Suttree

  Old crazy Leithal King worked in the kitchen after that. I believe he was the biggest fuck-up in the workhouse. Shit. I got tired takin stuff off of him he was so dumb. I used to race lizards with him I'd let him take his pick, we'd have upwards of half a dozen in a kettle. I'd have me some chili pepper in my hand and when I got my lizard I'd rub a little of that in his ass. He'd go like he was on fire. Old Leithal'd get em and wouldnt know how to hold em or nothin, half the time he'd pull their tails off. He raced one one time that son of a bitch stood straight up and went right on over backards, feet just a churnin.

  They sat in blackness. Lights were coming on across the cut, blooming among the barren vines like winter fireflies there.

  Come on, said Suttree. You can stay at my place till you get sorted out what you're going to do.

  I dont want to put nobody out.

  Hell with that. Let's go.

  He rose reluctantly.

  What happened to your cat? said Suttree.

  Shit if I know. Seems like when the shit hits the fan they all clear out. Even the goddamn cat.

  Suttree never locked his door and the city mouse would come and go at hours convenient to his obscure purposes. He wandered through the wastes like a jackal in the dark, in the keep of old warehouse walls and the quiet of gutted buildings. He was enamored of the night and those quiet regions on the city's inward edges too dismal for dwelling. Down alleyways of flueblack brick. Through a gate unhinged to a garden of gloom.

  In the dawn when cold trucks cough and lumber over the cobbles and black men in frayed and partly eaten greatcoats of their country's service stand about the fires in empty trashdrums and spit and speculate and nod there'd shoulder in among them a paler derelict who held his small hands to the flames without a word.

  At night sometimes he'd sit by the right of way where the rails go so surgically in the slack gloss of the quartermoon. Curving away to some better land where strangers sit freely without being asked. Among alien shapes in the honeysuckles watching the train pass chuffing and clacking down the cut between the high banks, leaving in the smoke and leaf swirl such utter loneliness that he, who'd come from hiding to see it go, knelt sobbing on the crossties among the lightly whispered collisions of the leaves with a hot and salty sorrow in his throat, his hands dangling and his stained face wretched, watching the barnred hinder carriage shuttle gently from sight beyond the curve.

  He was caught at his first robbery. White lights crossed like warring swords the little grocery store and back, his small figure tortured there cringing and blinking as if he were being burnt. He dove headlong through a plateglass window and fetched up stunned and bleeding at the feet of a policeman who stood with a cocked revolver at his head saying: I hope you run. I wish you would run.

  He rode handcuffed through the winter landscape to Nashville. It is true that the world is wide. Out there the open ends of cornfield rows wheel past like a turnstile. Dark earth between the dead stalks. The rails at a junction veering in liquid collision and flaring again silently in long vees. His forehead to the cold glass, watching.

  They went on through the long afternoon twilight with the old carriage rocking and clicking and a rain that blew down from the north cutting long tears in the dust on the windows. Barren fields falling away desolate and small flocks of nameless birds flaring over the land and against the darkening sky like seafans stamped from black sheet iron the shapes of winter trees against a winter sky.

  They passed a house and a woman came from the door and tossed a dishpan of water into the yard and wiped her hand on her apron. He pressed his face to the window, watching her recede quietly in the dusk. The train hooted for a crossing and they passed a little store squatting in the coke and dust beyond the yard and they passed a row of empty coaches, the dead windows clocking by and dicing the scene beyond and the long wail of the engine hanging over the country like a thing damned of all deliverance. Harrogate eased the steel bracelet on his wrist and rested his head against the harsh nap of the seat and slept.

  He woke in the night with the train's slowing. Stale smell of smoke and an antique mustiness from the old woodwork of the carriage. The man he was manacled to slept slackjawed. He looked out the window. A long row of lighted henhouses on a hill went by like a passing train itself, row on row of yellow windows backing down the night and drawing off into the darkness. They went through a small town in the mountains, a midnight cafe, empty stools, a dead clock on the wall. As they moved on into the country again the windows became black mirrors and the city rat could see his pinched face watching him back from the cold glass, out there racing among the wires and the bitter trees, and he closed his eyes.

  Somnolent city, cold and dolorous in the rain, the lights bleeding in the streets. Cutting through the alley off Commerce he saw a man huddled among the trash and he knelt to see about him. The face came up and the eyes closed. An oiled mask in black against the bricks.

  Suttree took him by one arm. Ab, he said.

  Can you get me home? A voice from the void, dead and flat and divested of every vanity. Suttree raised up one of the great arms and got it across his shoulder and braced his feet to rise. Sweat stood on his forehead. Ab, he said. Come on.

  He opened his eyes and looked about. Are they huntin me? he said.

  I dont know. Come on.

  He lurched to his feet and stood there reeling while Suttree steadied him by one arm. Their shadows cast by the lamp at the end of the alley fell long and narrow to darkness. As they tottered out of the mouth of the alley a prowlcar passed. Ab sagged, swung back and slammed against the building.

  Goddamnit Ab. Straighten up now. Ab.

  The cruiser had stopped and was backing slowly. The spotlight came on and sliced about and pinned them against the wall.

  Go on, Youngblood.

  No.

  I aint goin.

  You'll be all right in a minute.

  With them I aint goin. Go on.

  No damnit. Ab. I'll talk to them.

  But the black had begun to come erect with a strength and grace contrived out of absolute nothingness and Suttree said: Ab, and the black said: Go on.

  All right, said the officer. What's this?

  I'm just getting him home, said Suttree. He's all right.

  Is that so? He dont look so all right to me. What are you doin with him? He your daddy?

  Fuck you, said Ab.

  What?

  There were two of them now. Suttree could hear the steady guttering of the cruiser's exhaust in the empty street.

  What? said the officer.

  The black turned to Suttree. Go on now, he said. Go on while ye can.

  Officer this man's sick, said Suttree.

  He's goin to be sicker, said the cop. He gestured with his nightstick. Get his ass in there.

  Bullshit on that, said the other one. Let me call the wagon. That's that big son of a bitch ...

  Jones lurched free and swung round the corner of the alley at a dead run. The two cops tore past Suttree and disappeared after him. The flat slap of their shoes died down the alley in a series of diminishing reports and then there was only the rough drone of the idling cruiser at the curb. Suttree stepped to the car, eased himself beneath the wheel and shut the door. He sat there for a moment, then he engaged the gearbox and pulled away.

  He drove to Gay Street and turned south and onto the bridge. The radio crackled and a voice said: Car Seven. He turned left at the end of the bridge, past the abandoned roller rink, a rotting wooden arena that leaned like an old silo. He went down Island Home Pike toward the river. The radio fizzled and crackled. Calling any car in area B. Area B. Come in.

  We've got a report of some kind of disturbance at Commerce and Market.

  Suttree drove along the lamplit street. There was no traffic. The lights at Rose's came up along his left and the lights from the packing company. The radio said: Car Nine. Car Nine. Suttree turned off down an old ferry road, going slowly, the car rocking and bumping over the grou
nd, out across a field, the headlights picking up a pair of rabbits that froze like plaster lawn figures. The dead and lightly coiling back of the river moving beyond the grass. The sparsely lit silhouette of the city above. The headlights failed somewhere out over the water in a gauzy smear. He brought the car to a stop and shifted it into neutral and stepped out into the wet grass. He pulled the hoodlatch under the dash and walked to the front of the cruiser and raised the hood. He came back to the car and sat in the seat and removed his shoelace. He looked out at the river and the city. One of the rabbits began to lope slowly through the light ground mist toward the dark of the trees.

  The radio popped. Wagner? What's the story down there?

  Suttree got out and walked around to the front of the car and bent into the motor compartment and pulled back the throttle linkage. The motor rose to a howl and he tied the linkage back with the shoelace, fastening it to the fuel line where it entered the pump. Live flame was licking from the end of the tailpipe. He climbed in and pushed the clutch to the floor and shifted the lever hard up into second in a squawk of gearteeth. The rabbits were both gone. He eased off the seat and stood with one foot on the ground and the other on the clutch. Then he leaped back and slapped the door shut.

  For a moment it didnt move. The tires cried in the grass and smoking clods went rifling off through the dark. Then it settled slightly sideways, dished back again, and in a shower of mud and grass moved out across the field. It went low and fast, the headlights rigid and tilting. It tore across the field and ripped through the willows at the river's edge and went planing out over the water in two great wings of spray that seemed pure white and fanned upward twenty feet into the air. When it came to rest it was far out in the river. The headlights began to wheel about downstream. Then they went out. For a while he could see the dark hump of it in the river and then it slowly subsided and was gone. He squatted in the damp grass and looked out. There was no sound anywhere along the river. After a while he rose and started home.

  Jones came to bay with his back to a brick wall, standing widefooted and gasping while the officers approached. A bloody dumbshow and no word spoken. The first policeman swung at him with his club and Jones slapped at it, a dead smack of meat in his palm. He swung again and this time the black's hand folded over the club. The policeman had the leather lanyard looped about his wrist and Jones swung him sideways and slammed him against the bricks. Then he jerked him to his knees and was strangling him when the other officer fell upon him and forced him to give it up. Jones kicked them back and the first officer staggered toward the center of the alley and dropped to his knees groaning. A cry of sirens was nearing in the streets. The able officer stepped back in alarm but Jones seized him like some huge black pervert. He struggled to reach for his revolver. By now a patrol car was coming down the alley in a blinding spray of lights. The seized officer gave up trying to loosen his pistol and was hammering away with his billy at the cropped skull above him and his hand and arm were slick with blood.

  Men were running in the alley. Jones turned and started off lumbering and huge in the lights like a movie monster. The revolvers in that narrow space crashed like mortars and the bullets caromed and whined and skittered. But before they could get a true aim his knees went under him and he collapsed flailing among the trashcans at the alley's mouth.

  The officer who opened the rear door of the paddywagon just closed his eyes. He had no time to fend or hide. Jones's boot caught him in the throat and he went to the pavement without a cry. The other officers received him with billies and slapsticks, his eyes huge and crazed and his jacket spongy with blood launching himself upon them like some unshackled wild man and taking them to the ground with him.

  They dragged him bleeding and senseless down the corridor to the tank, his feet scuffing behind. His bearers were bleeding and torn and they cursed every step they took. They pulled him into the empty iron cage and let him fall face down on the concrete. Tarzan Quinn came from the dayroom with a cup of coffee in one hand. The jailer was locking back the hall door, a great ring of keys fastened to him with a chain.

  Duck, said Tarzan.

  The jailer turned. Yeah, he said.

  You let me know when that son of a bitch wakes up.

  Sure will, Tarzan.

  Tarzan nodded and sipped his coffee. He worked his right fist open and shut and rubbed his palm on the side of his trousers.

  She was a long time coming but when she saw him she opened the door and motioned with her head for him to enter. She had a lamp in her hand and she wore an old chenille robe and she had some sort of a nightcap on her head that looked vaguely orthopedic. She shuffled wearily into a chair and put her face in one hand.

  He shut the door and leaned against it, watching her. After a while she raised her head and wiped her eye and her mouth. She was looking at the lampflame.

  He aint dead is he? she said.

  No. I thought maybe he got away but he must be in jail.

  Well.

  What do you want to do?

  Aint nothin to do. Aint no use in goin over there till in the mornin.

  I guess not.

  She shook her head. They aint no way, she said. Just aint no way.

  Do you have any money?

  Some. I dont know. Them bondsmens gets it all, I'll have to look and see.

  I've got about thirty dollars if you need it.

  That wouldnt get him started.

  What will they charge him with?

  What wont they. Two year ago they tried to get him for temptin murder. It costed me fourteen hunnerd dollar.

  I cant go down there with you.

  You dont need to go down there.

  They may be looking for me.

  Dont let em get on you, she said. They never will get off.

  A dull glow of coals showed through the drafthole in the stove door but it was cold in the room. She must have followed his thoughts. Come over here by the stove and warm, she said. You want a beer?

  No. I've got to go. I've got to figure out what to do.

  She shook her head and looked up. Black shining face, those lunettes of flesh ridging the skin and the one webbed and blinking eye.

  He fifty-six year old, she said. You know that?

  I knew he was something like that.

  He caint carry on like this. They'll kill him. You caint tell him.

  Suttree looked at the floor.

  Well, she said. I thank ye for stoppin.

  Do you want me to try and get hold of Oceanfrog?

  No. I'll see him.

  Well. I'll come by tomorrow.

  She rose from the chair and put both hands on the table. Then she sat down again. Suttree opened the door and went out.

  He crossed the cold white tiles of the lobby floor and leaned at the desk. There was no one about. He palmed the little bell. Brass through the nickel plate. After a while Jesse came from the rear and nodded with that expression of constrained contempt with which he beheld all life forms not midnight in color.

  He be out in a minute.

  The clerk came out and went through the little gate and stood facing Suttree.

  You got a room? said Suttree.

  He reached and took a card from a slot and slid it across the marble counter and laid a pen across it.

  Suttree wrote his name and pushed the card back. The clerk didnt look at it. Is it just you? he said.

  Just me.

  How long?

  I dont know. Couple of weeks.

  He laid out a key on its fiberboard fob. Twelve bucks, he said.

  For a week?

  Right.

  I only paid fourteen for a double. Last time I was here.

  It's twelve bucks.

  Suttree counted out the money and took the key and crossed the lobby to the stairs and climbed upward into the gloom. He found the room and went to put the key in the door but it was already ajar. He pushed it open. The latch was smashed, broken hardware hung from the screws. The whole door was cr
acked through and wobbled sickly when he pushed it shut. He went back down the stairs and dinged on the bell.

  The clerk gave him another room and he went up again. It looked out over the alley in the rear of the hotel. There were enormous holes caved in the walls and patched over with cardboard and masking tape. A small iron bed. An oak veneer dresser on tall castered legs. He lay hammocked in the soft mattress and stared at the ceiling. After a while he got up and turned off the light and kicked off his shoes and stretched out again. Cars passed in the streets below. Already a faint grfcy light from the day to come lay in the eastward windows. He slept.

  It was late afternoon when he woke. He shuffled off down the hall to the bathroom. There seemed to be no one about. He went down and got the paper in the lobby and crossed the street and went up to the drugstore where he sat in a back booth and had coffee and doughnuts. He ransacked the paper for news of the night before but there was no word.

  With dark he went down to the end of the street and to the river. There was no light at Doll's and no one answered when he rapped at the door. Ab's cat came down from the roof and rubbed against his leg but he had nothing to give it.

  It was dark on the river and the only sound was the dripping of the oars and the light rasp of the locks. He foundered among the shore brush with his flashlight and finally located the stake where his trotline was fastened and he hooked the line through the lock in the transom and took the oars again, the flashlight propped on the seat and the line coming up very white from the black water. He stripped the bait from the hooks as they came up and when he reached the farther bank he cut the line. It rifled off into the river with a thin sucking sound and disappeared from sight. Then he rowed down and ran the other line and cut it. By the time he came back upriver with his catch in the floor of the skiff it was past midnight. He lit his lamp and sat on the deck and cleaned the fish, pausing from time to time to warm his stained hands at the lampchimney. He wrapped the fish in newsprint and put them in a box and he went down and drew the skiff ashore and turned it over. Then he went in and got his clothes and the few personal things he owned and blew out the lamp and went across the fields toward the town with these things piled atop the fishbox in front of him.