Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Check, said Suttree, rising and putting the fifteen pill under the rail.

How’s that fourteen look, Sut?

That’s too hard a shot, Jelly.

Jelly walked around the table and sighted on the oneball and banked it across the side.

Double, said Suttree.

No shit? said Jelly, raising up and grinning.

Rack, said Jerome.

Flop shook his head. The other man stood up and threw his pills on the table and took the pillbottle and emptied the pills out onto the felt. Let him draw his own fuckin pills, he said.

Yes, said Jelly. I aint had the eightball a time.

How sweet it is on the Jellyroll Kid, said Jake, racking up the balls.

The stranger was counting the pills back into the bottle. Jellyroll grinned and winked at Suttree. Kenneth Tipton told me he got in a check game up here last week with four highschool boys. He was the last to draw pills and when he went to draw them there wasnt but one left in the jug. He held it up and asked could he borrow one from somebody.

Suttree grinned. Jimmy Long got in a bank game up here with a hustler one time, they butted heads for about an hour, finally this hustler says: Let’s play one game lefthanded for ten. Old J-Bone says okay and this hustler was lefthanded.

Jelly laughed and bent and broke the balls and reached for the pillbottle. Suttree rose.

Where you goin Sut?

I’ve got to go.

Shit, dont leave now. We’ll go drink a beer here in a minute.

I’ll see you later.

Jelly was looking at his pills. Drink some mash and talk some trash, he called out.

Suttree went past the counter. Hey Fred, he said.

Buddy boy, said Fred.

He pushed open the door and nodded to the sentry at the top of the stairs and went down the stairwell to the street.

In the evening he rowed back across the river with six bottles of cold beer under the seat. The shadow of the bluff lay deep and cool along the south shore of the river. He swung in alongside the Indian’s patched skiff and tethered his rope and tucked the sack of beer under his arm and started up the bluff.

The path wound up by a steep and narrow way and near the top of the rise came out upon a natural terrace in the rock and a cave. The Indian did not seem to be about. A soapkettle was lodged on a rock hob and the gray flaky ashes when he toed them broke open to an orange heart of burning wood.

Hey Michael, he called.

A lizard crossed the stone floor and slithered into the weeds.

Suttree tipped up the rim of the kettle’s lid with a stick. A wafted breath of fragrant steam slid out. The stew simmered gently. He let the lid drop and went to the mouth of the cave and looked in. A red clay floor that shaped itself among the rocks. On the right was a table made from a plank propped on stones. He ducked under the low limestone ledge and entered and set the beer down. Just within the last reaches of daylight he could make out the footrail of an old iron bed. It was damp in the cave and it smelled of earth and woodsmoke. Suttree went back out. He called again but there was no answer. He walked to the edge of the bluff and looked out. The city lay quiet in the evening sun and innocent. Far downstream the river narrowed with distance where the pieced fields lay pale and hazy and the water placid much like those misty landscapes in which Audubon posed his birds. He sat in a tattered lawnchair and watched the traffic on the bridge below. There was no sound save for a bird that conjured up forbidden jungles with its medley of whoops and croaks. Suttree saw it put forth from the bluff and flutter in midair and go back. He leaned his head back. A mayfly, delicate and pale green, drifted past. Lost ephemera, wandered surely from some upland pastoral. The chat came from its bower on the bluffside and fluttered and snatched the mayfly and returned. After a while it sang again. It sang grok, wheet, erk. Suttree got up and went into the cave and got one of the beers. He returned to the chair and sat and wiped the mouth of the bottle with the web of his thumb and held it up and toasted mutely the city below and drank.

It was almost dark when the Indian returned. He came down the slope above the cave and dropped to the stone floor and crossed to where Suttree sat.

Hey, said Suttree.

How you doin?

Okay. Get yourself a beer there. I set them inside on that table.

You want one?

Yeah.

The Indian crossed the little terrace and lifted the lid from the pot and sniffed. How’s it doin?

Okay.

He stirred the mixture with a peeled stick and clapped the lid back over it and pushed more wood into the fire. He came from the cave with the beers and handed one to Suttree and squatted on his heels at the edge of the bluff. The John Agee was coming downriver, her stern paddles trudging the brown waters. They sipped their beers. The lights of the city were beginning to come up across the river. The lamps along the bridge winked on. Cryptic shapes of neon gas bloomed on the wall of the night and the city reached light by light across the plain, the evening land, the lights in their gaudy penumbra shoring up the dark of the heavens, the stars set back in their sockets. Bats came from flues and cellars to flutter over the water like rough shapes of ash tumbled on the wind and the air was clean and fresh after the rain.

You’re not from Knoxville, Suttree said.

No.

How long you been here?

Just this summer.

Suttree looked out over the lights of the city. What will you do in the winter?

I dont know.

You’ll freeze your ass off up here.

How cold does it get.

Got down to zero last winter.

The Indian turned his head and laid the flat of his chin on his shoulder and spat and turned back to watch the river.

I almost froze in that shantyboat. Stove and all.

The Indian nodded.

What do those signify?

The Indian looked down. He touched the doll’s eyes. Them? I dont know. Good luck.

I guess they must work. Judging by that catfish.

Dont you have nothin?

A good luck piece?

Yeah.

No. I guess not.

The Indian rose. Wait a minute, he said. I’ll get you something.

When he came back from the cave he handed Suttree a small lozenge of yellowed bone. Suttree held it up and looked at it. It had a hole bored in one end and he turned it in his hand to feel if there were not some carving on it but there wasnt. A few hairline cracks. A tooth? He rubbed its polished surface.

What is it?

The Indian shrugged.

Where did you get it?

I found it.

Do I have to wear it or can I just carry it in my pocket.

You can just carry it if you want to.

Okay.

Dont forget about it.

No. He held it up.

You cant just put it away and forget about it. said the Indian, He drained his bottle and rose and crossed the terrace to the fire. He ladled the stew up into heavy white china bowls and came and handed one to Suttree. Suttree took it in both hands and balanced it and stirred. He spooned up a piece of the meat and cradled it in his mouth to cool it. He chewed it. It was succulent and rich, a flavor like no other.

The Indian came from the cave with two more beers and a lighted lamp. He set the beers down and he set the lamp on the stone and crouched like an icon and began to ladle the stew into his jaws. Suttree watched him eat, his eyes dark and trancelike in the soft orange light, his jaws moving in a slow rotary motion and the veins in his temple pulsing. Solemn, mute, decorous. In his crude clothes crudely mended, wearing not only the outlandish eyes but small lead medallions that bore the names of whiskeys. Sitting solemn and unaccountable and bizarre. He reached and took up his beer and drank. He rocked the bottle and studied the foam within the brown glass. I found them in a fish, he said.