Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

His subtle obsession with uniqueness troubled all his dreams. He saw his brother in swaddling, hands outheld, a scent of myrrh and lilies. But it was the voice of Gene Harrogate that called to him where he tossed on his bunk in the murmurous noon. Harrogate’s hand in supplication from the tailgate of a truck, face waffled in the wire mesh, calling.

Suttree sat up groggily. His hair lay matted on his skull and beads of sweat trickled on his face.

Hey Sut.

Just a minute.

He pulled on his trousers and lurched toward the door and flung it open. Harrogate stood there amuck in his clothes, bright thin face, a frail apparition trembling and conceivably unreal in the heat of the day.

How you doin, Sut?

He leaned against the jamb, one hand over his eyes. God, he said.

Was you asleep?

Suttree retreated a step into shadow. He did not take his hand from his face. When did you get out?

Harrogate entered with his country deference, looking about. I been out, he said.

How did you find me?

I ast around. I went to that yan’n first. They’s niggers lives there. She told me where you was at. He looked about the little cabin. They was in bed up yonder too, he said. Boy.

Wait a minute, said Suttree.

What?

He turned him about in the light from the window. What are you wearing? he said.

Harrogate shuffled and flapped his arms. Aw, he said. Just some old clothes.

Did they rig you out in these at the workhouse?

Yeah. They lost my clothes what they give me at the hospital. I dont look funny do I?

No. You look crazy. He pulled at Harrogate. What is this?

Harrogate held his arms aloft. I dont know, he said.

Suttree was turning him around. Good God, he said.

The shirt was fashioned from an enormous pair of striped drawers, his neck stuck through the ripped seam of the crotch, his arms hanging from the capacious legholes like sticks.

What size do you wear?

What size what?

Anything. Shirt to start with.

I take a small.

A small.

Yeah.

Take that damn thing off.

He peeled out of the shirt and stood in a pair of outsize pastrycook’s trousers with cuffs that reverted back nearly to his knees.

Why the hell didnt you cut the legs off those?

He spread his feet and looked down. I might not be done growin, he said.

Take them off.

He dropped them to the floor and stood naked save for his shoes. Suttree collected the trousers and hacked a foot or more from the legs with his fishknife and rummaged through his bureau until he found a shirt.

The shoes is mine, Harrogate said.

Suttree looked down at the enormous sneakers. I guess your feet might grow another four or five inches, he said.

I caint stand a tight shoe, said Harrogate.

Here, try this shirt. And turn these trousers up on the inside where it wont show.

Okay.

When he had dressed again he looked less like a clown and more like a refugee. Suttree shook his head.

I got shot in the bottom of my shoe, Harrogate said. He held up one foot.

Gene, said Suttree, what are your plans?

I dont know. Find me a place here in town I reckon.

Why dont you go back home?

I aint goin back out there. I like it uptown.

You could still come in when you took a notion.

Naw. Hell Sut, I’m a city rat now.

Where are you going to live?

Well. I thought you might know a place.

You did.

That old codger up under the bridge has got him a slick place. Nobody never would find ye up in under there.

Why dont you move in at the other end up here?

I looked at it but it’s open to the road where you aint got no privacy. Besides they’s niggers lives next door.

Oh well, said Suttree. Niggers.

Do you not know of anyplace?

How about the viaduct? Have you looked under there?

Where’s it at?

You can see it right here. See?

Harrogate followed his pointing finger, looking out the open door toward the city where a smaller replica of the river bridge stood astraddle of First Creek.

You reckon it’s not taken?

I dont know. It may be just crammed with folks. Why dont you go see?

Harrogate rose from the cot where he’d been sitting. He was eager to be off. Hell fire, he said. It’d really be slick if it wasnt took wouldnt it? I mean, bein uptown like it is and all.

You bet, said Suttree

The viaduct spanned a jungly gut filled with rubble and wreckage and a few packingcrate shacks inhabited by transient blacks and down through this puling waste the dark and leprous waters of First Creek threaded the sumac and poison ivy. Highwater marks of oil and sewage and condoms dangling in the branches like stranded leeches. Harrogate made his way through this derelict fairyland toward the final concrete arches of the viaduct where they ran to earth. He entered delicately, his eyes skittering about. There was no one in. The earth was cool and naked and dry. Here some bones. Broken glass. A few stray dogturds. Two bent and mangled parking meters with clots of concrete about their roots.

Boy, whispered Harrogate.

There was a little concrete pillbox filled with pipes and conduits where you could store things and with the weeds grown about outside there was never a retreat so secluded. Harrogate sat on his heels and hugged his knees and looked out. He watched the pigeons come and go up under the high arches and he studied the warren of shacks on the farther bank of the cut where they hung yoked by insubstantial brigades of torn gray wash. Dark and near vertical gardens visible among the tin or tarred rooftops and vast nets of kudzu across the blighted trees.

Come evening he had accumulated some crates and aligned them in a sort of storage wall and he had made a firepit of old bricks and he had his eye on other goods which required but fall of dark to come by. By then he was uptown salvaging tins from trashcans for cook-ware. Appropriating the mattress from a lounge on a houseporch. All the redglobed lanterns from a ditchside where watermains were under repair.

He sat by the fire a long time after he had boiled and eaten the vegetables pilfered from gardens across the creek. His little grotto glowed with a hellish red from the lanterns and he reclined on the mattress and scratched himself and picked his teeth with a long yellow fingernail.

When Suttree came by next noon on his way to the market the city rat had just returned. He ushered in his guest expansively. How you like it, Sut?

Suttree looked around, shaking his head.

What I like about it is they’s plenty of room. Dont you?

You better get rid of those parking meters, Suttree said.

Yeah. I’ll haul em off to the creek this evenin.

What’s in here? He was peering into the little concrete vault.

I dont know. It’s a slick place to keep your stuff though, aint it?

Overhead in the arches there was a dull snap and a violent flapping of wings.

Hot damn, said Harrogate, slapping his thigh.

A pigeon fluttered down brokenly and landed in the dust and wobbled and flopped. It had a rat trap about its neck.

That makes three, said Harrogate, scurrying to secure the bird.

Suttree stared after him. Harrogate removed the trap and climbed up into the vaulted undercarriage of the viaduct and reset it, scooping the scattered grain over it with one hand. Boy, he called down, his voice sepulchral, them sons of bitches is really dumb.

What are you going to do with them?

I got two in the pot yonder stewin up with some taters and stuff but if this keeps up I’m goin to sell em.

Who to?

Harrogate hopped down, the dust pluming from under his sneakers. He gave his trousers a swipe with his hands. Niggers, he said. Shit, they’ll buy anything.

Well, said Suttree. I was going to ask you if you wanted some fish but I guess you’ve got enough to eat for a while.