Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

  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 woke 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 o
n 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?

  Well, I dont want to bet nothin. But I'd like to see it done.

  They looked at each other again. They had a curious way of turning their heads toward each other, like mechanical dolls. Go on over there Fernon and I'll turn my back.

  The one with the shotgun turned around with a lithe swiveling motion. He saw Suttree leaning against the rocks there and winked at him and put his hands over his ears and bent his head. The other one rose and went toward Reese and squatted by him and bent to his ear. Tell me a word, he said.

  What kind of word?

  Just a word. Whatever. Hush. Whisper it in my ear.

  Reese leaned and cupped his hand to the possumhunter's ear and then sat back again. The possumhunter mouthed the word to himself, his eyes aloft. Downriver came the thin cry of hounds and across the flooded fields a yard dog yapped in the distance.

  The man with the shotgun raised his head and took his hands from his ears. The boy had come to the fire and was squatting near Reese and the old lady and the girls were watching the hunter with the gun. You got it, Fernon? he cried out.

  Yep, said Fernon.

  The hunter opened his eyes. He squatted there motionless. His folded shadow skewered by the shotgun leaned across the slates. He looked at Suttree. Brother, he said.

  Suttree stood up. The hunter spun about and faced his unarmed image across the fire, his sinister isomer in bone and flesh. They hooted like mandrills and pointed with opposing hands at Reese. Reese drew back, his hand to his throat. Suttree took up his bedding and went down the face of the bluff beyond the firelight and through the woods to the river.

  In the morning he walked out through the rain to the highway and looked down the long black straight. There had been a high wind in the night and the wet macadam lay enameled up with leaves. He could have just walked off down the road.

  The old woman and the girls came in about four oclock with some eggs and things from the farm upriver where they traded and the old woman cast about with her sullen eyes as she did her work, kneading out biscuits and placing them in the iron dutch oven and piling coals with care onto the lid. It was past dark when Reese and the boy came in. They ate supper in silence. The rain that had fallen so small and fine all morning had ceased and Suttree took his bedding off down to the river and lay there with his hands composed upon his chest. Watching up at the starless dark. The shapes of the trees rearing dimly in the lightning. A distant toll of thunder. The sound of the river. Each drift of wind brought rainwater from the trees and it spattered lightly in the leaves and on his face. He'd had enough of rain. The fire had died, he eased toward sleep. The next moment all this was changed forever.

  Suttree leaped to his feet. The wall of slate above the camp had toppled in the darkness, whole jagged ledges crashing down, great plates of stone separating along the seams with dry shrieks and collapsing with a roar upon the ground below, the dull boom of it echoing across the river and back again and then just the sifting down of small rocks, thin slates of shale clattering down in the dark. Suttree pulled himself into his trousers and started up through the trees at a run. He heard the mother calling out. Oh God, she cried. Suttree heard it with sickness at heart, this calling on. She meant for God to answer.

  Reese! he called. There was no light. He stumbled on a clutch of figures on the ground. A sobbing in the dark. The rain was falling on them. He had not known that it was raining. In a raw pool of lightning an image of baroque pieta, the woman gibbering and kneeling in the rain clutching at sheared limbs and rags of meat among the slabs of rock. One of the younger girls was pulling at her. The boy had come with a flashlight.

  Dont, said Suttree.

  God almighty, said the boy.

  He snatched at the boy's hand. Get that damned light off of her.

  Mama, Mama.

  Oh God, said Reese.

  Suttree turned to see him hobbling toward them holding one knee. He knelt by the woman. Where's that light, he said. I know I seen a light.

  Suttree was kneeling by Reese. The cryptic lightning developed a rainveiled face stark and blue upon the ground. He took hold of a pale arm to feel for pulse. The arm was limp and turned the wrong way in his hand and there was no pulse to it. Reese was clawing at the rocks and the woman was moaning and pounding at them with her hand as if they were something dumb that might be driven off. Suttree took the light from the boy and cast it about. A havoc of old crushed signs and lumber. A pot, a mangled lantern. At the far edge of the slide the youngest girl sat dumb and bloody in the rain watching them. He reached and took hold of the topmost slate and raised it and slid it back.

  They worked without speaking and when the stones were all shifted the old man got the girl's broken body up some way in his arms and began to stumble off with her. The flashlight lay cocked on the ground and the beam of it angled up toward ultimate night and the rain fell small and slant. He seemed to be making for the river with her but in the loose sand he lost his footing and they fell and he knelt there in the rain over her and held his two fists at his breast and cried to the darkness over them all. Oh God I caint take no more. Please lift this burden from me for I caint bear it.

  He left downriver in the dark, the oars aboard, turning slowly in the current, jostling over the shoals. The cottonwoods went b
y like rows of bones. Come sunrise he was drifting through peaceful farmland upon a river high and muddy. He went along past grazing cows, their cropping in the grass audible above the clank of their bells. They looked up surprised to see him there. The fields were spatched with beds of silt and the shoreline brush wore shapes of wood and rags of paper all among the branches. He passed beneath a concrete bridge and boys fishing called to him but he did not look up. He sat in the skiff and held his hands in his lap with the dark blood crusted on the upturned palms. His eyes beheld the country he was passing through but did not mark it. He was a man with no plans for going back the way he'd come nor telling any soul at all what he had seen.

  He lay for days in his cot, no one came. The drums under one corner were banjaxed and the shanty lay tilted in the water so that he had to shore up the legs of his cot on one side with bricks. He did not put out his lines again. The windows in the shanty were mostly broken but he did not turn out to mend them. The river filled with leaves. Long days of fall. Indian summer. He wandered up the hill one evening to look for Harrogate but he did not find him. The musty keep beneath the arches of the viaduct was barren of the city rat's varied furnishings and there was a dog long dead lay there whose yellow ribs leered like teeth through the moldy rug of hide.

  He crossed the iron river bridge and went down the steep bank on the far side and came out on the railroad. Dry weeds among the ties, dead shells of milkweed, sumac and mimosa. The old locomotive was half swallowed up in kudzu and enormous lizards lay sunning on the tarred coach roofs.

  He went past the high webbed iron wheels, the seized journals and driving rods and the fat coiled springs and past the tender and rotting daycoach with its sunpeeled paint and paneless carriage sashes to the caboose.

  There was no one about. He climbed the steps and pushed open the door. The place was littered with trash and the little iron brakeman's stove had been kicked over and lay with the rusted sections of stovepipe in a tip of ash and cinder. On the table in the curious little baywindow lay a seal of yellow candlewax and two burnt matches. The old man's mattress was half off the bunk and there was little trace of his having ever lived there. Suttree kicked at the trash, the cans and papers and rags, and went back out. He followed the old railway trace downriver until he came to the bridge and here he called out the ragpicker.