Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Why’s that?

I never read one but what somebody aint been murdered or shot or somethin such as that. I never knowed such a place for meanness.

Was it ever any different?

How’s that?

I said was it ever any different.

No. I reckon not.

Well it’s always been in the papers hasnt it?

Yes. I just give up on it is all. I get older I dont want to hear about it. People are funny. They dont want to hear about how nice everthing is. No no. They aint somebody murdered in the papers their day is a waste of time. I give it up myself. Seen it all. It’s all the same. Train wrecks of course. Natural catastrophe. A train wreck’U make ye think about things.

Did you ever see a train wreck?

Oh yes.

What’s the worst one you ever saw?

Seen or heard tell of?

Either one.

I dont know. I seen a boiler cut loose in Letohatchie Alabama blowed the whole locomotive cab and all up onto a overpass and just left the trucks settin on the track. They’d stopped to take on water but fore they could fill her the crown sheet went. I seen that. But they was one blew up in the roundhouse in San Antonio Texas in the year nineteen and twelve that blowed the whole roundhouse down and a lot of other buildins besides. They found one chunk of the boiler that weighed eight ton a quarter mile from the wreck. Another piece weighed almost a thousand pound tore a man’s house down a half mile away. I was just a young man at the time but I remember readin it like it was yesterday. Had all the pitchers in the paper. I think they was twenty-eight killed and I dont know how many maimed for life.

Suttree looked at the old man. A thousand pound piece of iron went a half mile? he said.

Oh yes. Hadnt hit this feller’s house it might still be goin.

Would you have liked to have seen it, Daddy?

The old man looked at Suttree in alarm. Seen it? he said. Where from?

I see, said Suttree.

Course they’s been a lot worse wrecks than them. They was a Pennsy engine left the track in Philadelphia about ten year ago, hot box caused the axle to break, thowed some cars into a bridge and killed eighty people all told. Your worst wrecks was the telescopes. One car would run inside another and just gather everbody up out of their seats and make a big mud pie out of em at the end. Then of course they was bridges and trestles. I remember two trains run out on a doubletrack trestle up in Kentucky goin in opposite directions, about the time they got abreast of one another the whole thing just folded up and dropped into the river. Trestle, locomotives, tenders, cars, folks. All of it. Kaploosh. Back then most of ye trestles was just wood. The coaches was wood too and they had stoves in em about like thisn here and when they’d wreck they’d tip over and set the coaches afire and burn up everbody inside. I tell ye, ridin a train back in them days was a thing you give some thought to.

The old man rose heavily from the bed and opened the stove door and dumped in coal from the scuttle and sat back down again. He dabbed with the back of one knuckle at his nose. Outside it had grown almost dark and a cat appeared at the clerestory window and whined.

You caint get in that way, idjit, the old man called. You come to the door like everbody else.

When I was young I didnt care for nothin, he continued. I was always easy in the world. Saw a right smart of it. Never cared to go just wherever.

How did you happen to end up here?

I aint ended yet. Used to hobo a right smart. Back in the thirties. They wasnt no work I dont care what you could do. I was ridin through the mountains one night, state of Colorado. Dead of winter it was and bitter cold. I had just a smidgin of tobacco, bout enough for one or two smokes. I was in one of them old slatsided cars and I’d been up and down in it like a dog tryin to find some place where the wind wouldnt blow. Directly I scrunched up in a corner and rolled me a smoke and lit it and thowed the match down. Well, they was some sort of stuff in the floor about like tinder and it caught fire. I jumped up and stomped on it and it aint done nothin but burn faster. Wasnt two minutes the whole car was afire. I run to the door and got it open and we was goin up this grade through the mountains in the snow with the moon on it and it was just blue lookin and dead quiet out there and them big old black pine trees goin by. I jumped for it and lit in a snowbank and what I’m goin to tell you you’ll think peculiar but it’s the god’s truth. That was in nineteen and thirty-one and if I live to be a hunnerd year old I dont think I’ll ever see anything as pretty as that train on fire goin up that mountain and around the bend and them flames lightin up the snow and the trees and the night.

They nodded and shivered in the fogged car while the gray dawn hovered without. They groaned and stirred and slept. Sometime in the night Sharpe had come awake freezing, coatless, and climbed out to stir about in the alleyway, gathering pieces of cratewood and paper. J-Bone reared up in the front seat. What’s that? he said.

What time is it Jim?

I dont have a watch. Where’s that smoke coming from?

This fire here.

J-Bone raised himself and looked over the back of the seat. Sharpe had a small fire going in the floor of the car and he was holding his hands over it. J-Bone leaned over the seat and held his own hands out for warmth. Watch Cabbage’s leg there, he said.

Sharpe jostled the bony knee.

Hey Cabbage, get your leg out of the fire.

Cabbage reared up wildly and subsided.

Better crack that window hadnt we? said J-Bone.

They grinned at each other across the smoke and the flames.

I’m about to freeze my ass off. What time do you reckon it is?

I dont know. What time’s it get light?

Shit if I know. You sure they open at five?

Yeah. Have for years.

Sharpe was peering out across the blueblack night, the buildings stark and tall, the few streetlamps encoiled in fog.

It’s gettin smoky in here, said J-Bone.

Does Suttree have a watch?

No. I dont think so. He bent to see. Suttree lay slumped under the wheel with his folded hands between his knees.

Sharpe cranked down the rear window. Smoke was rolling blackly through the car.

Cabbage raised up and looked at Sharpe with drunken sleepshot eyes. What’s happening? he said.

We’re waiting on that five oclock beer.

The fucking car’s on fire.

We’re tryin to get warm, Cabbage, said J-Bone.

Cabbage looked from one to the other of them. You sons of bitches are crazy, he said. He opened the door and lurched out into the alley.

J-Bone got out on the other side. Come on Sharpe. Let’s walk around some fore we freeze.

See if you can see some more wood out there.

Suttree woke and looked out the window. A garbage truck had gone down the alley. He sat up. He was alone in the car. He opened the glovebox and reached around inside and shut it again. He felt under the seat and he looked in the back. The remains of the fire lay in a blackened crust of burnt rubber on the floor. He looked out down the alley. He was shaking with the cold.

He climbed stiffly from the car and shut the door. Traffic was commencing in the murk, headlamps boring past in pale shrouds. A dog crossed in the hobbled lights. Suttree stove his hands deep in his pockets and hunched his shoulders and went toward the street.

They were seated in a row on stools within the watered windows of the Signal Cafe and they were drinking beer. An old newspedlar sat at the front of the counter humped over his coffee. Suttree swung through the door blowing on his hands and took a stool.

This goddamn Suttree is a five oclock alarm clock, said Sharpe.

Wasnt no danger of sleepin over with Sut along.