Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

  They're tearing everything down, Suttree said.

  Yeah. Expressway.

  Sad chattel stood on the cinder lawns, in the dim lilac lamplight. Old sofas bloated in the rain exploding quietly, shriveled tables sloughing off their papery veneers. A backdrop of iron earthmovers reared against the cokeblown sky.

  New roads through McAnally, said J-Bone.

  Suttree nodded, his eyes shut. He knew another McAnally, good to last a thousand years. There'd be no new roads there.

  At night in the iron bed high in the old house on Grand he'd lie awake and hear the sirens, lonely sound in the city, in the empty streets. He lay in his chrysalis of gloom and made no sound, share by share sharing his pain with those who lay in their blood by the highwayside or in the floors of glass strewn taverns or manacled in jail. He said that even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering and he thought that he'd guessed out likewise for the living a nominal grief like a grange from which disaster and ruin are proportioned by laws of equity too subtle for divining.

  The destruction of McAnally Flats found him interested. A thin, a wasted figure, he eased himself along past scenes of wholesale razing, whole blocks row on row flattened to dust and rubble. Yellow machines groaned over the landscape, the earth buckling, the few old coalchoked trees upturned and heaps of slag and cellarholes with vatshaped furnaces squat beneath their hydra works of rusted ducting and ashy fields shorn up and leveled and the dead turned out of their graves.

  He watched the bland workman in the pilothouse of the crane shifting levers. The long tethered wreckingball swung through the side of a wall and small boys applauded. Brickwork of dried blood-cakes in flemish bond crumbling in a cloud of dust and mortar. Walls grim with scurf, a nameless crud. Pale spongoid growths that kept in clusters along the damper reaches came to light and all day grime-caked salvagers with hatchets spalled dead mortar from the piled black brick. Gnostic workmen who would have down this shabby shapeshow that masks the higher world of form. And left at eventide these cutaway elevations, little cubicles giving onto space, an iron bedstead, a freestanding stairwell to nowhere. Old gothic soffits hung with tar and lapsing paintflakes. Ragged cats picked their way over the glass and nigger dogs in the dooryards beyond the railsiding twitched in their sleep. Until nothing stood save rows of doors, some bearing numbers, all nailed to. Beyond lay fields of rubble, twisted steel and pipes and old conduits reared out of the ground in clusters of agonized ganglia among the broken slabs of masonry. Where small black hominoids scurried over the waste and sheets of newsprint rose in the wind and died again.

  When he went one morning to the river he found the houseboat door ajar and someone sleeping in his bed. He entered in a fog of putrefaction. A hot and heady reek under the quaking tin. So warm a forenoon. He screened his nostrils with his sleeve.

  Suttree nudged the sleeper with his toe but the sleeper slept. Two rats came from the bed like great hairy beetles and went rapidly without pause or effort up the wall and through a missing pane of glass as soundlessly as smoke.

  He went back out and sat on the rail. He watched the river and he watched the fishing canes wink in the sunlight at the point. Wands dipping and rising, an old piscean ceremony he'd known himself. Pigeons came and went beneath the arches of the bridge and he could hear the rattling whine of a bandsaw at Rose's across the river. Upstream at Ab Jones's no sign of life, he looked. After a while he sucked in a breath and entered the cabin again. He kicked away the covers. A snarling clot of flies rose. Suttree stepped back. Caved cheek and yellow grin. A foul deathshead bald with rot, flyblown and eyeless.

  He stood against the wall as long as he could hold his breath. A mass of yellow maggots lay working in one ear and a few flies rattled in the flesh and stood him off like cats. He turned and went out.

  A woman was trudging stoically across the fields toward his houseboat. She dipped into the swale on the far side of the tracks and rose up again, crossed the tracks and came on down the barren path toward the river. She was roundshouldered and slumped and she walked with a kind of mindless dedication like a circus bear. Suttree waited on her, pulling the door to at his back.

  When she reached the river she looked up at him and shaded her eyes with one hand. Mr Suttree? she said.

  Yes.

  She looked at the plank doubtfully, then shifted into motion again and came plodding up to the deck. She was sweating and she blew the hair from her eyes and wiped her eyes against her shoulders, one, the other, as if she were used to having things in her hands and had forgotten somewhat the use of them.

  I seen ye from over in the store, she said. They told me you come in over there. I was about give up on ye.

  Who are you? said Suttree.

  I'm Josie Harrogate. I wanted to see you about Gene.

  Suttree looked at her. A big rawboned woman, her hair matted over her face. The armpits of her cotton housedress black with sweat. Are you Gene's sister?

  Yessir. He's my halfbrother is what he is.

  I see.

  My daddy died fore Gene was born.

  Suttree ran his hand through his hair. Have you been to see him? he said.

  No. I allowed maybe you knowed where he was at.

  You dont know where he is?

  No sir.

  Suttree looked off down the river.

  Mama died back in the winter I dont reckon he even knows it.

  Well. I hate to have to tell you. He's in the penitentiary.

  Yessir. Whereabouts?

  Petros.

  Her lips formed the word but nothing came out. What was it again? she said.

  Petros. It's the state penitentiary. Brushy Mountain, it's called.

  Brushy Mountain. Where's it at?

  Well. It's west of here. About fifty miles I think. You could probably get a bus out there. They could tell you up at the bus terminal.

  What's he in for?

  Robbery.

  She stared fixedly into his eyes to stay his lying or to know it if he did and she said: They aint fixin to electricate him are they?

  No. He's in for three to five years. He could get out in eighteen months.

  Well how long has he done been in?

  A couple or three months.

  Well, she said. I sure thank ye. I knowed you was a friend to Gene.

  Gene's a good boy, Suttree said.

  She didnt answer. She had turned to go but she stopped at the rail. What was that name again? she said.

  Brushy Mountain?

  No. That othern you said.

  Petros.

  Petros, she said. She said it again, staring emptily upward. Then she started down the catwalk. There must have been a loose cleat somewhere because going down it she fell. Her feet shot from under her and she sat down. The plank bowed deeply and rose again, lifting her flailing figure. She managed to get a grip and steady herself and she stood carefully and went on, teetering along till she reached the shore.

  Are you all right? called Suttree.

  She didnt look back. She raised one hand and waved it and went on, stooped and heavy gaited, across the fields and the tracks toward the town.

  Suttree went up the river path through dockbloom and wild onion to the old floating roadhouse and tapped a last sad time at the green door. He rested on the railing and he tapped again but no one came. After a while he descended the plankwalk and crossed the fields and the tracks to the store.

  She's moved out, said Howard Clevinger.

  Yes, said Suttree.

  She had a brother in Mascot, I think she went to live with them. Did that woman find you that was huntin you?

  She did.

  I seen you over there.

  Suttree went back out and crossed to the river and sat on a stone and watched the water pass for a long time.

  It was just dusk. Hung in the darker wall of the hillside among kudzu and dusty vines a few pale windowlights. The porch at Jimmy Smith's with its yellow light and half shadowed drinkers above the sla
t railed balustrade. A broken portico not unlike the shorn wreckage in McAnally save pasted up with these small crazed faces peering out. Over the squalid littoral, the wasteclogged river and the immense emptiness of the world beyond. A garish figure was coming along, a hoyden that sallied and fluttered through the one cone of uncashiered lamplight down all Front Street. Trippin Through The Dew in harlequin evening wear. They half circled, regarding one another.

  Well I see you're still around anyway, said Suttree.

  Honey I'm always here. They cant do without me. He smiled, primlipt and coyly.

  Where's your hat this evening?

  Oh honey hats are out. They just are. I always thought they were tacky anyway. Except mine of course. He knit his hands and rolled his shoulders and a whinny of girlish laughter went skittering among the little gray shacks and along the quiet twilit riverfront. He sobered suddenly and cocked his head. Where you been? he said.

  I was in the hospital. Typhoid fever.

  Lord honey I thought you looked peaky. Let me see you. He turned Suttree toward the streetlamp and peered into his eyes with genuine solicitude.

  I'm okay, Suttree said.

  Sweetie you have just fell off to skin and bones.

  I lost about twenty pounds. I've gotten some of it back.

  You want to rest and take care of yourself. You hear?

  Suttree held out his hand. Tell me goodbye, he said.

  Where you goin?

  I dont know. I'm leaving Knoxville.

  Shoot. He slapped at Suttree's outstretched hand. You aint goin noplace. When? When you goin?

  Right now. I'm gone.

  The black reached out sadly, his face pinched. They stood there holding hands in the middle of the little street. When you comin back?

  I dont guess I'll be back.

  Dont tell me that.

  Well. Sometime maybe. Take care.

  Honey you write and let me know how you gettin on.

  Well.

  Just a postcard.

  Okay.

  You need any money?

  No. I've got some.

  You sure?

  I'm okay.

  Trippin Through The Dew squeezed his hand and stepped back and gave a sort of crazy little salute. Best luck in the world baby, he said.

  Thanks John. You too.

  He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in.

  He took the shortcut up the path behind the houses, avoiding any chance of other meetings in the street. Old broken Thersites would have called down from his high window but he was not well these latter days. Dried vitriol hung in glazen strings from a bush by the side of the house and Suttree even thought he heard muted sounds of grousing in an upper room. He cocked one eye up the high warped clapboard wall to the chamber kept by this old taperheaded troll but no one watched back. The eunuch was asleep in his chair and he stirred and mumbled fitfully as if the departing steps of the fisherman depleted his dreams but he did not wake.

  The city ambulance swung down off Front Street and went bobbling over the ground and across the tracks and up the river path until it came to the houseboat. People were watching along the porches and there were people standing around in front of the store watching with grave faces. Two men went in with a canvas stretcher and a blanket and in a few minutes they came out with the body and slid it quickly into the rear of the ambulance. In backing around they got the ambulance stuck in the mud. One wheel shot reams of gouty mire out into the river. The men climbed down and looked. One pushed. The ambulance sank until it was resting on its differential carrier.

  After a while three tall colored boys in track shoes came along and pushed the ambulance out.

  Who sick? one said.

  There was a man dead in there, the driver said.

  They looked at each other. How long he been dead?

  A couple of weeks.

  Shoo, one said, wrinkling his wide nose. That's what that's been.

  You dont know who it was do you?

  No suh.

  Dont know who lived here?

  No suh.

  Come on Ramsey, we got to go.

  I heah you, man.

  The driver closed the door and motioned with his hand and the ambulance pulled away. The boys watched them go. Shit, one said. Old Suttree aint dead.

  He had a small cardboard suitcase and he came out of the weeds and set it on the edge of the road and straightened up and began combing his hair. He looked about his appearance, propping one foot on the case and bending to scrape beggarlice from his trousers with his thumbnail. New trousers of tan chino. A new shirt open at the neck. His face and arms were suntanned and his hair crudely bartered and he wore cheap new brown leather shoes the toes of which he dusted, one, the other, against the back of his trouserlegs. He looked like someone just out of the army or jail. A car came down the highway and he gestured at it with his thumb and it went on.

  Traffic was slow along the road and he was there a long time. It was very hot. You could see his skin through the new shirt. Across the road a construction gang was at work and he watched them. A backhoe was dragging out a ditch and a caterpillar was going along the bank with mounds of pale clay shaling across its canted blade. Carpenters were hammering up forms and a cement truck waited on with its drum slowly clanking. Suttree watched this industry accomplish itself in the hot afternoon. Downwind light ocher dust had sifted all along the greening roadside foliage and in the quiet midafternoon the call of a long sad trainhorn floated over the lonely countryside.

  A boy was going along the works with a pail and he leaned to each, ladling out water in a tin dipper. Suttree saw hands come up from below the rim of the pit in parched supplication. When all these had been attended the boy came down along the edge of the ditch and handed up the dipper to the backhoe operator. Suttree saw him take it and tilt his head and drink and flick the last drops toward the earth and lean down and restore the dipper to the watercarrier. They nodded to each other and the boy turned and looked toward the road. Then he was coming down across the clay and over the ruts and laddered tracks of machinery. His dusty boots left prints across the black macadam and he came up to Suttree where he stood by the roadside and swung the bucket around and brought the dipper up all bright and dripping and offered it. Suttree could see the water beading coldly on the tin and running in tiny rivulets and drops that steamed on the road where they fell. He could see the pale gold hair that lay along the sunburned arms of the waterbearer like new wheat and he beheld himself in wells of smoking cobalt, twinned and dark and deep in child's eyes, blue eyes with no bottoms like the sea. He took the dipper and drank and gave it back. The boy dropped it into the bucket. Suttree wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Thanks, he said.

  The boy smiled and stepped back. A car had stopped for Suttree, he'd not lifted a hand.

  Let's go, said the driver.

  Hello, said Suttree, climbing in, shutting the door, his suitcase between his knees. Then they were moving. Out across the land the lightwires and roadrails were going and the telephone lines with voices shuttling on like souls. Behind him the city lay smoking, the sad purlieus of the dead immured with the bones of friends and forebears. Off to the right side the white concrete of the expressway gleamed in the sun where the ramp curved out into empty air and hung truncate with iron rods bristling among the vectors of nowhere. When he looked back the waterboy was gone. An enormous lank hound had come out of the meadow by the river like a hound from
the depths and was sniffing at the spot where Suttree had stood.

  Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them.

  Cormac McCarthy is the author of eleven novels. Among his honors are the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

  Books by Cormac McCarthy

  The Road

  The Sunset Limited (a novel in dramatic form)

  No Country for Old Men

  Cities of the Plain

  The Crossing

  All the Pretty Horses

  The Stonemason (a play)

  The Gardener's Son (a screenplay)

  Blood Meridian

  Suttree

  Child of God

  Outer Dark

  The Orchard Keeper

  BOOKS BY CORMAC MCCARTHY

  "McCarthy puts most other American writers to shame."

  --The New York Times Book Review

  THE ORCHARD KEEPER

  Set in a small, remote community in rural Tennessee between the two world wars, this novel tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father. Together with Rattner's Uncle Ather, they enact a drama that seems born of the land itself.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72872-6 (trade)

  978-0-307-76250-4 (eBook)

  OUTER DARK

  Outer Dark is a novel at once fabular and starkly evocative, set in an unspecified place in Appalachia around the turn of the century. A woman bears her brother's child, a boy, whom he leaves in the woods and tells her the baby died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72873-3 (trade)

  978-0-307-76249-8 (eBook)

  CHILD OF GOD

  Child of God is a taut, chilling novel that plumbs the depths of human degradation. Falsely accused of rape, Lester Ballard--a violent, dispossessed man who haunts the hill country of East Tennessee--is released from jail and allowed to roam at will, preying on the population with his strange lusts.