Suttree Read online

  Harrogate turned and beheld an overalled railroader coming down the tracks toward him, an oldtimer in a striped cap with a heavy brass watchchain hanging from him.

  The country mouse turned to see which way to run but the man had paused to stoop above a rusted truck with his longspouted oilcan. He was shaking his head and muttering. Old black engine oil dripped from a seized journal. He raised himself erect and checked the time by the clocksized watch he wore in his bibpocket. Where's your buddies at today? he said.

  Harrogate looked about to see if it was he that was addressed. A cat regarded him dreamily from the domed roof of the coach, belly weighed with pigeon eggs against the warm tar.

  It's just me, said Harrogate.

  The old man squinted at him. Your daddy aint a railroad man is he?

  No.

  I allowed maybe I knowed ye.

  I'm new around here.

  I dont know ye then.

  My name's Gene Harrogate, said Harrogate coming forward. But the old man shook his head and waved him away and climbed laboriously over the couplings between the cars. I know all the people I want to know, he said.

  You dont know old Suttree do ye? Harrogate called after him, but the old man didnt answer.

  Harrogate went on down the line, under the old steel bridge and out from the shadow of the bluff past a lumberyard and a slaughterhouse. Rich odors of pinepitch and manure. The siding switched off among the yards and he crossed a field with a ragged camp of shacks sketched into the distance and a weedy sea of auto wrecks washed up on the flank of a hill. He came out upon a narrow road and after a while he came to a gate construed from an old iron bedframe all overgrown with dusty morninglories and hung about with hummingbirds like windtoys on strings. In the yard lay a man in greasy overalls with his head resting on a tire.

  Hey, said Harrogate

  The man reared up wildly and looked about.

  I'm a huntin Suttree.

  We're closed, said the man. He rose and crossed the yard toward a tarpaper shack covered with hanging hubcaps, no two alike. Bumpers were stacked against the wall and water dripped from a tap into a gastank halved open with a torch. Beyond in the rank and steamy foliage wrecked cars crouched and everywhere in this lush waste were blooming flowers and shrubs.

  Look around if you want, the man called. Dont bother me. Dont steal nothin. He disappeared into the shack and Harrogate pushed open the gate and entered. The gate was weighted with a chainload of gears and closed gently behind him. The air was rich with humus and he could smell the flowers. Wild datura with pale strange trumpets and harebells among the debris. Great gangly rosebushes covered with dying blooms that collapsed at a touch. Phlox lavender and pink along a leaning wall of cinderblock and loosestrife and columbine among the iron inner works of autos scattered in the grass. He crossed to the shed and peered through the open door. The man was lying stretched out on a car seat.

  Hey, Harrogate said.

  The man lifted his arm from his face. What in the name of God do you want anyway? he said.

  Harrogate was peering about in the gloom of this small hut crammed with the salvage of highway disasters. Faint country music came from a car radio in the floor. Tires rose in black serried pillars and batteries lay everywhere suppurating a dry white foam.

  I'm a huntin old Suttree, he said.

  He aint here.

  Where might I find him at do ye reckon?

  Web City.

  Where's that at?

  Up a spider's ass.

  The junkman put his arm back across his eyes. Harrogate watched him. It was incredibly hot in the shack and it reeked of tar. He studied the outlandish collection of autoparts. You a junkman? he said.

  What did you need?

  Nothin.

  What are ye sellin?

  I aint sellin nothin.

  Well let's buy or sell one.

  I thought you was closed.

  Now I'm open. I guess you've got a bunch of hubcaps you've stole.

  No I aint.

  Where are they?

  I aint got none. I'm just out of the workhouse now for stealin watermelons.

  I aint buyin no watermelons.

  Harrogate shifted to the other foot. His clothes did not move. You live here? he said.

  Mmm.

  It's neat. I bet a feller could fix hisself a place like this for next to little or nothin, couldnt he?

  The man's toes were pointed toward the ceiling and they spread and closed again in a gesture of noncommitment.

  Boy I wisht I had me a place.

  The man lay there.

  Hey, Harrogate said.

  The man groaned and rolled over and reached under the car seat and pulled out a quart jar of white whiskey and sat erect enough to funnel a drink down his gullet. Harrogate watched. The man deftly reapplied the twopiece lid and laying the half filled jar against his ribs he subsided into rest and silence once again.

  Hey, said Harrogate.

  He opened one eye. Boy, he said, what's wrong with you?

  Nothin. I'm all right.

  You want a job?

  Doin what?

  Doin what, doin what, the man said to the ceiling.

  What kind of a job?

  The man sat and swung his feet to the clay floor, the jar cradled in his arm. He shook his sweaty head. After a minute he looked up at Harrogate. I aint got time to mess with people too sorry to work, he said.

  I'll work.

  Okay. You see that frontended forty-eight Ford out there? That ragtop?

  I dont know. They's a bunch out there.

  This one is like new. I need the upholstery out of it fore it ruins. Seats, carpets, doorpanels. And I need em cleaned.

  What are you payin?

  What'll you take?

  Harrogate looked at the ground. A black swarf packed with small parts in a greasy mosaic. I'll take two dollars, he said.

  I'll give ye a dollar.

  Dollar and a half.

  You're on. They's wrenches in that box yonder and a screwdriver. The seats unbolts from underneath. Them door and winderhandle scutches are spring loaded you push in on em and knock the pins out with a nail. Armrests unscrews. When you get em all out I got some soap and they's a watertap at the side of the house.

  Okay.

  The man set down the jar and rose and went to the door. He pointed out the car. It was accordioned to half its length. Bring them sunvisors too, he said.

  What happened to it?

  Run head on into a semi. Froze the speedometer on the peg. You'll see it.

  Harrogate looked at the car in some wonder. How many was in it?

  Four or five. Bunch of boys. They found one in a field about two days later.

  Did it kill em?

  The junkman looked down at Harrogate. Did it what? he said.

  Did it kill em.

  Why no. I think one of em got a skint knee is all.

  Boy I dont see how it kept from killin em.

  The junkman shook his head wearily and went back in.

  Harrogate got the toolbox and went out to the car. He pulled on one crumpled door and pried at it. He went around to the other one but it had no handle.

  Hey, he said, standing in the door of the shack again.

  What now?

  I caint get in. The doors is jammed.

  You may have to jack em open. Go in through the top and take one of them jacks yonder and some blocks. And quit botherin me.

  He went back out, small apprentice, clambering up on the decklid and climbing down through the bows and stays and rags of canvas into the interior of the car. It smelled richly of leather and mildew and something else. The windshields were broken out and along the jagged jaws of glass in the channels hung cured shreds of matter and small bits of cloth. The upholstery was red and the blood that had dried in spattered shapes over it was a deep burgundy black. He propped his feet against one door and gave it a good kick and it fell open. Some kind of globular material hung down over the
steering column. He climbed out of the car and bent down to find the heads of the bolts beneath the seats. The carpeting had been rained on and was lightly furred with pale blue mold. Something small and fat and wet with an umbilical looking tail lying there. A sort of slug. He picked it up. A human eye looked up at him from between his thumb and forefinger.

  He set it carefully back where he'd gotten it and looked around. It was hot and very quiet in the little yard. He reached and picked it up again and studied it a minute and set it back and rose from his knees and went toward the gate, holding his hand before him, down the road toward the river.

  After he'd washed his hand for a while and squatted and thought about things he started back toward the bridge. There was a lower path that kept to the very brim of the river, winding over roots and along blackened shelves of stone. Fragile mats of trampled growth hanging over the water. Harrogate studied the shape of the city crossriver as he went.

  Under the shadow of the bridge the bare red earth lay in a strip of sunless blight. Rusty baitcans, tangled strands of nylon fishline among the rocks. He came out of the weeds and up past the ragpicker's firepit with its stale odor of smoked stones and stopped to study the darkness under the concrete arch. When that ragged troll appeared from behind his painted rock Harrogate nodded affably. Hidy, he said.

  The ragpicker scowled.

  I guess it's done took in under here, aint it?

  The old hermit made no answer but Harrogate seemed not to mind. He came closer, looking things over. Boy, he said. You got it fixed up slick in under here, aint ye?

  The ragpicker raised slightly up like a nesting bird disturbed.

  I'll bet that there old bed sleeps good, said Harrogate pointing.

  You better look out, spoke a voice from the high arches. That old man is mean as a snake.

  Harrogate craned his neck to see who'd said it. Fat birds the color of slate crooned among the concrete trusses overhead. Who's that? he called, his voice returning all hollow and strange.

  You better run. He's known to carry a pistol.

  Harrogate looked at the ragpicker. The ragpicker flapped about and bared his teeth. He looked up again. Hey, he called.

  There was no answer. Where's he at? said Harrogate. But the ragpicker just mumbled and withdrew from sight.

  Harrogate approached closer and peered into the gloom. The old man was seated in a burst chair at the rear of his quarters. There were odds and ends of furniture standing all around on the rank dirt floor and there was a vaguely eastern carpet with a raw cord warp that was eating away the serried minarets and there were oil lamps and stolen roadlanterns and cracked plaster statuary that stood like ghosts in the semidark and earthen crocks and crates of bottles and bricabrac and mounded troves of shoddy and great tottering sheaves of newsprint and heaps of rags. The bed was old and ornate with crown and finial in cast brass.

  Caint you read, boy? the old man's voice piped sepulchral from his lair.

  Not real good.

  That there sign says to keep out.

  They lord, I wouldnt come in without bein asked. You got it fixed up slick in here, I'll say that.

  The ragpicker grunted. He had his feet up in the chair with him and his thin polished shins shone like naked bones crossed there.

  Dont they nobody bother ye down here?

  I get a loose fool or two come by ever now and then, said the ragman.

  How long ye been here?

  About that long, the old man said, spacing a random measure between his palms.

  Harrogate grinned and rose to the challenge. You know the difference tween a grocery store fly and a hardware store fly?

  The ragman's eyes grew even colder.

  Well, the grocery store fly lights on the beans and peas, and the hardware store fly lights on the nails and screws. Harrogate folded suddenly and slapped his thigh and cackled like a stricken fowl.

  Boy why dont you get on down the road wherever you come from or was goin to one and leave me the son of a bitching hell alone?

  Hell, I just stopped to say Hidy. I didnt mean nothin by it.

  The old man closed his eyes.

  Say listen. Is they anyone under the far end yonder?

  The ragman looked. Across the river down the long aisle of arches lay the distant facing image of his own shelter. Why dont you go see? he said.

  Danged if I wont, said Harrogate. If it aint spoke for we'll be neighbors. He waved and started up around the side of the bridge. We'll get along, he called back. I can get along with anybody.

  It was midafternoon when he crossed into the city and descended the steep path at the end of the bridge, swinging down through a jungle of small locust trees filled with long spikes and blackened starlings that flew shrieking out over the river and circled and came back. He emerged onto the barren apron of clay beneath the bridge. Small black children playing there in the cool. Below them a black and narrow street. One of the children saw him and then they all looked up, three soft dark faces watching.

  Hidy, he said.

  They squatted immobile. Small wooden trucks and autos stalled in streets graded out with a broken shingle. Beyond them a brown clapboard house, foreyard a moonscape in clay and coaldust, a few sorry chickens crouched in the shade. A black man swung reposed and prone on a bench hung by chains from the porch ceiling and a line of faded wash steamed in the windless heat.

  What are you all doin?

  The oldest spoke. We aint done nothin.

  You all live over yonder?

  They admitted it with solemn nods.

  Harrogate looked about. He reckoned he'd not be put to living next door to niggers leastways. He climbed down the bank and came out on the road and went on downriver past rows of shacks. The road was pocked and buckled and after a while it went to sand and dried mud and then nothing. A thin path wandered on through weeds hung with wastepaper. Harrogate followed after.

  The path cut through heatstricken lots and fallow land and passed under a high trestle that crossed the river. A tramp's midden among the old stone footings where gray bones lay by rusted tins and a talus of jarshards. A ring of blackened bricks and the remains of a fire. Harrogate wandered about, poking at things with a stick. Pieces of burnt foil sunburst in blue and yellow. Dredging charred relics from the ashy sleech. Melted glass that had reseized in the helical bowl of a bedspring like some vitreous chrysalis or chambered whelk from southern seas. He dusted it on his sleeve and carried it with him. Across a smoking alluvial strewn with refuse to the faint rise of the railtracks and the river beyond.

  A row of black fishermen sat along the ties where the tracks crossed the creek, their legs dangling above the oozing sewage. They watched their corks tilt below them in the creek mouth and did not turn to see him teeter past along the rail, his head averted above the sulphurous fart reek that seeped up between the ties.

  You all doin any good? he sang out.

  A baleful face looked up and looked away again. He stood watching for a while and then went on, tottering in the heat. The sun like a bunghole to a greater hell beyond. On the hill above him he could see the brickwork of the university and a few fine homes among the trees. He came out at length onto a small riverside street. His sneakers lifting from the hot tar with smacking sounds. A sidelong dog receded at a half trot before him down the street toward the shade of some lilac bushes by one of the combustible looking shacks there. Harrogate studied the landscape beyond. A patch of gray corn by the riverside, rigid and brittle. A vision of bleak pastoral that at length turned him back toward the city again.

  He wandered Knoxville's sadder regions for the better part of the afternoon, poking in alleys, probing old cellars, the dusty lees or nether dank of public works. Him wide eyed in his juryrigged apparel not unlike some small apostate to the race itself, pausing here at a wall to read what he could of inscriptions in cloudy chalk, the agenda of anonymous societies, assignation dates, personal intelligence on the habits of local females. A row of bottles gone to the wal
l for stoning lay in brown and green and crystal ruin down a sunlit corridor and one upright severed cone of yellow glass rose from the paving like a flame. Past these gnarled ashcans at the alley's mouth with their crusted rims and tilted gaping maws in and out of which soiled dogs go night and day. An iron stairwell railing shapeless with birdlime like something brought from the sea and small flowers along a wall reared from the fissured stone.

  He paused at some trash in a corner where a warfarined rat writhed. Small beast so occupied with the bad news in his belly. It must have been something you ate. Harrogate crouched on his heels and watched with interest. He prodded it gently with a curtainrod he'd found. From a doorway a girl watched him motionless and thin and unkempt. A crude doll dressed in rags with huge eyes darkly dished and guttering in her bird's skull. Harrogate looked up and caught her watching him and she went all squirmy with her hands pulling at the raveled hem of her dress for a moment before her head snapped back and he could see a ropeveined claw clutched in her hair and the girl jerked backward and disappeared through an open door. He looked down at the rat again. It was moving one rear leg in slow circles as if to music. It must have felt some cold pneuma pass for it suddenly shivered and then it let out its feet slowly until they came to rest. Harrogate poked it with the curtainrod but the rat only rolled loosely in its skin. Fleas were running out at the lean gray face.

  He rose and nudged the rat with his toe and then went on down the alley. He crossed a tarred street bedded with bottlecaps and bits of metal, scattered patterns in niello and one improbable serpent, the ribbed spine polished by traffic and partly coiled in a pale bone omen he could not read. Overhead the bowls of stoned out polelamps. A lank black slattern stood hipshot in a doorframe. Hey boydove, you gettin any gravel for yo goose? Whoopla laughter scuttling after him and a gold tooth winksome, bawdy dogstar in the ordurous jaws of fellatio major.

  He went where torpid blacks crouched or drowsed in doorways, stoops, on corners almost in the traffic. Old men like effigies with fingers laced and capped upon the heads of canes between their knees. In suits thought long extinct, perforated two-tone shoes, socks rolled in obscene tubes about their thin black ankles. A hawkfaced ebon freak importuned him, sussurous, long underlip leaking a clear drool. Flies clove the air like comets. He passed on. Eyes averted. Dark matrons at the upper windows in hot and airless dishabille, chocolate breasts leaning, Dusklovers. Ancillary disciples to the rise of night. He'd come from the dwellingstreets of whites to those of blacks and no gray middle folk did he see.