Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Where's everbody at? the boy said.

  They've done gone to a social. Where you all been?

  Is there anything to eat? Suttree said.

  They's some whitebeans and cornbread in the pan.

  Is they any onions? the boy said.

  No they aint, said Reese. He came over to where Suttree was sitting on a board with his feet stretched out before him. Did you all do any good? he said.

  Ask him, said Suttree.

  How did you all do?

  We done all right Aint they no milk?

  No they aint.

  Shit, said the boy.

  What?

  I said shoot.

  You better of.

  Did ye'ns get a pretty good mess?

  We got about all the boat would hold. How did you all do?

  We done all right.

  Suttree had taken up a plate and was spooning beans from the pot. Is there any coffee? he said.

  No they aint.

  He stared sullenly into the fire. No they aint, he said.

  He was lying in his blankets out on the knoll when they came back. They came down through the woods by the river swinging a lantern and singing hymns. He lay there listening to this advancing minstrelsy and watching the moon ride up out of the trees. He was hungry and his shoulders ached. His eyelids felt like they were on springs, he couldnt get them to stay shut. After a while he got up.

  One of the girls was going toward the river and he called to her. Hey, he said. Is there anything to eat up there?

  It was quiet for a minute. The fire had been built back and the flames looked hopeful up there under the rocks. No they aint, she said.

  In the morning they were up at some misty hour and were at donning the crazy calico churchclothes. They did not wake him. He raised the edge of his blanket and peered out. Among the slats of the lamplit shed he could see thin flashes of white flesh, birdlike flurryings. The girls emerged in their carboncopy dresses and the boy came out of the woods stiffly and looking churlish and sullen and strange, like a child pervert. They set off upriver through the woods and Suttree sat up in his blanket to better view the spectacle.

  They were gone all day. He stirred out and searched through the kitchen things and through the jumble of stuff in the lean-to but he could find nothing to eat other than the cornmeal and a handful of whitebeans that had been left to soak. He made a fire and put the beans on and went off down to the river to look at the skiffs. He squatted on his heels and threw small stones at waterspiders skating on the dimpled river.

  In the afternoon he sat in the cool under the bluff. Summer thunderheads were advancing from the south. He leaned back against the rock escarpment. Jagged blades of slate and ratchel stood like stone tools in the loam. Tracks of mice or ground squirrels, a few dry and meatless nuthulls. A dark stone disc. He reached and picked it up. In his hand a carven gorget. He spooned the clay from the face of it with his thumb and read two rampant gods addorsed with painted eyes and helmets plumed, their spangled anklets raised in dance. They bore birdheaded scepters each aloft.

  Suttree spat upon the disc and wiped it on the hip of his jeans and studied it again. Uncanny token of a vanished race. For a cold moment the spirit of an older order moved in the rainy air. With a small twig he cleaned each line and groove and with spittle and the tail of his shirt he polished the stone, holding it, a cool lens, in the cup of his tongue, drying it with care. A gray and alien stone of a kind he'd never seen.

  He took off his belt and with his pocketknife cut a long thin strip of leather and threaded it through the hole in the gorget and tied the thong and put it around his neck. It lay cool and smooth against his chest, this artifact of dawn where twilight drew across the iron landscape.

  He was sitting on a log carving a whistle from willow wood when the family returned from service. He watched them come down through the woods, the six of them indianfile. When they had passed and gone on to the camp he rose and folded away his knife and went after.

  Yonder he comes, sang out Reese.

  Yeah, said Suttree.

  We seen ye was asleep when we left out of here this mornin. Didnt want to bother ye.

  The women were gone to the shed to change out of their clothes and Reese had taken a seat under his tree in his suit. Suttree squatted on one knee in front of him and pinned him with a hungry stare.

  Look, he said, I dont want to be a bother to anybody but when the hell do we eat around here?

  I'm glad you ast me that, said Reese. Somebody has got to go to the store and I was wonderin if you could maybe take the boy and run on over there.

  You all just came from over there.

  Yes we did. But I'll be danged if I didnt get over there and come to find out I didnt have no money on me. I thought of it quick as we got up to the church there. I'd meant to ...

  All right, said Suttree. He was holding out his hand. Let me have some money.

  Reese eased himself up a little bit and leaned forward from the tree. He spoke in a low voice. I wanted to talk to you about that, he said.

  Suttree stared at him a minute and then rose and stood looking off toward some brighter landscape beyond them all. Listen, Reese was saying. He tugged at Suttree's trouserleg. Suttree took a step away.

  Listen. What it is, we've had so much expense settin up camp and gettin everthing ready, you know. We been up here two weeks now and aint had nothin but outgoes, bound to be a little short, and you a partner, regular partner you know, I thought we could share expense a little until we sold us a load and I could settle with ye. You know.

  What the hell would you of done if I hadnt come up here when I did?

  Why, somethin would of turned up. Always does. Listen ...

  Suttree had turned out his pockets and was putting together what money he had. A couple of dollars and some change. He dropped it on the ground in front of Reese. How long do you reckon we can eat on that? he said.

  We can get something. He looked at the crumpled money lying there. He poked at it, as if it were something dead. It aint a whole lot, is it? he said.

  No, said Suttree. It sure as hell aint.

  That all you got? Reese squinting up at Suttree.

  That's it.

  He scratched his head. Well, he said. Listen ...

  I'm listening.

  Why dont you and the boy go on over there and get us some bread and some lunchmeat. They's cornmeal and some beans here. Ast the old lady what all she needs real bad. Get a quart of milk if you can. You know.

  Suttree stalked off to find the boy.

  I just come from there, the boy said.

  Well get your ass up cause you're going again.

  They aint no need to cuss about it, the boy said. It Sunday and all.

  They went off up the path through the woods. She'd written him a list, a pinched scrawl on a piece of paper sack. He balled it in his fist and pitched it into the weeds.

  They went through the woods for a half mile and came out onto an old macadam road half grown back in patches of grass, small saplings. They followed it with its tilted slabs of paving through a countryside warped and bleared in the steamy heat. They passed the ruins of an old motel, a broken paintworn sign, a clutch of tiny cabins quietly corroding in an arbor of pines. When they came out onto the highway Suttree could see the little crossroads community at the top of the rise. A handful of houses and a stuccoed roadside grocery store with a gaspump.

  He crossed the graveled forebay and entered the store. Old familiar smells. He got a pint of chocolate milk from the cooler and drank it.

  You goin to set us up to a dope? the boy said.

  Get one.

  Let's get us a couple of cakes too and we wont say nothin about it.

  Suttree looked at him. He was rummaging among the bottles in the drink case. These here R C's cold? he called out. Suttree went on to the meatcounter.

  What for ye? said the storekeeper, appearing behind the case and taking down an apron from a nail.

&nbs
p; Slice me a couple of pounds of that baloney, said Suttree.

  He hung the apron back.

  Slice it thin, said Suttree.

  He got some cheese and some bread and a drum of oatmeal and two quarts of milk and some onions. When the merchant had totted up these purchases there was forty cents left. Suttree looked at the rows of coffee in their bags above the merchant's head. The merchant turned to look with him.

  What's the cheapest coffee you've got?

  Well, let's see. The cheapest I got is the Slim Jim.

  Slim Jim?

  Slim Jim.

  How much is it?

  Thirty-nine cents.

  Let me have it.

  The merchant lifted down a bag of it from the shelf and set it on the counter. It was dusty and he blew on it and gave it a little swat before he lifted it into the grocery bag.

  Right, said Suttree. He scooped the bag off the counter and handed it to the boy and they left.

  It was evening when they got back. Suttree went down and sat in the dark by the river until supper was ready, the light of the cookfire composing behind him on the high bluff a shadowshow of primitive life. He pitched small round pebbles at the river as if he were feeding it.

  They ate sandwiches of fried baloney and bowls of whitebeans. Suttree came to the fire with his cup and held it out. The old woman lifted the potlid and sniffed. Suttree watched her. The plaited hawsers of hair that bound her thin gray skull. She took up her apron in one hand to grip the pot and tilt the hot black coffee out. Suttree went back to the box where he'd been sitting and stirred the coffee and put the spoon in his cuff for safekeeping and lifted the cup and sipped.

  He sat very still, then he turned and spat the coffee on the ground. Good God, he said.

  What is it? said Reese.

  What's happened to this coffee?

  I aint drunk none of it.

  Suttree swung his nose across the rim of the cup and then pitched the coffee out on the ground and went on eating.

  Reese wiped his mouth on his knee and rose. He came back with a cup of the coffee and stood over Suttree blowing at it and then he took a sip.

  What is this shit? he said.

  Damned if I know. Slim Jim, that's the name of it.

  Reese took another sip and then tipped it out on the ground. I dont know what it is, he said. But it aint coffee.

  The girl was sitting on the far side of the fire. She flung her black hair. What'd you do to the coffee, Mama? she called.

  Reese had gone back to the fire. They had the package up trying to read it. Reese poured the coffee out on the ground. A squabble ensued.

  Suttree what is this shit?

  I dont know. I bought it for coffee.

  It dont even smell like coffee.

  They done emptied the coffee out and filled the sack back with old leaves or somethin, said the woman, nodding her head and looking about.

  Bring me a cup of it, Willard, the girl called.

  Reese cut his eyes about. It might be poison, he said.

  Put eggshells in it, Mama, the girl called. That'll rectify it.

  Where's she goin to get eggshells at, dumb-ass? They aint no eggs.

  The woman reached and swatted the boy in the top of the head with her hand.

  Ow, he said.

  You mind how you talk to your sister.

  Something woke him in the small hours of the morning. Things moving in the dark. He took his flashlight and trained it out along the trees until it ghosted away in the dark fields downriver. He swept it toward the woods and back again. A dozen hot eyes watched, paired and random in the night. He held the light above his head to try and see the shapes beyond but nothing showed save eyes. Blinking on and off, or eclipsing and reappearing as heads were turned. They were none the same height and he tried his memory for anything that came in such random sizes. Then a pair of eyes ascended vertically some five feet and another pair sank slowly to the ground. Weird dwarfs with amaurotic eyeballs out there in the dark on a seesaw sidesaddle. Others began to raise and lower.

  Cows. He agreed with himself: It is cows. He switched off the flashlight and lay back. He could smell them now on the cool upriver wind, sweet odor of grass and milk. The damp air was weighted with all manner of fragrance. You can see it in a dog's eyes that he is sorting such things as he tests the wind and Suttree could smell the water in the river and the dew in the grass and the wet shale of the bluff. It was overcast and there were no stars to plague him with their mysteries of space and time. He closed his eyes.

  In the morning they took the womenfolk downriver to shuck the mussels there, the girls giggling, the old woman clutching the sides of the boat nervously and staring with her hooded eyes toward the passing shore. That evening after supper he went down to the river with a bar of soap and sat naked in the water off the gravel bar. He washed his clothes and he washed himself and he hung his clothes from a tree and got his towel and dried himself and sat among his blankets. After a while Reese came down through the woods on tiptoe, calling out softly.

  Over here, said Suttree.

  He crouched in front of Suttree. He looked back over his shoulder toward the camp.

  What is it? said Suttree.

  We got to go to town.

  Okay.

  I figure we ought to just go on in the mornin and get done with it.

  Suttree nodded.

  I started to let Mama and Wanda go, but you caint depend on no women to do business. What do you think?

  It suits the hell out of me.

  Reese looked toward the fire and looked back. It suits the hell out of me too, he hissed. If I dont get shitfaced drunk they aint a cow in Texas. You ever been to Newport?

  Not lately.

  Lord they got the wildest little old things runnin around up there. It's a sight in the world.

  They have?

  You daggone right. The old man checked the camp again and leaned to Suttree's ear. We go up there, Sut, we'll run a pair or two down and put the dick to em. He winked hugely and set one finger to his lips.

  They left in the early morning two days later. It had rained all night and the cars came down the long black road like motorboats and passed and diminished in shrouds of vapor. After a while an old man stopped in a model A and they rode on into Dandridge. The old man did not speak. The three of them hunched up like puppets on the front seat watched the summer morning break over the rolling countryside.

  They got a ride from Dandridge to Newport on a truck. There was a tractor on the truckbed and it kept shifting in its chains so that the travelers stood back against the stakesides with their hair blowing in the wind lest the thing break loose. They reached Newport around noon and descended blinking and disheveled into the hot street.

  The jeweler was sitting in a wire cage at the front of the store and he had what looked like a snuff jar screwed into his eye. The two of them stood there at the window and waited. Yes, the jeweler said. He didnt look up.

  Reese laid a pearl on the counter.

  The jeweler raised his head and sniffed and took the glass from his eye and donned a pair of spectacles. He reached and picked up the pearl. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it and put it back. He took off his spectacles and put the glass back in his eyes and bent to his work again. I cant use it, he said.

  Reese gave Suttree an uneasy wink. He delved up another jewel from his little changepurse and laid it by the first. Larger and more round. Hey, he said.

  The jeweler set aside a small pick with which he was sorting something in a boxlid. He looked at the two pearls before him and he looked at Reese. I cant use it.

  Reese had fished out meantime his best pearl and this he brought forth and held out in one grimy hand. I guess you cant use this one either, he said in triumph.

  The jeweler removed the glass and fitted the spectacles again. He didnt reach for the pearl. He seemed to simply want a better look at these two.

  Go ahead, said Reese, grinning and gesturi
ng with the pearl

  Fellers, said the jeweler, those things are not worth anything.

  They're pearls, Suttree said.

  Tennessee pearls.

  Hell, they've got to be worth something.

  Well, I hate to say it, but they're not worth a nickel. Oh, you might find somebody that wanted them. Keepsake or something. I've known people to pay three or four dollars for a really nice one that they wanted made into a pin or something, but you might have a shoebox full and I wouldnt give a dime for them.

  Reese was still holding out the pearl. He turned to Suttree. He thinks we aint never traded afore, I reckon.

  The jeweler had taken off his spectacles and was preparing to look through his glass again.

  We may look country, but we aint ignorant, Reese told him.

  Let's go, Reese.

  You aint never seen no nicer a one than that there.

  The jeweler bent with his monocle to his work again.

  Suttree took the old man's arm and steered him out the door. Reese was looking over the prize pearl for some undetected flaw. In the street Suttree turned him around and got him by the shoulder. What the hell is going on? I thought you said that big pearl was worth ten dollars?

  Shit Sut, dont pay no attention to him, he dont know the first thing about it.

  Suttree pointed toward the windowglass. He's a goddamned jeweler. Cant you see the sign? What the hell do you mean he doesnt know?

  He's just outslicked hisself is what he's done. He wants us to give him the goddamned pearls. I've traded with these cute sons of bitches afore, Sut. I know.

  Let me see those things.

  Reese handed him the pearls. Suttree looked them over in the hard light of midday. They looked like pearls. Somewhat gray, somewhat misshapen. Hell, they must be worth something, he said.

  Reese took the pearls from him. Course they are, he said. Goddamn, you think I dont know nothin?

  How many have you ever sold?

  That's all right how many I sold. I sold some.

  How many?

  Well. I sold one last year for four dollars.

  Who to?

  Just to somebody.

  Suttree was standing looking at the ground and shaking his head. After a while he looked up. Well let's try somewhere else, he said.

  They canvassed the three jewelers and two pawnshops and were again on the street. Shadows were tilting on the walk, the day'd grown cooler.