Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Doll came to the door at Ab's and looked him up and down. Hunh, she said. What happen to you?

  Some son of a bitch hit me with a rock.

  Mm-mmm, she said, shaking her head. Come in.

  How's Ab?

  She shut the door behind him.

  Suttree turned in the stale and darkened room. Why didnt you tell me he was all screwed up?

  I caint do nothin with him.

  Where is he, in the back?

  She gestured him on with one hand and he pushed back the curtain. At first he could not see him well but gradually the black's half closed and swollen eyes appeared, his glistening misshapen face. His broken mouth moved painfully. He said: Hey Youngblood.

  Suttree heard his breath suck in the quiet. Hey Ab, he said. How are you.

  I'm okay. I's just slippin me a nap. What you up to in the heat of the day? You catchin any fish?

  Not to amount to anything. Have you had a doctor?

  A throaty laugh shook the sagging bedsprings. He moved his head on the pillows as if he'd seek a darker place to rest it. What I needs with a doctor?

  I think you need some help.

  That may be. But I aint in need of bein patched up and prayed over.

  What can I get you?

  Ah Youngblood. I dont need nothin.

  Somebody told me you tried to whip everybody at city jail.

  You caint do nothin with them crackers. They needs they wigs tightened ever little bit.

  I remember the last time they picked up Byrd and Sam Slusser you saw cops for weeks all over Knoxville with bandages and black eyes limping around.

  Jones chuckled.

  I guess far as that goes we might look for some this week.

  Ah, said Jones. Aint but one of em I wants.

  Who's that, Quinn?

  Jones didnt answer. How's you little buddy? he said. He aint drownded hisself in that boat yet is he?

  Not yet.

  He come by here other day tryin to sell the old woman what he call scobs.

  Scobs?

  What he call em. Look like old pigeons to me. He had em all dressed and everthing. He some kind of a mess, aint he?

  He's crazy as a mouse in a milkcan.

  Jones chuckled.

  I'm going uptown. You want me to bring you anything?

  Naw.

  You sure you okay?

  He turned his battered face. Do somethin for me, Youngblood.

  Name it.

  Go see Miss Mother for me. Tell her I needs to see her.

  Wouldnt Doll go for you?

  Doll dont want me to have no truck with her. She wont run her off if she comes down here. You tell her.

  What else?

  That's all. I'd be much obliged.

  Okay. Take care and I'll see you later.

  Yeah, said the black.

  He crossed the fields and went up Front Avenue and turned down a steep cinderpath past a run of chickens, a sleeping dog. The path went through a locust wood and the huge beanpods hung everywhere in a sunlight stained and made obscure by windblown papers staked out among the blackened upper branches, tents of newsprint and trash and the ruins of kites all tattered and rainleached and impaled upon the locust spikes. He crossed an iron sewer main half out of the ground and he descended into an old limestone sink that had been filled back as a city dump and graded over years ago. Now it was a small glade and there was a raw board shack in the center of it. Suttree came down the path and out from the last of the trees. The ninekiller flew. A few garish outland birds leaned from the limbs to watch him, gaudy longtailed fowl, he didnt know what kind. Their moult feathers lay about in the dust of the yard. He crossed to the door and tapped with his knuckles.

  It opened on a female dwarf coalblack in widow's weeds who wore little goldwire spectacles on a chain about her neck. Scarce four feet tall she was, her hand on the doorknob at her ear like a child or a trained house ape. She looked up at Suttree and she said: Well, you aint come for yourself I dont reckon.

  No mam, he said. She turned her head and cocked it slightly. He said: I came for Ab Jones. He wanted to know if you could come over to his place.

  Come in here, she said, stepping back.

  He entered with a peculiar feeling of deference. When she shut the door behind them they were in almost total dark. She led the way along a hall and through a curtained doorway. Black drapes were tacked to the window sashes. He could make out a table and some chairs and a small cot.

  Set down, she said.

  He sat at the table and looked about. She had left the room. Strange effects began to accrue out of the semidark like figures in a dream. On the table was an assortment of silver vases and candlesticks and porringers and bowls all covered over with sheets of yellow cellophane. There was a fireplace that held a broken coalgrate propped on bricks and there was a beveled lookinglass above the mantel. On the mantel a lamp, a vase, a marble clock. What appeared to be a stuffed bird. Smaller objects harbored in the gloom. An electric fan on the table kept turning from side to side and washing him with periodic gusts of fetid air. Flowered wallpaper had been glued over the shack's naked boards and the joints had laddered and split the paper. Everywhere hung portraits of blacks, strange family groups where the faces watched gravely from out of their paper past. Hanging in the dark like galleries of condemned. Their homemade clothes.

  He heard the creak of a cellar door. On the hearth cut flowers in a blue coalscuttle stirred and trembled.

  He could hear her coming from outside, doorlatch and the scuffle of her soft shoes. She entered and closed the door behind her. In the light of its closing he saw a coatrack hung with little fairground birds that swung or turned on their wires in the wind. She came to him and took his head in her hand and held up something small and oddly shaped and wrapped in an old socktoe. Suttree fended it off. Wait a minute, he said. What is that?

  Hold still, she said.

  He reared back. In his hand her forearm felt like a thin piece of kindling.

  Aint a fool a wonderful thing? she said. It's ice, boy. Now set still.

  He subsided into the chair and she laid the cold wet rag against the knot on his forehead and took his hand in her own, a thin little thing you'd remember from touching hands with a monkey through the bars or having a pet coon. She guided his hand to the ice and he held it there. A small rill of water ran down his nose. His head began to feel nicely numb.

  You'd better bring some of this for Jones, he said.

  What's got with him?

  He got beat up pretty bad down at the jail last week. I guess that's why he wants to see you.

  He dont care nothin about that. He want to kill his enemies is what he want.

  Kill his enemies? Suttree had his head bent forward to let the water drip.

  Mm-hmm.

  Which enemies?

  Standing there by the chair where he sat her eyes were level with his. She looked at him. A face wherein lay everything and nothing. A visage hacked from cold black wax. She gestured with one hand, extending her arm and suggesting the world that stood beyond the thin board walls and beyond the locust forest, a gesture both grave and gracious that acknowledged endless armies of the unbending pale. That was all. She put a finger in her mouth to adjust her teeth.

  Suttree stood and said that he must go.

  She held back the curtain and he went through and made his way to the door. He paused there with his hand on the knob. What should I tell Jones? he said.

  I caint make no call down there.

  He really wants you to come.

  Mm-hmm.

  He needs you to come.

  I knows that.

  Can I bring him up here?

  He knows where I'm at.

  Well.

  He opened the door. White sunlight blinded him. Thank you for the ice, he said.

  Mm-hmm, she said.

  By the time he reached the street the ice was gone and he stopped in Howard Clevinger's to get another piece. Lifting the rus
ty lid of the drinkbox and sorting through the cold water for a rightsized chunk, the smooth shapes sliding about among the bottlenecks with bits of paper and flakes of fallen paint. Gatemouth was watching him from the rocker and when he raised up from behind the lid and clapped the piece of ice to his forehead he laughed and wheezed and rocked and shook his head.

  Ho ho, said Suttree.

  Who went up the side of yo head, baby?

  Suttree leaned back. On the cardboard ceiling were tacked odd shaped bits of paper.

  Who you jump salty with, Sut?

  I ran into a door.

  Hee hee, chuckled Gatemouth.

  Where's all your nutwagon friends today?

  Out amongst em.

  Good, said Suttree. He held the ice to his head and went out. Clevinger, slouched in his chair with his arms crossed, opened one eye when he passed the counter and closed it again. Suttree went up the hill toward town.

  It was late afternoon when he returned. He sat on the porch and watched the river pass. Before dark fell he rose and went up the river to Ab Jones's.

  Two white men were drinking beer in the corner and Doll was frying hamburgers on the little burner in the galley. He went through the room and pushed back the curtain. The bed was empty. He pushed back the plastic shower curtain on the other side. Jones was standing at the urinal, bracing himself up with one hand against the wall. He was wearing a pair of khaki undershorts and even in the dim light from the small window on the river Suttree saw such galaxies of scars and old rendings mended and slick and livid suture marks as made him gasp. He looked like some dusky movie monster patched up out of graveyard parts and stitched by an indifferent hand. Suttree let the curtain fall.

  What did she say, Youngblood?

  She said for you to come up there.

  He was looking at the floor, waiting for an answer. Jones didnt answer.

  I told her you needed her to come but she wouldnt have any part of it.

  Well.

  You want me to try again?

  Naw. Go on out there and get you a beer.

  Do you think you could make it up there?

  I'll get up there one of these days.

  Suttree went back to the front room.

  You want a hamburger? Doll said.

  Suttree said he would.

  He got a beer from the cooler and crossed to the far corner and sat down. The two men watched him. Suttree took a long pull from the bottle and set it on the marble at his elbow. She came shuffling over in her houseshoes and set a thick plate before him with a hamburger and some pickles and went back.

  Hey, said one of the men.

  Suttree looked at them.

  How come he gets his first? He come in after us.

  She looked up from behind the plywood counter. Her one eye blinked. She looked enormously tired. He work here, she said.

  They looked at Suttree. He raised the hamburger and took a good bite. It was heavily seasoned with pepper. Rich grease and mayonnaise dripped to the plate.

  Hey buddy, you work here?

  Suttree looked at them. They didnt look good.

  How about bringin us a couple more beers, good buddy.

  He pointed toward Doll Tell her, he said.

  Hell, she said you worked here. Do you not wait tables?

  Shit boy, we might be heavy tippers and you not know it.

  Suttree set the beer down and leaned forward in his chair. I'm going to tell you goofy pricks something, he said. If you cause that big son of a bitch to come out here as bad as he feels he is going to kill you where you sit.

  They looked toward the rear where he'd pointed. One turned to the other. Is he back there? he said.

  Shit if I know.

  I thought he was in jail.

  Suttree looked at Doll. She was turning the pats of meat, her sullen face shining with grease and steam.

  We'll see you outside, motherfucker, said the man at the table.

  Sure, said Suttree. He finished his hamburger and drained the beer bottle and rose. He set the plate and bottle on the counter and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  What do I owe?

  You dont owe nothin.

  Thanks Doll.

  Dont you bring that witch down here.

  Suttree grinned. She wouldnt come, he said.

  Mm-hmm. She came from behind the counter with the plates and Suttree went on to the door. He listened for the men to say something but they didnt.

  He crawled into bed without lighting the lamp and he was up not much past daybreak and out to run his lines.

  When he came back upriver with his catch the Indian's skiff was moored to the rocks under the bluff and the Indian hailed him from the top with a piercing whistle.

  Suttree waved.

  The Indian cupped his hands and called for him to pull in. Suttree feathered the left oar and came up under the shadow of the rocks. The Indian was working his way down the path. Suttree sat the oars and waited.

  I got us a turtle, the Indian said. He bent to look at Suttree. What happened to you?

  What?

  He pointed at Suttree's head. Suttree put a finger gently to his wound. I got that yesterday. Your buddies.

  My buddies?

  When I was coming back up after I left you somebody cut loose at me with a flipper.

  He was a hell of a shot.

  Suttree looked up to see if he was smiling but he wasnt. He rose and went down the rocks. Come on, he said. I'll show you your supper.

  Suttree climbed from his skiff with the rope and made fast. The Indian had taken up a cord from among the rocks and was hauling it in hand over hand. A hulking shape loomed and subsided. It entered the shadowline of the rock pool and scuttled slowly among the ebbing fish heads. Suttree shaded his eyes. It rose up, dragged by its head, a mosscolored shadow taking shape, a craggy leathercovered skull. The Indian braced his feet and swung it up dripping from the river and onto the rocks and it squatted there watching them, its baleful pig's eyes blinking. It was tied through the lower jaw with a section of wire and the Indian took hold of the wire and tugged at it. The turtle bated and hissed, its jaws gaped. The Indian had out his pocketknife and now he opened it and he pulled the turtle's obscene neck out taut and with a quick upward motion of the blade severed the head. Suttree involuntarily drew back. The turtle's craggy head swung from the wire and what lay between the braced forefeet was a black and wrinkled dog's cunt slowly pumping gouts of near black blood. The blood ran down over the stones and dripped in the water and the turtle shifted slowly on the rock and started toward the river.

  The Indian undid the wire and flung the head into the river and reached up the turtle by its tail and swung it trailing blood toward Suttree for him to heft.

  Suttree reached to take it by one hindfoot but when he touched the foot it withdrew beneath the scaly eaves of the shell.

  Here, you can get him by the tail.

  He reached past the Indian's grip and took the headless turtle. Blood dripped and spattered on the stones.

  What do you think he'll weigh?

  I dont know, said Suttree. He's a big son of a bitch. Thirty pounds maybe?

  May be. Lay him down here and we'll dress him.

  Suttree laid the turtle on the rock and the Indian scouted about until he came up with a goodsized stone.

  Watch out, he said.

  Suttree stepped back.

  The Indian raised the stone and brought it down upon the turtle's back. The shell collapsed with a pulpy buckling sound.

  I never saw a turtle dressed before, said Suttree. But the Indian had knelt and was cutting away the broken plates of shell with his pocketknife and pitching them into the river. He pulled the turtle's meat up off the plastron and gouged away the scant bowels with his thumb. He skinned out the feet. What hung headless in his grip as he raised it aloft was a wet gray foetal mass, a dim atavism limp and dripping.

  Plenty of meat there, said the Indian. He laid it out on the rock and bent and swished the bl
ade of his knife in the river.

  How do you fix it, said Suttree.

  Put him in a pot and cook him slow. Lots of vegetables. Lots of onions. I got my own things I put in. Come on I show you.

  I've got to get on to town with these fish. How long does it take to cook.

  Three, four hours.

  Well why dont I come back this evening? Okay.

  Suttree looked at the saclike shape of the shucked turtle dripping from the Indian's hand.

  You be sure and come, the Indian said.

  I'll be here.

  He pushed off in the skiff and took up the oars. The Indian raised the turtle and swung it before him like a censer.

  As he left the markethouse it was beginning to rain. Merchants were out with poles winching down their awnings. The vendors scurried among their trucks, stowing their produce more inboard and a crazed prophet in biblical sandwichboards tottered past muttering darkly at the heavens. Suttree went up the alley and up the back stairs at Comer's.

  A company of mutes were playing check at the rear table and some raised their hands in greeting. Suttree raised back, going to the washbasin for paper towels. One of the mutes gestured at him, carving words with a dexter hand in the smoky air. Suttree was drying his face. He thought he had the gist of it and nodded and formed words with his own fingers, puzzled, erased, began again. They nodded encouragement. He fashioned his phrase for them and they laughed their croaky mute's laughter and elbowed one another. Suttree grinned and went on to the lunchcounter.

  Eddie Taylor was playing bank pool in the sideroom onehanded against a stranger and spotting him two balls. Suttree sat at the counter and turned his stool to watch. The balls rifled across the felt and whacked viciously into the pockets, Taylor laughing, joking, chalking his cue. Bending, stroking. The ball smoking back down from the end rail. Whop.