Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

  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 t
he 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 birth 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.

  Or cold mornings in the Market Lunch after serving early Mass with J-Bone. Coffee at the counter. Rich smell of brains and eggs frying. Old men in smoky coats and broken boots hunkered over plates. A dead roach beneath a plastic cakebell. Lives proscribed and doom in store, doom's adumbration in the smoky censer, the faint creak of the tabernacle door, the tasteless bread and draining the last of the wine from the cruet in a corner and counting the money in the box. This venture into the world of men rich with vitality, these unwilling churched ladling cream into their cups and watching the dawn in the city, enjoying the respite from their black clad keepers with their neat little boots, their spectacles, the deathreek of the dark and half scorched muslin that they wore. Grim and tireless in their orthopedic moralizing. Filled with tales of sin and unrepentant deaths and visions of hell and stories of levitation and possession and dogmas of semitic damnation for the tacking up of the paraclete. After eight years a few of their charges could read and write in primitive fashion and that was all.

  Suttree looked up at the ceiling where a patriarchal deity in robes and beard lurched across the cracking plaster. Attended by thunder, by fat infants with dovewings grown from their shoulderbones. He lowered his head to his chest. He slept.

  A priest shook him gently. He looked up into a bland scented face.

  Were you waiting for confession?

  No.

  The priest looked at him. Do I know you? he said.

  Suttree placed one hand on the pew in front of him. An old woman was going along the altar rail with a dusting rag. He struggled to his feet. No, he said. You dont know me.

  The priest stepped back, inspecting his clothes, his fishstained shoes.

  I just fell asleep a minute. I was resting.

  The priest gave a little smile, lightly touched with censure, remonstrance gentled. God's house is not exactly the place to take a nap, he said.

  It's not God's house.

  I beg your pardon?

  It's not God's house.

  Oh?

  Suttree waved his hand vaguely and stepped past the priest and went down the aisle. The priest watched him. He smiled sadly, but a smile for that.

  The ragman laboring up beneath the mound of ripe bedding in which he had entombed himself for sleep looked like a melted candle. He sat cowled and scowling out upon the new day. A draft of dank air went among his silken chinwhisk
ers and a faint miasma rose off of him like heat from a summer road.

  Now he hobbled about in his ragged underwear with his withered and rickety shanks trembling, gathering his clothes in one hand and poking among the mounds of paper for dry ones with which to start his fire. The sound of morning traffic upon the bridge beat with the dull echo of a dream in his cavern and the ragman would have wanted a sager soul than his to read in their endless advent auguries of things to come, the specter of mechanical proliferation and universal blight. Two fishermen passed along the river path, misty figures going silently save for the fragile rattling of their canes, lifting hands toward him where he stood with his palms spread above a thin and heatless spire of smoke, the rank earthy smell of the barren mud beneath the bridge rife with the morning damp, the river passing smoky and silent and overhead in the arches of the bridge the inane and sporadic clapping of pigeons setting forth into the day.

  He mumbled and massaged his hands above the fire. He took his kettle to the river and dipped it full of water and came back. The mist was running off the river in little tongues and lapping eddyplaces and there was hope of sunlight somewhere beyond the eastern murk.

  He went with his despair through the warrens of the city towing his kindlingwood cart with a sound in those lightless corridors like guts rumbling.

  In the belly of an iron trashbin big enough to hold a pokergame he sorted out mementos all the morning long. Indemnified bottles cast off by the idle rich. Redeemable at two cents per. Newsprint for baling. Useless bones. A dead rat, a broken broom, part of an inkpen. A side of gangrenous bacon filled with skippers. The wreck of a fruitcrate which his eyes saw as kindling, salvageable, saleable. A passing truck muted out the footsteps of the kitchen boy from the Sanitary Lunch. The old man felt the door above him darken and looked up with eyes terrible to see the round mouth of a swillcan tipping. He leaped back flailing and was upended by a turtling box. A lapful of lettuce and old bread, nothing worse. The can rattled and clanged. In the distance a trolley answered. The old man appeared in the door of the bin like some queer revenant rising in smokeless athanasia from the refuse to croak a slew of bitter curses out upon the world but the kitchen boy didnt even look back.