Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

  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 sh
ort. 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 evenin?

  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.

  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.