps sendin em down here.
I just come by myself.
Yeah. Yeah.
Have you not got a hood to match thatn?
I got a forty-six, it's the same cept for the chrome, you can have it for six dollars if you want it.
Well I wanted to talk to you about that.
He looked like an enormous turtle going to the river, staggering under the weight of the welded car hoods, the aft one dragging a trail in the summer dust. He hadn't found any way to take the pot of tar so he'd tied it to one ankle and it scuttled along after him.
He put in above the packing company, sliding his boat through the grass and down the mud of the bank. The water that trickled in looked like ink beading over the tarred floor. He bent and untied the tarpot and set it in the boat and then stepped in cautiously. The steel flexed with a little dead buckling sound somewhere. He gripped the sides, going along on his knees. The back end lifted from the mud and he was adrift in the river.
Shit a brick, said Harrogate with cautious enthusiasm. He pulled off his shirt and sponged up the water to better see where the leaks were. Drifting past the packing company, the lumberyard.
What is that? called a watcher from the shore.
Boat, called Harrogate back.
By the time he reached the bridge he was sitting in the center with his feet spread before him, taking the sun and enjoying the river breeze. He came in at Goose Creek, paddling with his fingers. Up the small estuary, under the low bridge of the railway, lying on his back, muddobber nests overhead and lizards in little suctioncup shoes sliding past his face, easing himself along the wall with one hand. And under Scottish Pike and up the creek, standing in the stern of his new boat and poling with a stick he'd found, the rounded prow browsing through the rippled sludge that lay thick on the backwater.
He spent the night under the boat, it upturned like a canoe and propped with sticks, a small fire before him. Vestal boys came down to visit and to envy. One among the younger was sent for a chicken from his mother's yard and they plucked it and roasted it on a wire and passed about a warm RC Cola and told lies.
He came out of the creek into the river the next morning rowing with a board and a split paddle in oarlocks made from a dogchain. An eerie rattling apparition stroking through the fog. He'd not gone far before he was near run down by the dredger from the gravel company just set out downriver. A face passed high up the bank of fog, not even looking down from the floating wheelhouse. Harrogate had stood in his boat and raised a fist but the first bowwave almost tilted him out into the river and he sat quickly in the floor again and called a few round oaths.
He rowed upriver with his back to the rising sun, envisioning a penthouse among the arches and spans of the bridge he passed beneath, a retractable ropeladder, his boat at anchor by a stanchion, the consternation of a marveling citizenry. At Suttree's he pulled in and rapped on the floor of the deck with his knuckles. Hey Sut, he called.
Suttree raised up in his bunk and looked out. He saw a hand from the river holding onto the houseboat deck. He rolled out and went to the door and around and stood there in his shorts looking down at the city rat.
Slick aint it? said Harrogate.
Can you swim?
This time tomorrow you will be ta
lkin to a wealthy man.
Or a drowned one. Where the hell did you get that thing?
Made it. Me and old drunk Harvey.
Good God, said Suttree.
What do you think of it?
I think you're fucking crazy.
You want to go for a ride?
No.
Come on, I'll ride ye.
Gene, I wouldnt get in that thing and it on dry land.
Well, I got to get on.
Harrogate pushed off and took up his trailing oars. I got a lot to do, he said.
Suttree watched him go on up the river, the little keelless contraption skittering and jerking along. It went pretty good.
Harrogate turned up First Creek and rowed beneath the railway trestle and continued on until he came to a narrows composed of abandoned machinery and high tiered tailings of garbage. He wired his boat to a small tree and went backwards up the bank admiring it.
He tried to nap but lying there in the heat beneath the viaduct with the traffic overhead he had such fantasies of plenitude that his feet made little involuntary trotting motions. By late afternoon he was up and about, flexing his sling with its new red rubbers and firing a few flat stones through the lightwires where they caromed and sang enormous lyrenotes in the budding tranquillity of evening. An addled cock crowed from the black hillside. He looked to his appurtenances and set forth.
He emerged from the creek mouth past the curious dark fishermen, oaring slowly and studying the sky. He stroked his way upstream, past the last of the shacks and as far as the marble company. Coming about on the placid evening calm and easing back the oars alongside and taking up his sling. Pinching up the leather in his fingers. Pouring the pellets. One flew. And there. A goatsucker wheeled and croaked. He hove back on the sling bands nearly to the floor and let go. And again. Random among the summer trees houselights came on along the southern shore. The neon nightshapes of the city bloomed, their replicas in the water like discolored sores. Across the watered sky the bats crossed and checked and flared. Dark fell but that was all. He was drifting beneath the bridge. He laid down the sling and took up the oars and came back.
It was a hot night for heavy thinking. He lay with his hands composed upon his chest. Beyond the bridge's arching brow drifting fireflies guttered against the night and the wind bore a heady jscent of honeysuckle.
It was a grayhaired and avuncular apothecary who leaned not unkindly down from his high pulpit. Enormous fans stirred overhead, shifting the reek of nostrums and purgatives. Beyond the counter ranged carboys and galleypots and stainedglass jars of chemic and cottonmouthed bottles cold and replete with their particolored pills. Harrogate's chin rested just at the cool stone trestle and his eyes took in this alchemical scene with a twinge of old familiarity for which he could not account.
May I help you? said the scientist, his hands holding each other.
I need me some strychnine, said Harrogate.
You need some what?
Strychnine. You know what it is dont ye?
Yes, said the chemist.
I need me about a good cupful I reckon.
Are you going to drink it here or take it with you?
Shit fire I aint goin to drink it. It's poisoner'n hell.
It's for your grandmother.
No, said Harrogate, craning his neck suspectly. She's done dead.
The chemist tore off a piece of paper from a pad and poised with his pen. Just let me have the name of the person or persons you intend to poison, he said. We're required to keep records.
Suspecting japery, Harrogate grinned an uneasy grin. Listen, he said. You know about these here bats?
Oh yes indeed.
Well, that's what it's for. I dont care to tell you because they aint nobody else but me could figure out the rest of it.
I'm sure that's true, the chemist said.
I didnt bring nothin to fetch it in. You got a jar of some kind?
How old are you? said the chemist.
I'm twenty-one.
No you're not.
What'd you ast me for then?
The chemist removed his glasses and closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He donned the spectacles again and looked down at Harrogate. He was still there. I can't sell strychnine to minors, he said. Nor to folk of other than right mind. It's against the law.
Well, said Harrogate. That's up to you.
Yes, said the chemist.
Harrogate backed sidling down the pale medicinal corridor, past ordered rows of canisters and jars. The rotors overhead sliced through the antiseptic air slow and constant. He pushed back the door with one hand. Bell ching. A slender rod came sucking out of a little piston. The chemist had not moved.
You're just a old fart, called Harrogate, and ran.
Suttree just shook his head. He was sitting with his trousers rolled and his bare feet hanging in the river.
Come on, Sut.
Gene.
Yeah.
I am not going in no goddamned drugstore and buy strychnine. Not for you. Not for anybody.
Hell Sut, they'd sell it to you. If I tell you what I want with it will you?
No.
They sat there watching Suttree's toes resting on the river.
Listen, Sut ...
Suttree put his forefingers in his ears.
Harrogate leaned more closely. Listen, he said.
He waited down on Stinky Point, one eye for measuring the sun's decline, the other weathered out for his friend's coming. He had a pieplate with a piece of high and wormy hog's liver in it and he was cutting this up in small gobbets with his pocketknife. Suttree came through the weeds hot and perspiring and squatted on the bank and drew a small package from the hippocket of his jeans. Here, you crazy son of a bitch, he said.
Harrogate's black rat's eyes glazed over with joy. He untied the string and lifted a glass vial from the paper and examined it. A pale label with a green skull and bones. Shithouse mouse, he said. Thanks Sut. I sure as shit appreciate it.
You owe me two dollars.
Old buddy, that kind of money aint nothin now. You'll have it in the mornin.
Suttree watched him go on through the weeds to the river where his boat rode tethered to a cinderblock by a length of wire. He turned and smiled back and stepped neatly into the boat, holding the bottle in one hand, the tin of liver in the other. He sat carefully and laid his things out before him and leaned slightly forward and unpocketed the small catapult he'd fashioned from a treefork. Unwiring himself from the land he took up his makeshift oars and feathered gently into the current and away.
From the deck of his houseboat Suttree watched the antics of this half daft adolescent with a mild disgust. Standing amidships in his cocklecraft Harrogate tacked here and there. In the quiet evening the face of the river grew glassy. Suttree muttered to himself. He'd not muttered long before a bat came boring crazily askew out of the sky and fell with a plop onto the surface of the river and fluttered briefly and was still. Suttree sat up in his folding chair. Bats had begun to drop everywhere from the heavens. Little leatherwinged creatures struggling in the river. Harrogate oaring among them. One dropped with a mild and vesperal bong on the tin of Suttree's roof. Another close by in the water. Lying there on the dark current it seemed surprised and pitiful.
Harrogate in his tin coracle was hefting them aboard with a dipnet of his own devising. A bullbat fell bandywinged. A swift, a swallow. Along the dimming shore of broken fence and rubble and over the sparse colonies of jakelike dwellings a new curse falling, a plague of bats, small basilisks pugnosed with epicanthic eyes and upreared dogs' ears filled with hair and bellies filled with agony. In the smoke and burgundy dusk they dimpled the face of the river like lemmings. Two small black boys had packed a halfgallon picklejar with ones they found and screwed down the lid to keep them until needed. In the floor of Harrogate's boat the brown and hairy mound grew, strange cargo, such small replicas of the diabolic with their razo
rous teeth bared in fiends' grins. By dark he had a half a boatload and by the warehouse lights he struck a landfall just below the creek and tied up. He sat on the bank and drank in the evening calm and the winey honeysuckle air and waited for the last of the crawling pile of bats to die. When they had done so he loaded them in his sack and staggered up the bank and home.
In the morning he set out with them. A light heart and deep rejoicing for the fortune of it made the load less heavy yet he still must rest here and there by the streetside. By such stages he labored out Central Avenue small and bowed and wildlooking.
What you got in the sack son?
He peered from under the load at his inquisitor lounging in the open window of the halted cruiser. He shifted the weight a little higher on his shoulder. Bats, he said.
Bats.
Yessir.
What, ballbats?
No, them little'ns. Flittermouses.
The policeman's face bore a constant look of tolerant interest. Set the sack down son and let's see what all you got there.
Harrogate rolled the sack from his shoulder and lowered it to the paving and spread the drawstrung mouth with his thumbs. A musky smell rose. He tilted it slightly policeward. The officer thumbed his cap back on his head and bent to see. A prefiguration of the pit. Vouchsafed a crokersack vision of hell's floor deep with the hairy damned screaming mute and toothy toward the far and heedless city of God. He raised his head and looked at the waiting Harrogate and he looked at the bright sky above Knoxville and he turned to the driver.
You know what he's got in that sack?
What's he got?
Dead bats.
Dead bats.
Right.
Well.
What do you think?
I dont know. Ask him where he's goin with em.
Where you goin with em?
Up here to the hospital.
The officer had his chin resting on his shoulder. His face went blank. Rabies, he said. He turned to the driver and said something and they pulled away. Harrogate shouldered the bats and set forth again.
He climbed the marble stairs and went past the old columns of the portico and down the hall to a desk. Howdy, he said.
A nurse looked up.
I got some more.
What?
Suttree (1979) Page 24
