Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

He made his way by alleys and small dark streets to the lights at Henley Street where he’d earlier spied a church lawn. Here he found himself a nest among the curried clumps of phlox and boxwood and curled up like a dog. He had a few things he’d collected in his pocket and he took these out and set them alongside in the edging of mulch and lay back again in the grass. He could feel under his back the rumble of trucks passing in the street. He shifted his hips. He folded his hands behind his head. He must prop his upturned toes together to ease the weight of the enormous shoes from his bird’s ankles. After a while he slipped them off and lay back again. Yellow lamplight clung in his lashes. He watched insects rise and wheel there. A hunting bat cut through the cone of light and sucked them scattering. They re-formed slowly. Soon two bats. Veering and rending the placid life that homed to ash in the columnar light. Harrogate awonder at how they did not collide.

He was sitting up in the shrubbery long before good daylight, waiting for the day to come for him to set forth in, watching the glozy headlights come out of the fog on the bridge and draw past him into the town. Shapes evolved out of the gray dawn. What he’d thought to be another indigent hosteled on the grass below him was a newspaper winded up against a bush. He rose and stretched and crossed the lawn to the street and went toward Market where all sorts of country commerce had begun.

Harrogate eased his way among the rotting trucks and carts at the curbside until he had the lay of things and then his scrawny hand darted out and seized a peach from a basket and tucked it down the windsock of a pocket that hung inside his trousers. The next thing he knew an old lady had him by the collar and was beating him over the head with a mealscoop. She was yelling in his face and spraying him with snuffjuice. Shit, said Harrogate, trying to pull away. A long ripping sound ensued.

Quit it. You’re tearin my goddamned shirt.

Bong bong bong went the mealscoop on his bony head.

Give it back, she squalled.

Hell fire. Here. He thrust the peach at her and she immediately turned loose of him and took the peach and wobbled back to her truck and restored it to the basket.

He felt his head. It was all knotty. Shit a brick, he said. I didnt want the goddamned thing that bad. A legless beggar mounted on a board like a piece of ghastly taxidermy had come awake to laugh at him. Fuck you, said Harrogate. The beggar shot forward on ballbearing wheels and seized Harrogate’s leg and bit it.

Shit! screamed Harrogate. He tried to pull away but the beggar had his teeth locked in the flesh of his calf. They danced and circled, Harrogate holding to the top of the beggar’s head. The beggar gave a shake of his head and a tug in a last effort to remove the flesh from Harrogate’s legbone and then turned loose and receded smoothly to his place against the wall and took up his pencils again. Harrogate went limping down the street holding his leg. Crazy sons of bitches, he said, hobbling among the shoppers. He was almost in tears.

He crossed through the markethouse and went up the other side of the square. Something was pulling at his shoe. He bent to see. Chewing gum. He sat in the gutter with a stick and scraped at it. Turning a pink blob of it on the end of the stick …

Harrogate coasted by the blind man in front of Bower’s, watching the crowd. No one watched back. He returned, bent lightly, jabbed with his stick at the cigarbox in the blind man’s lap. The blind man raised his head and put one hand over the box and looked about. Harrogate going up the street tilted the stick. A dime clung to the end of it. He swung about and came back. The blind man sat warily. Paleblue and moldgrown grapes caved and wrinkled in his eyesockets. Harrogate executed a fencer’s thrust and came up with a nickel.

Hey you cocksucker, called the blind man.

Fuck you, said Harrogate, skipping nimbly on.

He went into the Gold Sun and ordered coffee and doughnuts, sitting at the counter among the morning smells of fried sausage and eggs. He rolled back the folds of his trouserlegs and examined his wound. The beggar’s illspaced teeth had printed two little sickle shapes, the flesh blue, small pinlets of blood, Harrogate wet a paper napkin in his water glass and laved it over his queer stigmata. Son of a bitch, he muttered. He drank the coffee and slid his cup forward for more.

In the streets again he rubbed his little belly and set out for Comer’s. Climbing the stairs. A small bent person at the landing watched. Who knew every cop in town in or out of uniform. Harrogate pushed open the green door with its wiremesh covered glass and entered. To his surprise the place was nearly empty. A blond youth was practising three rail banks at the second table. The rack was brushing the tables in the rear. A whimsical man with a paunch hanging over his changeapron and jaws knobby with tobacco. At Harrogate’s elbow tickertape hung from a glass bell and several old men sat along the benches to the front of the hall and watched the day start in the street below.

Harrogate went to the counter where a man in an eyeshade was counting money. You know Suttree? he said.

What? said the man.

Suttree.

Ask Jake. He tilted his head toward the rear of the hall and went on counting. Harrogate went wobbling down the aisle past the tables, the cues racked up on the walls like weapons in some ancient armory. Hey, said the blond youth.

What?

You want to play some nine ball?

I dont know how to play.

Rotation?

I aint never shot no pool.

The blond youth studied him a moment, chalking his cue with a little rotary motion. He bent to shoot.

You know Suttree?

He stroked. The one ball went down the table, circled the racked balls from rail to rail and returned to drop in the upper corner pocket. Harrogate waited for the shooter to answer but the shooter took the ball from the pocket and set it up and bent again with his cue and did not look up. Harrogate went on to the rear.

You Jake? he said.

Yep.

You know Suttree?

He turned and looked down at Harrogate. He spat into a steel cuspidor on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Yeah, he said. I know him.

You know where he’s at?

What’ll you take for them britches?

Harrogate looked down. Them’s all the ones I got, he said.

Well. He aint here.

I was wonderin if you might know where he’s at.

Home I reckon.

Well where’s he live?

He lives down on the river. I believe in one of them houseboats.

Houseboat?

Yep. Jake bent, the change in his apronpocket swinging. He began to brush the dust toward the corner pocket. Harrogate had turned to go.

What about that shirt?

What about it?

How would you trade?

Hell fire, said Harrogate. Yourn’d do me for a overcoat.

Jake grinned. Come back, little buddy, he said.

At the bottom of Gay Street he stood leaning on the bridge rail looking down at the waterfront. There’s the goddamned houseboats, he said.

Coming down the steep and angled path behind the tall frame houses he thought he heard a voice. He tilted back his head to see. Half out from a housewindow high up the laddered face of sootcaulked clapboards hung some creature. Sprawled against the hot and sunpeeled siding with arms outstretched like a broken puppet. Hah, he called down. Spawn of Cerberus, the devil’s close kin.

Harrogate clutched his lower teeth.

A long finger pointed down. Child of darkness, of Clooty’s brood, mind me.

Shit, said Harrogate.

The window figure had raised itself to address some other audience.

See him! Does he not offend thee? Does such iniquity not rise stinking to the very heavens?