Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

How did you sleep last night?

He spooned great lavings of sugar. Not worth a shit, he said. You?

Suttree just shook his head. The stripling on the stool beside him with his heron’s legs dangling smelled like a smoked jockstrap. Even the waitress’s eyes went a little funny when she passed and she herself no rosegarden.

Looky here, said Harrogate.

She set before them each a white platter. Sliced turkey and dressing pooled over in thick gravy and steaming creamed potatoes and peas and a claretcolored dollop of cranberry sauce and hot rolls with pats of creamery butter. Harrogate’s eyes were enormous.

You all want some more coffee?

Yes mam.

Harrogate had his mouth so crammed with food his eyes bulged.

Take it easy, Gene. There’s no prize at the bottom of the plate.

Harrogate nodded, slumped over the plate and encircling it with one arm while he scooped falling forkfuls toward his underjaw. There was no conversation. Down the counter a man sat reading the newspaper. The waitresses lollygagged about, dragging foul dishclouts across the stainless steel equipment. Suttree took in this scene of stone eyed boredom while he ate. He’d have ordered second plates around had it not been for attracting attention.

With his belly full Harrogate’s countenance grew cute and his eyes began to sidle. They drank more coffee. He leaned toward Suttree.

Listen Sut. Let me have the checks and we’ll slip on around to the other side and look at the magazines till we see the coast is clear and then we’ll ease on out.

It’s all right.

Hell, save your money. We may need it. Listen, they’re easy here.

Suttree shook his head. They’re watching you, he said.

What all do you mean, watching me?

You look suspicious.

I look like it? What about you?

They can tell I’m all right just by looking.

Why you shit-ass.

Suttree was laughing with his mouth full of coffee.

Come on Suttree. Hell, you can go out first if you want and I’ll foller ye.

Suttree wiped his chin and looked down at the sharp and strangely wizened childsface rapt with larceny. Gene?

Yeah?

You waste me.

Yeah. Well.

In the street they stood facing downwind, picking their teeth.

What are you going to do?

I dont know. Freeze.

Dont you know anybody over on the hill you could sort of visit?

I dont know. I could go up to Rufus’s maybe.

Well get somewhere. I’m going over to see how the old man is. We’ll figure something out.

I believe it’s the end of the world.

What?

Harrogate was looking at the pavement. He said it again.

Look at me, Suttree said.

He looked up. Sad pinched face, streaked with grime.

Are you serious?

Well what do you think about it?

Suttree laughed.

It aint funny, said Harrogate.

You’re funny, you squirrely son of a bitch. Do you think the world will end just because you’re cold?

It aint just me. It’s cold all over.

It’s not cold by Rufus’s stove. Now get your ass up there. I’ll see you later.

A colder wind was coming upriver across the bridge. Suttree scurried along like a hunchback. When he got to the other side he scrambled down the frozen mudbank and ducked under the bridge. There was no fire.

Ho, he called.

Oh, said a voice from the arches.

He entered and looked about. The old man’s bed and the old man’s cart and the mounds of junk and rags and furniture. Frozen seepage hung from the bell joints of cesspipes overhead. Suttree turned and went back up the bank to the street and crossed the bridge again.

He went up Market and up the hill to Vine Avenue and the halfdollar dosshouse there, old darkened brick and gabley mansard roof shingled up in slates the shape of fishscales. He looked for a bell but there were just the wires hanging from a hole so he tapped on the glass of the sidelights. They gave soft and soundless in their lead muntins. He tapped on the door. After a while he tried the knob. The door was unlocked and he entered. Into a cold and narrow hallway. He shut the door and went down in the semidark calling out hello. No one was about. He paused at the coiled banister finial and gazed up the cold black stairwell. He listened. A sound of snuffling. Someone spat. He came back along the hall and opened a door. Upon a drawing room full of derelicts. It looked like the hatching of some geriatric uprising, this congregation of the ravaged on their rickety chairs all gathered about a patent iron stove, old graylooking men crouched by the warmth in the barren room, nodding and muttering and hawking gobbets of spit clogged with dust and blood against the hot iron to sizzle and stink. The ragpicker was crouched in the corner on the old hearth almost behind the stove. Suttree saw him look up, eyes that could not see far. The ragpicker didnt know who had come in until Suttree said his name.

Who’s that? he said, craning his neck and looking up.

Suttree.

Ah, said the ragpicker.

Suttree smiled. A warm odor of filth hung in the room cut through with a reek of urine.

What are you doing?

Mildewing. You?

I’m freezing.

This is just the commence of it. I look for the river to freeze over. You better draw your lines. The ice’ll cut em. You never will find em. I’ve seen it to happen. Bet me.

Suttree squatted and held his hands to the fire. A man with a mauve face like the faces of the dead was looking down at him.

How long have you been up here? said Suttree.

Since two days ago.

Suttree looked around. Mauve man was looking at a hole in the floor. A quivering string of drool hung from his lower lip halfway to his shoe.

How long do you plan on staying?

The ragpicker shrugged up his buzzard’s shoulders. For however long it stays cold. I dont care. I just wisht I could die and I’d be better off.

Suttree ignored this. He’d heard it all before. How many do they have staying here? he said.

The ragpicker waved his hand. I dont know. What all’s here, I reckon. Aint no other place in the house warm that I know of.

Where are the rooms, upstairs?

Yeah, upstairs. The beds is all took.

Mauve man had been listening. Cecil’s aint took, he said.

Well. Cecil’s aint took.

Who’s Cecil?

Just old Cecil. He died.

Oh.

He never died in the bed though.

Where’d he die?

Uptown. He got too drunk to come in and I reckon he passed out. He was froze, they said. I dont know.

He froze, said Mauve man. Old Cecil did.

Cecil froze.

Old Cecil froze from head to toes

And stiffer than a tortoise

In spite of drinking strained canned heat

And dilute Aqua Fortis

Suttree waved away these things from his ears. Cecil was being discussed by the company. All agreed that the day of his death was a cold one. Today even colder. It’s colder than a welldigger’s ass said one, another said A witch’s tit. A nun’s cunt said a third. On Good Friday.

Suttree leaned and touched the old man’s arm. His coat with the eaten elbows. The ragpicker jerked awake and turned a baleful red eye on him.

Who do you see about a room here?

He aint here.

It’s fifty cents isnt it?

By the night it is. You can rent by the week and beat them rates. Two fifty. If you’ve got it. What’s wrong with your place? You’ve not got thowed out have ye?

It’s for somebody else.

Well you better tell him to come on. With this weather. You caint look for somebody to die just ever day.

When is whatsit due back?

I caint say.

Can I look upstairs?

You can look anyplace you take a notion because he aint here.

Do you need anything?

I need everthing.

Suttree rose.

Bring something for the pot, said the ragman, and you can sit in. He gestured upward with a gray hand webbed in part of a sock. A lardpail simmered on the one eye of the iron stove and a pieplate with a rock in it lifted along one edge like a thin frogjaw and belched forth a gout of steam and clapped shut again.