Suttree watched him totter down the planks in the band of yellow light. He veered, he stood with one foot, he went on. When he reached the shore he raised one hand.
Come back, called Suttree.
The junkman raised the hand again and kept going.
It was a full two miles out Blount Avenue to his brother's junklot and the junkman reeled along in the lamplight through a floating world of honeysuckle nectar and nightbird cries and distant dogs that yapped at their moorings.
He made his way across the little wooden bridge and past the dim shapes of the cars and stood before the housetrailer.
Dubyedee!
The waters of Goose Creek purled past the tirecasings and body-panels in the farther dark of the yard.
Come out you old fart.
He stumbled among the articles of their common trade. Blood black and crusted in these broken carriages. A shoe.
Dubyedee! Come out, goddamnit.
He had ceased calling and was sat within a truck when a light came on in the trailer. The door opened and light fell across the yard among the cluttered shapes and Clifford stood looking out. What do you want? he said.
Want Dubyedee. Harvey spoke through the steeringwheel spokes in which his head lay cradled.
What? said Clifford.
He raised his head. Clifford hung in the white web of the broken windshield. I want Dubyedee, he said.
He aint here.
Where's he at?
He aint here. He dont live here now.
It's just old drunk Uncle Harvey aint it?
You said it, I never.
No, you never. You smug sack of shit.
What?
I said you're a smug sack of shit.
Clifford's head turned in silhouette in the doorframe as if he'd turned to spit. He aint here, Harvey. Go on home.
He aint here Harvey. Go home Harvey. Where's he live at now?
You caint get out there. It's too far.
I'll be the judge of that. Where's he live at?
Why dont you come up and I'll give ye a cup of coffee.
Harvey shook his head. Aint you somethin, he said.
What?
I said you sure are somethin. Clifford old buddy. You sure are. Get some coffee in him. Clifford you favor your old man more than a little, did you know that?
You want some coffee I'll fix ye some. Otherwise I'm goin to bed.
Lord God, Clifford, dont let me keep ye from your sleep. I'd not do it for the world.
The figure shored up in the doorway shifted. You can sleep in the shed if you want. I'll give you the key.
You aint got a drink in there have ye?
No.
Then you aint got nothin in there I want.
The light withdrew up the path. Then it vanished from the small paned window in the door. Harvey smiled and leaned back in the truck.
Clifford!
Dogs hereto sleeping woke with howls all down the creek.
Clifford!
The light snapped on again. The door opened.
What now, goddamnit?
You wasnt asleep was ye?
I got to work tomorrow Harvey. Some of us is got to work for a livin yet.
Is he payin ye now Clifford? Or you still just gettin your keep.
He pays me.
Big boy like you.
If you dont want nothin I'm goin to bed.
I'll tell you what I'm makin if you'll tell me what you are.
You aint makin nothin is what you're makin. Cause you dont do nothin but lay drunk.
What you are, what you are, said Harvey aimlessly.
You dont need to know.
Dont need to know, dont need to know. You sure you aint got a little drink in yonder?
I told you I'd fix you some coffee if you want it.
Let me tell you about your coffee, Clifford. You want to hear about your coffee?
Clifford didnt want to hear. He shut the door again and the lights went out.
What about your daddy, called Harvey. Want to hear about that thievin son of a bitch? Want to hear how he robbed his own brother blind? Clifford?
Lying in his cot in the early hours Suttree half asleep heard a dull concussion somewhere in the city. He opened his eyes and looked out through his small window at the paling stars, the sparse electric jewelry of the bridgelights hung above the river. Perhaps an earthquake, seams shifting deep in the earth, sand sifting for miles down blind faults in eternal dark. It did not come again and after a while he slept.
Coming back upriver in the hot noon he kept to the south shore and passed under the bridge and passed the lumber company and the packinghouse and moored the skiff at the foot of the path that led to the junkman's lot and the road beyond. A brief spate of summer rain had fallen in the morning and the smell of it in the shoreland woods rose rank and steamy like the air in a hothouse. On the narrow path he met a cluster of deferential blacks who passed sidling, their eyes cutting to and back like horses. A light clank of baitbuckets and a bristling of canes. The cars in Harvey's lot lay humped and black in the sun with visible heat rising from them in the wrinkled air. Suttree passed through a reek of milkweed and oil and hot tin toward the little bedstead gate.
He found him senseless and hanging half off the ragged army cot. The little shack smelled of grease and tarpaper and filth. Suttree took the junkman up by arm and elbow and eased him back onto the bed, solicitous yet somewhat loath to touch him in his leprous rags. Harvey rolled a whited eye and muttered and fell back. Suttree looked around the little cabin. Floor strewn with gears, axleshafts, batteries. Tottering columns of tires. A cupboard of hubcaps like curious silver, mangled and banged, painted or stamped with loutish new world crests.
He stood in the door and looked out over the junkman's lot. Tall hollyhocks by the weighted gate and dockweed blooming and begonias down along the remnants of the fence. In the corner of the lot a stand of sunflowers like some floral enormity in a child's garden. Suttree sat on the cinderblock steps. The flowers moved in the wind. He could not see the river but there was a barge going upstream through the trees like a great train of wares ferrying soundlessly by means unknown up the valley floor. On the far shore a riprap of broken marble. Rough shapes of iron rusting in the sun. In the gloom of the shack the junkman groaned and turned. One among a mass of twisted shapes discarded here by the river. Suttree turned and saw him fend with his arm some phantom, a gesture of dread such as the mad favor, his anguish no less real. Suttree rose and went out through the gate and the gate clanged gently shut behind him.
When Harrogate pulled the string on his homemade detonator he had one finger in his ear. The explosion blew him twenty feet up the tunnel and slammed him against a wall where he sat in the darkness with chunks of stone clattering everywhere about him and his eyes enormous against the unbelievable noise in which he found himself. Then he was sucked back down the tunnel in a howling rush of air, his clothes scrubbing away and peelings of hide until he found himself lying on his face in the passage with a shrieking in his ears. Before he could rise it returned and snatched him up again and scuttled him back along the floor in a cloud of dust and ash and debris and left him bleeding and halfnaked and choked and groping for something to hold to. Dont come no more, he cried aloud in the ringing vault, I done had enough. Far back through the broken wall he could hear the echoes of the blast shunting row on row down the cavern to ultimate nothingness.
He lay very quietly. He was bruised and bleeding and numb all over and he began to cry. His head was ringing and he was half deaf yet he could hear in the horrid darkness shapes emerge from the reeks and crannies, features stained with boneblack, jaws adrip. He could hear the blood running in his body and he could hear the organs working, the lungs filling and collapsing. Little girls in flowered frocks went tripping out through stiles of sunlight and their destination was darkness as is each soul's. Coming toward him was a soft near soundless mass. Sucking over the stones. Seeking him out. He pulled himself up a
nd listened. Coming down the tunnel. Something nearing in the night. A sluggish monster freed from what centuries of stony fastness under the city. Its breath washed over him in a putrid stench. He tried to crawl. He scrabbled blindly among the stones in the dark. He was engulfed feet first in a slowly moving wall of sewage, a lava neap of liquid shit and soapcurd and toiletpaper from a breached main.
When Suttree saw the piece in the paper that said: Earthquake? he read and knew. He folded the paper and rose and went out the door and down the steps.
At Harrogate's there was no one home, not even the cat. He stirred the cold ashes in the firepit, he poked among the city rat's belongings.
In the afternoon he went about where the rat was known but no one knew where he could be.
It was evening when he came upon Rufus down on Front Street. He was sat in a gutterful of lamplight before the store as if he were waiting for it to open. He raised up when he saw who it was. Hey Sut, he said. How you makin it?
Just slidin, said Suttree. What are you doing?
Aw just settin. He pushed back his cap with his thumb and rubbed his head and smiled.
Suttree sat beside him on the little stone curb.
You want a drink? He canted the bottle he held to one side for the light to follow the label. They looked at the bottle together in silence. Get ye a sup. Tastes pretty good.
Suttree took the bottle and twirled off the little fluted plastic cap and hooked a good shot of it back.
Smoke rose from his noseholes.
Agh gie gie, he said.
Oh yes, said Rufus, shaking his head profoundly. It'll talk to ye.
Great God.
Rufus took the bottle from him gently and supped a good sup and stood it carefully in the road before them. Suttree wiped his eyes with the balls of his fingers. The vapors seemed to have risen to his brain. Even the smell of honeysuckle that had choked the air with its hot and winey perfume and memories of summer eve was burned away. He looked at Rufus with watery eyes. Have you seen Harrogate? he said.
Harrogate? Rufus turned and jerked his head back and frowned at Suttree across his shoulder. The city mouse? Naw. He aint been round. What you wants with him?
I think he's all fucked up somewhere.
Wherever he at he's fucked up. Aint no news in that.
Did you hear that earthquake last night?
I did. Rattled the glass in my windersashes. Woke my old lady up. You hear it?
Suttree nodded.
Get ye a little old drink there, Sut.
I dont believe I can stand it.
Why that there's a nice little whiskey.
The whiskey stood in the road.
I got a old dog stobbed up in my slopbarrel, said Rufus.
Suttree nodded. His lips moved as if he were repeating this to himself.
I caint get near him to fetch him out. He keeps wantin to bite me.
How did he get in there?
Fell in I reckon. Eatin my slops. I aint tippin out my slops for no fool ass dog.
No.
I remember from when I was a boy down in Loudon County and I had this uncle used to make whiskey all the time. We went up to his still one evenin and he had five barrel of mash settin around on the ground workin and we got up there and in ever barrel one they was a old hound. They was stobbed up in them mashbarrels to they neck and they was drunk and just a singing to beat the band. You never seen a more pleasant sight. We set on the ground and laughed and the more we laughed the louder they'd sing and the more they sung the louder we'd laugh.
How did you get them out?
We cut us a green hickory and run it through they collars and got one either end and snaked em out. They was some might too drunk to walk hardly.
Well why dont we get this one out of your mashbarrel like that?
He aint got no collar on.
I see. Well why dont we get a rope on him and haul him out?
We might could try it. I hate to go up there at all.
Why is that?
Old lady's put out with me.
Well you got to go sometime.
I know it. But sometimes I just purely hate it.
Come on. You cant sit down here all night.
Suttree stood up and Rufus rose and dusted the sag of his trouser-seat with two handswipes and stooped, tilted, recovered, seized the bottle and reared upright. Beat no drink atall, dont ye? he said to the bottle.
They labored up the switchback path through the kudzu and came out in a dark little lane. It was a clear night and they walked slowly and the black man would pause again before they reached the house to take another drink and restore the bottle to the pocket of his ample trousers. Suttree could smell above the honeysuckle a sour reek from the hoglot like the smell of vomit. Through the vines stood a windowlight. Rufus held up one finger and they paused and consulted.
Let me get my lannern.
Okay.
Suttree crouched in the lane. He heard a door open and close and then in a moment he heard a high shrieking voice that seemed to speak in a tongue unknown to him. The door opened and Rufus came from the porch holding up the lantern and adjusting the wick.
They walked out past the shed and Rufus lifted a nail out of the hasp-staple on the smokehouse door and entered and reappeared with a hank of coarse rope. They went on along a fence patched up from scraps of board and tin. Something scuttled off among the weeds. A hog grunted in the dark. Rufus held the lantern up and in the light Suttree saw the dog's eyes.
Yonder he is.
Suttree took the lantern and approached the dog. A sodden hound with wet bread hanging from his head, stogged to the neck in a slopdrum. He had his forepaws on the rim of the drum and as Suttree approached he bared his teeth in the lamplight.
Cant he get out? said Suttree.
He dont appear able. I see him rear up a time or two but he caint get pulled loose enough from that slop to jump.
Well hand me that rope.
Watch you dont get too close. He'll growl and make at ye.
Hold the lantern.
You watch him now.
Suttree fetched an empty drum and stood it bottom up alongside the dog and stood on it. The dog turned to face him. He made a noose in the rope and dropped it over the dog's head and the dog's teeth closed on the air with a dull wet chop. When he felt the rope tighten about his neck he began to moan.
Suttree doubled the rope in his fist and began to haul on the dog. The dog's eyes rolled wildly and it began to scrabble at the drum.
Great God this son of a bitch is heavy.
It rose strangled and dripping from the barrel and slid over the side and collapsed in a foul wet mass on the ground.
They stood watching it, Suttree on the drum holding the lantern. It looked like some strange medieval beast lying there gasping and stinking. Suttree steered the rope off the hound's neck and after a while it rose and shook itself and staggered off heavily through the honeysuckles.
Suttree coiled the rope save for the fouled noose of it and dragging this behind they went back up the path and sat on the porch. Rufus snuffed the lantern and leaned back against the post and closed his eyes. Then he opened them and patted his pocket where the bottle lay and then he closed them again. You caint see his lights now, growed up like it is, he said.
Whose lights?
The city mouse. When it's growed up thisaway you caint see over yonder. I dont know if he been there or not.
I dont believe he was there last night.
He might of got off drunk with Cleo and them. They gives him whiskey all the time.
Suttree nodded. Across the gut the lights of the city lay staggered on the night. You know any caves around here? he said.
Rufus opened his eyes. Caves? he said.
Do you know any?
They's a big cave yon side of the river. Cherokee cave.
I mean on this side.
They's caves all in under Knoxville.
Do you know how to get into them?
> You dont want to mess around in no caves. What you wants to mess around down in under the ground for?
If you dont tell me how to get in those caves I'm going to get that dog and put him back in your slopbarrel.
Rufus grinned. He straightened out one leg across the porch and reached in his pocket for the bottle. Sheeit, he said.
I may get two dogs.
Harrogate wounded and covered in shit found in his pocket a pennybox of matches and a candlestub and made a light. The slender flame leaned and fluttered. He groped in the sewage for his flashlight, up and down the passage. When he found it he fetched it up and shook it and worked the button back and forth but it would not light. He knelt there looking about at the stone walls surrounding. Hot wax ran on his hand and he scratched at it absently. He began to clamber back up the tunnel toward higher ground.
He bathed himself in a black pool while the candle grew squat. Checked his injuries. Dismantled and put back the flashlight and tried it. Unscrewed the bezel that held the lens, took out the bulb and held it to the candlelight but he could not see wires or no wires. He watched the candle. It wasnt dripping. It just looked as if it were being sucked down through the stone.
He left it burning there and went as far as the edge of the light, his small shadow swallowed up finally in the greater dark beyond. He turned and came back. He squatted and watched the flame totter. The dank stone room grew smaller, drew in about him. He crouched in the smallest cup of light with his hands joined at the back of the flame as if he would gather it to him. Hot oil ran on the stones. The wick toppled and dropped with a thin hiss and dark closed over him so absolute that he became without boundary to himself, as large as all the universe and small as anything that was.
Suttree went by a wellrope down a dry brick cistern. Odor of earth and moss, the old brick dark and crumblesome. The floor of the cistern had fallen in and he went down a tailing of rubble and broken brick into a hole in the earth. He turned on the flashlight he carried and stepped down into the darkness.
He followed a narrow passage where the floor was mud and strewn with old bottleglass. The walls inscribed with names and dates scratched in the soft wet stone. The corridor narrowed and gave onto a drafty blackness where his light went from wall to far wall, an enormous and slaggy tureen traversed by plumbing. Great jointed runs of sewerpipe and tubes of cable cold and wet. He entered warily. No sound but a distant timeless dripping. He listened for any faint sound of traffic in the streets above but that world seemed gone altogether. The grotto lay like a sea cave, smooth and curving, a thing shaped to hold the wind where no wind was. He turned, his light going along the walls, the muddy flowstone and the high domed roof where hung stone teeth and tongues of wet black slag. He crossed the room, patches of dark sludge in the floor like pools of tar. At the far side a round tunnel went on through the rock and Suttree stooping followed after.