Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

You know what he’s got in that sack?

What’s he got?

Dead bats.

Dead bats.

Right.

Well.

What do you think?

I dont know. Ask him where he’s goin with em.

Where you goin with em?

Up here to the hospital.

The officer had his chin resting on his shoulder. His face went blank. Rabies, he said. He turned to the driver and said something and they pulled away. Harrogate shouldered the bats and set forth again.

He climbed the marble stairs and went past the old columns of the portico and down the hall to a desk. Howdy, he said.

A nurse looked up.

I got some more.

What?

Some more. Bats.

I dont know what you’re talking about.

Bats. I got a whole damn … I got a whole sackful.

She stared at him warily.

Looky here, he said, pointing.

She stood up and leaned over and looked down. Harrogate fumbled with the sack, trying to see her tits. She put her hand to her collarbone. He spread the sack open and she leaped back.

It’s a mess of em, aint it?

Get those things out of here, she whispered.

Where do I take em?

But she had gone down the hall on her white crepe shoes. She came back with a man in a white tunic. Him? said the man.

Harrogate stood his ground.

Let me see what you’ve got there.

He held open the mouth of the sack.

The man turned pale. He gestured at the nurse. Call the clinic, he said. Tell them we’ve got about a bushel of dead bats up here.

She was dialing.

Where did you get them? said the man.

Just here and there, said Harrogate.

A woman was coming down the hall. The man went to her and ushered her back toward the door.

Dr Hauser says to bring them on, said the nurse, holding one hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone.

Tell him we’re on our way.

I guess you aint used to gettin this many at a time, said Harrogate.

They sat him in a little white room and gave him a box of vanilla icecream. He watched the sunlight on the walls with dreamy content. After a while a nurse brought him a little metal tray with a hot lunch.

You can just take it out of what all you owe me, Harrogate told her.

The afternoon set in and he grew bored. He went to the door and looked out. An empty corridor. He sat some more. It grew warmer. He lay on the tile floor with his hands cradling his head. His mind roved over storewindows. He saw himself ascending the stairs at Comer’s in pressed gabardines and zipper shoes, a slender cigar in his mouth, an Italian switchblade knife silver bound with ebony handles in one pocket, a gold watchchain draped across the pleats of his slacks. Greeted by all. Pulling the roll of bills from his pocket. He went back down the stairs and came up again in different attire, a pullover shirt like Feezel’s. Dark blue. With pale gray trousers and blue suede shoes. Belt to match. The door opened. He sat up.

Mr Harrogate.

Yes mam.

Dr Hauser would like to see you.

They went through three doors. The doctor was standing at a bench among bottles and jars. The nurse closed the door behind him. Harrogate stood there with his hands hanging down inside the pockets of his capacious trousers. The doctor turned and looked dourly across the upper rims of his glasses at him.

Mr Harrogate?

Yessir.

Yes. Would you just come with me a minute?

Harrogate followed him into a tiny office. A little white cubicle with glass bricks in the ceiling. Occasional pedestrians walked overhead, muted heels and sunlight. The pipes that hung from the ceiling were painted white. He looked everything over.

That was quite a collection of bats, said the doctor.

They’s forty-two of em.

Yes. None rabid at all. We were curious. We couldn’t find any marks on them.

Harrogate grinned. I figured you might reckon they’d been shot or somethin. Many of em as they was.

Yes. We examined one.

Mm-hmm.

Strychnine.

Harrogate’s face gave a funny little twitch. What? he said.

How did you do it?

Do what?

How did you do it? Poison forty-two bats. They only feed on the wing.

I dont know nothin about it. They was dead. Listen. I brought one down here before and nobody never said nothin. They never said they was a limit on how many you could collect on.

Mr Harrogate, the city is offering a reward for any dead bats found in the streets. We have what could become a critical situation here with rabies. That’s the purpose of the reward. We have not authorized the wholesale slaughter of bats.

Do I get the money or not?

You do not.

Shit.

I’m sorry.

Well.

I would like to know how you managed to poison them.

Harrogate sucked at his black foretooth. What will you give me? he said.

The doctor leaned back in his chair and studied him all over again. Well, he said, feeling the spirit of things, what will you take?

I’ll take two dollars.

That’s too high. I’ll give a dollar.

Make it a dollar and a quarter.

All right.

That includes the dinner and the icecream.

Okay.

I done it with a flipper.

With a flipper?

Yessir.

The doctor looked at the ceiling. Ah, he said. I see. What? Did you poison scraps of meat and then shoot them in the air?

Yeah. Them sons of bitches like to never quit fallin.

Very ingenious. Damned ingenious.

I can figure out anything.

Well, I’m sorry your efforts were for nothing.

Maybe a dollar and a quarter aint nothin to you but it is to me.

When Suttree called on him he found a shrunken djinn hulked over an applebox tracing with a chewed pencil stub a route beneath the city on a map of it. A sanguine scene, there by the bloodcolored light of the construction lantern. At Suttree’s approach a bright red cat rose from before the lamp and moved away into the dark. Harrogate looked up, feet tucked and bright smile, a diabolic figure across which the shadow of a moth passed and repassed like a portent.

How did you make out?

Set down Sut. Not worth a shit.

Wouldn’t they pay?

Naw. I got to hand it to em. They’re smart.

Well.

I’m glad you come. Looky here at this map.

Suttree glanced at it.

It shows where all the buildings is and you can measure it on here, see, on this here scale?

Yeah?

Well shit. I mean, what with them caves down there and it all holler and everthing?

So?

Lord, Sut, it’s tailormade. They’re just askin for it.

Suttree rose. Gene, he said, you’re crazy.

Set down Sut. Looky here. The goddamned bank is only …

I dont want to look. I dont want to hear.

Harrogate watched him wane from the gory light toward darkness.

It’s a dead lock, Sut, he called. I need you to help me.

Beyond in the dark of the town late traffic passed.

Sut?

A chained dog yapped from the shackstrewn hillside across the creek.

I need you to help me, he called.

In the early months of that summer a new fisherman appeared on the river. Suttree saw him humped over the oars in a skiff composed of actual driftwood, old boxes and stenciled crateslats and parts of furniture patched up with tin storesigns and rags of canvas and spattered over with daubs of tar. A crazyquilt boat sculled through the loose fog by a sullen oarsman who looked not right nor left.

Standing at Turner’s stall Suttree stared down into the long glass bier. Little beads of water ran on the heavy slant panes in their nickel and porcelain mortises. Inside on a bed of crushed ice dimly lit and lightly garlanded with parsley sprigs lay a catfish with a nine inch dinnerplate in its mouth. Old men kept drifting by to peer in and comment. A little card rested against the broad yellow flank. It said: Caught in the Tennessee River June 9 1952. Wt. 87 lbs.