Suttree Read online

  Hold it, little buddy.

  He paused on one leg.

  Bring them over here.

  Harrogate collected his clothes and carried them to the window. The black took them and hung them on a hanger gingerly with two fingers. The man was sorting about behind him.

  It's hangin on the nail yonder, the black said.

  Harrogate was sitting naked on the bench. The man came out with a longhandled spraygun. He stood up.

  Raise your arms.

  He did. The man pumped the sprayer and squirted his armpit.

  Shoo, said Harrogate. What's that for?

  Bugs, said the guard. Turn around.

  I aint got no bugs.

  You aint now, said the man. He sprayed under the other arm and then gave Harrogate a good spraying over his sparse pubic hair. Get them crotch crickets too, he said. When he was done he stepped back. Harrogate stood with his arms aloft like a robbery victim.

  Damn if you aint just barely feathered, said the man. How old are you?

  Eighteen, said Harrogate.

  Eighteen.

  Yessir.

  You just did get in under the wire, didnt ye?

  I reckon.

  What's these here?

  That's where I's shot.

  The man looked from his skinny body to his face again. Shot, eh? he said. He handed the spraygun through the window to the black and the black hung the gun back up behind him and pushed a folded set of stripes through the window at Harrogate.

  Harrogate unfolded the suit and looked at it. He held the shirt in his teeth while he flapped the trousers out and started to step into them.

  Aint you got no underwear? said the man.

  No.

  The man shook his head. Harrogate stood on one leg. He took a little hop to capture his balance.

  Go on, said the man. If you aint got any you aint got any.

  He dressed and stood barefoot. The trousers ran down over his feet and onto the floor and just his fingertips hung from the sleeves of the jumper. He looked at the black in the window.

  Dont look at me, said the black. Them's the smallest they come.

  Roll them sleeves and pants up. You'll be all right.

  Harrogate rolled the sleeves back two turns. The clothes were clean and rough against his skin. Do I wear my own shoes? he said.

  You wear your own shoes.

  The smallest prisoner crossed the floor and stepped into his shoes and clattered back to the window. The man looked him over sadly and handed him a blanket. Let's go, he said.

  Harrogate followed him out and up the stairs, shuffling along, a slight limp. At the top of the stairs they turned down a hall past huge barred cages like the one they'd left. At the end of the hall sat a man at a table reading a magazine. He rose smiling and placed the magazine facedown on the table.

  The man was sorting through the keys. I think they ought to've thrown thisn back, Ed, what do you think?

  Ed looked at Harrogate and smiled.

  The man opened the iron door and Harrogate entered alone. A concrete room painted pea green. He walked past the sink, the taps each tied with little tobaccosacks hanging from their mouths. Pale winter light fell through the welded iron windows. The door clanked shut behind him and the guard's footsteps receded in the corridor.

  With his blanket he went down the room past rows of iron beds in blocks of four all painted green, some with sacklike mattresses, some with nothing but the woven bare iron straps that served for springs. He went along the aisle looking left and right. A few figures lay motionless in the cots he passed. He went to the end of the room and stood on tiptoe and peered out the window. Rolling hills. Stark winter trees. He came back up the aisle and nudged a sleeper by the foot. Hey, he said.

  The man on the pallet opened one eye and looked at Harrogate. What the fuck do you want? he said.

  Where am I supposed to sleep?

  The man groaned and closed his eyes. Harrogate waited for him to open them again but he did not. After a while he jostled the foot again. Hey, he said.

  The man did not open his eyes. He said: If you dont get the fuck away from me I'm going to kick the shit out of you.

  I just wanted to know where I'm supposed to sleep.

  Anywhere you like you squirrely son of a bitch now get the hell away from here.

  Harrogate wandered on up the aisle. Some of the bunks had pillows as well as blankets. He picked one out that had only a bare tick and climbed up and spread his blanket and sat in the middle of it. He sat there for a while and then he climbed down again and went to the bars and peered out. Someone in a suit like his was coming backward down the hallway towing a bucket on wheels by a mop submerged in the black froth it held. He glanced at Harrogate as he went past, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. He didnt look friendly. Across the hall another prisoner was peering from his cage. Harrogate studied him for a minute. Then he gave sort of a crazy little wave at him. Hidy, he said.

  Sure, said the other prisoner.

  Harrogate turned and went back and climbed into his bunk and lay staring at the ceiling. Concrete beams painted green. A few half blackened lightbulbs screwed into the masonry. It had grown dim within the room, the early winter twilight closing down the day. He slept.

  When he woke it was dark out and the bulbs in the ceiling suffused the room with a sulphurous light. Harrogate sat up. Men were filing into the cell with a sort of constrained rowdiness, not quite jostling one another, lighting or rolling cigarettes, speaking only once they were inside. A rising exchange of repartee and shaded insult. One spied Harrogate where he sat up in his cot like a groundsquirrel and pointed him out.

  Looky here, new blood.

  They filed past. Toward the end came men hobbling with what looked like the heads of pickaxes welded about one ankle. The door clanged, keys rattled. Two men turned in at the bunks beneath Harrogate. One of them lay down and closed his eyes for a minute and then sat up and shucked off his shoes and lay back and closed his eyes again. The other stood with his head bent a few inches from Harrogate's knee and began to unload his pockets of various things. A pencil stub, matchbooks, a beercan opener. A flat black stone. A sack of tobacco. He saw Harrogate watching him and looked up. Hey, he said.

  Hey, said Harrogate.

  You dont piss in the bed do you?

  No sir.

  You smoke?

  I used to some. Fore I got thowed in the jailhouse and couldnt get nary.

  Here.

  He pitched the sack of tobacco up onto Harrogate's blanket.

  Harrogate immediately opened the sack and took a paper from the little pocket under the label and began to roll a cigarette.

  You get one of those every week, the man said.

  When do I get mine?

  Next week.

  You aint got no match have ye?

  Here.

  Harrogate lit the cigarette and sucked deeply and blew out the match and put it in his cuff.

  Keep em.

  He put the matches in his pocket.

  How old are you?

  Eighteen.

  Eighteen?

  Yessir.

  You just made it didnt you?

  That's what they keep tellin me.

  What's your name?

  Gene Harrogate.

  Harrogate, the man said. He had one elbow on the upper bunk and was holding his chin in his fingers, studying the new prisoner with a rather detached air. Well, he said. My name's Suttree.

  Howdy Mr Suttree.

  Just Suttree. What are you in for?

  Stealin watermelons.

  That's bullshit. What are you in for.

  I got caught in a watermelon patch.

  What with, a tractor and trailer? They dont send people to the workhouse for stealing a few watermelons. What else did you do?

  Harrogate sucked on his cigarette and looked at the green walls. Well, he said. I got shot.

  Got shot?

  Yeah.

  Whereabouts? Yeah
, I know. In the watermelon patch. Where did you get hit.

  Pret near all over.

  What with, a shotgun?

  Yeah.

  For stealing watermelons.

  Yeah.

  Suttree sat down on the lower bunk and put one foot up and began to rub his ankle. After a while he looked up. Harrogate was lying on his stomach looking down over the edge of his bunk.

  Let's see where you got shot, said Suttree.

  Harrogate knelt up in the bed and lifted his jumper. Little mauve tucks in his pale flesh all down the side of him like pox scars.

  I got em all down my leg too. I still caint walk good.

  Suttree looked up at the boy's eyes. Bright with a kind of animal cognizance, with incipient good will. Well, he said. It's getting rough out there, isnt it?

  Boy I thought I was dead.

  I guess you're lucky you're not.

  That's what they said at the hospital.

  Suttree leaned back in his bunk. What kind of son of a bitch would shoot somebody for stealing a few watermelons? he said.

  I dont know. He come out to the hospital and brung me a ice cream. I didnt much blame him. He said hisself he wished he'd not done it.

  Didnt keep him from pressing charges though, did it?

  Well, I guess seein as he'd done shot me he couldnt back out.

  Suttree looked at the boy again with this remark but the boy's face was bland and without device. He wanted to know when supper was served.

  Five oclock. Should be in a few minutes.

  Do they feed good?

  You'll have time to get used to it. What did you draw anyway?

  Eleven twenty-nine.

  Old eleven twenty-nine.

  Boy they feed good in that hospital. Best you ever ate.

  Couldnt you have run off from there?

  I never had no clothes. I thought about it but I didnt have stitch one nor no way to come by any. I'd rather to be in the workhouse than get caught out wearin one of them old crazy nightshirts they make ye wear. Wouldnt you?

  No.

  Well. That's you.

  That's me.

  Harrogate looked down at him but he had his eyes closed. He rolled back over and stared at the ceiling. Someone had written a few sentiments there but they were lost in the glare of the lightbulbs. After a while he heard a bell clang somewhere. A guard came to the door and opened it and when Harrogate sat up he saw that the prisoners were shaping up ready to leave and he hopped from the bunk and shaped up with them.

  They marched down the concrete stairs and turned through a door and filed through a messhall where picnic tables ran the length of the room. They were cobbled up out of oak flooring and had the benches bolted to them. At the end of the messhall the prisoners turned into the kitchen where each man got a tin plate and a large spoon. They filed past a steamtable where the kitchen help likewise in stripes ladled up smoking pinto beans, cabbage, potatoes, hot rounds of cornbread. Harrogate had his thumb in his plate and got hot cabbage spooned over it by a smiling black man. He said: Yeeow. Swapped hands and stuck the thumb in his mouth. A guard came over and looked down at him. Was that you? he said.

  Yessir.

  One more holler out of you and you get no supper.

  Yessir.

  Nearby prisoners wore pinched faces, apparently in pain, eyes half shut with joy constrained. Harrogate followed on into a messhall like the one they'd come through. The benches and tables were filling up with prisoners. He sought out Suttree and sat next to him and fell to with his spoon. A great clanking and scraping throughout the hall and no word spoke. The table across from them was taken by black prisoners and Harrogate eyed them narrowly from under his brows, his head bent over his plate and the spoon he gripped like a trowel rising and falling woodenly.

  When his group had all done eating the guard walked along behind them to the head of the table and rapped and they rose and filed back through the kitchen, scraping their plates into a slopcan and stacking them on a table, dropping their spoons into a bucket. Then they filed out through the other messhall, now partly filled with prisoners eating, and into the hall and up the stairs to their cell again.

  They wasnt no meat, said Harrogate.

  That's right, said Suttree.

  Do they ever have meat?

  I dont know.

  Have you ever eat any meat here?

  You mean other than breakfast bacon?

  Yeah. Other than breakfast bacon.

  No.

  Harrogate leaned against the bunk. After a while he said: How long you been here?

  About five months.

  They hell fire, said Harrogate.

  It was dark when they rose in the morning and dark when they filed into the kitchen to get their plates and spoons and still dark when they turned out in the dewfall and grainy mist of the yard. He stood there with his sleeves and cuffs rolled two turns each and watched the men climb into the trucks. He looked for Suttree but by the time he saw him he was already in a truck and the door was shut. Some of the trucks started to pull away. A guard came over and looked down at him. He stooped with his hands on knees to see into his face. Who the hell are you? he said.

  Harrogate.

  The guard nodded his head as if this was the right answer.

  Did you get your breakfast?

  Sure did.

  Feel like you're ready for a day's work do you?

  I reckon.

  Well we have a truck over here for you to ride in if that's all right with you.

  Thisn here?

  Yeah. You dont care do you?

  Harrogate grinned. Shoot, he said. I reckon that's what all I'm here for. I'll do just whatever.

  Well we're mighty pleased about that. We like for everbody to be happy.

  Shoot, said Harrogate over his shoulder as he slouched toward the waiting truck. I aint hard to get along with.

  As he reached the rear of the truck and put up one hand to help himself the guard fetched him a kick from behind that lifted him through the door and dropped him among the boots and shoes of the other prisoners. They looked down at him with crazed grins and someone jerked him forward by the collar in time to keep the door from slamming on his foot. A redheaded man leaned down and said: Get in here, idjit. You make that son of a bitch mad this early of the mornin and I'll kick your ass myself.

  I didnt know which truck I was supposed to go to.

  Well no truck was the wrong one. Set over here. This son of a bitch drives like a drunk indian goin after more whiskey.

  The truck coughed up gouts of white smoke and they lurched off into the fog down the hill and down the winding workhouse road to the highway where the taillights of the other trucks went by twos like eyes before them in the cool October dawn. The prisoners sat in rows facing each other, jiggling and rolling, some trying to sleep. Harrogate crouched on the bench with his hands beneath his thin legs and watched the floor. There was no conversation. The truck gained speed and the tires sang on the black road.

  At the first stoplight a young girl was waiting for a bus at the edge of the road. The prisoners shoved and crowded at the wiremesh door of the truck. She turned to stare out over the barren lots toward houses swimming in the mist. A cold light was leaking across the landscape from the east. Harrogate watched two birds come out of the colorless heavens and alight upon a wire and look down into the truck and fly again. They went on, the driver's eyes in a car come up behind them somewhat uneasy at the sight of these striped miscreants.

  By good daylight they had crossed the north end of the county and were pulled up at a roadside where sewerpipe lay unjointed along a selvedge of red mud and where riders from the first truck had already descended into ditches and begun to swing picks. The sun rose and warmed them where they stood waiting tools and orders. A man handed Harrogate a pick, stepped back and studied him with it and took it away again. A few cars eased past, faces at the glass. Men bound for work in the city looking out with no expression at all. The prison
ers shuffled and milled about until all had tools and Harrogate stood alone. He had started down into the ditch with naked hands when a guard called to him.

  Wait here a minute, he said.

  The guard went away and returned with another man who looked down at Harrogate suspiciously.

  How old are you son?

  I'm still eighteen, said Harrogate. He had one black tooth in the front of his mouth and he sucked at it nervously.

  The two men looked at each other. The younger one shrugged. I dont know, he said.

  Well hell. Take him on back and let Coatney have him. You. You go on back with Mr Williams. You hear?

  Yessir.

  Get in that pickup over yonder and wait, the other man said.

  Harrogate nodded and hobbled up the road to the truck and climbed up into the bed and sat there in his outsized togs watching the men in the ditch. He saw Suttree shoveling dirt up over the rim of the excavation and Suttree looked his way once sitting there alone in the truck but he did not nod or gesture. After a while the guard came up. He motioned to him and opened the door of the truck. Get up front, he said.

  Harrogate climbed over the side of the truck and opened the door and got in. There was a speaker hanging by a cord from the dashboard and there was a pumpaction shotgun hung in a rack over the rear window. The guard started the truck, glanced down at Harrogate and pulled away shaking his head.

  When Suttree came in that night the smallest prisoner was not in the cell. He saw him at supper. Half obscured behind tottering tiers of pans smoking a homerolled cigarette and firing thin pipes of smoke from his nostrils in disgust. He was moved that night to the kitchen cell. When he came to get his blanket Suttree was lying stretched on his cot with his shoes off. His socks were streaked with red clay.

  Guess what, said Harrogate.

  What.

  They got me warshin fuckin dishes.

  I know. I saw you.

  Shit, said Harrogate.

  Hell, that's no bad shake. It beats swinging a pick all day.

  It dont to me. I'd rather to do anything as to warsh dishes.

  You'll appreciate it more when the weather turns colder.

  Shit.

  Harrogate gathered up his blanket in his arms. Someone down the cell called up to Suttree was he through with the newspaper.