Suttree (1979)

by McCarthy, Cormac

  Suttree sat down on the tarp alongside her.

  They could hear the river running on in the dark. He heard her breathing beside him, her breast rising and falling, eyes watching the fire. Suttree rose onto his knees and reached across the flames and jostled the stump forward into a better place. He looked back at her. She had her knees up and her arms locked about them. Her full thighs shone in the firelight, the little wedge of pink rayon that pursed her cleft. He leaned to her and took her face in his hands and kissed her, child's breath, an odor of raw milk. She opened her mouth. He cupped her breast in his palm and her eyes fluttered and she slumped against him. When he put his hand up her dress her legs fell open bonelessly.

  This is nothing but trouble, he said.

  I dont care.

  Her dress was around her waist. Incredible amounts of flesh naked in the firelight. She was warm and wet and softly furred. She seemed barely conscious. He felt giddy. An obscene delight not untouched by just a little sorrow as he pulled down her drawers. Struggling onehanded with buttons. Her thighs were slathered with mucus. She put her arms around his neck. She bowed her back and sucked her breath in sharply.

  Hers was a tale of bridled lust. He made her tell him everything. Never a living man. When he rose from between her thighs the fire had died almost to coals. She sat and smoothed her skirt and swept back her hair. She got up and took up her fallen underclothing and went to the lean-to. Suttree saw her go with a basin toward the river and when she returned she had bathed and changed her dress and he had mended back the fire and she came and sat by him and he took her hand.

  She came to him again in the night where he slept above the river, waking him with her hands on him and her warm breath. She wanted to sleep with him but he sent her away. She came back again toward the morning and Suttree faced the day on buckling knees. He saw her coming from the river with a pail of water, smiling. He went up to the fire and found Reese squatting there with his arms folded on top of his knees.

  Hot nights filled with summer thunder. Heat lightning far and thin and the midnight sky becrazed and mended back again. Suttree moved down to the gravelbar on the river and spread his blanket there under the gauzy starwash and lay naked with his back pressed to the wheeling earth. The river chattered and sucked past at his elbow. He'd lie awake long after the last dull shapes in the coals of the cookfire died and he'd go naked into the cool and velvet waters and submerge like an otter and come up and blow, the stones smooth as marbles under his cupped toes and the dark water reeling past his eyes. He'd lie on his back in the shallows and on these nights he'd see stars come adrift and rifle hot and dying across the face of the firmament. The enormity of the universe filled him with a strange sweet woe.

  She always found him. She'd come pale and naked from the trees into the water like some dream old prisoners harbor or sailors at sea. Or touch his cheek where he lay sleeping and say his name. Holding her arms aloft like a child for him to raise up over them the nightshirt that she wore and her to lie cool and naked against his side.

  She sat in the bow of the boat going upriver. She traced her cool fingertips along his nape and he turned and squinted at her. Sunlight swarmed on the water. That's going to get you screwed, he said. She knelt forward and ran her velvet tongue between his lips. She smelled of soap and woodsmoke. Tasted of salt.

  He turned the skiff toward shore and he spread her naked in the grass, her grave and slightly smiling face pooled in black hair, her perfect teeth, her skin completely flawless, not so much as a mole. The nipples tulipshaped and full and her navel just a slit in her flat little belly. Her smooth thighs, her childlike shamelessness, her little hands dug into his buttocks. Her whimpering like a puppy's.

  They swam in the river and slept in the sun. They woke in the hot forenoon and laughed at the hurry with which they worked. Reese came down in the dark to help them moor the loaded skiff and ran his flashbeam over the piles of shellfish and the three of them went up through the trees to the fire.

  She sat across from him and watched him and she brought his coffee and pushed a soft young breast against his ear in taking away his empty plate.

  I believe that gal's a better cook than her mother, said Reese. What do you think?

  Suttree stopped chewing and looked sideways at Reese and then went on chewing again.

  That little old gal is special to me, Reese said. She'll just do a man's work.

  Suttree spat an insoluble wad of gristle at the dark. The women were laboring up the slope with a washtub of water between them, the girl laughing, the water licking over the sides.

  You want some more coffee, Sut? Holler there and tell her to bring the pot.

  And across the fire her hot eyes watched him and she seemed half breathless in the things she did. He walked off down by the river with his flashlight, along the path, flicking the light into the dead water by the shore where suckers lay on the bottom, old bottles furred with silt, pale mooneyed shad in catatonia. He turned off the light and sat in the easy dark and listened to a rip in some rocky shoal, a gentle whispering in the reeds where the river ran. A figure came down from the fire and squatted in the grass and rose and went back. The willows at the far shore cut from the night a prospect of distant mountains dark against a paler sky. Halfmoon incandescent in her black galactic keyway, the heavens locked and wheeling. A sole star to the north pale and constant, the old wanderer's beacon burning like a molten spike that tethered fast the Small Bear to the turning firmament. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked again. He was struck by the fidelity of this earth he inhabited and he bore it sudden love.

  In the morning the boy helped them unload the mussels, sullen face filled with suspicion, a potential spy. The woman and the younger girls came up the river path with their shelling tools, the woman with her air of habitual rigidity and the girls in lockstep behind. At supper that night Reese said he thought the boy was well enough to work and the boy glared at Suttree across the table.

  Two mornings later he was looking at Willard in the rear of the skiff. Willard wore a dark blue hat he'd come by somewhere made of imitation felt and maybe paper. Suttree rowed with his head averted watching the shore. They hardly spoke all day. By the time they'd unloaded the mussels downstream it was getting on toward evening.

  Daddy's got a hole baited down here, the boy said. Said for us to run his thowlines.

  Suttree leaned on his shovel. You go run them, he said.

  Willard clambered ashore and disappeared whistling down the river path. He was gone the better part of an hour and when he came back he was lugging a goodsized spoonbill catfish, relict of devonian seas, a thing scaleless and leathery with a duck's bill and the small eyes harboring eons of night. Suttree shook his head. Some like spirit joined beast and captor. Looky here, called the boy. Suttree sat in the boat with his head in his hands. Darkness settled on them before they'd rowed halfway back to the camp.

  They spent the last hour rowing upstream with the boy in the bow sounding with a pole, going up shoals where the oars grated on the gravel bottom and rocks passed along the planks with a slow dull wrenching, fighting off treelimbs that kept boarding them in the dark.

  She came down to him at some hour before dawn and lay by him. She put her head against his chest.

  We've got to stop this, he said.

  Why.

  We'll get caught.

  I dont care.

  You'll get pregnant.

  She didnt answer. After a while she said: We could be careful.

  There's nothing careful about us.

  What are we going to do?

  Suttree lay staring up through the trees at the night sky.

  Do you not want me to come anymore?

  He didnt answer.

  Buddy?

  No, he said. His voice sounded strange.

  She lay there for a long time. They didnt speak. Then she rose and went back up the hill.

  He thought she would come the next night anyway but she did not. He wok
e once and heard a rustle, night wind, a dog in the dark. One of the girls went down to the river and back. He got up and walked down the path and waded out and crouched there looking across the dark current to the darker shapes of trees on the farther shore and the faint shoals of mist.

  In the third week of August it began to rain. He and the boy were on the river when it started and the rain was very cold and they tucked their necks against it and put toward shore. Not drops but whole glycerinous clots of water were falling in the river, raising great bladderlike weals that exchanged with constant hissing pops. The boy's hat came slowly and darkly down about his face like a flower in an inkbottle until he looked out from a soggy cowl, his back hunched and his eyes planing about in deep suspicion. Suttree at the oars grinned. The boy half grinned back. His whole head was turning pale blue with hatdye. I aint never seen it rain no harder, have you? he said What?

  I said have you?

  No.

  They sidled into the bank and Suttree boated the oars and took the rope in his hand and leaped for the bank. He went headlong and slid feetfirst back into the river, his hands dragging up great clawfuls of mud. When he came up he was in water to his chest. The first thing he saw was the boy hugging himself dementedly. He slogged over to the boat and hung his elbows over it. What the fuck are you laughing at, he said.

  Whew, gasped the boy. You looked like a big springlizard slippin off into the river.

  You simple shit. How about getting that oar and pushing us in.

  The boy staggered up still shaking his head and took up the oar. They had drifted under some willows and Suttree was holding to the boat with one elbow and pulling on them. The rain was falling so hard it hurt. He got the boat tied and crawled through the willows and up the bank. There was a thick stand of cedars some little distance up the river and he made for that. Crawling under the trees, driving small birds forth into the weather. Within the copse the day was darker yet but the thick brown compost under him was almost dry and he took off his shoes and emptied out the water and fetched the wadded socks from the toes of them and wrung them out. He took off his shirt and twisted the water from it and put it on again. He heard his name called off down by the river. He heard his name called in the woods. Water was beading down through the cedars and dropping all about him. He parted the boughs and saw the boy going up the river path with his hat hanging about his ears and his face a mottled blue and his arms flailing like an idiot wandered from a pesthouse.

  It rained for three days while they sat along the narrow strip of dry earth under the bluff and played cards and while they mended their clothes and Reese whittled first a flute from river cane and then a snake with seedpearl eyes and last a basswood bear he stained with shoeblack for the youngest girl.

  It cleared a little on the fourth day and they tried to run their boats in the snarling yellow flood but were glad to give it up. That evening it began to rain again and it never did stop. They laid up in the camp for two weeks and watched the river bloat and swell until it was screaming through the trees below the bluff and the fields crossriver were flooded far as you could see.

  The first of these days Reese had kept a watcher posted in the skiff to set forth should anything of value come down but soon the waters grew too treacherous for this commerce. They accumulated a strange collection of goods which he sorted and divided among them guided by inscrutable rules of equity. He'd squat for hours and watch the river pass, pointing sadly at valuables hurtling past with the speed of a train. He'd come back dripping and sit by the fire and shake his head.

  They spent three days shoveling at the mussels upstream where the river was sucking away at the edge of the pile and taking back the shells. When they hiked downriver to see about things there they found part of the bank washed out and a great crescentshaped bite gone from their stacks.

  At night she watched him with eyes full of questions. All were brought into such close and constant communion by the rain that the configuration of the family seemed to alter. A frailly structured matriarchy showed itself in these latter days, and Suttree reckoned it had always been so. Crouched there under the ledge in the wind's lee while the flames of the small fire lapped back the dark and all around and ceaseless fell the rain in the forest they could have been some band of stone age folk washed up out of an atavistic dream.

  In the office of the old motel on the pike Suttree had found a stack of moldering books and he read through them one by one without regard. Lying with his blanket for a laprobe, propped against the rocks. He read Tom Swift and His Motorcycle and he read The Black Brotherhood and he read Mildred at Home. There were about a dozen titles and when he had finished them all he started over again. She read Mildred at Home and a story about nurses. She said that she would like to be a nurse. He looked at her. She smiled thinly.

  When all were asleep in their places she rose with her blanket folded about her and came from the lean-to and went down the bluff toward the woods. Suttree watched. When she was gone he raised up and looked around. Then he pushed back his blanket and followed her.

  He caught her up just beyond the edge of the trees. She was all over him. It was raining lightly and they were both wet. She was naked under her blanket. It fell in a dark pool about her feet. In which he knelt, rain dripping from her nipples, runneling thinly on her pale belly. With his ear to the womb of this child he could hear the hiss of meteorites through the blind stellar depths. She moaned and stood tiptoe, her hands holding his head to her.

  These lovers lay crumpled in the dripping wood and listened to the fall of the rain heart on heart. Her wet hair lay across his face like black seaweed. She said his name. He moved as if to rise but she held him.

  You'll catch cold, he said.

  I dont care.

  In their last week on the river two possumhunters came upon their camp. They'd heard hounds coursing on the ridge behind them and the hunters hallooed from the dark before they came up. Two figures shambling in from the night like bad news, bearing a lighted lantern by its long bail, a shotgun held together with tape. They squatted on their haunches side by side like buzzards and smiled around. Suttree looked at them. He looked at one and then he looked at the other. They were alike to the crooks in their stained brown teeth. The creases about their eyes, the quilting of their dry bird necks. They squatted there and bobbed their heads and smiled and spat at the fire and said howdy howdy.

  Set and warm, said Reese. Hey old woman. Need some coffee cups over here.

  Howdy howdy, said the possumhunters.

  We heard ye'ns dogs a while back. Did they not tree?

  Naw. Fernon here is got this young bitch keeps a treein flyin squirrels. He's kicked her till she's flat on one side but she dont want to give it up.

  Quick as I can see one to shoot I'm goin to tie it round her neck and let her wear it till it rots off. That'll break em ever time. You all got dogs out?

  Naw. We just camped up here gettin mussels. Danged if you fellers dont favor one another about as much as anybody I ever saw.

  The possumhunters looked at each other and guffawed. Their chins jerked forward as if tied together to a wire and they spat into the fire. We're twins, one of them said.

  I allowed maybe ye was.

  Most folks caint tell us apart.

  Boy you can pull some capers on folks when you look much alike as me and Vernon does.

  Reese took cups from the woman and set them on a flat rock by the fire and took up the old blue enamel coffeepot. He gazed at the possumhunters from one to the other. You all aint got the same name have ye? he said.

  The possumhunters guffawed and the one with the shotgun elbowed the other one in the ribs. Naw, he said. I'm Vernon and this here is Fernon.

  Reese grinned. Suttree was leaning back against the slate of the bluff watching them. They were thin and longboned and squatting there their knees came almost to their ears and their hands lay palm up on the ground before them in the manner of apes.

  Lots of folks thinks we got
the same name, said the one with the lantern. Their bein so much alike. Dont that coffee smell good.

  Just drink all ye want, said Reese, pouring carefully.

  They hung their lean faces in their cups and peered over the rims. Reese was full of admiration and kept looking from one to the other of them and shaking his head and looking about at various members of his family to see what they thought.

  We dont rightly know which one of us is which noway, said the one with the shotgun. Mama never could tell us apart. They'd just kindly guess. Up till we was long in about four or five years old and could tell our own names. Fore that they aint no tellin how many times we might of swapped.

  We had little old bracelets had our names on em but we kicked them off first thing. I caint stand to wear nothin like that nor Vernon neither. I just despise a wristwatch.

  One time we was eight year old I fell out of a tree and broke my arm Vernon was at Grandaddy's. They wouldnt let me go for somethin I done. I fell out of a black walnut tree in the back yard and laid there hollerin till Mama come and got me. Well, she run out in the road and stopped a car and they put me in it and took me in to Dr Harrison and we went up the steps to where his office was at and there set Vernon with his own arm broke.

  The one with the shotgun grinned and nodded. We'd both fell out of black walnut trees at the identical same minute eight mile apart. I broke my right arm and Fernon his left'n and he's lefthanded and me right.

  Pshaw, said Reese.

  You dont need to ast us. It was in the papers. You can go look it up your ownself.

  We had that piece from the paper a long time.

  We can tell what one another is thinkin, said the one with the shotgun. He nodded toward the brother. Me and him can.

  Reese looked at him and then he looked at the one with the lantern.

  He can think a word and I can tell ye what it is. Or him me, either one.

  Caint do it, Reese said.

  The possumhunters looked at each other and grinned.

  What'U you bet on it?