Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Have you eaten anything?

  Harrogate shook his head. Shit no. I'm a mere shadder.

  Well, let's see about getting some groceries in your skinny gut.

  You got any money?

  Not yet.

  Shit, said Harrogate.

  They hiked up the cold and desolate street. A bitter wind had risen and little balls of soot hobbled along the walks. Old papers rose and rattled in an alleyway and a paper cup went scuttling. These lone figures going through the naked streets swore at the cold and something like the sun struggled at ten oclock sleazy and heatless beyond the frozen pestilential miasma that cloaked the town.

  At Lane's Drugs they peered in.

  They're closed.

  It's Thanksgiving.

  Harrogate looked about. Well hell, he said.

  We'll go down to Walgreen's. They always have a turkey dinner.

  Large posters hung within the glass facade. A steaming plate of turkey meat with dressing and potatoes and peas and cranberry sauce. The price was fifty-nine cents.

  How does that look? said Suttree.

  Harrogate just shook his head.

  They filed through the door and Suttree went to the cash register. A blond girl in glasses raised up from below the counter with cartons of cigarettes to fill the little shelves. Hey good-lookin, she said.

  Hi Mary Lou.

  What are you doin?

  I came to eat.

  She looked past him and around. Okay, she said.

  I brought a friend.

  Okay, she said.

  He smiled and pursed his lips in a kiss and he and Harrogate made their way down along the counter and climbed onto stools.

  Two turkey dinners, Suttree said.

  She wrote on the green ticket. You all want coffee?

  You want coffee, Gene?

  Hell yes.

  Two coffees.

  They sipped water from little paper cones in openwork holders.

  Quit looking so nervous, Gene.

  Yeah yeah, sure sure, said Harrogate. He was staring at the gaudy cardboard placards above the fountain with their icecream sundaes and model sandwiches. He looked about and he leaned toward Suttree. I thought you said you didnt have no money, he whispered.

  I thought you said you had some.

  I'm gettin the fuck out of here.

  Suttree took hold of his sleeve. I was just kidding, he said.

  You sure?

  Sure.

  Harrogate unbuttoned his jacket and began to look about more easily. Coffee arrived.

  How did you sleep last night?

  He spooned great lavings of sugar. Not worth a shit, he said. You?

  Suttree just shook his head. The stripling on the stool beside him with his heron's legs dangling smelled like a smoked jockstrap. Even the waitress's eyes went a little funny when she passed and she herself no rosegarden.

  Looky here, said Harrogate.

  She set before them each a white platter. Sliced turkey and dressing pooled over in thick gravy and steaming creamed potatoes and peas and a claretcolored dollop of cranberry sauce and hot rolls with pats of creamery butter. Harrogate's eyes were enormous.

  You all want some more coffee?

  Yes mam.

  Harrogate had his mouth so crammed with food his eyes bulged.

  Take it easy, Gene. There's no prize at the bottom of the plate.

  Harrogate nodded, slumped over the plate and encircling it with one arm while he scooped falling forkfuls toward his underjaw. There was no conversation. Down the counter a man sat reading the newspaper. The waitresses lollygagged about, dragging foul dishclouts across the stainless steel equipment. Suttree took in this scene of stone eyed boredom while he ate. He'd have ordered second plates around had it not been for attracting attention.

  With his belly full Harrogate's countenance grew cute and his eyes began to sidle. They drank more coffee. He leaned toward Suttree.

  Listen Sut. Let me have the checks and we'll slip on around to the other side and look at the magazines till we see the coast is clear and then we'll ease on out.

  It's all right.

  Hell, save your money. We may need it. Listen, they're easy here.

  Suttree shook his head. They're watching you, he said.

  What all do you mean, watching me?

  You look suspicious.

  I look like it? What about you?

  They can tell I'm all right just by looking.

  Why you shit-ass.

  Suttree was laughing with his mouth full of coffee.

  Come on Suttree. Hell, you can go out first if you want and I'll foller ye.

  Suttree wiped his chin and looked down at the sharp and strangely wizened childsface rapt with larceny. Gene?

  Yeah?

  You waste me.

  Yeah. Well.

  In the street they stood facing downwind, picking their teeth.

  What are you going to do?

  I dont know. Freeze.

  Dont you know anybody over on the hill you could sort of visit?

  I dont know. I could go up to Rufus's maybe.

  Well get somewhere. I'm going over to see how the old man is. We'll figure something out.

  I believe it's the end of the world.

  What?

  Harrogate was looking at the pavement. He said it again.

  Look at me, Suttree said.

  He looked up. Sad pinched face, streaked with grime.

  Are you serious?

  Well what do you think about it?

  Suttree laughed.

  It aint funny, said Harrogate.

  You're funny, you squirrely son of a bitch. Do you think the world will end just because you're cold?

  It aint just me. It's cold all over.

  It's not cold by Rufus's stove. Now get your ass up there. I'll see you later.

  A colder wind was coming upriver across the bridge. Suttree scurried along like a hunchback. When he got to the other side he scrambled down the frozen mudbank and ducked under the bridge. There was no fire.

  Ho, he called.

  Oh, said a voice from the arches.

  He entered and looked about. The old man's bed and the old man's cart and the mounds of junk and rags and furniture. Frozen seepage hung from the bell joints of cesspipes overhead. Suttree turned and went back up the bank to the street and crossed the bridge again.

  He went up Market and up the hill to Vine Avenue and the halfdollar dosshouse there, old darkened brick and gabley mansard roof shingled up in slates the shape of fishscales. He looked for a bell but there were just the wires hanging from a hole so he tapped on the glass of the sidelights. They gave soft and soundless in their lead muntins. He tapped on the door. After a while he tried the knob. The door was unlocked and he entered. Into a cold and narrow hallway. He shut the door and went down in the semidark calling out hello. No one was about. He paused at the coiled banister finial and gazed up the cold black stairwell. He listened. A sound of snuffling. Someone spat. He came back along the hall and opened a door. Upon a drawing room full of derelicts. It looked like the hatching of some geriatric uprising, this congregation of the ravaged on their rickety chairs all gathered about a patent iron stove, old graylooking men crouched by the warmth in the barren room, nodding and muttering and hawking gobbets of spit clogged with dust and blood against the hot iron to sizzle and stink. The ragpicker was crouched in the corner on the old hearth almost behind the stove. Suttree saw him look up, eyes that could not see far. The ragpicker didnt know who had come in until Suttree said his name.

  Who's that? he said, craning his neck and looking up.

  Suttree.

  Ah, said the ragpicker.

  Suttree smiled. A warm odor of filth hung in the room cut through with a reek of urine.

  What are you doing?

  Mildewing. You?

  I'm freezing.

  This is just the commence of it. I look for the river to freeze over. You better draw your lines. The ice'll cut
em. You never will find em. I've seen it to happen. Bet me.

  Suttree squatted and held his hands to the fire. A man with a mauve face like the faces of the dead was looking down at him.

  How long have you been up here? said Suttree.

  Since two days ago.

  Suttree looked around. Mauve man was looking at a hole in the floor. A quivering string of drool hung from his lower lip halfway to his shoe.

  How long do you plan on staying?

  The ragpicker shrugged up his buzzard's shoulders. For however long it stays cold. I dont care. I just wisht I could die and I'd be better off.

  Suttree ignored this. He'd heard it all before. How many do they have staying here? he said.

  The ragpicker waved his hand. I dont know. What all's here, I reckon. Aint no other place in the house warm that I know of.

  Where are the rooms, upstairs?

  Yeah, upstairs. The beds is all took.

  Mauve man had been listening. Cecil's aint took, he said.

  Well. Cecil's aint took.

  Who's Cecil?

  Just old Cecil. He died.

  Oh.

  He never died in the bed though.

  Where'd he die?

  Uptown. He got too drunk to come in and I reckon he passed out. He was froze, they said. I dont know.

  He froze, said Mauve man. Old Cecil did.

  Cecil froze.

  Old Cecil froze from head to toes

  And stiffer than a tortoise

  In spite of drinking strained canned heat

  And dilute Aqua Fortis

  Suttree waved away these things from his ears. Cecil was being discussed by the company. All agreed that the day of his death was a cold one. Today even colder. It's colder than a welldigger's ass said one, another said A witch's tit. A nun's cunt said a third. On Good Friday.

  Suttree leaned and touched the old man's arm. His coat with the eaten elbows. The ragpicker jerked awake and turned a baleful red eye on him.

  Who do you see about a room here?

  He aint here.

  It's fifty cents isnt it?

  By the night it is. You can rent by the week and beat them rates. Two fifty. If you've got it. What's wrong with your place? You've not got thowed out have ye?

  It's for somebody else.

  Well you better tell him to come on. With this weather. You caint look for somebody to die just ever day.

  When is whatsit due back?

  I caint say.

  Can I look upstairs?

  You can look anyplace you take a notion because he aint here.

  Do you need anything?

  I need everthing.

  Suttree rose.

  Bring something for the pot, said the ragman, and you can sit in. He gestured upward with a gray hand webbed in part of a sock. A lardpail simmered on the one eye of the iron stove and a pieplate with a rock in it lifted along one edge like a thin frogjaw and belched forth a gout of steam and clapped shut again.

  I'll see what I can do, said Suttree. He eased his way around the edge of these half addled aged and rumsoaked dotards and ascended the stairs.

  Muted light fell through a window at the end of the hall The doors had all been unpinned from their hinges and taken away. Suttree peered into an old boudoir with mattresses along the walls. Tattered gray army blankets. A thin little man was squatting by the window masturbating. He did not take his eyes from Suttree nor did he cease pulling at his limp and wattled cock. It was deadly cold in the room, Suttree turned and went back and down the stairs.

  Mrs Rufus opened the door.

  Cold enough for you? said Suttree.

  She motioned him in.

  Harrogate was sitting by the stove with a parcel of blacks all of whom were drunk or working at it. When Harrogate turned and raised his head Suttree saw that the city rat himself was reeling.

  How the hell did you manage to get drunk this quick? he said.

  Drinkin whiskey is how. Have a goddamn drink Sut. Give him a drink Cleo.

  An angular black with splayed teeth held forth a quart picklejar half full of splo. Suttree waved it away.

  Where's Rufus?

  He aint here.

  I can see that.

  I told that fool not to give him none of that whiskey, said Mrs Rufus from behind him in a muted shriek.

  I never poured it down his thoat, said a dark dwarf by the stove-door.

  Suttree looked around. Well fuck it, he said.

  Who is this cat? said a tawny freckled halfbreed. Small skull covered with snips of copper wire.

  He's cool man, he's cool, said Harrogate, having fallen easily into the way of things.

  Suttree turned and went out. He pulled the door to behind him and went on along the little cinder path past the hoglot, a pair of snouts working in the fence mesh to get the wind of him. Long ears tilting, pale eyes watching from their purlieu of frozen mire. He went out to the road and across the viaduct toward town. The lightest rain of soot was falling and a handful of small birds flared suddenly about him, moving through the bitter air with a faint rasping sound. Suttree looked down at the blackwater creek swirling below, the gray panes of scalloped ice. He went on toward the town, a colorless world this winter afternoon where all things bear that grainy look of old films and the buildings rise into an obscurity prophetic and profound.

  He went up Central, slumped and hands deeply pocketed. An eyeless beggar addled with the cold sat in the empty feastday street singing a canticle to his eternal night and holding out a simple frozen claw for whatever might fall almswise. Suttree hawked up and thooked forth a clot of phlegm against a boarded storewindow and started across the street. As he did so his eye fell on a cartoken in the gutter. He bent to claim it. Small brass coin stamped through with a K. He crossed the street and swung up through the open door of a standing trolley and dropped the coin in the glass cage and went down the aisle. The driver watched him in the mirror. Suttree eased himself into the cold leather seat and looked out.

  Lights came on above the shops, a neon sign here, sudden paltry spanglements against the bluegray dusk. A fabled miscellany in this pawnshop window. The door clattered and hushed shut and the trolley lurched forward. The pale domes of light in the clerestory waxed more yellow. The seats to the front of the streetcar were vacant yet two blacks hung by one arm each like gibbons from the chrome rail overhead and swayed with the gathering speed. With the heel of his hand Suttree cleared a small window in the frosted glass and peered out at the few figures receding along the walks. Fellow citizens in this bewintered city. A passing rack of hot neon washed his own sad countenance from the glass. He leaned his head against the cold pane, watching pedestrians toil from pool to pool of lamplight, trailing wisps of vapor, bent figures, homebound. He could smell the old varnished wood of the sash and the brass of the catches. The trolley slowed, surged forth again. Cars passed below, a rumpling sound of tires over the bricks. The buildings dropped away. They were going by a frozen mudflat, lunar, naked, spoored with fossil dogtracks. Under the billboard lights small sprawling mica constellations.

  The lightwires slung past in shallow convections pole to pole and the loneliness rode in his stomach like an egg.

  Bell ching. This archaic craft grinding to a halt. People shuffling out through the folding door. A wet pneumatic hiss, clanking into motion once again. Your face among the brown bags old lady. Waiting to cross. Blinking at the transit of these half empty frames slapping past. Beyond in a yellowlit housewindow two faces fixed aspectant and forever in some domestic vagary. Rapid his progress who petrifies these innocents into stony history.

  They swung past the deserted park, the midway, the ferriswheel like a bumtout armature standing black and cold against the farther streetlamps. The trolley heeled hard by a brick wall and went rattling down an alleyway where scrawled fucks in rainwashed chalk flashed past the window under the crackling blue stroboscope of the antenna. They wheeled through a long carbarn and pulled to a stop with dimming lights. />
  End of the line, buddy, the driver called back.

  I'll just ride on back to town with you, Suttree said.

  Well you'll have to come up here and put a token in the box.

  I thought you could ride as far as you wanted on one token.

  Not on this streetcar.

  Suttree rose and made his way down the aisle, his eye studying the floor for a chance of coin or token among the matchstems and gum wrappers. Listen, he said, cant I just ride on back?

  Fares is one way, said the driver.

  I dont have another token.

  They're five for thirty cents. Or you can put in a dime.

  I dont have any money.

  Oh well, said the driver. He reached and got his little leather bag and rose. This would be a pleasant world if everybody could just ride and ride.

  He descended the steps with his satchel and crossed through the dim electric gloom of the terminal toward the dispatch office. Suttree went out to the street.

  A few carlights came owllike from the murk and receded. He stood beneath a streetlamp with his thumb out. In his thin coat he was cold to the bone in moments. The streetcar hove from the carbarn and sucked by the soft yellow bore of the headlamp went trundling past. Blacks nodding in their windowstrips. A trolley of dolls or frozen dead.

  Suttree with one foot in the gutter glared numbly after the helmless driver and the springworn trucks moaned and lolled on their shackles and a blue tailstar clicked along the wires and the trolley drew away into the night. He gripped his thighs through his threadbare pockets and set off along the weedy walkway. The lights of Knoxville quaked in a faint penumbra to the west as must the ruins of many an older city seen by herders in the hills, by barbaric tribesmen shuffling along the roads. Suttree with his miles to go kept his eyes to the ground, maudlin and muttersome in the bitter chill, under the lonely lamplight.

  The old railroader had a fire going in the little iron stove and he'd pulled his bed crosswise before it for warmth. Suttree slid the door shut. Back down the tracks the gray ruins of summer weeds looked wrinkled and very old.

  Come set by the fire, the old man said. I didnt know it was so cold.

  I've brought it all inside with me. How have you been?

  Mean as ever. How you makin it?