Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

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.