Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Look comin here.

What’s happened to him?

Looks like one leg’s grown longer’n the other one.

Harrogate crashed into the end of a set of bunks and reeled away.

Damned if the country mouse aint drunker’n hell.

Them eyes look like two pissholes in the snow.

He veered toward them like a misfired android. One caught him up by the sleeve.

You goin to supper, Countrymouse?

You fuckin ay, said Countrymouse.

They covered for him in line, holding him erect, shielding him from the guards. The cook’s helper who loaded his plate looked at his face probably because it was the only one in the line passing at that diminished altitude. Shit a brick, he said.

Bet your ass, said Harrogate, winking profoundly.

They went on to the messhall. Harrogate stepped over the bench and misbalanced and stepped back. He raised his foot to try again. One of the prisoners grabbed his leg and pulled it down and caught his tilting plate and jerked him into the bench alongside him.

Hee hee, said Harrogate.

Someone kicked him under the table. He peered about at nearby faces for the culprit. The blacks filing in at the table opposite seemed to have wind of him already and were ogling and grinning.

Harrogate spooned up a load of pinto beans and shoved them toward his jaw. Some fell down the front of him. He looked after them. He began to spoon beans from his lap. Several guards were watching. He was having difficulty sitting on the bench. He was tottering about. The guard at the head of the table, a man named Wilson, walked down to get a better look. Harrogate sensed him standing there above him and turned to see, falling against the prisoner at his side as he did so. Wilson looked down into the thin face, now slightly green. Harrogate turned back to his food, holding onto the edge of the table with one hand.

This man’s drunk, said Wilson.

Somewhere down the table someone muttered No shit and a ripple of tittering passed through the messhall. Wilson glared. All right, he said. Knock it off. You. Get up.

Harrogate put down his spoon and took another grip on the table and raised himself up. But since the bench would not push back from the table he remained in a sort of crouched position, finally losing his balance and sitting down again. Now he turned in his seat and tried to get one foot over the bench, lifting his leg up by the cuff of his trousers, one elbow resting in his food.

The clanking and scraping of spoons had ceased altogether. The only sound in the messhall was Harrogate struggling to free himself from the table. Wilson standing over him like a faith healer over a paraplegic. Until he actually raised up astraddle the bench, creamed corn dripping from his sleeve. Ick, he said.

What? said Wilson menacingly.

The country mouse closed his eyes, belched, opened them again. Sick, he said. He was trying to raise his other leg. The prisoner alongside looked up at him and leaned away. Harrogate lurched and his neck gave a sort of chickenlike jerk and he vomited on Wilson’s shoes.

The prisoners on either side of Harrogate leaped up. Wilson’s slapstick was out. He was looking at his shoes. He couldnt believe it. Harrogate wore a look of terror. He seized hold of the table, looking about wildly, his gorge swollen. He spied his plate. He leaned toward it. He vomited on the table.

You nasty little bastard, screamed Wilson. He was doing little kicks, trying to shake the puke from his shoes. The prisoners who’d been sitting opposite Harrogate had risen from the table and were watching the country mouse in awe. Harrogate looked up at them with weeping eyes and managed just the smallest blacktooth grin before he puked again.

They did not see him for ten days. Then one morning as they filed through the kitchen with their plates there he was, grinning sheepishly, ladling up gravy for their biscuits. Beyond him through the steam, on a can with a cigarette in his mouth, sat Red Callahan. No one asked where Slusser was.

That night when they came in he must have been showering in the kitchen cell because when they went past on their way to their own quarters silently in twos, exuding the aura of cold they’d brought in with them, Harrogate suddenly appeared naked at the bars, his thin face, his hands clutching, like a skinned spidermonkey.

Sut, he called out softly. Hey Sut.

Suttree heard his name. As he came abreast of the smallest prisoner he dropped out of the line. When will the phantom puker strike again, he said. What the fuck are you doing bare assed?

Listen Sut, that fuckin Wilson’s got it in for me. I got to get out of here.

Out of where?

Here. The joint.

You mean run off?

Yeah.

Suttree shook his head. That’s crazy, Gene, he said.

I need you to help me.

Suttree fell back in at the tail of the line. You’re nuts, Gene, he said.

He saw him again a week later on Thursday when he was assigned to the indigent food detail. The needy trooping through in rags, their eyes rheumy, snuffling, showing their papers at the desk and going on to where the prisoners unloaded bags of cornmeal from pallets or scooped dried beans into grocery bags. Suttree sought their eyes but few looked up. They took their dole and passed on. Old shapeless women in thin summer dresses, socks collapsed about their pale and naked ankles, shoes opened at the side with knives to ease their feet. The seams of their lower faces stained with snuff, their drawstrung mouths. To Suttree they seemed hardly real. Like pictureshow paupers costumed for a scene. At the noon dinner break he and Harrogate fell in together. They crouched with others among the palleted beans and unwrapped their sandwiches.

What we got?

Baloney.

Anybody got a cheese?

They aint no cheese.

Sut.

Yeah.

Shhh. Do you know where we’re at?

Where we’re at?

I mean which way is town?

Harrogate speaking in loud hoarse whispers, spewing bits of bread.

Suttree jerked a thumb over his shoulders. It’s thataway, he said.

Harrogate motioned his thumb down and looked about. What I figure to do, he said …

Gene.

Yeah.

If you run off from here you’ll wind up like Slusser.

You mean with a pick on my leg?

I mean you’ll be in and out of institutions for the rest of your life.

Save for one thing.

What’s that.

They aint goin to catch me.

Where will you go?

Go to Knoxville.

Knoxville.

Hell yes.

What makes you think they wont find you in Knoxville?

Hell fire Sut. Big a place as Knoxville is? They never would find ye there. Why you wouldnt even know where to start huntin somebody.

Suttree looked at Harrogate and shook his head.

How far you reckon it is to town? said Harrogate.

It’s six or eight miles. Listen. If you’ve got to run off why dont you wait and slip off from the county garage some evening?

What for?

Hell, you’re practically in town. Besides it would be dark or damn near it.

Harrogate paused from his chewing, his eyes fixed on his shoe. Then he commenced chewing again. You might be right, he said.

Suttree was unwrapping his other sandwich. It dont make all that much difference actually, he said.

Why’s that?

Cause they’ll catch your skinny ass anyway.

They aint no way.

What do you aim to do about clothes? What do you think people are going to say when they see you wandering around in that outfit?

I’ll get me some clothes first thing.

Suttree shook his head.

Hell Sut. I can slip around.

Gene.

Yeah.

You look wrong. You will always look wrong.

Harrogate looked at the floor. He had stopped chewing. No I wont, he said.

The weather turned colder and they did not go out. Wilson put Harrogate to work painting the black borders along the lower hallway walls that served for baseboards. The workhouse smelled of paint and so did the country mouse when he came up in the evening with the smears of black on his face like a guerrilla fighter.