Suttree Read online

  He squatted.

  The old man watched the thin flames. Slow traffic passed above them in a muted rumble. In the fire potatoes blistered and split their charred jackets with low hissing sounds like small organisms expiring on the coals. The old man speared them from the ashes, one, two, three black stones smoking. He grouped them in a rusty hubcap. Get ye a tater, he said.

  Suttree lifted a hand. He did not answer because he knew that the old man would offer three times and he must parcel out his words of refusal. The old man had tilted a steaming can and was peering inside. A handful of beans boiled in riverwater. He raised his ruined eyes and looked out from under the beam of tufted bone that shaded them. I remember you now, he said. From when you was just little. Suttree didnt think so but he nodded. The old man used to go from door to door and he could make the dolls and bears to talk.

  Go on and get ye a tater, he said.

  Thanks, said Suttree. I've already eaten.

  Raw steam rose from the mealy pith of the potato he broke in his hands. Suttree looked out toward the river.

  I like a hot dinner, dont you? the old man said.

  Suttree nodded. Arched sumac fronds quivered in the noon warmth and pigeons squabbled and crooned in the bridge's ribbed spandrels. The shadowed earth in which he squatted bore the stale odor of a crypt.

  You didnt see that man jump, did you? Suttree said.

  He shook his head. An old ragpicker, his thin chops wobbling. I seen em draggin, he said. Did they find him?

  Yes.

  What did he jump for?

  I dont guess he said.

  I wouldnt do it. Would you?

  I hope not. Did you go over in town this morning?

  No, I never went. I been too poorly to go.

  What's the matter?

  Lord I dont know. They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.

  Well dont jump off the bridge.

  I wouldnt do it for nothin.

  They always seem to jump in hot weather.

  They's worse weather to come, said the ragpicker. Hard weather. Be foretold.

  Did that girl come out to see you?

  Aint been nobody to see me.

  He was eating the beans from the tin with a brass spoon.

  I'll talk to her again, said Suttree.

  Well. I wish ye'd get ye one of these here taters.

  Suttree rose. I've got to get on, he said.

  Dont rush off.

  Got to go.

  Come back.

  All right.

  A slight wind had come up and going back across the river he braced his feet against the uprights in the stern and pulled hard. The skiff had shipped enough water through her illjoined planks to float the morning's catch and they wandered over the cupped and paint-chipped floorboards colliding dumbly. Rag ends of caulkingstring flared from the seams and ebbed in the dirty water among bits of bait and paper and the sweeps dipped and rose and a constant sipe of riverwater sang from under the tin of one patched blade. Half awash as she was the skiff wallowed with a mercurial inertia and made heavy going. He turned upriver close to shore and went on. Black families in bright Sunday clothes fishing at the river's brim watched somberly his passage. Dinner pails and baskets adorned the grass and dark infants were displayed on blankets kept at their corners by stones against the wind.

  When he reached the houseboat he shipped the oars and the skiff slewed to a stall and settled ponderously against the tirecasings nailed there. He swung himself up with the rope in one hand and made fast. The skiff bobbed and slid heavily and the bilgewater surged. The fish sculled sluggishly. Suttree stretched and rubbed his back and eyed the sun. It was already very hot. He went along the deck and pushed open the door and entered. Inside the shanty the boards seemed buckled with the heat and beads of pitch were dripping from the beams under the tin roof.

  He crossed the cabin and stretched himself out on the cot. Closing his eyes. A faint breeze from the window stirring his hair. The shantyboat trembled slightly in the river and one of the steel drums beneath the floor expanded in the heat with a melancholy bong. Eyes resting. This hushed and mazy Sunday. The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit.

  He turned heavily on the cot and put one eye to a space in the rough board wall. The river flowing past out there. Cloaca Maxima. Death by drowning, the ticking of a dead man's watch. The old tin clock on Grandfather's table hammered like a foundry. Leaning to say goodbye in the little yellow room, reek of lilies and incense. He arched his neck to tell to me some thing. I never heard. He wheezed my name, his grip belied the frailty of him. His caved and wasted face. The dead would take the living with them if they could, I pulled away. Sat in an ivy garden that lizards kept with constant leathery slitherings. Hutched hares ghost pale in the shade of the carriagehouse wall. Flagstones in a rosegarden, the terraced slope of the lawn above the river, odor of boxwood and mossmold and old brick in the shadow of the springhouse. Under the watercress stones in the clear flowage cluttered with periwinkles. A salamander, troutspeckled. Leaning to suck the cold and mossy water. A rimpled child's face watching back, a watery isomer agoggle in the rings.

  In my father's last letter he said that the world is run by those willing to take the responsibility for the running of it. If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.

  From all old seamy throats of elders, musty books, I've salvaged not a word. In a dream I walked with my grandfather by a dark lake and the old man's talk was filled with incertitude. I saw how all things false fall from the dead. We spoke easily and I was humbly honored to walk with him deep in that world where he was a man like all men. From the small end of a corridor in the autumn woods he watched me go away to the world of the waking. If our dead kin are sainted we may rightly pray to them. Mother Church tells us so. She does not say that they'll speak back, in dreams or out. Or in what tongue the stillborn might be spoken. More common visitor. Silent. The infant's ossature, the thin and brindled bones along whose sulcate facets clove old shreds of flesh and cerements of tattered swaddle. Bones that would no more than fill a shoebox, a bulbous skull. On the right temple a mauve halfmoon.

  Suttree turned and lay staring at the ceiling, touching a like mark on his own left temple gently with his fingertips. The ordinary of the second son. Mirror image. Gauche carbon. He lies in Woodlawn, whatever be left of the child with whom you shared your mother's belly. He neither spoke nor saw nor does he now. Perhaps his skull held seawater. Born dead and witless both or a terratoma grisly in form. No, for we were like to the last hair. I followed him into the world, me. A breech birth. Hind end fore in common with whales and bats, life forms meant for other mediums than the earth and having no affinity for it. And used to pray for his soul days past. Believing this ghastly circus reconvened elsewhere for alltime. He in the limbo of the Christless righteous, I in a terrestrial hell.

  Through the thin and riven wall sounds of fish surging in the sinking skiff. The sign of faith. Twelfth house of the heavens. Ushering in the western church. St Peter patron of fishmongers. St Fiacre that of piles. Suttree placed one arm across his eyes. He said that he might have been a fisher of men in another time but these fish now seemed task enough for him.

  It was late evening before he woke. He did not stir, lying there on the rough army blanket watching the licking shapes of light from the river's face lapse and flare over the ceiling. He felt the shanty tilt slightly, steps on the catwalk and a low trundling sound among the barrels. No shade, this. Through the cracks he could see someone coming along the walk. A tim
orous tapping, once again.

  Come in, he said.

  Buddy?

  He turned his head. His uncle was standing in the doorway. He looked back at the ceiling, blinked, sat up and swung his feet to the floor. Come in, John, he said.

  The uncle came through the door, looking about, hesitant. He stopped in the center of the room, arrested in the quadrate bar of dusty light davited between the window and its skewed replica on the far wall, a barren countenance cruelly lit, eyes watery and half closed with their slack pendules of flesh hanging down his cheeks. His hands moved slightly with the wooden smile he managed. Hey boy, he said.

  Suttree sat looking at his shoes. He folded his hands together, opened them again and looked up. Sit down, he said.

  The uncle looked about, pulled the one chair back and sat carefully in it. Well, he said. How are you Buddy?

  Like you see. How are you?

  Fine. Fine. How is everything going?

  All right. How did you find me?

  I saw John Clancy up at the Eagles and he said that you were living in a houseboat or something so I looked along the river here and found you.

  He was smiling uncertainly. Suttree looked at him. Did you tell them where I was?

  He stopped smiling. No no, he said. No. That's your business.

  All right.

  How long have you been down here?

  Suttree studied with a cold face the tolerant amusement his uncle affected. Since I got out, he said.

  Well, we hadnt heard anything. How long has it been?

  Who's we?

  I hadnt heard. I mean I didnt know for sure if you were even out or not.

  I got out in January.

  Good, good. What, do you rent this or what?

  I bought it.

  Well good. He was looking about. Not bad. Stove and all.

  How have you been John?

  Oh, I cant complain. You know.

  Suttree watched him. He looked made up for an older part, hair streaked with chalk, his face a clay mask cracked in a footman's smile.

  You're looking well, said Suttree. A tic jerked his mouthcorner.

  Well thanks, thanks. Try to keep fit you know. Old liver not the best. He put the flat of his hand to his abdomen, looked up toward the ceiling, out the window where the shadows had grown long toward night. Had an operation back in the winter. I guess you didnt know.

  No.

  I'm pulling out of it, of course.

  Suttree could smell him in the heat of the little room, the rank odor of his clothes touched with a faint reek of whiskey. Sweet smell of death at the edges. Behind him in the western wall the candled woodknots shone blood red and incandescent like the eyes of watching fiends.

  I dont have a drink or I'd offer you one.

  The uncle raised a palm. No, no, he said. Not for me, thanks.

  He lowered one brow at Suttree. I saw your mother, he said.

  Suttree didnt answer. The uncle was pulling at his cigarettes. He held out the pack. Cigarette? he said.

  No thanks.

  He shook the pack. Go ahead.

  I dont smoke. You used to.

  I quit.

  The uncle lit up and blew smoke in a thin blue viper's breath toward the window. It coiled and diffused in the yellow light. He smiled. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I quit, he said. Anyway, they're all fine. Thought I'd let you know.

  I didnt think you saw them.

  I saw your mother uptown.

  You said.

  Well. I dont get out there much, of course. I went at Christmas. You know. They left word at the Eagles for me to call one time and I dont know. Come to dinner sometime. You know. I didnt want to go out there.

  I dont blame you for that.

  The uncle shifted a little in his chair. Well, it's not that I dont get along with them really. I just ...

  You just cant stand them nor them you.

  A funny little smile crossed the uncle's face. Well, he said. I dont think I'd go so far as to say that. Now of course they've never done me any favors.

  Tell me about it, said Suttree dryly.

  I guess that's right, the uncle said, nodding his head. He sucked deeply on his cigarette, reflecting. I guess you and me have a little in common there, eh boy?

  He thinks so.

  You should have known my father. He was a fine man. The uncle was looking down at his hands uncertainly. Yes, he said. A fine man.

  I remember him.

  He died when you were a baby.

  I know.

  The uncle took another tack. You ought to come up to the Eagles some night, he said. I could get you in. They have a dance on Saturday night. They have some goodlooking women come up there. You'd be surprised.

  I guess I would.

  Suttree had leaned back against the raw plank wall. A blue dusk filled the little cabin. He was looking out the window where nighthawks had come forth and swifts shied chittering over the river.

  You're a funny fella, Buddy. I cant imagine anyone being more different from your brother.

  Which one?

  What?

  I said which one.

  Which what?

  Which brother.

  The uncle chuckled uneasily. Why, he said, you've just got the one. Carl.

  Couldnt they think of a name for the other one?

  What other one? What in the hell are you talking about?

  The one that was born dead.

  Who told you that?

  I remembered it.

  Who told you?

  You did.

  I never. When did I?

  Years ago. You were drunk.

  I never did.

  All right. You didnt.

  What difference does it make?

  I dont know. I just wondered why it was supposed to be a secret. What did he die of?

  He was stillborn.

  I know that.

  I dont know why. He just was. You were both premature. You swear I told you?

  It's not important.

  You wont say anything will you?

  No. I was just wondering about it. What the doctor says for instance. I mean, you have to take them both home, only one you take in a bag or a box. I guess they have people to take care of these things.

  Just dont say anything.

  Suttree was leaning forward looking down at his cheap and rotting shoes where they lay crossed on the floor. God, John, dont worry about it. I wont.

  Okay.

  Dont tell them you saw me.

  Okay. Fair enough. That's a deal.

  Right John. A deal.

  I dont see them anyway.

  So you said.

  The uncle shifted in the chair and pulled at his collar with a long yellow forefinger. He could have helped me, you know. I never asked him for anything. Never did, by God. He could have helped me.

  Well, said Suttree, he didnt.

  The uncle nodded, watching the floor. You know, he said, you and me are a lot alike.

  I dont think so.

  In some ways.

  No, said Suttree. We're not alike.

  Well, I mean ... the uncle waved his hand.

  That's his thesis. But I'm not like you.

  Well, you know what I mean.

  I do know what you mean. But I'm not like you. I'm not like him. I'm not like Carl. I'm like me. Dont tell me who I'm like.

  Well now look, Buddy, there's no need ...

  I think there is a need. I dont want you down here either. I know they dont like you, he doesnt. I dont blame you. It's not your fault. I cant do anything.

  The uncle narrowed his eyes at Suttree. No need to get on your high horse with me, he said. At least I was never in the goddamned penitentiary.

  Suttree smiled. The workhouse, John. It's a little different. But I am what I am. I dont go around telling people that I've been in a T B sanitarium.

  So? I dont claim to be a teetotaler, if that's what you're getting at.

  Are you an alco
holic?

  No. What are you smiling at? I'm no goddamned alcoholic.

  He always called you a rummy. I guess that's not quite as bad.

  I dont give a damn what he says. He can ...

  Go ahead.

  The uncle looked at him warily. He flipped the tiny stub of his cigarette out the door. Well, he said. He dont know everything.

  Look, said Suttree, leaning forward. When a man marries beneath him his children are beneath him. If he thinks that way at all. If you werent a drunk he might see me with different eyes. As it is, my case was always doubtful. I was expected to turn out badly. My grandfather used to say Blood will tell. It was his favorite saying. What are you looking at? Look at me.

  I dont know what you're talking about.

  Yes you do. I'm saying that my father is contemptuous of me because I'm related to you. Dont you think that's a fair statement?

  I dont know why you try and blame me for your troubles. You and your crackpot theories.

  Suttree reached across the little space and took his uncle's willowing hands and composed them. I dont blame you, he said. I just want to tell you how some people are.

  I know how people are. I should know.

  Why should you? You think my father and his kind are a race apart. You can laugh at their pretensions, but you never question their right to the way of life they maintain.

  He puts his pants on the same way I do mine.

  Bullshit, John. You dont even believe that.

  I said it didnt I?

  What do you suppose he thinks of his wife?

  They get along okay.

  They get along okay.

  Yeah.

  John, she's a housekeeper. He has no real belief even in her goodness. Cant you guess that he sees in her traces of the same sorriness he sees in you? An innocent gesture can call you to mind.

  Dont call me sorry, said the uncle.

  He probably believes that only his own benevolent guidance kept her out of the whorehouse.

  That's my sister you're talking about, boy.

  She's my mother, you maudlin sot.

  Sudden quiet in the little cabin. The uncle rose shaking, his voice was low. They were right, he said. What they told me. They were right about you. You're a vicious person. A nasty vicious person.

  Suttree sat with his forehead in his hands. The uncle moved warily to the door. His shadow fell across Suttree and Suttree raised his head.

  Maybe it's like colorblindness, he said. The women are just carriers. You are colorblind, arent you?

  At least I'm not crazy.

  No, Suttree said. Not crazy.

  The uncle's narrowed eyes seemed to soften. God help you, he said. He turned and stepped onto the catwalk and went down the boards. Suttree rose and went to the door. The uncle was crossing the fields in the last of the day's light toward the darkening city.