Suttree

  Around the bend of the road was a store. An orange gaspump standing atilt. Suttree almost croaked out for a brief halt and Reese watched the building go past with sadder eyes yet.

  Where you all from? the boy said.

  Down around Knoxville. You from up here?

  Naw, the boy said. I'm from down around Sevierville. He looked them over. I just come up here to mess around some last night, he said.

  They watched the road in silence. Reese looked at the boy. He was wearing clean overall pants and he was leaning up over the wheel and he was chewing tobacco. You ever been to that there Green Room? said Reese.

  The boy looked at him sidelong slyly. Shit, he said. Aint that the dangdest place?

  You wasnt in there last night was you?

  We come in there about three oclock this mornin.

  Reese looked at him again. He shook his head. Well, he said. Be proud you wasnt there no earlier. That first shift is pure hell. Aint it Sut?

  When they stumbled back into the camp on the river the four women and the boy were waiting for them with grim set mouths.

  Boy if you aint a couple of good'ns, she said. Where's them groceries you was goin to bring?

  I can explain everthing, Reese said.

  Where they at? Hey? Boy if you aint a couple of good'ns.

  Reese turned to Suttree. I told you she'd say that. What'd I tell ye?

  Standing there with her hands on her hips and that stringy hair and her face a mask of bitterness she looked fearful and Suttree turned away. Reese tried to detain him to verify various lies but he went on toward the lean-to and got his bedding and slouched off toward the river with it. He could hear the debate rising behind him. Suttree'll tell ye. Ast him if you wont believe me.

  He lay down in his blankets. It was growing dark, long late midsummer twilight in the woods. He wanted to go down to the river to bathe but he felt too bad. He turned over and looked at the small plot of ground in the crook of his arm. My life is ghastly, he told the grass.

  The girl woke him, shaking him by the shoulder. He'd heard his name called and he rose up wondering. The boy was coming up out of the darkness downriver with a load of pale and misshapen driftwood like scoured bones from a saint's barrow. At the fire the woman bent and stooped and placed the blackened pots about and the old man squatted on his haunches and rolled one of his limp wet cigarettes and lit it deftly with a coal and watched. All this with a quality of dark ceremony. Suttree walked with the girl to the fire. One of the younger girls came up from the river with the coffeepot dripping riverwater and set it on the stones. She gave him a slow look sideways and arranged the pot with a studied domesticity which in this outlandish setting caused Suttree to smile.

  They ate almost in silence, a light smacking of chops, eyes furtive in the light of the lantern. The meal consisted of the whitebeans and cornbread and the boiled chicory coffee. There was about them something subdued beyond their normal reticence. As if order had been forced upon them from without. From time to time the woman awarded to the round dark a look of grim apprehension like a fugitive. When Suttree had finished he thanked her and rose from the table and she nodded and he went off toward the river.

  He woke once in the night to the sound of voices, a faint lamentation that might have been hounds beyond the wind but which to him as he lay watching the slow procession of lights on a highway far across the river like the candles of acolytes seemed more the thin clamor of some company transgressed from a dream or children who had died going along a road in the dark with lanterns and crying on their way from the world.

  It was the boy came down with poison ivy. First between his fingers, then up his arms and on his face. He'd rub himself with mud, with anything. I seen dogs like that, said the old man. Couldnt get no relief.

  His eyes is swoll shut, the woman said at breakfast next morning. The boy came to the fire like a sleepwalker. His arms puffed like adders. He tilted his head a bit to one side to favor the eye he could still see from. The skin of his upper arms had cracked in little fissures from which a clear yellow liquid seeped.

  The old man shook his head in disgust. I aint never seen a feller swell up thataway with poison ivy. What all do you reckon's the matter with him?

  Just keep him away from me, said Suttree.

  I thought you didnt take it, Sut.

  I think he's found a new kind.

  Shoo, said Wanda. You're a mess.

  He came toward her, arms flailing stiffly in a fiend's mime, and she ran screaming.

  Well, the old man said. You wont get it just bein in the same boat with him.

  I aint goin in no boat, the boy said.

  You aint, aint ye?

  I caint bend my arms.

  Reese had a knife and spoon up in his hands, holding them like candles, waiting for the food. The boy was standing rigidly at the end of the table. You what? Said Reese.

  Caint bend my arms, said the boy loftily.

  The old man laid down his silver quietly. Well hell's bells, he said. He looked at Suttree. I reckon you and Wanda will have to take it today.

  I've got a better idea, Suttree said.

  What's that?

  You and Wanda.

  Well, I thought I'd make the downstream run by myself. I thought I'd let you take the upstream with Wanda on account of she knows it.

  The woman swung a bucketful of oatmeal onto the table and the old man seized the ladle and loaded his bowl. Suttree looked downtable at the boy. He was still standing with his arms out at his sides. Wanda was sitting at the table across from him. She did not look up. She seemed to be at grace. Suttree took the ladle and dolloped out the oatmeal. Reese was blowing on his, holding the bowl in both hands and watching Suttree across the rim. Pass the milk, said Suttree.

  She sat with her knees together in the stern facing him as he rowed, her hands in her lap, the brail drops swinging behind her from the poles. Suttree seeing new country and asking about things along the shore, which side of an island to take. Her pointing, her young breasts swinging in the light cloth of her dress, turning in the boat, caught up in a childlike enthusiasm, a long flash of white thighs appearing and hiding again. Her bare feet on the silty boards of the skiffs floor crossed one over the top of the other.

  She said: Holler when you get tired and I'll spell ye.

  That's all right.

  I row for Daddy all the time. I can row good.

  Okay.

  You like to work with Willard?

  He's all right.

  I dont. I worked with him last summer some. He's a smart aleck.

  I guess you got to practice up on your rowing with him.

  Shoot. That thing wont do nothin. You know he tried to get me to hide out what pearls we found cleanin shells and we'd slip off and sell em and keep the money?

  Suttree grinned. Well, he said. I'd guess old Willard probably doesnt have much luck finding pearls. I'd say that everybody else would find about five to his one.

  Shoot, I bet he keeps what good ones he does find and hides em somewheres. Looky yonder at that old snake.

  A watersnake was weaving his way upriver by the shore reeds, his sleek chin flat on the water.

  I just despise them things, she said.

  They wont hurt you.

  Shoot, What if one was to bite ye?

  They wont bite. They're not poison anyway.

  She watched the snake, the tip of her thumb between her teeth.

  Let's just row over there and get him and I'll show you, said Suttree, taking a hard turn on the larboard oar.

  She squealed and jumped, grabbing at the oars. Suttree could see down the front of her dress all the way to her belly, the skin so smooth, the nipples so round and swollen. Buddy! she said, high and breathless and laughing. She was almost in his lap. You stay away from that thing.

  The boat rocked. She steadied herself with a hand on his shoulder, she touched the gunwale and sat down, a shy smile. They looked toward the shore for the snake but the snake was
gone. The sun was warm on Suttree's back. He let one oar trail and wet his hand in the river and put it against the back of his neck. You scared the snake off, he said.

  You scared me.

  Maybe we'll see another one.

  You stay away from them things. What if one was to climb in the boat?

  I guess you'd be climbing out. Suttree suddenly looked down over the side. Why here he is, he said. Right alongside the boat.

  She squealed and stood up, holding her wrists together in front of her, her hands at her mouth.

  Suttree shook and jostled the oar. He's coming up the oar, he said.

  Buddeee! she wailed, climbing onto the seat in the transom. She peered down into the water. Where? she said.

  Suttree had let go the oar and was laughing like a simpleton.

  You quit that, she said. You hear? Buddy?

  Yes? he said.

  You promise me. You hear? Dont do that no more.

  Okay, he said. You better sit down before you fall in.

  She stepped down and sat, holding the gunwales at either side as if to be ready for rough water. He stood his feet against the struts in the skiffs side and pulled into the current.

  They ate their lunch on a grassy knoll above the river. A cool wind that bore an odor of damp moss coming off the water. Reese had gotten credit at the store and there were baloney sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise and little oatmeal cakes. She sat with her bare feet tucked beneath her and brought these things from a paper grocery sack and laid them out. When they'd eaten he lay back in the grass with his hands behind his head. He watched the clouds. He closed his eyes.

  She took the oars as they went back down and Suttree handled the brail bars. She would help him haul the filled brails in, smelling of soap and sweat, her body soft and naked under the dress touching him, the mussels dripping and swinging from the lines and clacking like castanets.

  They coaxed the loaded boat through the shallows, walking alongside it on the gravel floor of the river. Suttree raised the front of it by the ring in the prow and ran the water to the rear and grounded the bow of the skiff on a rock. Them leaning over the boat from either side, their heads almost touching, scooping out the water with bailing cans.

  Drifting downriver in the lovely dusk, the river chattering in the rips and bats going to and back over the darkening water. Rocking down black glides and slicks, the gravel bars going past and little islands of rock and tufted grass.

  When they reached the camp there was no one about. Suttree took the axe and went for wood while she built the fire back.

  He came up dragging some dead stumps and found her sitting in front of the fire on a tarpaulin she had spread there. She looked up quickly and smiled. He set one of the stumps in the flames. Hot sparks rose and drifted downwind in the dark. Where is everybody? he said.

  I reckon they're at church.

  You think Willard went with them?

  Mama makes him go. She puts him to work if he tries to lay out.

  Suttree sat down on the tarp alongside her.

  They could hear the river running on in the dark. He heard her breathing beside him, her breast rising and falling, eyes watching the fire. Suttree rose onto his knees and reached across the flames and jostled the stump forward into a better place. He looked back at her. She had her knees up and her arms locked about them. Her full thighs shone in the firelight, the little wedge of pink rayon that pursed her cleft. He leaned to her and took her face in his hands and kissed her, child's breath, an odor of raw milk. She opened her mouth. He cupped her breast in his palm and her eyes fluttered and she slumped against him. When he put his hand up her dress her legs fell open bonelessly.

  This is nothing but trouble, he said.

  I dont care.

  Her dress was around her waist. Incredible amounts of flesh naked in the firelight. She was warm and wet and softly furred. She seemed barely conscious. He felt giddy. An obscene delight not untouched by just a little sorrow as he pulled down her drawers. Struggling onehanded with buttons. Her thighs were slathered with mucus. She put her arms around his neck. She bowed her back and sucked her breath in sharply.

  Hers was a tale of bridled lust. He made her tell him everything. Never a living man. When he rose from between her thighs the fire had died almost to coals. She sat and smoothed her skirt and swept back her hair. She got up and took up her fallen underclothing and went to the lean-to. Suttree saw her go with a basin toward the river and when she returned she had bathed and changed her dress and he had mended back the fire and she came and sat by him and he took her hand.

  She came to him again in the night where he slept above the river, waking him with her hands on him and her warm breath. She wanted to sleep with him but he sent her away. She came back again toward the morning and Suttree faced the day on buckling knees. He saw her coming from the river with a pail of water, smiling. He went up to the fire and found Reese squatting there with his arms folded on top of his knees.

  Hot nights filled with summer thunder. Heat lightning far and thin and the midnight sky becrazed and mended back again. Suttree moved down to the gravelbar on the river and spread his blanket there under the gauzy starwash and lay naked with his back pressed to the wheeling earth. The river chattered and sucked past at his elbow. He'd lie awake long after the last dull shapes in the coals of the cookfire died and he'd go naked into the cool and velvet waters and submerge like an otter and come up and blow, the stones smooth as marbles under his cupped toes and the dark water reeling past his eyes. He'd lie on his back in the shallows and on these nights he'd see stars come adrift and rifle hot and dying across the face of the firmament. The enormity of the universe filled him with a strange sweet woe.

  She always found him. She'd come pale and naked from the trees into the water like some dream old prisoners harbor or sailors at sea. Or touch his cheek where he lay sleeping and say his name. Holding her arms aloft like a child for him to raise up over them the nightshirt that she wore and her to lie cool and naked against his side.

  She sat in the bow of the boat going upriver. She traced her cool fingertips along his nape and he turned and squinted at her. Sunlight swarmed on the water. That's going to get you screwed, he said. She knelt forward and ran her velvet tongue between his lips. She smelled of soap and woodsmoke. Tasted of salt.

  He turned the skiff toward shore and he spread her naked in the grass, her grave and slightly smiling face pooled in black hair, her perfect teeth, her skin completely flawless, not so much as a mole. The nipples tulipshaped and full and her navel just a slit in her flat little belly. Her smooth thighs, her childlike shamelessness, her little hands dug into his buttocks. Her whimpering like a puppy's.

  They swam in the river and slept in the sun. They woke in the hot forenoon and laughed at the hurry with which they worked. Reese came down in the dark to help them moor the loaded skiff and ran his flashbeam over the piles of shellfish and the three of them went up through the trees to the fire.

  She sat across from him and watched him and she brought his coffee and pushed a soft young breast against his ear in taking away his empty plate.

  I believe that gal's a better cook than her mother, said Reese. What do you think?

  Suttree stopped chewing and looked sideways at Reese and then went on chewing again.

  That little old gal is special to me, Reese said. She'll just do a man's work.

  Suttree spat an insoluble wad of gristle at the dark. The women were laboring up the slope with a washtub of water between them, the girl laughing, the water licking over the sides.

  You want some more coffee, Sut? Holler there and tell her to bring the pot.

  And across the fire her hot eyes watched him and she seemed half breathless in the things she did. He walked off down by the river with his flashlight, along the path, flicking the light into the dead water by the shore where suckers lay on the bottom, old bottles furred with silt, pale mooneyed shad in catatonia. He turned off the light and sat in th
e easy dark and listened to a rip in some rocky shoal, a gentle whispering in the reeds where the river ran. A figure came down from the fire and squatted in the grass and rose and went back. The willows at the far shore cut from the night a prospect of distant mountains dark against a paler sky. Halfmoon incandescent in her black galactic keyway, the heavens locked and wheeling. A sole star to the north pale and constant, the old wanderer's beacon burning like a molten spike that tethered fast the Small Bear to the turning firmament. He closed his eyes and opened them and looked again. He was struck by the fidelity of this earth he inhabited and he bore it sudden love.

  In the morning the boy helped them unload the mussels, sullen face filled with suspicion, a potential spy. The woman and the younger girls came up the river path with their shelling tools, the woman with her air of habitual rigidity and the girls in lockstep behind. At supper that night Reese said he thought the boy was well enough to work and the boy glared at Suttree across the table.

  Two mornings later he was looking at Willard in the rear of the skiff. Willard wore a dark blue hat he'd come by somewhere made of imitation felt and maybe paper. Suttree rowed with his head averted watching the shore. They hardly spoke all day. By the time they'd unloaded the mussels downstream it was getting on toward evening.

  Daddy's got a hole baited down here, the boy said. Said for us to run his thowlines.

  Suttree leaned on his shovel. You go run them, he said.

  Willard clambered ashore and disappeared whistling down the river path. He was gone the better part of an hour and when he came back he was lugging a goodsized spoonbill catfish, relict of devonian seas, a thing scaleless and leathery with a duck's bill and the small eyes harboring eons of night. Suttree shook his head. Some like spirit joined beast and captor. Looky here, called the boy. Suttree sat in the boat with his head in his hands. Darkness settled on them before they'd rowed halfway back to the camp.

  They spent the last hour rowing upstream with the boy in the bow sounding with a pole, going up shoals where the oars grated on the gravel bottom and rocks passed along the planks with a slow dull wrenching, fighting off treelimbs that kept boarding them in the dark.

  She came down to him at some hour before dawn and lay by him. She put her head against his chest.

  We've got to stop this, he said.