Suttree stared at them. The one with his arms crossed began to rock up and down on his heels and look about.
Orville and them be here directly, the other one said.
Suttree rose from the chair and pulled back the canvas drop where it was thrown over the mound of earth. A few racks of flowers toppled. A pick and two spades lay there and he took up one of the spades and sank it into the loose dirt and hefted it and sent a load of clods rattling over the little coffin.
The two men looked at each other.
We got to get them straps, the one said.
You better get em then, said Suttree, swinging a spadeload of clay. Well hold up a minute.
The smaller man stepped down into the grave to free the straps and the other one hauled them up.
You want this here wreath? said the man in the grave, raising up, just his head sticking out. He shook it. It's got dirty, he said.
Get out of there, said Suttree.
He climbed out and stood back. Orville and them'll be here in a minute, he said.
Suttree didnt answer. He labored on, shoveling the dirt, the two men watching. After a while they began to stir about, folding shut the chairs and stacking them against the corner pole of the canopy. Suttree stopped and took off his jacket and then bent to work again.
Before the grave was half filled a truck entered the cemetery gates towing a lowboy with a tractor chained to the bed. The tractor was rigged with a frontloader. They came up the hill and swung down alongside the tent. The driver of the truck looked down at Suttree, his chin on his arm. He spat and looked out over the cemetery grounds and opened the door and climbed down. I allowed you'd have this thing down, he called out.
Suttree looked. The other two men were smoking and grinning and shuffling their feet. The three of them looked over at him. He shoveled on. The driver in the lowboy climbed out and the four of them stood around talking and smoking. I dont know, one of them said. He just jumped up and went to shovelin.
I reckon he was. I dont know. No, he was settin up here on the side of the hill.
Hey, called one of the new men.
Suttree looked up.
We got a tractor here to do that with if you want to wait a minute.
Suttree wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve and kept on shoveling. The men trod out their cigarettes in the grass and set about uncleating ropes, gouging stakes from the ground. They hauled down the canopy and folded it out on the ground and Suttree worked on in the open air. They disjointed the pipework frame and loaded poles and ropes and canvas in the truck and passed the folded chairs in after.
We might as well leave the tractor on the float, one of the men said.
We goin to do them sods in the mornin?
We'll have to. It's done past quittin time now.
They sat in the grass watching him. Already it was evening and overcast and before he was done a small rain came cold and slowly falling out of the south autumn sky. Suttree pitched a final shovelful of clods over the little mound and dropped the spade and picked up his jacket and turned to go.
You can ride in with us if you want, one of the men said.
He looked up. They were squatting in the rear of the truck watching the rain. He went on.
Before he reached the cemetery gates a gray car with a gold escutcheon on the door came down the little gravel road and stopped alongside him. A paunchy man in tan gabardines looked up at him.
Your name Suttree?
Suttree said it was.
The man climbed out of the car. He wore a tooled belt and holster and his clothes were neatly pressed. He opened the rear door of the car. Get in, he said.
Suttree climbed into the back of the car and the door shut after him. There was a heavy screen mesh separating him from the front seat. As if the car were used for hauling mad dogs about. There were no door handles or window cranks. The driver looked at him in the mirror and the man in the gabardines looked straight ahead. Suttree leaned back and passed his hand over his eyes. As they came into town people watched him from the street.
Pull over here, Pinky, the man said.
They came to a stop at the curb.
Go get yourself a Coke.
I'm all right.
Go get yourself a Coke.
The driver looked back at Suttree and climbed out and shut the door. The sheriff leaned one arm across the back of the seat and regarded Suttree through the wire. Then he climbed out and opened the back door.
Get up here, he said.
Suttree climbed out and got into the front of the car. The sheriff walked around and climbed into the driver's seat. He studied Suttree for a minute and then he said: Let me tell you something.
All right, said Suttree.
He reached down and tapped Suttree's knee with his forefinger. You, my good buddy, are a fourteen carat gold plated son of a bitch. That's what your problem is. And that being your problem, there's not a whole lot of people in sympathy with you. Or with your problem. Now I'm goin to do you a favor. Against my better judgment. And it's not goin to make me no friends. I'm goin to drive your stinkin ass to the bus station and give you an opportunity to get out of here.
I dont have any money.
I never reckoned that you did. I intend to put up five dollars cash money out of my own pocket to get you started. I aint interested in where you go, but I aim to see to it that you go five dollars' worth in some direction and you and me both are goin to hope that you dont never come back. Now do you want to know why?
Why what?
Why I'm puttin up the five dollars.
No.
I thought maybe the economics of it might interest you. I hear tell you're supposed to be real smart.
I dont care.
The reason I'm investin five dollars in your absence is because the man whose daughter's life you ruined happens to be a friend of mine and a man I not only like but respect. And I'd like to see him have some peace of mind. I know he aint goin to thank me for this. What he'd like is to see you hung. But I know him for a fairminded man and a peacelovin man and I know that he'll be happier in his mind if he just gets you out of his sight. He might even come to forget there ever was a lowlife like you although I doubt it.
What do you get out of it?
Not a thing, good buddy.
You said I ought to be interested in the economics of it.
I said it but I dont believe it. It's not much economics anyway. About the only thing to be said for gettin fucked out of five dollars this way is that you wont catch the clap. I never expected you to understand.
No one cares. It's not important.
That's where you're wrong my friend. Everything's important. A man lives his life, he has to make that important. Whether he's a small town county sheriff or the president. Or a busted out bum. You might even understand that some day. I dont say you will. You might.
The sheriff turned in the seat and reached for the key and turned it. But the motor was already running and the starter made a sudden wild screeching sound. He muttered to himself and shifted the gears and they went on down the street.
The bus station was in the back of a cafe and when they pulled up in front there were two buses idling in the alley. The sheriff shifted and took out his billfold and lifted a five dollar bill from it and handed it across.
I suppose I have to take it, Suttree said.
You suppose correctly.
Suttree took the bill and looked at it.
Now, the sheriff said, I want you to take whichever bus out of here best pleases you and I want you to ride five dollars in that direction and I dont want you back. You got that?
I've got it.
Suttree was holding the money in his hand. The sheriff looked at him. You all right? he said.
Yeah. I'm all right.
I'm puzzled that you'd have the face to come here.
Well. You're puzzled.
I will say one thing: you've opened my eyes. I've got two daughters, oldest fourteen, and I'
d see them both in hell fore I'd send them up to that university. I'm damned if I wouldnt.
How many sons have you got?
Not any. Look Suttree, I'm sorry as far as that goes. These people did want me to put you in jail.
I know.
Well. You get your ticket right in there. Dont let me see you on the street. You stay in there till your bus runs. You hear?
Suttree opened the door and climbed out. He looked down at the sheriff and then he shut the door.
You take care, the sheriff said.
Okay.
The sheriff had bent forward to see his face. Suttree turned and walked into the cafe.
He left the bus in Stanton Tennessee with three dollars still in his pocket. It was ten oclock at night. He walked down to a cabstand and bought a pint of whiskey from a driver and put it in his shirt and hiked out to the edge of town and stood in the road holding his thumb up at the lights that passed. None stopped. After an hour he walked on. It had turned cool. He could see lights far up the highway, a roadhouse or cafe.
The sign said it was a truck stop and there was a diesel rig pulled over on the gravel with the motor running. Suttree peered in through the plateglass window. A cold hall of a place. Plastic tables. Two boys playing a pinball machine. The driver sat at the counter drinking coffee. Suttree searched his pockets for a dime but he had none. He went in anyway.
An ancient waitress was cleaning out the coffee urn with a short-handled mop. When she saw Suttree she climbed down off the chair she was standing on and came shuffling up the aisle behind the counter. Suttree leaned on the counter next to the driver. The driver looked at him.
Is that your rig? said Suttree.
The driver set his cup down. Yeah, he said. That's my rig.
You reckon I could get a ride with you?
Where you goin?
To Knoxville.
I aint goin to Knoxville.
Well where are you going?
I aint goin to Knoxville.
The driver bent and sipped his coffee and Suttree stood looking down at him and then turned and left the cafe. He started back down the highway toward the town. The lights had dimmed, the town seemed farther at this midnight hour. Partway down the road he stopped and opened the bottle and drank.
The first building he came to was a church. There was a small illuminated glass case standing in the yard, white letters on a black plastic board within. Insects were swarming over the dimly lit church news. Suttree turned across the lawn and went to the back of the church and sat in the grass and drank the whiskey. After he had drunk a little of it he began to cry. He began to cry harder and harder until he was sitting there in the grass with the bottle upright between his knees, wailing aloud.
He must have slept. When he woke he was lying in the grass looking up at the heavens. A cloudless night strewn with stars. Salt taste of sorrow in his throat. He saw a star spill across the sky, a light trail of fire and then nothing. Hot spalls of matter rifling through the icy ether. Misshapen globs of iron slag.
The night had grown much colder. He lay in the grass shivering and he tried to sleep but he could not. After a while he rose and took the whiskey and went to the rear door of the church and tried it and it opened.
He was in a cellar. There were stacks of old newspapers and magazines along one wall and he stretched out on these and lay there. Then he sat up and took some to spread over him and lay down again. Then he started to cry again, lying there in the dark of the church cellar under the old newspapers.
It was midmorning when he woke. A truck gone out the pike had rattled the cellar door. He sat up in a flurry of newsprint and looked about. Light fell from a high window. Some kind of small bird was pecking in the grass there. Suttree rose and ran his hand through his hair. His throat was dry and his head hurt. The rest of the whiskey stood in the bottle on the floor and he fetched it up and held it to the light. It was about a third full and he unscrewed the cap and took a drink and shuddered and shook himself and then took another drink. Then he went out.
It took him all day to cross the state. He was unshaven and he looked bad. Toward evening he was in a nameless crossroads high in the Cumberland Mountains. A quarter mile down the road in the dusk stood a figure like his own, a wanderer longmirrored in the black asphalt, one arm aloft. Suttree walked on. It was a husky young boy and he had stationed himself in front of a small country store to try for a ride. Suttree walked on past. The store was closed and the windows boarded up and some twisted pipes grew from the concrete apron in front where a gaspump had been ripped up.
Hey, the boy said.
Hey, said Suttree.
You live around here?
No.
You aint got a cigarette on you have you?
The boy was walking down toward him, studying him with a kind of sly intensity that drifters seem to come by. No, Suttree said.
I saw you thumbin down there. Where you headed?
Knoxville.
I'm goin to Florida. I got a sister in Fort Lauderdale. He turned and spat. He had on a shortsleeved shirt and Suttree in his jacket was already cold. Dark as it was he could see him but poorly. Tattoos along one arm.
I'll go on down, said Suttree.
The boy changed his tone. Listen, he said. Why dont we hitch together. We might have a better chance.
Suttree looked at him. He was dressed in jeans and his hair was wild and he wore a general look of dangerous filth. A big meanlooking kid. I'll go on down, said Suttree. Let you have first shot.
You reckon anybody might stop along here after dark?
I dont know. Your guess is as good as mine.
Yeah?
Where did you come from?
The kid's eyes shifted. St Louis, he said.
St Louis, said Suttree. I've been through there.
Aint this a hell of a place to get stuck?
Yeah. Good luck.
Listen. How far is it to the next town?
I dont know.
Suttree had started off. Listen, the kid called again.
What?
You got a quarter you could let me have?
Suttree shook his head no.
The kid was walking down toward him. Come on, man, he said. I aint eat in two goddamned days. Hell, fifteen cents. Somethin.
I aint got a dime, Suttree said.
Let's see.
Suttree watched him. He was standing on the balls of his feet and he looked hungry. What? he said.
I said let's see. Let's see you turn your pockets out.
I told you I'm not holding anything.
The kid moved slightly to his left. That's what you say, he said. I'd like to see.
That's your problem, Suttree said. He stepped back and turned to go. As he did so the kid jumped him. Suttree ducked. They went to the ground together. Suttree could smell the stale sweat of him. The kid was trying to hit him, short chops with his big fists. Suttree pushed his face against his chest. Fear and nausea. The kid quit punching and tried to get him by the throat. Suttree rolled. They came up. The kid had hold of his jacket. Suttree swung at him. They closed, feet scrabbling in the gravel there in the near dark in front of the abandoned store. The kid turned loose of Suttree to hit him and Suttree dropped to one knee and seized the kid behind the calves and pulled him down hard on his rump. Then he was running down the highway. The kid's shoes slapping after him. Taste of blood in his mouth. But the footsteps faded and when Suttree looked back he could see in the deeper dusk by the roadside the kid crouched to get his breath.
You yellow cocksucker, the voice came drifting up the highway.
Suttree put his hand to his heart where it boomed in the otherwise silence of the wilderness. He went on up the road in the dark.
It is little more than dawn when the general comes down Front Street slumped on the box of his coalwagon, the horse named Golgotha hung between the trees and stumbling along in the cold with his doublejointed knees and his feet clopping and the bright worn quoits
winking feebly among the clattering spokes. In the whipsocket rides a bent cane. There is a gap in the iron of one tire and above the meaningless grumbling of the wagon it clicks, clicks, with a clocklike persistence that tolls progress, purpose, the passage of time. When they stop it is in a violent shudder, as if something has given way. The general climbs and climbs down from his seat and goes to the rear and takes up his blackened basket and sets it in the street. He levers up the lantern glass and blows out the tiny flame. He hands down coal lump by lump until the basket is filled and with pain he hefts and carries it toward the dim house, through the chill fog bent and muttering, returning lightened but with no better speed or humor to where the horse stands sleeping in the traces.
They come trundling and slowly aclatter up the empty street, pass under the bridge and take the bitter and frozen fields toward the river. In the hoarcolored dawn they seem to be drifting, closed away in the cold smoke until just the general's shoulders and the slouched back of him with his hat perched on the shoulders of his clothes and the hat the horse wore float over the cold gray void like transient artifacts from a polar dream.
Ooh coal, kindlin wood
Would if I could
Hep me get sold
Coal now.
It was six degrees above zero. Suttree crawled from his bed, pulled on his coat and got his trousers and climbed up onto the bed to don them so cold the floor was. He squatted and fished his socks out from beneath the cot and shook out the dust and pulled them on and stepped into his shoes and went to the door. Mist swirled about him. The old black coalpedlar sat his cart, the horse sidled and stamped.
Couldnt you just leave a basket and go on?
I see you aint froze, said the general, climbing down.
Suttree got the basket from beside the door and came down the walk. The river was frozen between the houseboat and the bank, a thin skim of wrinkled ice through which fell chunks of frozen mud from the underside of the flexing plank. He threw the empty basket up on the wagon and took the full one from the old man.
I gots to have me some money today, the general said.
How much?
You owes me eighty-five cents.
How do you know?
The old man patted his gloved hands together. His head was wrapped in rags. I keeps it all in my counts, he said. You keep you own if'n you dont like mine.
Where do you keep them?
That's all right where I keeps em.
How much will you take?