Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Suttree turned and looked down at the old man. He was squatting on his heels, having risen that far by way of greeting. Smiling. Optimistic. A pale and bloated tick hung in his scalp like a pendulous wen.

  We got to get your boat rigged. I done hunted up some poles and stuff.

  Have you got a hammer and nails?

  I got some nails comin out of them boards yonder quick as I burn em. We'll get some more. They's plenty of old boards got nails in em.

  Suttree was kneading his bloated palms. How do you aim to drive the nails, he said.

  Just knock em in with a rock.

  Suttree looked at the river. If you just get in your boat you can stretch out and sleep and barring snags wake up sometime back in Knoxville like you'd never been away.

  I guess we'll manage, he said.

  Why hell yes, said the old man.

  Suttree wandered off to the skiff to get his blankets and gear. He took the two cans of beer he had stowed under the rear seat and tied them to a string and lowered them over the side.

  The family had put up a rude lean-to against the wall of the bluff. Old roofing tin and random boards and a plywood highway sign that said Slow Construction Ahead. It all looked like it had washed up there in high water. Under the overhang of the bluff were thin home-sewn ticks and quilts and army blankets. Suttree didnt think it would rain anytime soon so he went on down past the camp with his gear to a little knoll that overlooked the river and where there were some small pines and a wind to stand the insects off. He fixed a smooth place on the ground and fluffed up the pineneedles and spread a blanket and sat down. He lay back and stretched out. The river chattered back a querulous babbling from the limestone shoals below the camp. The trees fell and fell down the lightly clouded summer sky.

  Reese woke him kicking his foot. Hey, he said.

  Suttree rolled over and shaded his eyes.

  What you doin?

  I was sleeping.

  The old man squatted and eyed the river through the trees. We might's well get your boat rigged this afternoon, he said.

  Suttree rose heavily. He was hot and sweaty and worn out.

  You aim to bed down out here?

  If it doesnt rain.

  You can sleep up in the camp with us.

  I snore, Suttree said.

  The old man stood up. Snore? he said. Hell fire, son, you aint never heard a snore. I'll put my old lady up against any three humans or one moose.

  Suttree went on up the bank.

  He studied the brail rig in the old man's skiff and went into the woods to cast about for suitable saplings to make the uprights. He'd set the boy to straightening nails, beating them out with a rock. The old man had wandered off somewhere.

  He sat in the stern of his skiff and trimmed the poles he'd cut, dressing the forks, shaving the lower ends flat to be nailed to the sides of the skiff. The white waxy woodpeelings coiled up cleanly under his knife and he watched them spin and drift on the river. With the point of the knife he bored holes partway through the flats on the butt end so that the wood would not split when it was nailed. The old man had come down the bank and was sitting on his heels nodding at Suttree's work and making encouraging talk. He always expected everyone to be out of heart.

  By evening they had the skiff rigged with a ramshackle and barbarous facsimile of a brailboat's gear. Suttree carried the brails aboard and stowed them in the trees of the uprights and Reese eyed the sun.

  You want to make a run this evening?

  I dont think so.

  You and the boy might make just a short run and see how she does.

  Suttree stood up in the skiff and stepped ashore. And we might not, he said.

  Well. We can get an early start of the mornin.

  Suttree didnt answer. He went on toward the camp where smoke was rising from the supper fire.

  Hidy, said the girl with studied boldness.

  Hey, said Suttree. She was white with flour to her elbows, bent above a breadboard kneading biscuit dough. The two smaller girls were standing behind her and the old woman was at the fire. One of the girls poked her head around and said something and the older girl slapped at her and they fled shrieking with giggles.

  Oh you all ... Mama, make her quit.

  You all quit, said the woman. She was stoking the fire and fixing the sheet of tin laid over the rocks. Flames licked from under the edges. There was a kettle and an iron pot on the tin and it sagged badly under the weight.

  Is there any coffee? Suttree said.

  Is there any coffee Mama?

  You know there aint no coffee.

  I dont guess there is none, said the girl.

  What time do we eat?

  In about a hour. It wont be long.

  Suttree scratched his jaw and looked about. There was an old mattress in the lean-to and a packingcrate with an oil lamp on it and a miscellany of junk stored along the dark stone wall at the rear. He went down to the river again and stretched out on a cool rock in the shade and looked down into the water. On the rippled silt floor of the eddy a small turtle shifted with uncertain bowlegs. Small bits of wood, twigs, lay furred with silt and a muddog lay inert with its obscene gills branching like bright fungus. Suttree's face shifted and dished. A waterspider crossed on jointed horsehair legs and the river gave off a cool metallic smell. He spat at his trembling visage and sat up and took off his shoes and socks and lowered his feet into the water.

  They ate on what looked like an outhouse door. A weathered wooden trestle propped on poles. Suttree was afraid to lean on it. They sat on planks and cinderblocks, the smallest girl's chin just clearing the boards. Suttree was lightheaded with hunger.

  The iron pot came aboard and the kettle and pan of biscuits. In the kettle were some rough and hairy greens he'd never met before. In the pot whitebeans. He stirred them but no trace of fat meat turned up. He eyed the boy across the board and began to eat faster.

  After supper they sat around the fire while the girls washed the dishes. The old man brought a soft and greasy leather bible from the lean-to and opened it on his knees. When the dishes were done the girls gathered around and the old man commenced to read aloud from the text. Suttree had gone to the river and fetched the two cans of beer. He opened them at the table and carried them to the fire and handed one to the old man. His eyes brightened in the firelight when he saw it. Lord have mercy looky here, he said.

  Suttree gestured with his can and drank. The beer was cold and slightly bitter and very good. The old man tilted his beer to drink.

  Dont you read scripture and drink that, the woman said.

  What?

  You heard me. Dont you read scripture and drink that.

  Why hell fire, said Reese.

  Nor cuss neither. You put that up or finish that beer one.

  He looked around to see if anyone might be on his side. Suttree went off down to his little knoll above the river.

  They went to sleep like dogs, curling up in their bedding on the ground until they were a scattering of dark shapeless mounds beneath the bluff. The fire had died. Suttree shucked off shoes and trousers and lay in his blanket. The river talked all night in the shoals. Some dogs in the anonymous distance beyond set up a clamor but they were far away and their barking muted by the river fell lost and dreamlike on his ears.

  In the morning they were about and breakfasting almost with the first light. Thin cakes of fried cornmeal with sugar syrup. There was still no coffee.

  The old man took the girl and went upriver and left Suttree and the boy to themselves. Suttree bailed the boat and stowed the can back under the seat and looked out downstream, A thousand smokes stood on the gray face of the river. After a while the boy emerged from the woods buttoning his trousers and came down the bank and climbed into the skiff.

  You ready? he said.

  Suttree looked at him. He was sitting in the bow of the skiff with his hands on his knees.

  How about casting off for us.

  Do what?

>   How about untying us.

  He climbed out and got the rope loose from the stump and threw it into the skiff and knelt in the bow and shoved them off. Suttree let the oars into the river.

  The skiff nosed downstream through pales of vapor. A small heron rose clacking from the reeds. The boy swung on it with an imaginary gun. Blam, he said.

  I saw ducks on the river coming up, Suttree said.

  Boy I bet if I had me a gun I'd kill everthing up here.

  He was watching downriver, picking absently at one of the yellow pustules with which his chin was afflicted. After a while he said: What was you in the workhouse for?

  Suttree leaned on the oars and looked behind him. They were in faster water and there were little weedy islands in the middle of the river. I was with some guys got caught breaking into a drugstore.

  What did you break in for?

  They were trying to get some drugs. Pills. They got some cigarettes and stuff. I was outside in the car.

  I guess you was keepin the motor runnin and lookout and all.

  I was drunk.

  The boy looked at him but Suttree had turned to study the water. Across the river a tractor was plowing in the black and fallow bottoms and over the plowed land rim to rim lay a serpentine of mist the course and shape of the river itself like a ghost river there. The sun was a long time coming. In the graygreen light the midsummer corn moved with the first wind and the countryside had a sad and desolate look to it.

  Did you go to college? the boy said.

  Why?

  I just wondered. Gene says you're real smart.

  Who, Harrogate?

  Yeah.

  Well. Some people are smarter than others.

  You mean Gene aint real smart?

  No. He's plenty smart. You have to be smart to know who's smart and who's not.

  I never figured you to be just extra smart.

  There you are, said Suttree.

  He looked puzzled. Old Gene used to come sniffin around after Wanda, he said. Mama run him off. You got a girl?

  No. I used to have one but I forgot where I laid her.

  The boy looked at him dully for a minute and then slapped his knee and guffawed. Boy, he said, that's a good'n.

  How far down do we go?

  We'll run the Gallops first and then go on down to the Wild Bull Shoals.

  The Gallops?

  That's the next shoals down. Taint far. You say you aint never musseled afore?

  No.

  Taint nothin to it. Yonder goes a mushrat.

  Suttree turned. A dark little shape forded the dawn, a black nose in a wedge of riverwater.

  Quick as furs primes I'm goin to be back up here with me some traps.

  Suttree nodded, pulling along easily, the oarlocks creaking and the lines of the brail swinging behind the boy's head like a bead curtain. The sun came up. It bored up out of the trees in a greengold light and Suttree's silhouette lay long and narrow down the river among the brail line shadows like a rowing marionette.

  He swung the skiff more shoreward. The boy was bent peering down into the water. In the clear shallows suckers trailed by their whiterimmed mouths from the rocks like soft pennants fluttering.

  The boy took an empty rubber flashlight from his hippocket and dipping the lens in the river looked down through the gutted barrel at the piscean world below.

  Do you see any mussels? Suttree said.

  We aint into em yet, the boy said. They godamighty what a catfish.

  How deep is it?

  Yonder goes a old mudturkle.

  Suttree leaned on the oars. How about letting me look, he said.

  The boy lifted his head.

  I said how about letting me look.

  Well. Sure.

  Suttree shipped the oars and took the tube from the boy and bent over the side with it. A high sheer rock veered past wrapped in bubbles. Moted panels spun down deeps of dusky jade where dim shoals of fish willowed and flared and drifted back over the cold slate floor of the river. A braided cable among the rocks trailed rags of soft green slime in the current.

  I dont see any mussels, he said.

  The boy looked out downriver. Keep a lookin, he said. They'll be some directly.

  He bent again. A whole tree lay on the bottom of the river, deep in a pool, a murky bole with filaments of moss swaying and a heavy black bass that waited on below. A sandy floor sloped away. Fat suckers sculled. A cloud of bubbles rolled up in the glass and cleared and a green cold slick faired over paler rocks, round river stones and ledges of slate gently sculpted. A seam of black shellfish lay beneath.

  Here come some.

  He heard the splash of the brail going overboard. The boat rocked and recovered with the boy's standing and Suttree's face dipped in the water. He raised his head and shook the water from the glass and bent to look again. Long greenbrown weeds swung in the current and dimly through the moving water he could see the mussel beds, a slender colony of them dark and quaking among the rocks with their pale clefts breathing, closing, folding slowly fanwise, valved clots of flesh in their keeps of cotyloid nacre. The shadow of the skiff like a nightshade passing swept them shut.

  Is they lots?

  A few.

  The bottom fell away into an opaque green murk. The boat spun slowly.

  Suttree raised up and took the oars and straightened the skiff out.

  It deeps off here, the boy said.

  Yeah.

  We'll just go on down.

  Okay.

  How about lettin me have my looker?

  Okay.

  They ran downstream a quarter mile, the boy watching the bottom, Suttree at the oars. They swung into a long ropy glide and went rocking down a chute into fast water. The boy raised his head, his forelock dripping. We'll get em now, he called.

  Suttree steadied the boat with the oars.

  When they drifted out into the slow water at the foot of their run amid flotsam and tranquil spume the boy stood at the transom and hauled the brail aboard and hung it dripping in the uprights with a couple dozen black mussels clamped to the lines. They swung and turned and clacked and the boy took out an enormous brass cook-spoon and began to pry them loose. Within minutes they lay like stones in the floor of the skiff and the boy had cast the brail overboard again. He turned to Suttree who was backoaring to stand in the current. His face was flushed and his breath short. That's how we do it, he wheezed.

  Is that a pretty good batch for a run?

  It aint no more'n average. I've seen em to come up solid with em. Me and Daddy has dredged messes we couldnt lift.

  What's the other brail for?

  You swap off. You hang up the full brail and thow out the othern.

  Well why didnt you throw out the other one?

  The boy was watching the river bottom again. He waved one hand in the air to dismiss the subject. I just wanted to show you how to strip the lines, he said.

  Suttree edged the boat away from a dimpled suck in the river and they went rocking down the shoals, the sun well up now, the day warming. His hands were like claws on the oars.

  They washed out in a slackwater where a gravel bar ran almost to midriver and the boy raised up the brail again and hung it dripping and clicking with mussels in the trees. He and Suttree looked at each other.

  These is some jimdandy'ns, the boy said.

  Suttree nodded. There were some big as your hand.

  Let's swing up and run that bed one more time.

  Suttree looked upriver dubiously.

  You wont find em much better'n these here.

  He swung the skiff and braced his feet and dug into the river. They went up along the inside shore. When they had gained the head of the glide he stood the boat in the current and swung back obliquely across the run while the boy cast over the empty brail.

  I thowed one one time a hook got me behind the ear and like to took me with it.

  How far down do we go? said Suttree.

  You mean this eve
nin?

  Yes.

  We'll go on down to the Wild Bull. What Daddy said.

  Who the hell is going to row back?

  The boy squinted at him there in the sunshine, the spoon poised over the mussel in his hand, the mussels in the skiff floor drying in the sun to a gray slate color. You aint give out are ye? he said.

  I've been rowing this damned thing for two days. What do you think?

  Well shit, I'll swap off with ye comin back. It aint all that far.

  They reached the shoals in the early afternoon. The boy boated the last rackful of mussels and shucked them from the hooks wet and clattering onto the pile in the boat and Suttree stood on one oar to turn them toward the bank. The boat would hardly move it lay so deep in the river with its cargo.

  There was but one shovel and it had an old handmade tang about a foot long but no handle other at all. Suttree set the boy to shoveling the mussels out of the boat onto the bank and he himself went up through the woods until he found a good shade tree and he lay flat on his back beneath it and was soon asleep.

  He was awakened by cries down toward the river. It occurred to Suttree that he and the boy didnt even know each other's names. He got up and went down through the woods.

  Hey, called the boy.

  All right, all right.

  Hell fire, where'd you get to? I aint shovelin all these here by myself.

  Suttree took the shovel from him and stepped into the boat.

  I thought you'd run plumb off, the boy said.

  My name's Suttree.

  Yeah, I know it.

  What's yours?

  Willard.

  Willard. Okay Willard.

  Okay what?

  Suttree heaved a shovelful of mussels up and looked at the boy. It was hot in the sun. The boy standing there in his rancid overalls looked pale and pitiful and slightly malevolent. Just okay, Willard, he said.

  They rowed into camp at dusk sitting side by side on the seat of the skiff each with a sweep in two hands. Suttree staggered up the bank with the rope and tied up and went to the fire and sat and stared into it. Reese emerged from the lean-to in his underwear. Is that you all? he said.

  Yeah.

  Where you been?

  Suttree didnt answer. The boy had come up and was looking around. Where you all been? the man asked him.