Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Fuck you, said Suttree.

A wave of nausea washed through him and he paused to rest on an old retaining wall. Looking under his hand he saw dimly the prints of trilobites, lime cameos of vanished bivalves and delicate seaferns. In these serried clefts stone armatures on which once hung the flesh of living fish. He lurched on.

He stopped in the middle of the street before the tall frame house on Grand. Paintless boards smoked a bluish color. He called to a woman sitting on the porch. She leaned forward peering.

Is Jimmy there?

No. He’s not come in from last night. Who is that?

Cornelius Suttree.

Lord have mercy I didnt know who that was. No, he’s not here, Cornelius. I dont know where he’s at.

Well. Thank you mam.

You come see us.

I will. He waved a hand. A police car was turning the corner.

They drove past. Before he got to the end of the street they had circled and pulled up alongside him from behind.

Where you goin, boy?

Home, he said.

Where you live?

Down off Front Avenue.

Beefy face, small eyes looking him over. The face turned away. They said something between them. The one turned back. What’s happened to you?

Nothing, he said. I’m all right.

I believe you a little drunk aint ye?

No sir.

Where you been?

He looked at his crusted shoes and took a breath. I was visiting some people over here. I’m just on my way home.

What you got all over the front of you there?

He looked down. When he raised his head again he fixed his eyes across the cruiser’s roof upon the bleak row of old houses with their cloven hanging clapboards and their cardboard windowpanes. A few blackened trees stood withering in the heat and in this obscure purgatory a thrush was singing. Mavis. Turdus Musicus. The lyrical shit-bird.

I spilled something on me, he said.

You smell like you been dipped in shit.

Two boys were coming along the broken walk. When they saw the cruiser they turned and went back.

The door opened and beefy got out.

Maybe you better get in here, he said.

Dont put that stinkin son of a bitch in here. Call the wagon.

Well. You just stand right there.

I’m not going anywhere.

I’ll tell you that, you aint.

He listened dreamily to the crackling of the intercom.

The paddy wagon came down off Western and Forest avenues and pulled up in front of the cruiser and two policemen got out. They opened the door and Suttree walked toward it.

Boy if he aint a sweet blossom, one said.

There was a drunk inside sitting on the bench that ran the length of the wagon. Suttree sat opposite. The door banged shut. The drunk leaned forward. Hey old buddy, he said. You got a cigarette? Suttree shut his eyes and rested his head against the side of the van.

At the jail he stood before a little window and was asked to empty his pockets. He managed a faint smile.

The officer at his side nudged him with a nightstick. Empty them pockets, boy.

Suttree lifted his caked shirt. His pockets hung like socks.

You got any identification on you.

No sir.

How come you aint.

I’ve been robbed.

What’s your name.

Jerome Johnson.

The officer was writing. We’ve had trouble with you before aint we Johnson?

No sir.

He looked up. I bet we aint. Get his belt and his shoelaces there.

They took him along the corridor toward the cells.

They opened the door to a large cage and he went in and they shut the door behind him. Someone slept in one corner, his head in a pool of clabbered void. There were no benches, no place to sit. A concrete scupper ran the perimeter of the cage. Suttree shuddered in a seizure of skullpangs. He sat on the floor. It was cool. After a while he knelt and pressed his head against it.

He must have slept. He heard the turnkey rapping along the bars, calling a name. When he came past Suttree spoke to him.

Can you call me a bondsman back here?

What’s your name?

Johnson.

How long you been in?

I dont know. I was asleep.

You got to stay in six hours anyway.

I know. I was wondering if you’d check for me.

The turnkey didnt say he would or wouldnt.

After a while Suttree stretched out on the floor and slept again. He woke from time to time to shift a bone where it wore against the concrete. It was evening before the bondsman came.

A small dapper man in mesh shoes. He looked up at the foul enigma caged before him. You Johnson? he said.

Yes.

You want to make bail?

Yes. I dont have any money. You’ll have to call.

Okay. Who do I call? He had out a pad and pencil.

Suttree gave him the number.

All right, he said. Wait here.

Sure, said Suttree. Listen.

What?

Tell them Suttree. But to ask for Johnson.

You can get in a lot of trouble that way.

I can get in a lot the other way.

Okay. What was it again?

Suttree.

The bondsman was shaking his head, writing the new name. You people are really something, he said.

He was back in a few minutes. He aint home, he said.

Did she say when he might be in?

Nope.

What time is it?

Around seven. He flicked his cuff back. Ten after.

Goddamn.

Dont you know nobody else?

No. Look, try it again in an hour, will you? You sure you got the right number?

21505. Right?

That’s it.

What’s the guy’s name anyways?

Jim.

I know that. What’s his full name.

Jim Long.

The bondsman gave him a funny little look. Jim Long? he said.

Yes.

Got a brother named Junior?

That’s him.

The bondsman looked at him sideways.

What is it? said Suttree.

Shit.

What’s the matter?

Why hell fire, the bondsman said. Both of em are right behind you in number eight. They been here since this mornin and cant raise bond neither.

He was looking at Suttree more curiously yet. Suttree’s face began to wrinkle and go peculiar. A horse snigger leapt from his lips and his eyes wandered.

You’re crazy as shit, said the bondsman.

Suttree sat down on the concrete floor and held his stomach. He sat there shaking and holding himself. You’re a real nutwagon, aint ye? said the bondsman.

Later he called through the bars to his friends but they didnt answer. A voice somewhere asked why he didnt shut the fuck up. Later still the lights in the corridor ceiling came on. The man in the corner had not moved and Suttree didnt want to look at him if he were dead. He lay on the floor again and drifted in and out of a poor sleep. He dreamt whole rivers of icewater down his parched throatpipe.

At some hour unknown he woke to sounds of commotion. He had half his hand in his mouth. Looking up he saw a man stoop and swing a bucket of water through the bars over him. Sputtering, he got to his knees.

The bucket clanged to the floor. The man studied him there in his cage. Suttree turned away. In the corner his cellmate was standing. When Suttree looked at him the cellmate said: You dont shut up that hollerin I’m goin to knock your dick in your watchpocket.

He closed his eyes. The gray water that dripped from him was rank with caustic. By the side of a dark dream road he’d seen a hawk nailed to a barn door. But what loomed was a flayed man with his brisket tacked open like a cooling beef and his skull peeled, blue and bulbous and palely luminescent, black grots his eyeholes and bloody mouth gaped tongueless. The traveler had seized his fingers in his jaws, but it was not alone this horror that he cried. Beyond the flayed man dimly adumbrate another figure paled, for his surgeons move about the world even as you and I.

He scouted in the weeds until he found a suitable tin before going out to the road. The kerosene had rendered soft a patch of tar in the roadsurface and he knelt and began to dig it up with an old kitchen knife, stringy viscous gobs of pitch, until he had as much as he needed.