Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Fucking rat poison, he said, suddenly looking up through the smoke and the din toward a far wall with wide eyes.

People turned to look at him. Cocky paused in midstroke at the table, the cue quivering in his old palsied hands. Harrogate rose and drained the carton of milk and dropped it in a spittoon and went out.

Ratlike himself, quietly in the dimestore aisles. A small box of pellets slid between the lowermost shirtbuttons to lay against his skin. Things to be done. The Ford hood that he portaged on his shoulders up the river path had sheltered chickens. He stopped often to rest. It had rained in the night and his clothes were soaked from the bushes.

Scarlet trumpets of cowitch overhung the little house and wildflowers bloomed up through the twisted shapes of steel by whatever miracle renders grease and cinders arable and the junkman’s lot was a garden more lovely for the phantasm from which it sprang. Harrogate paused at the fence and leaned his hood there. He pushed open the weighted gate, starting a hummingbird from the flowers in the dooryard. Rainwater still dripped from the tarpaper eaves and it lay in bright pools and slashes on the gray and steaming backs of the autos where they reared above the grass and fronds like feeding bovines. He rapped at the open door. The cane at the corner of the shack rattled gently in the wind. Everything lay quiet and sundabbled in this quaint garden by the river.

What can I do for ye? said the junkman.

Harrogate stepped back and looked. The junkman was hanging half drunk from the one small window.

You remember me dont ye? said Harrogate.

No.

Well, listen. I need a car hood.

Just a minute.

He appeared at the door. With splayed fingers attacking the matter that webbed his eyes.

What kind? he said.

It’s a Ford.

Any particular year?

I dont know. I got it out here if you could match it up.

The junkman spat and looked at him and started down the stoop past him.

Where’s it at? He was standing in the yard with his palms in the small of his back, squinting about.

Right yonder leanin against the fence.

The junkman followed his pointing finger. I hope it dont lean too hard, he said. He sauntered over to the fence and looked down. He gave the hood a shove and it fell over in the dust with a sad bong. The junkman looked it over and he looked at Harrogate. Hell son, he said. What’s the matter with thisn?

I hope they aint nothin the matter with it. I just need me one more.

The junkman looked at him for several minutes and then he went back across the little yard and entered the shack again.

When Harrogate peered in he was lying on the cot with one arm across his eyes.

Hey, said Harrogate.

I aint got time to mess with you, the junkman mumbled.

Listen, said Harrogate. I need two alike to make a boat out of.

The junkman removed his arm from his face and looked at the ceiling.

I wanted to get em welded together and tar up the holes so I could have me a boat.

A boat?

Yessir.

How do you sons of bitches find me?

It aint but just me.

All you crazy sons of bitches. I wish I could catch whoever it is keeps sendin em down here.

I just come by myself.

Yeah. Yeah.

Have you not got a hood to match thatn?

I got a forty-six, it’s the same cept for the chrome, you can have it for six dollars if you want it.

Well I wanted to talk to you about that.

He looked like an enormous turtle going to the river, staggering under the weight of the welded car hoods, the aft one dragging a trail in the summer dust. He hadn’t found any way to take the pot of tar so he’d tied it to one ankle and it scuttled along after him.

He put in above the packing company, sliding his boat through the grass and down the mud of the bank. The water that trickled in looked like ink beading over the tarred floor. He bent and untied the tarpot and set it in the boat and then stepped in cautiously. The steel flexed with a little dead buckling sound somewhere. He gripped the sides, going along on his knees. The back end lifted from the mud and he was adrift in the river.

Shit a brick, said Harrogate with cautious enthusiasm. He pulled off his shirt and sponged up the water to better see where the leaks were. Drifting past the packing company, the lumberyard.

What is that? called a watcher from the shore.

Boat, called Harrogate back.

By the time he reached the bridge he was sitting in the center with his feet spread before him, taking the sun and enjoying the river breeze. He came in at Goose Creek, paddling with his fingers. Up the small estuary, under the low bridge of the railway, lying on his back, muddobber nests overhead and lizards in little suctioncup shoes sliding past his face, easing himself along the wall with one hand. And under Scottish Pike and up the creek, standing in the stern of his new boat and poling with a stick he’d found, the rounded prow browsing through the rippled sludge that lay thick on the backwater.

He spent the night under the boat, it upturned like a canoe and propped with sticks, a small fire before him. Vestal boys came down to visit and to envy. One among the younger was sent for a chicken from his mother’s yard and they plucked it and roasted it on a wire and passed about a warm RC Cola and told lies.

He came out of the creek into the river the next morning rowing with a board and a split paddle in oarlocks made from a dogchain. An eerie rattling apparition stroking through the fog. He’d not gone far before he was near run down by the dredger from the gravel company just set out downriver. A face passed high up the bank of fog, not even looking down from the floating wheelhouse. Harrogate had stood in his boat and raised a fist but the first bowwave almost tilted him out into the river and he sat quickly in the floor again and called a few round oaths.

He rowed upriver with his back to the rising sun, envisioning a penthouse among the arches and spans of the bridge he passed beneath, a retractable ropeladder, his boat at anchor by a stanchion, the consternation of a marveling citizenry. At Suttree’s he pulled in and rapped on the floor of the deck with his knuckles. Hey Sut, he called.

Suttree raised up in his bunk and looked out. He saw a hand from the river holding onto the houseboat deck. He rolled out and went to the door and around and stood there in his shorts looking down at the city rat.

Slick aint it? said Harrogate.

Can you swim?

This time tomorrow you will be talkin to a wealthy man.

Or a drowned one. Where the hell did you get that thing?

Made it. Me and old drunk Harvey.

Good God, said Suttree.

What do you think of it?

I think you’re fucking crazy.

You want to go for a ride?

No.

Come on, I’ll ride ye.

Gene, I wouldnt get in that thing and it on dry land.

Well, I got to get on.

Harrogate pushed off and took up his trailing oars. I got a lot to do, he said.

Suttree watched him go on up the river, the little keelless contraption skittering and jerking along. It went pretty good.

Harrogate turned up First Creek and rowed beneath the railway trestle and continued on until he came to a narrows composed of abandoned machinery and high tiered tailings of garbage. He wired his boat to a small tree and went backwards up the bank admiring it.

He tried to nap but lying there in the heat beneath the viaduct with the traffic overhead he had such fantasies of plenitude that his feet made little involuntary trotting motions. By late afternoon he was up and about, flexing his sling with its new red rubbers and firing a few flat stones through the lightwires where they caromed and sang enormous lyrenotes in the budding tranquillity of evening. An addled cock crowed from the black hillside. He looked to his appurtenances and set forth.