Cormac McCarthy - Suttree

These lovers lay crumpled in the dripping wood and listened to the fall of the rain heart on heart. Her wet hair lay across his face like black seaweed. She said his name. He moved as if to rise but she held him.

You’ll catch cold, he said.

I dont care.

In their last week on the river two possumhunters came upon their camp. They’d heard hounds coursing on the ridge behind them and the hunters hallooed from the dark before they came up. Two figures shambling in from the night like bad news, bearing a lighted lantern by its long bail, a shotgun held together with tape. They squatted on their haunches side by side like buzzards and smiled around. Suttree looked at them. He looked at one and then he looked at the other. They were alike to the crooks in their stained brown teeth. The creases about their eyes, the quilting of their dry bird necks. They squatted there and bobbed their heads and smiled and spat at the fire and said howdy howdy.

Set and warm, said Reese. Hey old woman. Need some coffee cups over here.

Howdy howdy, said the possumhunters.

We heard ye’ns dogs a while back. Did they not tree?

Naw. Fernon here is got this young bitch keeps a treein flyin squirrels. He’s kicked her till she’s flat on one side but she dont want to give it up.

Quick as I can see one to shoot I’m goin to tie it round her neck and let her wear it till it rots off. That’ll break em ever time. You all got dogs out?

Naw. We just camped up here gettin mussels. Danged if you fellers dont favor one another about as much as anybody I ever saw.

The possumhunters looked at each other and guffawed. Their chins jerked forward as if tied together to a wire and they spat into the fire. We’re twins, one of them said.

I allowed maybe ye was.

Most folks caint tell us apart.

Boy you can pull some capers on folks when you look much alike as me and Vernon does.

Reese took cups from the woman and set them on a flat rock by the fire and took up the old blue enamel coffeepot. He gazed at the possumhunters from one to the other. You all aint got the same name have ye? he said.

The possumhunters guffawed and the one with the shotgun elbowed the other one in the ribs. Naw, he said. I’m Vernon and this here is Fernon.

Reese grinned. Suttree was leaning back against the slate of the bluff watching them. They were thin and longboned and squatting there their knees came almost to their ears and their hands lay palm up on the ground before them in the manner of apes.

Lots of folks thinks we got the same name, said the one with the lantern. Their bein so much alike. Dont that coffee smell good.

Just drink all ye want, said Reese, pouring carefully.

They hung their lean faces in their cups and peered over the rims. Reese was full of admiration and kept looking from one to the other of them and shaking his head and looking about at various members of his family to see what they thought.

We dont rightly know which one of us is which noway, said the one with the shotgun. Mama never could tell us apart. They’d just kindly guess. Up till we was long in about four or five years old and could tell our own names. Fore that they aint no tellin how many times we might of swapped.

We had little old bracelets had our names on em but we kicked them off first thing. I caint stand to wear nothin like that nor Vernon neither. I just despise a wristwatch.

One time we was eight year old I fell out of a tree and broke my arm Vernon was at Grandaddy’s. They wouldnt let me go for somethin I done. I fell out of a black walnut tree in the back yard and laid there hollerin till Mama come and got me. Well, she run out in the road and stopped a car and they put me in it and took me in to Dr Harrison and we went up the steps to where his office was at and there set Vernon with his own arm broke.

The one with the shotgun grinned and nodded. We’d both fell out of black walnut trees at the identical same minute eight mile apart. I broke my right arm and Fernon his left’n and he’s lefthanded and me right.

Pshaw, said Reese.

You dont need to ast us. It was in the papers. You can go look it up your ownself.

We had that piece from the paper a long time.

We can tell what one another is thinkin, said the one with the shotgun. He nodded toward the brother. Me and him can.

Reese looked at him and then he looked at the one with the lantern.

He can think a word and I can tell ye what it is. Or him me, either one.

Caint do it, Reese said.

The possumhunters looked at each other and grinned.

What’U you bet on it?

Well, I dont want to bet nothin. But I’d like to see it done.

They looked at each other again. They had a curious way of turning their heads toward each other, like mechanical dolls. Go on over there Fernon and I’ll turn my back.

The one with the shotgun turned around with a lithe swiveling motion. He saw Suttree leaning against the rocks there and winked at him and put his hands over his ears and bent his head. The other one rose and went toward Reese and squatted by him and bent to his ear. Tell me a word, he said.

What kind of word?

Just a word. Whatever. Hush. Whisper it in my ear.

Reese leaned and cupped his hand to the possumhunter’s ear and then sat back again. The possumhunter mouthed the word to himself, his eyes aloft. Downriver came the thin cry of hounds and across the flooded fields a yard dog yapped in the distance.

The man with the shotgun raised his head and took his hands from his ears. The boy had come to the fire and was squatting near Reese and the old lady and the girls were watching the hunter with the gun. You got it, Fernon? he cried out.

Yep, said Fernon.

The hunter opened his eyes. He squatted there motionless. His folded shadow skewered by the shotgun leaned across the slates. He looked at Suttree. Brother , he said.

Suttree stood up. The hunter spun about and faced his unarmed image across the fire, his sinister isomer in bone and flesh. They hooted like mandrills and pointed with opposing hands at Reese. Reese drew back, his hand to his throat. Suttree took up his bedding and went down the face of the bluff beyond the firelight and through the woods to the river.

In the morning he walked out through the rain to the highway and looked down the long black straight. There had been a high wind in the night and the wet macadam lay enameled up with leaves. He could have just walked off down the road.

The old woman and the girls came in about four oclock with some eggs and things from the farm upriver where they traded and the old woman cast about with her sullen eyes as she did her work, kneading out biscuits and placing them in the iron dutch oven and piling coals with care onto the lid. It was past dark when Reese and the boy came in. They ate supper in silence. The rain that had fallen so small and fine all morning had ceased and Suttree took his bedding off down to the river and lay there with his hands composed upon his chest. Watching up at the starless dark. The shapes of the trees rearing dimly in the lightning. A distant toll of thunder. The sound of the river. Each drift of wind brought rainwater from the trees and it spattered lightly in the leaves and on his face. He’d had enough of rain. The fire had died, he eased toward sleep. The next moment all this was changed forever.

Suttree leaped to his feet. The wall of slate above the camp had toppled in the darkness, whole jagged ledges crashing down, great plates of stone separating along the seams with dry shrieks and collapsing with a roar upon the ground below, the dull boom of it echoing across the river and back again and then just the sifting down of small rocks, thin slates of shale clattering down in the dark. Suttree pulled himself into his trousers and started up through the trees at a run. He heard the mother calling out. Oh God, she cried. Suttree heard it with sickness at heart, this calling on. She meant for God to answer.