Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Suttree lifted his beer and sipped it and set it back and looked at Leonard. You're not shitting me are you? he said.

  About what?

  This whole thing. Are you telling me the truth?

  Goddamn Sut. You think I'd kid about a thing like this? Hell, even Lorina dont know he's dead.

  What does she think is going on in the back bedroom?

  She just thinks he's sick and she caint see him. That's all.

  How old is she?

  I dont know. Six I guess. She starts school this year. Maybe seven. Look Sut, we can get him out while she's in bed of a night. The old lady'll help us. We'll just haul him out and put him in the trunk. I got some wheelrims and some chains we can use.

  What the fuck are you talking about?

  Some old rims and stuff. To weight him with.

  Weight him with?

  Yeah. We'll have that old fucker so loaded down he wont even show up for judgment day.

  Where the hell are you going to put him?

  Leonard straightened up and looked around. We got to hold it down, he whispered.

  Okay.

  We'll dump him in the fuckin river of course. You got a better idea?

  I sure do.

  Okay. Let's hear it.

  Forget this goofy goddamned notion and just call the police or whatever and tell them to come and get his stinking ass.

  Leonard looked at Suttree. He shook his head. You dont understand, he said.

  I understand I'm not getting mixed up in it.

  Listen ...

  Get Harrogate to help you. Loonies ought to stick together.

  He aint got a boat. Listen Sut ...

  The hell he aint got a boat.

  You got to be shittin me Sut. I wouldnt set foot in that fuckin thing.

  Suttree drained his mug and stood. I've got to go, he said. You do what you want but count me out.

  In the cool of the mornings he'd run his lines, out with the sun on the foggy river. Afternoons he'd walk in the city but he kept much to himself. He came upon Smokehouse uptown and the old derelict pawed him and begged for a coin. Suttree was holding his pocket with one hand while he reached in with the other but then he looked at Smokehouse and said no. He moved past the old cripple but found him fallen in at his elbow, hobbling along on his twisted legs like a broken disciple. Hey, called Smokehouse, though he wasnt a foot away.

  Hey yourself, said Suttree.

  Hell fire, let me have somethin. A dime. Goddamn, Bud, you got a dime aint ye?

  Mine's the greater need, said Suttree.

  This brought the old man up short. He watched Suttree go on up Market Street. He called out again but Suttree didnt turn. That's right, called the derelict. That's the way to treat a old cripple man never done nothin but favors for ye.

  He made his way down Vine among blacker mendicants but he kept his silver to himself such as he had of it. An old negress in rags washed up on the paving beneath the Human Furniture Company like a piece of dark and horrid flora ran her wasted leg over the walkway before her and invited whomever to walk upon it. It lay there like a charred treelimb. Whomever smile wanly and look away and she calls down upon them the darker curses of a harried god. Her eyes are red with drink, her geography is immutable. Whereas the quick are subject to the weathers of a varied fate and know not where a newer day will find them she is fixed in perpetuity, steadfast, a paradigm of black anathema impaled upon the floor of the city like a medieval felon.

  Suttree passed by, in these days moving through the streets like a dog at large. Such old things strangely new, the city seen through eyes unsealed. The repetition of its own images had washed out and leveled it and he saw upright and arrant on the dead alluvial grimmer shapes, the city of his remembrance a ghost like him and he himself a shape among the ruins, prodding dried artifacts like some dim paleontrope among the bones of fallen settlements where no soul's left to utter voice at what has passed. A garrulous jocko was miming buggery behind a young black girl passing on the walk and she turned on him with hot eyes and he fled laughing. The gallery of indolents draped among trashcans and curbstones pointed and croaked. Give it to you mammy, she told them, and the black mummer mimed masturbation at her, two hands holding an imagined phallus the size of a lightpole while the watchers hooted and slapped their knees. To Suttree they appeared more sinister and their acts a withershins allegory of anger and despair, clutches of the iniquitous and unshriven howling curses at the gates and calling aloud for redress of their right damnation to a god who need be interceded with bassackwards or obliquely. Some knew him to nod to and nodded but the hand he raised to greet them with seemed held in a gesture of dread. He moved on in the accomplished dusk. Night found him in the B&J with Bucket and J-Bone and he danced with a young girl who slewed against him shamelessly. Blackhaired, her grimestreaked legs fullthighed under the thin dress, she moved with a kind of lyrical obscenity. She had a tooth out in the front and when she smiled she'd poke the tip of her tongue in the gap. When the place closed they rode through the streets in the back of a cab and he cupped her breast in his palm and she put her tongue in his mouth. He clove her damp and naked thighs with his hand, the moist warm pouched everything tucked under his finger in the silk-crotched crevice there. He took her to Ab Jones's first. An after-hours place, he told her. He'd had them leap from the cab at the sight of his own dark houseboat there on the deserted riverfront. They drank in a corner and he took her down to his shack and lit the lamp and turned the wick low in the glass.

  She sat there on the cot in her pale blue drawers while he ran his tongue in her ear. Her drinking her beer, quivering a little. Bitter taste of wax and the weight of her plump young tit naked in his hand. As she lay back he could see her dull hypoplastic doll's face and her full vapid look for a moment before her head went under the dark of the wall. He fell asleep sprawled against her.

  He'd been sleeping he knew not how long when a light flared somewhere and the joints in the shanty wall were lit like a bead curtain. He thought it was the sweep of a barge's shorelight but he heard a motor running just beyond his door. He thought police. The motor ceased and the lights dimmed to nothing. He heard a car door slam. He sat up in the cot.

  What is it? she said.

  I dont know.

  Steps on the catwalk, a knock at the door.

  Who is it? said Suttree.

  It's me.

  Who?

  Me. Leonard.

  Mother of God, said Suttree.

  Who is it? said the girl.

  Suttree rose from the cot and scrabbled about for his breeches. He got them on and went to the table and turned up the wick in the lampchimney. The girl sat up in the bed with her arms folded across her breasts. Who is it? she said. She was pulling the sheet over herself.

  Suttree opened the door. Leonard had not lied. It was himself. Eyes huge and earnest. He spoke in an excited whisper. I got him, he said.

  You what?

  I got him. He's in the trunk.

  Suttree tried to shut the door.

  You're breakin my goddamned foot, Sut.

  Get it out of the fucking door then.

  Listen Sut ...

  I said no, goddamnit.

  It's too late Sut. I got him out here I'm tellin you.

  You're crazy Leonard. You hear me?

  I'll pay ye, Sut.

  Get away. Go get one of your faggot friends to do it.

  You caint get them motherfuckers to do nothin. Listen, the old lady told me to tell you she never would forget you for it. Listen ...

  You tell him to watch his mouth, the girl called out. There's ladies in here if he dont know it.

  Who the fuck is that? said Leonard.

  Suttree sagged against the jamb. The lamp on the table behind him was smoking and he stood away from the door and adjusted the wick. You son of a bitch, he said.

  Leonard came in and shut the door behind him and leaned against it. He smelled peculiar. Whew, he said. I was afraid you might not
be home.

  Would to God I wasnt, said Suttree. He pushed back a chair and slumped wearily at the table.

  Why didnt you tell me they was someone in here? said Leonard. He nodded affably toward the girl in the bed. Hidy, he said.

  Why dont you just go away, said Suttree.

  Listen. Come on outside where we can talk.

  No.

  He glanced impatiently at the girl. We caint talk in here, he whispered hoarsely.

  I want to go home, the girl said.

  Suttree laid his head on the table. Leonard tugged at his elbow. Sut? he said. Hey Sut.

  He got up and got his shoes and put them on. He pulled on his shirt.

  Where you goin? the girl wanted to know.

  I'll be right back.

  I want to go home.

  Just wait a minute, will you?

  They walked down the plank and out through the weeds and Suttree sat down. It was a warm night and the city behind them drawn upon the dark with its neon geometry seemed somehow truer than the shape it wore by day. The lights on the far side of the river stood recast in the water like torches shimmering inexplicably just beneath the surface.

  Leonard.

  Yeah Sut.

  Sit down.

  He sat. We better get started, he said.

  Leonard do you really have your father in the trunk of that car there?

  Hell Sut. You dont think I'd kid about a thing like that do you?

  Suttree shook his head sadly. He groped about and plucked a handful of weeds and let them fall again. After a while he said: Whose car is it?

  Whose car?

  Yes.

  I dont know. Hell Sut, it dont make no difference whose car it is.

  The car is stolen.

  Well, shit. I aint goin to sell it or nothin. I just borrowed it is all. Hell Sut, they'll get their car back. There wont be no heat about the fuckin car.

  I see.

  There aint nothin to worry about.

  No. Of course not.

  They sat in silence. Leonard stirred uneasily. After a while he said: Are you ready?

  Am I ready?

  Yeah.

  No. I'm not ready.

  Well listen Sut ...

  I sure as fuck am not ready.

  Well it aint gettin no earlier.

  I will never be ready.

  We caint just leave him in the goddamned car. You know that, Sut.

  I know that?

  Well what the hell.

  You crazy bastard. Why me?

  You got a ...

  A boat. I know. Mother of God.

  Hell fire Sut, I've done done the worst of it. Gettin the car and the chains and all. It wont take no time.

  But Suttree had risen from the weeds. Just dont say another word, he said. Just be quiet.

  What about her?

  You get in the car and go down to just above that tree there. There's a landing. I'll get the boat.

  When he went back in she was dressed. I want to go home, she said, and I mean it.

  Suttree took up the lamp from the table. You can wait or you walk, he said. It's strictly up to you.

  I dont know where I'm at, she said petulantly.

  I'm sure of that, said Suttree. You're not alone, either.

  You aint goin to leave me in the dark, she called. But Suttree was gone.

  He got the boat and rowed down to the landing and pulled in sideways. When they raised the trunklid of the car a vile stench came flooding out. He stepped back half gagging. Great God, he said.

  Bad aint it?

  Bad? Suttree looked at the stars. That's the awfullest stink I ever smelled.

  That's the biggest reason we had to get him out of the house.

  God you're a sick bastard.

  Well give me a hand with him.

  Just a minute.

  Suttree pulled off the cotton undershirt he wore and tied it around his lower face.

  Okay, said Leonard.

  Leonard's father was wrapped in the sheets he'd died in months before. Leonard was setting out wheelrims and a pile of chain. He got hold of the body and wrestled part of it over the car bumper. Suttree held the lamp.

  Get his feet there, Sut, and I'll haul on his arms.

  How did you get him in there?

  What?

  Suttree freed his mouth from the shirt. I said how did you get him in there?

  Me and the old lady done it. He aint all that heavy.

  Suttree took hold of the limbs beneath the sheet with sick loathing. They dragged the body out and it slumped to the ground with a nauseating limberness. Leonard's father lay like a dead klansman. By the light of the lamp on the bare ground they could see strange brown stains seeping through the sheets. Suttree turned away and went to sit on the bank for a while.

  They dragged the remains down to the boat and Suttree stood in the transom and hauled the thing aboard, goggleheaded under the thin cotton, against his naked chest. Leonard bearing up behind with the lamp, chains clanking.

  They rowed far downstream. Leonard saying Hell, Sut, any place is good and Suttree rowing on. They looked like old jacklight poachers, their faces yellow masks in the night. The corpse lay slumped in the floor of the skiff. The lamp standing on the stern seat with its thin spout of insects caught in its light the wet sweep of the oars, the beads of water running on the underblades like liquid glass and the dimples of the oarstrokes coiled out through the city lights where they lay fixed among the deeper shapes of stars and galaxies fast in the silent river.

  Coming about below the railway bridge Suttree shipped the oars. Leonard was at wrapping his father in chains, fastening them with dimestore locks, chaining up the wheelrims through the center holes. One of the old man's legs lay twisted in the floor of the skiff and Suttree could see the stained flannel pajamas that he wore.

  I think that'll get it, Sut, said Leonard.

  Think it will?

  Yeah. Shit, this'll take his ass to the bottom like a fucking rocket.

  Are you going to say a few words?

  Do what?

  Say a few words.

  Leonard gave a sort of nervous little grin. Say a few words?

  Arent you? I mean you're not going to bury your father without anything at all.

  I aint burying him.

  The hell you're not.

  I'm just puttin him in the river.

  It's the same thing.

  It's the same as burial at sea.

  Well goddamn, Suttree.

  Well?

  This old son of a bitch never went to church in his life.

  All the more reason.

  Well I dont know no goddamned service nor nothin. Shit. You say it.

  The only words I know are the Catholic ones.

  Catholic?

  Catholic.

  Leonard regarded his chained and hooded father in the floor of the skiff. Hell fire. He sure wasnt no Catholic. What about that part that goes through the shadow of the valley of death. You know any of that?

  Suttree stood up in the skiff. The river about them was black and calm and the bridgelights rigid where they lay upstream in the water.

  Give me a hand with him.

  Leonard looked up, one side of him softly lit by the lamp at his elbow, his shadow in the night enormous. He leaned and took hold of the cadaver and together they raised him. They laid him across the seat, one leg already reaching over the side into the river as if the old man couldnt wait. Suttree put his foot against the thing and shoved it. It made a dull splash and the white sheets flared in the lamplight and it was gone. Leonard sat back down in the stern of the skiff. Whew, he said.

  Suttree washed his hands in the river and dried them on his trousers and took up the oars again. Leonard tried him in conversation on several topics as they came back up the river but Suttree rowing said no word.

  Suttree drunk negotiated with a drunk's meticulousness the wide stone steps of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. The virtues of a stainless bir
th were not lost on him, no not on him. The moon's horn rode in the dark hard by the steeple. An older sot wobbled in the street without, caroming along a wall like a mechanical duck in a carnival. Suttree entered the vestibule and paused by a concrete seashell filled with sacred waters. He stood in the open door. He entered.

  Down the long linoleum aisle he went, and with care, tottered not once. A musty aftertaste of incense hung in the air. A thousand hours or more he's spent in this sad chapel he. Spurious acolyte, dreamer impenitent. Before this tabernacle where the wise high God himself lies sleeping in his golden cup.

  He eased himself into the frontmost pew and sat. By his knee on the pewback a small brass clasp springloaded for the gripping of hatbrims. A little bracket containing literature. Long leatherpadded kneebenches underfoot. Where rows of hemorrhoidal dwarfs convene by night.

  He looked about. Beyond the chancel gate three garish altars rose like gothic wedding cakes in carven marble. Crocketed and gargoyled, the steeples iced with rows of marble frogs ascending. Here a sallow plaster Christ. Agonized beneath his muricate crown. Spiked palms and riven belly, there beneath the stark ribs the cleanlipped spear-wound. His caved haunches loosely girdled, feet crossed and fastened by a single nail. To the left his mother. Mater alchimia in skyblue robes, she treads a snake with her chipped and naked feet. Before her on the altar gutter two small licks of flame in burgundy lampions. In the sculptor's art there always remains something unsaid, something waiting. This statuary will pass. This kingdom of fear and ashes. Like the child that sat in these selfsame bones so many black Fridays in terror of his sins. Viceridden child, heart rotten with fear. Listening to the slide shoot back in the confessional, waiting his turn. Light pierced, light fell from the pieced and leaded glass of the windows in the western wall, light moteless and oblique, wine colors, rose magenta, leached cobalt, cinnabar and delicate citrine. The stainedglass saints lay broken in their panes of light among the pews and in the summer afternoon quietude a smell of old varnish and the distant cries of children in a playground. Memories of May processions, a priest in a black biretta rising from his carved oak faldstool to shuffle heavyfooted down the aisle attended by churlish and acnefaced striplings. The censer swings in chains, clinks back and forth, at the apex of each arc coughing up a quick gout of smoke. The priest dips the aspergillum in a gold bucket. He casts left and right, holy water upon the congregation. They pass out the door where two scullery nuns stand bowed in fouled habits. There follows a troop of small christians in little white fitted frocks. They bear candles. They are singing. Cornelius has set Danny Yike's hair on fire. An acrid stench. A flailing about the boy's head by a dracular nun. Patch of blackened stubble at the base of his skull. The boys laughing. The girls in white veils, white patentleather shoes with little straps. Snickering into the roses they hold in their prayerclasped hands. Small specters of fraudulent piety. At the foot of the steps a pale child collapses. Her rose lies dwindled on the stone. Some others taking cue drop about her. They lie on the pavement like patches of melting snow. Folk rush about these spent ones, fanning with folded copies of the Sunday Messenger.