Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

Nor was he out of them that evening. The snow had not stopped falling and he sat in the feathered darkness and heard it sifting through the woods with just the faintest whisper. He drowsed and woke and nodded off again. He wondered would he freeze, sitting there under a balsam tree watching the snow encroach toward his toes. The rich smell of the branches and the needles in which he sat carried him back to old Christmases, those sad seasons. He dreamed sad dreams and woke bitter and rueful. The snow had stopped and the trees stood stark against a paler sky. With first light he rose and went on.

All day this halfmad outcast staggered through the snow and what a baleful heart he harbored and how dear to him. In midafternoon he came upon a freshet and he turned downstream, his breath pluming. He could smell the water. Going down through the snow where ice tines hung from boughs above their replicas in graygreen pools like jaws from fierce Jurassic carnivores. Until late in the day he came out of the snow and crossed through a broad bottomland where the ground gave wet and spongy underneath. In his darker heart a nether self hulked above cruets of ratsbane, a crumbling old grimoire to hand, androleptic vengeances afoot for the wrongs of the world. Suttree muttering along half mindless, an aberrant journeyman to the trade of wonder.

He was wandering in a swampy wood, a landscape of cane and alder where gray reeks swirled. Cognate shapes among the vapors urged him on and in this sad glen under a pale sun he felt he’d grown improbable of succor and he began to run. Headlong through the bracken and briers in whose crushed wake he left small tattered stars of the rags he wore. Until at last he washed up in a little glade and fell to his knees gasping. Clouds lay remote and motionless across the evening sky like milt awash in some backwater of the planet’s seas and a white woodcock rose from the ferns before him and dissolved in smoke.

A curling bit of down cradled in this green light for the sake of my sanity. Unreal and silent bird albified between the sun and my broken mind godspeed.

He woke in full daylight by the side of a road. A truck had passed. Leaves stirred about him. He struggled up. His blanket lay in the ditch. His head was curiously clear.

The town that he came to was Bryson City North Carolina. He passed a shabby tourist court and went down the sidewalk in his blanket peering about at the sudden tawdry garishness in which he found himself. At the maze of small town mercenary legend, the dusty shopwindows, the glass bulb of a gaspump. Cars slowed in passing him. He entered the first cafe he came to and sat slowly in a booth. Some stark and darker bearded visage peered him back from the shiny black formica of the tabletop. Some alien Suttree there among the carven names and rings and smears of other men’s meals.

What for ye? said a leery matron.

The menu. I dont have a menu.

The old bird’s eyes honed by past injustices to a glint just between suspicion and outrage swept over him and to the wall.

Yonder it is.

He looked. Chalk script on a slate. Country steak, he said. Mashed potatoes and beans. Cornbread. And bring me a cup of coffee.

You get three vegetables.

He looked again. Let me have the apples, he said.

She finished writing and padded off on her white wedgeheeled shoes to the rear of the place. In the cameral shutting of the kitchen door he saw a black hand picking at the seat of a pair of greasy jeans. A dark wood clock above the door told a time of two twenty. Suttree seized the water tumbler she’d left and drank. A long cold drink laced with chlorine. His head swam, A pall of fried grease hung in the room. He rose from the booth and went to the counter and got a newspaper and came back. He looked in the upper corner for the date but there was none.

Whoever heard of a newspaper with no date, he said aloud, tearing open the sheets. Here. December third. How long is that?

He stared blankly across the empty dining hall. A huge and blackened trout hung bowed on a board above the counter and knew not. Nor the naked leather squirrel with the vitreous eyebulbs. A dull wooden clicking he’d thought some long coiled component of his forelobe together with the fading colored pictures and the receding attendance of horribles segued into a shrunken indian passing across the glass of the cafe front and the dull tocking of applewood clockworks from above the door. He turned to the paper. A rash of incomprehensible events. He could put no part of it together.

The kitchen door swung out and she came bearing coffee. A thick rimmed cup of sepia crockery. Beads of grease veered on the dishing meniscus of inky fluid it held. He poured cream copiously from a tin pitcher and laced in sugar and stirred. The smell of it flooded his brain and when he sipped it it seemed like an odd thing to drink. He sipped again. The waitress reared above the rim of the cup. He leaned back. A plate of corn muffins fell before him, A small oblong platter with thick flour gravy wherein lay a slab of waffled beef and the vegetables. Suttree could hardly lift his fork. He buttered one of the muffins and bit into it. His mouth was filled with a soft dry sawdust. He tried to chew. His jaws worked the mass slowly. He tried to spit it out and could not. He reached in his mouth and fished it forth with his fingers in thick clogs of paste which he raked off on the side of the platter. He cut away a section of the steak with his fork and eased it past his teeth. His eyes closed. He could taste nothing. His throatpipe seemed grown shut.

He mouthed the piece of meat like an old gummy man, dry smacking sounds. The waitress moved about the room refilling saltcellars, her eyes on him. He caught her watching from the sideboard. He spat in the plate.

Is there something wrong with me? he demanded.

She looked away.

What is this crap?

Other people eat it, she said.

He stabbed at the potatoes with his fork. The imago does not eat, he told the plate mutteringly. Fuck it. He let the fork fall and looked up at the waitress.

Will you take this away and bring me some soup.

You’ll have to pay for it.

Suttree watched her with his fevery eyes.

If you didnt want it you ought not to of ordered it, she said.

Will you please bring me some goddamned soup like I asked?

She turned and stalked off to the kitchen. He pushed the plate from him and laid his head on the table.

A hand jostled his elbow. Suttree jerked upright.

What’s the matter here? said a man in cook’s whites. The waitress hovered behind.

What do you mean what’s the matter?

Did you cuss her?

No.

He’s a damned liar. He did too do it.

I asked her to bring me some soup.

He cussed me and his dinner and everthing else.

We dont allow no cussin in here and we dont allow no trouble. Now let’s go.

He had stood back for Suttree to rise, to pass. He did. He and his blanket. He was shaking with rage and frustration.

He aint paid, said the waitress.

Suttree glared at her.

Just get on out, the man said. I dont need your money.

He stood in the street. He could hear doors closing all back through his head like enormous dominoes toppling in a corridor. He shouldered the blanket and went on. A black man he passed looked him over and called back to him. Suttree turned.

They’ll vag you here, said the black.

Suttree didnt answer.

I’m just tellin you. You do what you want.

He was gone. Somewhat jaunty, coatless in the cold. Suttree eyed the sun, cold worn and bonecolored above the chill overcast. He shuffled on. His knees kept grasshoppering out sideways and this way. He passed a storewindow and backed up. The glass was printed with the first three letters of the alphabet and in the hall beyond was a long counter and behind that were shelves ranked with bottles.