Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Gene, you're crazy.

  That's the real shit there. Buddy boy that'll get it when Bruton Snuff wont.

  You cant blow it. You dont have a detonator.

  I can blow it with a shotgun shell.

  I doubt it.

  You keep your old ear to the ground.

  Gene, you'll blow yourself up with this shit.

  I thought you said I couldnt blow it?

  Suttree shook his head sadly.

  Hot summer nights along the river and drunkenness and tales of violence. Steps in the dead of night, hollow as the clop of hooves on the shantyporch boards where Suttree lay silent within, breathing in the dark. He heard his name said.

  He lit the lamp and held it up to see the junkman at the window like a drunken burglar. He rose from the cot to let him in, steering him as he crossed the floor in his reeling step like a strange and midnight dance lesson there in the little shack.

  The junkman sat, he looked up. Was you asleep?

  No.

  He nodded enormously, his head rising and failing a foot or more. Didnt allow ye was. I knowed ye for a night owl. You got a smoke? I'm give out.

  I dont have any.

  The junkman was patting his pockets.

  You didnt walk all the way over here for a cigarette did you?

  No.

  Wasnt the Smoky Mountain open?

  I dont know. You aint got a little drink laid back anywheres have ye?

  I may have a beer about half warm. You want that?

  Be better'n a poke in the eye with a stick.

  Suttree rose and went out and took up the minnowbucket and got a beer out of it. He carried it back in the shanty and got the opener and uncapped the beer and handed it to the junkman. Harvey stalked the bottle with a veering hand and seized it and blinked and drank.

  Where'd you get in the mud at?

  He looked down. He appeared to be wearing puttees, slavered with mud as he was to his knees. I mired up, he said. Like to never found your place dark as it is. Like to of fell in the fuckin. He paused to belch. Fuckin river.

  Do you want me to row you back over?

  Harvey took a drink of the beer and eyed Suttree blearily. His face was very white and the wrinkled pouches of skin beneath his eyes looked translucent. Goin to see Dubyedee, he said. No good son of a bitch.

  You dont need to see him at this hour of the night. Why dont you let me run you home.

  The junkman shook his head testily. See my no good shitass brother.

  If you start across that bridge the cops'll get you.

  They never got me comin over.

  You better wait till tomorrow.

  Harvey was holding the bottle in his hands between his knees. I'll get me a goddamned pistol, he said, nodding his head.

  Pistol?

  Goddamn right.

  You going to shoot your brother?

  Fuck no. Shoot them goddamn thieves.

  What, over at your lot?

  Goddamned right.

  Hell, they're just kids.

  They're fuckin thieves. Steal anything they can get their hands on.

  Why dont you just run them off?

  Might as well shoot em now. Fore they get any bigger.

  He took a drink of the beer and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. Just like girls, he said. They grow up and hit in along about thirteen or fourteen and they's a few of em start screwin everbody in town. That's ye whores. It aint that they're young. All whores is young sometime just like all thieves is. You dont wait till you're old to start peddlin your ass or stealin either one. Nip em. He paused. Nip em in the bud.

  Why dont you get a watchdog?

  I done had one of them.

  What happened to it?

  I dont know. I believe they stole it.

  You better let me run you across the river.

  You can run me up to Goose Creek if you want to. He was looking up and regarding Suttree in the dim lamplight with one eye squint.

  You dont need to go up there.

  Fuck I dont.

  You can see him tomorrow.

  You know what he ast me?

  What?

  Ast me how come it was that I was always sober enough to buy a wreck but too drunk to sell one.

  Well?

  Well what?

  Well what's the answer?

  The junkman glared at Suttree for a moment and then shook the empty bottle. You aint got another one of them have ye? he said.

  I'm afraid that's it.

  You reckon old Jones'd find a man a drink at this hour?

  I reckon old Jones'd find a man a pumpknot on his bony head if he banged on that door after the lights were out.

  Somebody'll kill that nigger one of these days.

  Yes, they will.

  Wonder what about Jimmy Smith?

  Jimmy Smith will shoot you.

  The junkman shook his head sadly at the utter truth of this. He rose unsteadily. He smiled. Well, he said. Maybe old Dubyedee will have a little drink.

  You can stay here if you want.

  The junkman waved a hand about. I thank ye, he said, but I best be huntin that drink. I believe a little drink'd do me more good right now than just about anything I can think of.

  Suttree watched him totter down the planks in the band of yellow light. He veered, he stood with one foot, he went on. When he reached the shore he raised one hand.

  Come back, called Suttree.

  The junkman raised the hand again and kept going.

  It was a full two miles out Blount Avenue to his brother's junklot and the junkman reeled along in the lamplight through a floating world of honeysuckle nectar and nightbird cries and distant dogs that yapped at their moorings.

  He made his way across the little wooden bridge and past the dim shapes of the cars and stood before the housetrailer.

  Dubyedee!

  The waters of Goose Creek purled past the tirecasings and body-panels in the farther dark of the yard.

  Come out you old fart.

  He stumbled among the articles of their common trade. Blood black and crusted in these broken carriages. A shoe.

  Dubyedee! Come out, goddamnit.

  He had ceased calling and was sat within a truck when a light came on in the trailer. The door opened and light fell across the yard among the cluttered shapes and Clifford stood looking out. What do you want? he said.

  Want Dubyedee. Harvey spoke through the steeringwheel spokes in which his head lay cradled.

  What? said Clifford.

  He raised his head. Clifford hung in the white web of the broken windshield. I want Dubyedee, he said.

  He aint here.

  Where's he at?

  He aint here. He dont live here now.

  It's just old drunk Uncle Harvey aint it?

  You said it, I never.

  No, you never. You smug sack of shit.

  What?

  I said you're a smug sack of shit.

  Clifford's head turned in silhouette in the doorframe as if he'd turned to spit. He aint here, Harvey. Go on home.

  He aint here Harvey. Go home Harvey. Where's he live at now?

  You caint get out there. It's too far.

  I'll be the judge of that. Where's he live at?

  Why dont you come up and I'll give ye a cup of coffee.

  Harvey shook his head. Aint you somethin, he said.

  What?

  I said you sure are somethin. Clifford old buddy. You sure are. Get some coffee in him. Clifford you favor your old man more than a little, did you know that?

  You want some coffee I'll fix ye some. Otherwise I'm goin to bed.

  Lord God, Clifford, dont let me keep ye from your sleep. I'd not do it for the world.

  The figure shored up in the doorway shifted. You can sleep in the shed if you want. I'll give you the key.

  You aint got a drink in there have ye?

  No.

  Then you aint got nothin in there I want.

  The ligh
t withdrew up the path. Then it vanished from the small paned window in the door. Harvey smiled and leaned back in the truck.

  Clifford!

  Dogs hereto sleeping woke with howls all down the creek.

  Clifford!

  The light snapped on again. The door opened.

  What now, goddamnit?

  You wasnt asleep was ye?

  I got to work tomorrow Harvey. Some of us is got to work for a livin yet.

  Is he payin ye now Clifford? Or you still just gettin your keep.

  He pays me.

  Big boy like you.

  If you dont want nothin I'm goin to bed.

  I'll tell you what I'm makin if you'll tell me what you are.

  You aint makin nothin is what you're makin. Cause you dont do nothin but lay drunk.

  What you are, what you are, said Harvey aimlessly.

  You dont need to know.

  Dont need to know, dont need to know. You sure you aint got a little drink in yonder?

  I told you I'd fix you some coffee if you want it.

  Let me tell you about your coffee, Clifford. You want to hear about your coffee?

  Clifford didnt want to hear. He shut the door again and the lights went out.

  What about your daddy, called Harvey. Want to hear about that thievin son of a bitch? Want to hear how he robbed his own brother blind? Clifford?

  Lying in his cot in the early hours Suttree half asleep heard a dull concussion somewhere in the city. He opened his eyes and looked out through his small window at the paling stars, the sparse electric jewelry of the bridgelights hung above the river. Perhaps an earthquake, seams shifting deep in the earth, sand sifting for miles down blind faults in eternal dark. It did not come again and after a while he slept.

  Coming back upriver in the hot noon he kept to the south shore and passed under the bridge and passed the lumber company and the packinghouse and moored the skiff at the foot of the path that led to the junkman's lot and the road beyond. A brief spate of summer rain had fallen in the morning and the smell of it in the shoreland woods rose rank and steamy like the air in a hothouse. On the narrow path he met a cluster of deferential blacks who passed sidling, their eyes cutting to and back like horses. A light clank of baitbuckets and a bristling of canes. The cars in Harvey's lot lay humped and black in the sun with visible heat rising from them in the wrinkled air. Suttree passed through a reek of milkweed and oil and hot tin toward the little bedstead gate.

  He found him senseless and hanging half off the ragged army cot. The little shack smelled of grease and tarpaper and filth. Suttree took the junkman up by arm and elbow and eased him back onto the bed, solicitous yet somewhat loath to touch him in his leprous rags. Harvey rolled a whited eye and muttered and fell back. Suttree looked around the little cabin. Floor strewn with gears, axleshafts, batteries. Tottering columns of tires. A cupboard of hubcaps like curious silver, mangled and banged, painted or stamped with loutish new world crests.

  He stood in the door and looked out over the junkman's lot. Tall hollyhocks by the weighted gate and dockweed blooming and begonias down along the remnants of the fence. In the corner of the lot a stand of sunflowers like some floral enormity in a child's garden. Suttree sat on the cinderblock steps. The flowers moved in the wind. He could not see the river but there was a barge going upstream through the trees like a great train of wares ferrying soundlessly by means unknown up the valley floor. On the far shore a riprap of broken marble. Rough shapes of iron rusting in the sun. In the gloom of the shack the junkman groaned and turned. One among a mass of twisted shapes discarded here by the river. Suttree turned and saw him fend with his arm some phantom, a gesture of dread such as the mad favor, his anguish no less real. Suttree rose and went out through the gate and the gate clanged gently shut behind him.

  When Harrogate pulled the string on his homemade detonator he had one finger in his ear. The explosion blew him twenty feet up the tunnel and slammed him against a wall where he sat in the darkness with chunks of stone clattering everywhere about him and his eyes enormous against the unbelievable noise in which he found himself. Then he was sucked back down the tunnel in a howling rush of air, his clothes scrubbing away and peelings of hide until he found himself lying on his face in the passage with a shrieking in his ears. Before he could rise it returned and snatched him up again and scuttled him back along the floor in a cloud of dust and ash and debris and left him bleeding and halfnaked and choked and groping for something to hold to. Dont come no more, he cried aloud in the ringing vault, I done had enough. Far back through the broken wall he could hear the echoes of the blast shunting row on row down the cavern to ultimate nothingness.

  He lay very quietly. He was bruised and bleeding and numb all over and he began to cry. His head was ringing and he was half deaf yet he could hear in the horrid darkness shapes emerge from the reeks and crannies, features stained with boneblack, jaws adrip. He could hear the blood running in his body and he could hear the organs working, the lungs filling and collapsing. Little girls in flowered frocks went tripping out through stiles of sunlight and their destination was darkness as is each soul's. Coming toward him was a soft near soundless mass. Sucking over the stones. Seeking him out. He pulled himself up and listened. Coming down the tunnel. Something nearing in the night. A sluggish monster freed from what centuries of stony fastness under the city. Its breath washed over him in a putrid stench. He tried to crawl. He scrabbled blindly among the stones in the dark. He was engulfed feet first in a slowly moving wall of sewage, a lava neap of liquid shit and soapcurd and toiletpaper from a breached main.

  When Suttree saw the piece in the paper that said: Earthquake? he read and knew. He folded the paper and rose and went out the door and down the steps.

  At Harrogate's there was no one home, not even the cat. He stirred the cold ashes in the firepit, he poked among the city rat's belongings.

  In the afternoon he went about where the rat was known but no one knew where he could be.

  It was evening when he came upon Rufus down on Front Street. He was sat in a gutterful of lamplight before the store as if he were waiting for it to open. He raised up when he saw who it was. Hey Sut, he said. How you makin it?

  Just slidin, said Suttree. What are you doing?

  Aw just settin. He pushed back his cap with his thumb and rubbed his head and smiled.

  Suttree sat beside him on the little stone curb.

  You want a drink? He canted the bottle he held to one side for the light to follow the label. They looked at the bottle together in silence. Get ye a sup. Tastes pretty good.

  Suttree took the bottle and twirled off the little fluted plastic cap and hooked a good shot of it back.

  Smoke rose from his noseholes.

  Agh gie gie, he said.

  Oh yes, said Rufus, shaking his head profoundly. It'll talk to ye.

  Great God.

  Rufus took the bottle from him gently and supped a good sup and stood it carefully in the road before them. Suttree wiped his eyes with the balls of his fingers. The vapors seemed to have risen to his brain. Even the smell of honeysuckle that had choked the air with its hot and winey perfume and memories of summer eve was burned away. He looked at Rufus with watery eyes. Have you seen Harrogate? he said.

  Harrogate? Rufus turned and jerked his head back and frowned at Suttree across his shoulder. The city mouse? Naw. He aint been round. What you wants with him?

  I think he's all fucked up somewhere.

  Wherever he at he's fucked up. Aint no news in that.

  Did you hear that earthquake last night?

  I did. Rattled the glass in my windersashes. Woke my old lady up. You hear it?

  Suttree nodded.

  Get ye a little old drink there, Sut.

  I dont believe I can stand it.

  Why that there's a nice little whiskey.

  The whiskey stood in the road.

  I got a old dog stobbed up in my slopbarrel, said Rufus.

  Suttree n
odded. His lips moved as if he were repeating this to himself.

  I caint get near him to fetch him out. He keeps wantin to bite me.

  How did he get in there?

  Fell in I reckon. Eatin my slops. I aint tippin out my slops for no fool ass dog.

  No.

  I remember from when I was a boy down in Loudon County and I had this uncle used to make whiskey all the time. We went up to his still one evenin and he had five barrel of mash settin around on the ground workin and we got up there and in ever barrel one they was a old hound. They was stobbed up in them mashbarrels to they neck and they was drunk and just a singing to beat the band. You never seen a more pleasant sight. We set on the ground and laughed and the more we laughed the louder they'd sing and the more they sung the louder we'd laugh.

  How did you get them out?

  We cut us a green hickory and run it through they collars and got one either end and snaked em out. They was some might too drunk to walk hardly.

  Well why dont we get this one out of your mashbarrel like that?

  He aint got no collar on.

  I see. Well why dont we get a rope on him and haul him out?

  We might could try it. I hate to go up there at all.

  Why is that?

  Old lady's put out with me.

  Well you got to go sometime.

  I know it. But sometimes I just purely hate it.

  Come on. You cant sit down here all night.

  Suttree stood up and Rufus rose and dusted the sag of his trouser-seat with two handswipes and stooped, tilted, recovered, seized the bottle and reared upright. Beat no drink atall, dont ye? he said to the bottle.

  They labored up the switchback path through the kudzu and came out in a dark little lane. It was a clear night and they walked slowly and the black man would pause again before they reached the house to take another drink and restore the bottle to the pocket of his ample trousers. Suttree could smell above the honeysuckle a sour reek from the hoglot like the smell of vomit. Through the vines stood a windowlight. Rufus held up one finger and they paused and consulted.

  Let me get my lannern.

  Okay.

  Suttree crouched in the lane. He heard a door open and close and then in a moment he heard a high shrieking voice that seemed to speak in a tongue unknown to him. The door opened and Rufus came from the porch holding up the lantern and adjusting the wick.