Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

He was brought up by a wooden wall against which the corridor terminated neat and flush. Harrogate studied this barricade with his flashlight and he studied the wet stone ceiling and the walls. With the hammer he prized away a chunk of pulpy wood until he got the board levered up. He took it in both hands, dropping the hammer, the flashlight in his armpit illuminating odd points above his head. The board gave with a gradual springy feeling and fell at his feet. He trained the flashlight on the place. Behind the boards was a wall of solid concrete. Knotty grain and the marks of a circlesaw in the masonry. He set the claws of the hammer under the next board and pried it up and ripped it away. With the hammer he went tapping across the face of the barricade listening. The tapping went down the chamber and returned. He sat in a pile of slag and studied what to do. And were they walling in or walling out? He tapped at the empty rubber toecap of his outsize sneaker with the hammer. After a while he raised his head. Dynamite, he said.

The times that Suttree called on him now he found him deeper yet in his plottings, frowning over his charts, composing campaigns to entrap the phantoms with which he was beset.

How are you doin? he said.

Okay.

You breached the bank vaults yet?

Nope. But come here and look.

Harrogate rose from his table and went back toward the darker arches to the little concrete bunker. He beckoned with one finger.

What is it?

Come see.

Suttree approached and looked in.

Looky here, said the city mouse.

What is it?

Suttree was kneeling. He reached into the dark and felt a wooden box where cold waxed shapes like candles lay. He lifted one out and turned it to the light.

Gene, you’re crazy.

That’s the real shit there. Buddy boy that’ll get it when Bruton Snuff wont.

You cant blow it. You dont have a detonator.

I can blow it with a shotgun shell.

I doubt it.

You keep your old ear to the ground.

Gene, you’ll blow yourself up with this shit.

I thought you said I couldnt blow it?

Suttree shook his head sadly.

Hot summer nights along the river and drunkenness and tales of violence. Steps in the dead of night, hollow as the clop of hooves on the shantyporch boards where Suttree lay silent within, breathing in the dark. He heard his name said.

He lit the lamp and held it up to see the junkman at the window like a drunken burglar. He rose from the cot to let him in, steering him as he crossed the floor in his reeling step like a strange and midnight dance lesson there in the little shack.

The junkman sat, he looked up. Was you asleep?

No.

He nodded enormously, his head rising and failing a foot or more. Didnt allow ye was. I knowed ye for a night owl. You got a smoke? I’m give out.

I dont have any.

The junkman was patting his pockets.

You didnt walk all the way over here for a cigarette did you?

No.

Wasnt the Smoky Mountain open?

I dont know. You aint got a little drink laid back anywheres have ye?

I may have a beer about half warm. You want that?

Be better’n a poke in the eye with a stick.

Suttree rose and went out and took up the minnowbucket and got a beer out of it. He carried it back in the shanty and got the opener and uncapped the beer and handed it to the junkman. Harvey stalked the bottle with a veering hand and seized it and blinked and drank.

Where’d you get in the mud at?

He looked down. He appeared to be wearing puttees, slavered with mud as he was to his knees. I mired up, he said. Like to never found your place dark as it is. Like to of fell in the fuckin. He paused to belch. Fuckin river.

Do you want me to row you back over?

Harvey took a drink of the beer and eyed Suttree blearily. His face was very white and the wrinkled pouches of skin beneath his eyes looked translucent. Goin to see Dubyedee, he said. No good son of a bitch.

You dont need to see him at this hour of the night. Why dont you let me run you home.

The junkman shook his head testily. See my no good shitass brother.

If you start across that bridge the cops’ll get you.

They never got me comin over.

You better wait till tomorrow.

Harvey was holding the bottle in his hands between his knees. I’ll get me a goddamned pistol, he said, nodding his head.

Pistol?

Goddamn right.

You going to shoot your brother?

Fuck no. Shoot them goddamn thieves.

What, over at your lot?

Goddamned right.

Hell, they’re just kids.

They’re fuckin thieves. Steal anything they can get their hands on.

Why dont you just run them off?

Might as well shoot em now. Fore they get any bigger.

He took a drink of the beer and wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand. Just like girls, he said. They grow up and hit in along about thirteen or fourteen and they’s a few of em start screwin everbody in town. That’s ye whores. It aint that they’re young. All whores is young sometime just like all thieves is. You dont wait till you’re old to start peddlin your ass or stealin either one. Nip em. He paused. Nip em in the bud.

Why dont you get a watchdog?

I done had one of them.

What happened to it?

I dont know. I believe they stole it.

You better let me run you across the river.

You can run me up to Goose Creek if you want to. He was looking up and regarding Suttree in the dim lamplight with one eye squint.

You dont need to go up there.

Fuck I dont.

You can see him tomorrow.

You know what he ast me?

What?

Ast me how come it was that I was always sober enough to buy a wreck but too drunk to sell one.

Well?

Well what?

Well what’s the answer?

The junkman glared at Suttree for a moment and then shook the empty bottle. You aint got another one of them have ye? he said.

I’m afraid that’s it.

You reckon old Jones’d find a man a drink at this hour?

I reckon old Jones’d find a man a pumpknot on his bony head if he banged on that door after the lights were out.

Somebody’ll kill that nigger one of these days.

Yes, they will.

Wonder what about Jimmy Smith?

Jimmy Smith will shoot you.

The junkman shook his head sadly at the utter truth of this. He rose unsteadily. He smiled. Well, he said. Maybe old Dubyedee will have a little drink.

You can stay here if you want.

The junkman waved a hand about. I thank ye, he said, but I best be huntin that drink. I believe a little drink’d do me more good right now than just about anything I can think of.

Suttree watched him totter down the planks in the band of yellow light. He veered, he stood with one foot, he went on. When he reached the shore he raised one hand.

Come back, called Suttree.

The junkman raised the hand again and kept going.

It was a full two miles out Blount Avenue to his brother’s junklot and the junkman reeled along in the lamplight through a floating world of honeysuckle nectar and nightbird cries and distant dogs that yapped at their moorings.

He made his way across the little wooden bridge and past the dim shapes of the cars and stood before the housetrailer.

Dubyedee!

The waters of Goose Creek purled past the tirecasings and body-panels in the farther dark of the yard.

Come out you old fart.

He stumbled among the articles of their common trade. Blood black and crusted in these broken carriages. A shoe.

Dubyedee! Come out, goddamnit.

He had ceased calling and was sat within a truck when a light came on in the trailer. The door opened and light fell across the yard among the cluttered shapes and Clifford stood looking out. What do you want? he said.

Want Dubyedee. Harvey spoke through the steeringwheel spokes in which his head lay cradled.