Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  He was hanged in Rockcastle County Kentucky on July 18 1884.

  She didnt answer. She said: Allen always said that Robert favored him. But of course Robert never come back from the war. Lord he wasnt but eighteen poor baby. Allen never got over it. They say he died of cancer and that may be but he never had hardly a well day after they brought Robert home. I believe it killed him as much as anything did. They was nine of us you know. Me and Elizabeth outlived all the boys and now she's gone and I'm in the crazy house. Sometimes I dont know what people's lives are for. She looked at Suttree. Her eyes moved and she smiled.

  Daddy kept store you know, and we had this horse his name was Captain and he used to pull the wagon delivered the groceries and he was my pet. He'd foller me around, just foller me around like a dog would. We lived in Sweetwater then. And they was hard times then and we had to sell the store and Daddy had to sell Captain. And they took me up to Nanny's because the man was comin to take him, you see. I was just a little thing. Years later when I was a young girl I was in Knoxville one Saturday and I seen this horse standin in front of a feedstore hitched to a wagon and it was Captain. I run over to him and thowed my arms around him and kissed him and I reckon everbody thought I was crazy, me about full growed standin there in the street huggin a old horse and just a bawlin to beat the band.

  She pushed the palm of her hand hard against one cheek. She looked up at Suttree and smiled and she looked at the woman by her side who now was weeping and she gave her a great nudge with her elbow. Lord amercy, she said. You're the silliest thing in here.

  The woman shook her head and snuffled and Suttree's aunt smiled at him. I want you to look at this old crazy thing, she said. She dont even know what all she's bawlin about.

  Do too, said the woman.

  It wasnt the first word she'd said but it was the first Suttree'd heard. She had her hand across her forehead and was rubbing it as if she'd have the skin off. She wore a faint mustache and her gray hair stood about her head electrically. Aunt Alice looked down at her with soft amusement. She brushed her cheeks again and turned to Suttree. Her eye was bright and her expression full of sauce. You're a good lookin somethin, she said. I believe you favor E C. You dont have a motorcar do you?

  Suttree said he didnt. He felt himself being drawn into modes for which he had neither aptitude nor will. They were both watching him. The tears were gone. Their eyes seemed filled with expectation and he'd nothing to give. He'd come to take. He pulled away from them and they leaned toward him with their veined old hands groping at the emptiness. He rose. Casting his eyes over this wreckage. What perverted instinct made folks group the mad together? So many. He was the only person in the room standing and now they were watching him, eyes vacant or keen with suspicion or incipient hatred. Or eyes betrayed of any earnestness at all. An air of possible insurrection in the room, wanting just the cue to set these wretches clawing at their keepers. He looked down at the old ladies at his feet. They had their hands to their mouth in identical attitudes. I have to go, he said. I cant stay. He tore his look from theirs and wheeled off through the room. An old man in a striped railroader's hat was holding a huge watch in his hand and following Suttree with his eyes as if he'd time him. Their eyes met across the dayroom and Suttree's face drained to see the old man there and he almost said his name but he did not and he was soon out the door.

  He was going from phone to phone in the booths of the Park National Bank and he was whistling to himself when a heavy hand dropped across his shoulder. He stopped and looked down, placing the nearest black wingtip shoe. He leaped up and came down on the shoe with his heel, his knee locked. Small bones cracked under the leather. The hand went away. Harrogate never even saw the man. He crossed Gay Street in the noon traffic over the actual hoods and decklids of idling cars, faces white behind the glass, sounds of buckling sheetmetal.

  Suttree sought him out under the viaduct among the debris. Gene? he called. There was no fire, no sign of having been one. Cars rumbled distantly overhead. Hey Gene.

  Harrogate crawled out of the concrete pillbox and squatted in the dirt. He was ragged looking and shaking with the cold and he had shaved his mustache off.

  Suttree squatted beside him. Well, he said. What are your plans?

  The city rat hunched his shoulders. He looked frail and wasted with defeat.

  You cant stay down here, you'll freeze.

  He shook his head slowly from side to side, staring at the raw ground. I dont know, he said. I been in there all day. I figured the law would of done had me by now.

  Suttree stirred the dust with his forefinger. They will, he said. This is no place to hide out.

  I know it. How'd you find me?

  I didnt have any place else to look. Rufus told me you'd been up there.

  Yeah. You caint depend on a nigger for nothin. I didnt know where else to go. All them sons of bitches. Many a time as I drunk whiskey with em. They didnt hardly know me.

  Suttree smiled. A fugitive's life is a hard one, he said. What happened to your mustache?

  Harrogate rubbed his lip. Shaved it off, he said. Maybe they wont recognize me without it. I dont know. Shit.

  Well what are you going to do?

  I dont know. I was ashamed to come to you.

  Maybe you ought to get out of town for a while.

  Where to?

  Anywhere. Out of town.

  Harrogate looked up at him vaguely. Out of town? he said.

  If you stay around here they'll nail your ass.

  Hell, Sut. I aint never been out of town. I wouldnt know where to go. I wouldnt know which way to start.

  Just get on a bus and go. What difference does it make? You've scuffled in this town for three years, hell, you could make it somewhere else.

  I dont have no friends somewhere else.

  You dont have any here.

  Harrogate shook his head. Shit, he said. Bus? I aint never even been on a goddamned bus.

  All you do is get a ticket and get on.

  Yeah yeah, sure sure, I'd get on the wrong damned bus or somethin.

  There's not any wrong bus. Not for you.

  Well how the hell would I know where to get off at? And where would I be when I did?

  They'd tell you.

  He looked at the ground. Naw, he said. I'd never make it. I'd get lost and never would get home again ever. He shook his head. I dont know, Sut. Seems like everthing I turn my hand to. Dont make no difference what it is. Just everthing I touch turns to shit.

  Have you got any money?

  Not a cry in dime.

  What did you do with all that money you were making?

  Spent it, naturally.

  You could go on the train.

  Do they not charge?

  You can sneak on. Get in an empty car over in the yards. I can let you have a few dollars.

  Train, said Harrogate, staring off toward the creek.

  You could go south for the winter. Someplace where it's not so fucking cold. Hell, Gene. You've got to do something. You cant just sit here.

  The city rat made a little shivering motion and drew up his feet but he didnt answer.

  Who was it nailed you?

  Fuck if I know.

  Was it a detective? Plainclothes?

  I dont know, Sut. I never seen nothin but his feet. I reckon it was the telephone heat. They tell me when them sons of bitches get on your trail you're completely fucked. They wont rest till they get ye.

  Telephone heat?

  Harrogate looked up warily. You fuckin ay, he said. Them bastards take it personal. He looked at the ground. I knew that, he said. I knew it, but I went and done it anyways.

  Dark was falling over the creek and a cold wind was moving in the dry weeds. On the hill among the shacks a dog had begun to bark. They sat quietly under the viaduct in the deepening chill. After a while Harrogate said: They wouldnt be a soul there that I knowed. I'd bet on it.

  Where?

  In the workhouse.

  The
re wasnt anybody there you knew the last time.

  Yeah.

  You're not there yet, anyway.

  Me and old crazy Bodine used to have some good times racin scorpions in the kitchen. That was after you'd done left.

  Scorpions?

  Lizards I guess you call em.

  Lizards?

  Yeah. We'd get the yard man to get em for us. We'd race em on the kitchen floor. Get a bet up. Shit. I had me one named Legs Diamond that son of a bitch would stand straight up with them old legs just a churnin and quick as he'd get traction he was gone like a striped assed ape. Never would touch down with his front feet.

  The city mouse shook his head, deep in the fondness of these recollections like a strange little old man there in the blue winter twilight under the bridge. Remembering the sunlight on the buffed floor and the broomhandles laid out and the chalk marks. Lying like the children they were on the cool floor with their fragile reptiles, the small hearts hammering in the palms of their hands. Holding them by their tiny pumping waists and releasing them at a signal. The lizards rearing onto their hind legs as their feet slipped on the smooth waxed concrete, strange little saurians. Harrogate has tacked the hinder toes of his with syrup and it scampers through the barry light to soundless victory.

  Old crazy Leithal King worked in the kitchen after that. I believe he was the biggest fuck-up in the workhouse. Shit. I got tired takin stuff off of him he was so dumb. I used to race lizards with him I'd let him take his pick, we'd have upwards of half a dozen in a kettle. I'd have me some chili pepper in my hand and when I got my lizard I'd rub a little of that in his ass. He'd go like he was on fire. Old Leithal'd get em and wouldnt know how to hold em or nothin, half the time he'd pull their tails off. He raced one one time that son of a bitch stood straight up and went right on over backards, feet just a churnin.

  They sat in blackness. Lights were coming on across the cut, blooming among the barren vines like winter fireflies there.

  Come on, said Suttree. You can stay at my place till you get sorted out what you're going to do.

  I dont want to put nobody out.

  Hell with that. Let's go.

  He rose reluctantly.

  What happened to your cat? said Suttree.

  Shit if I know. Seems like when the shit hits the fan they all clear out. Even the goddamn cat.

  Suttree never locked his door and the city mouse would come and go at hours convenient to his obscure purposes. He wandered through the wastes like a jackal in the dark, in the keep of old warehouse walls and the quiet of gutted buildings. He was enamored of the night and those quiet regions on the city's inward edges too dismal for dwelling. Down alleyways of flueblack brick. Through a gate unhinged to a garden of gloom.

  In the dawn when cold trucks cough and lumber over the cobbles and black men in frayed and partly eaten greatcoats of their country's service stand about the fires in empty trashdrums and spit and speculate and nod there'd shoulder in among them a paler derelict who held his small hands to the flames without a word.

  At night sometimes he'd sit by the right of way where the rails go so surgically in the slack gloss of the quartermoon. Curving away to some better land where strangers sit freely without being asked. Among alien shapes in the honeysuckles watching the train pass chuffing and clacking down the cut between the high banks, leaving in the smoke and leaf swirl such utter loneliness that he, who'd come from hiding to see it go, knelt sobbing on the crossties among the lightly whispered collisions of the leaves with a hot and salty sorrow in his throat, his hands dangling and his stained face wretched, watching the barnred hinder carriage shuttle gently from sight beyond the curve.

  He was caught at his first robbery. White lights crossed like warring swords the little grocery store and back, his small figure tortured there cringing and blinking as if he were being burnt. He dove headlong through a plateglass window and fetched up stunned and bleeding at the feet of a policeman who stood with a cocked revolver at his head saying: I hope you run. I wish you would run.

  He rode handcuffed through the winter landscape to Nashville. It is true that the world is wide. Out there the open ends of cornfield rows wheel past like a turnstile. Dark earth between the dead stalks. The rails at a junction veering in liquid collision and flaring again silently in long vees. His forehead to the cold glass, watching.

  They went on through the long afternoon twilight with the old carriage rocking and clicking and a rain that blew down from the north cutting long tears in the dust on the windows. Barren fields falling away desolate and small flocks of nameless birds flaring over the land and against the darkening sky like seafans stamped from black sheet iron the shapes of winter trees against a winter sky.

  They passed a house and a woman came from the door and tossed a dishpan of water into the yard and wiped her hand on her apron. He pressed his face to the window, watching her recede quietly in the dusk. The train hooted for a crossing and they passed a little store squatting in the coke and dust beyond the yard and they passed a row of empty coaches, the dead windows clocking by and dicing the scene beyond and the long wail of the engine hanging over the country like a thing damned of all deliverance. Harrogate eased the steel bracelet on his wrist and rested his head against the harsh nap of the seat and slept.

  He woke in the night with the train's slowing. Stale smell of smoke and an antique mustiness from the old woodwork of the carriage. The man he was manacled to slept slackjawed. He looked out the window. A long row of lighted henhouses on a hill went by like a passing train itself, row on row of yellow windows backing down the night and drawing off into the darkness. They went through a small town in the mountains, a midnight cafe, empty stools, a dead clock on the wall. As they moved on into the country again the windows became black mirrors and the city rat could see his pinched face watching him back from the cold glass, out there racing among the wires and the bitter trees, and he closed his eyes.

  Somnolent city, cold and dolorous in the rain, the lights bleeding in the streets. Cutting through the alley off Commerce he saw a man huddled among the trash and he knelt to see about him. The face came up and the eyes closed. An oiled mask in black against the bricks.

  Suttree took him by one arm. Ab, he said.

  Can you get me home? A voice from the void, dead and flat and divested of every vanity. Suttree raised up one of the great arms and got it across his shoulder and braced his feet to rise. Sweat stood on his forehead. Ab, he said. Come on.

  He opened his eyes and looked about. Are they huntin me? he said.

  I dont know. Come on.

  He lurched to his feet and stood there reeling while Suttree steadied him by one arm. Their shadows cast by the lamp at the end of the alley fell long and narrow to darkness. As they tottered out of the mouth of the alley a prowlcar passed. Ab sagged, swung back and slammed against the building.

  Goddamnit Ab. Straighten up now. Ab.

  The cruiser had stopped and was backing slowly. The spotlight came on and sliced about and pinned them against the wall.

  Go on, Youngblood.

  No.

  I aint goin.

  You'll be all right in a minute.

  With them I aint goin. Go on.

  No damnit. Ab. I'll talk to them.

  But the black had begun to come erect with a strength and grace contrived out of absolute nothingness and Suttree said: Ab, and the black said: Go on.

  All right, said the officer. What's this?

  I'm just getting him home, said Suttree. He's all right.

  Is that so? He dont look so all right to me. What are you doin with him? He your daddy?

  Fuck you, said Ab.

  What?

  There were two of them now. Suttree could hear the steady guttering of the cruiser's exhaust in the empty street.

  What? said the officer.

  The black turned to Suttree. Go on now, he said. Go on while ye can.

  Officer this man's sick, said Suttree.

  He's goin to b
e sicker, said the cop. He gestured with his nightstick. Get his ass in there.

  Bullshit on that, said the other one. Let me call the wagon. That's that big son of a bitch ...

  Jones lurched free and swung round the corner of the alley at a dead run. The two cops tore past Suttree and disappeared after him. The flat slap of their shoes died down the alley in a series of diminishing reports and then there was only the rough drone of the idling cruiser at the curb. Suttree stepped to the car, eased himself beneath the wheel and shut the door. He sat there for a moment, then he engaged the gearbox and pulled away.

  He drove to Gay Street and turned south and onto the bridge. The radio crackled and a voice said: Car Seven. He turned left at the end of the bridge, past the abandoned roller rink, a rotting wooden arena that leaned like an old silo. He went down Island Home Pike toward the river. The radio fizzled and crackled. Calling any car in area B. Area B. Come in.

  We've got a report of some kind of disturbance at Commerce and Market.

  Suttree drove along the lamplit street. There was no traffic. The lights at Rose's came up along his left and the lights from the packing company. The radio said: Car Nine. Car Nine. Suttree turned off down an old ferry road, going slowly, the car rocking and bumping over the ground, out across a field, the headlights picking up a pair of rabbits that froze like plaster lawn figures. The dead and lightly coiling back of the river moving beyond the grass. The sparsely lit silhouette of the city above. The headlights failed somewhere out over the water in a gauzy smear. He brought the car to a stop and shifted it into neutral and stepped out into the wet grass. He pulled the hoodlatch under the dash and walked to the front of the cruiser and raised the hood. He came back to the car and sat in the seat and removed his shoelace. He looked out at the river and the city. One of the rabbits began to lope slowly through the light ground mist toward the dark of the trees.

  The radio popped. Wagner? What's the story down there?

  Suttree got out and walked around to the front of the car and bent into the motor compartment and pulled back the throttle linkage. The motor rose to a howl and he tied the linkage back with the shoelace, fastening it to the fuel line where it entered the pump. Live flame was licking from the end of the tailpipe. He climbed in and pushed the clutch to the floor and shifted the lever hard up into second in a squawk of gearteeth. The rabbits were both gone. He eased off the seat and stood with one foot on the ground and the other on the clutch. Then he leaped back and slapped the door shut.