Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Let me have a Redtop, said Suttree to the counterman.

You rest well Sut?

You sons of bitches would let a man lay out there and freeze to death.

I was goin to come out there and get you, Bud.

We run out of firewood.

How long you all been in here?

This is our first one. Hell, he just opened this minute.

Suttree seized the bottle before him and drank and hiked his shoulders up and drank again. Across the street a neon sign that once said Earle Hotel said le Ho. Two workers with their lunchboxes in their armpits stamped and smoked on the corner. Suttree looked at his companions. Their bottles rose and fell like counterweights. I thought five oclock never would get here, said J-Bone.

By nine oclock that night they were twelve or more, all good hearts from McAnally. An hour later they were at a roadhouse called the Indian Rock.

They threaded their way among the tables, Billy Ray Callahan stopping where girls had gone to dance and left purses among the drinks. Callahan draining the glasses and taking the money from the purses and moving on, smiling and nodding to friends and strangers, past a table where a big boy was sitting, Callahan smiling at him invitingly.

What say, big boy.

Big boy looked away.

They pulled tables together and ordered Cokes and set out pints of whiskey. Under the tilting smoke the dancers whirled and the music with its upbeat country tempo scored like an overture the gatherings of violence just beneath the surface, the subtle exchanges in the heated air. Suttree and J-Bone made their way toward the men’s room. Cabbage on the floor already dancing mightily, the girl laughing. Kenneth Tipton at a nearby table holding out his hand.

We’ve got to get these cunts, said J-Bone.

Let’s not get too drunk.

When they got back their table was gone. The drinks lay in a pile of glass and icecubes on the wet concrete floor and the table lay caved in a corner. Suttree saw one of the legs in someone’s hand. The area was clearing fast, people moving along the walls. Suttree saw Hoghead move with stealth along the rear of a phalanx of battlers and draw back and hit a boy behind the ear and move on. Earl Solomon came pedaling backwards out of the line and slammed up against the wall. Paul McCulley was trading punches with three boys all by himself down by the ladies’ room door and the door kept opening and closing and girls looking out by turns.

We better get some of them off of Hulley Babe, said J-Bone.

They started down the room but before they’d gone far someone fell into J-Bone. J-Bone shoved him and he turned around and took a swing and at it they went. Suttree made his way on to where Paul was and grabbed a boy by the wrist and whipsawed and flung him into a table full of half empty drinks. He screamed something at Suttree but it was lost in the melee. Paul hit one of the other boys and he went down and got up and walked off. The third one hit Suttree in the side of the head. Suttree squared off and ducked and the boy looked and saw McCulley coming for him and said: I aint fightin the two of ye.

Why you crawfishin son of a bitch, McCulley said. You didnt mind it the other way around. He shoved the boy back against the wall but the boy turned and ran.

Get that little fucker, Red, called McCulley.

Callahan was standing bloodyheaded in the middle of a pile of fallen bodies looking about. He reached and took the boy by the shoulder almost gently. Pow, he said. Suttree turned his head. McCulley had his arm around him hugging him and laughing and taking him directly into the thick of it.

Who the fuck are we fighting? said Suttree.

Who the fuck cares? If he aint from McAnally bust him.

And they are whelmed in dark riot, the smoking hall a no man’s land filled with lethal looking drunks reeling about with bleeding eyes and reeking of homemade whiskey. A scuffling of feet, fists thudding. Long endless crash of glass and chairs and overhead the intermittent whoosh of whiskey bottles crossing the room like mortar shells to explode on the block walls. A wave of bodies swept over Suttree. He struggled up. In the midst of it all he found Kenneth Tipton seemingly encased in a nimbus of peace, holding his wrist and working his hand open and shut. I’ve fucked up my hand, he said. Then he was swept away.

The floor was slick with blood and whiskey. Someone hit him under the eye. He tried to see J-Bone but he could not. He saw Callahan go by, one eye blue shiny, smiling, his teeth in a grout of blood. His busy freckled fists ferrying folks to sleep. He saw a bottle in a fist rise above the melee, saw it powdered on an unknown skull.

The fight washed up against the ladies’ room wall and the structure groaned and slewed. Suttree saw a head snap back and cave a cracked dish shape in the wallboard. Somebody had an old boy in the corner with handkerchiefs trying to stop his ear from bleeding and the old boy was ready to whip his nurse to get back into it. Slapping away the hand attending him, his ear hanging half off. The bouncer was working his way like a reaper through the crowd by the wall, flattening people with a slapstick. When he came upon McCulley, McCulley hit him solidly in the jaw. The bouncer reeled back and shook his head and came on again and swung with the slapstick. It made an ugly sound on the side of McCulley’s head. McCulley swung again and caught the bouncer in the face. Blood flew. The bouncer fell back and recovered. Both were preparing to swing together when McCulley’s knees gave way and he knelt in the glass and the blood. The bouncer moved on, making his way toward Callahan. Behind him came a man lugging a floorbuffer.

A heavy machine, he could just by main strength raise it. When he hit the bouncer with it the bouncer disappeared.

Suttree tried to work his way toward the wall but a heavy arm came athwart his eyes. He spun. Surrounded now by strangers. The man with the floorbuffer washed up nearby. The buffer rose trembling above the crowd. It came down on no head but Suttree’s.

He felt the vertebrae in his neck crack. The room and all in it turned white as noon. His eyes rolled up in his head and his bowels gave way. He distinctly heard his mother say his name.

He was standing with his knees locked and his hands dangling and the blood pouring down into his eyes. He could not see. He said: Do not go down.

He swayed. He took a small step, stiffly fending. What waited was not the black of nothing but a foul hag with naked gums smiling and there was no madonna of desire or mother of eternal attendance beyond the dark rain with lamps against the night, the softly cloven powdered breasts and the fragile claviclebones alabastrine above the rich velvet of her gown. The old crone swayed as if to mock him. What man is such a coward he would not rather fall once than remain forever tottering?

He dropped like a zombie among the din and the flailing, his face drained, his eyes platelike with the enormity of the pain behind them. Someone stepped on his hand as he was crawling across the floor. He tried to rise again but the room had composed itself into a tunnel down which he kept falling. He did not know what had happened to him and his eyes kept filling up with blood. He thought he’d been shot and he kept telling himself that the damage could be repaired if nothing else befell him dear God to be out of this place forever.

He pulled himself up a swaying wall and tried to see. All that frantic bedlam before him seemed to have slowed and each whirling face swam off in perfect parallax like warriors and their mentors twinned, a roomful of hostile and manic Siamese. Ahhh, said Suttree. Making his way toward the door he realized with a faint surge of that fairyland feeling from childhood wonders that the face he passed wide eyed by the side of an upturned table was a dead man. Someone going with him saw him see. That’s fucking awful, he said. Suttree was bleeding from the ears and couldnt hear well but he thought so too. They stumbled on like the damned in off the plains of Gomorrah. Before they reached the door someone hit him in the head with a bottle.