Suttree (19 page)

I dont know. It's a slick place to keep your stuff though, aint it?

Overhead in the arches there was a dull snap and a violent flapping of wings.

Hot damn, said Harrogate, slapping his thigh.

A pigeon fluttered down brokenly and landed in the dust and wobbled and flopped. It had a rat trap about its neck.

That makes three, said Harrogate, scurrying to secure the bird.

Suttree stared after him. Harrogate removed the trap and climbed up into the vaulted undercarriage of the viaduct and reset it, scooping the scattered grain over it with one hand. Boy, he called down, his voice sepulchral, them sons of bitches is really dumb.

What are you going to do with them?

I got two in the pot yonder stewin up with some taters and stuff but if this keeps up I'm goin to sell em.

Who to?

Harrogate hopped down, the dust pluming from under his sneakers. He gave his trousers a swipe with his hands. Niggers, he said. Shit, they'll buy anything.

Well, said Suttree. I was going to ask you if you wanted some fish but I guess you've got enough to eat for a while.

Hell, come take supper with me this evenin. They's enough for two.

Suttree looked at the limp and downy bird, its pink feet. Thanks, he said, but I guess not. He nodded toward Harrogate's mattress. You need to get your bed up off the ground there, he said.

I wanted to talk to you about that. I got my eye on some springs down here by the creek but I caint get em by myself.

Suttree tucked his fish beneath his arm. I'll stop by later, he said. I've got to get on to town.

I got to figure some way to keep these dogs out of here too.

Well.

I'll have her fixed up slick next time you see it.

Okay.

Livin uptown like this you can find pret near anything you need.

Dont forget about the parking meters.

Yeah. Okay.

Suttree took a final look around and shook his head and went out through the weeds to the world.

Sunday he set forth downriver in the warm midmorning, rowing and drifting by turns. He did not run his trotlines. He crossed below the bridge and swung close under the shadow of the bluffs, the dripping of the oars in the dark of the river like stones in a well. He passed under the last of the bridges and around the bend in the river, through peaceful farmland, high fields tilted on the slopes and rich turned earth in patches of black corrugation among the greening purlieus and small cultivated orchards like scenes of plenitude from picturebooks suddenly pasted over the waste he was a familiar of, the river like a giant trematode curling down out of the city, welling heavy and septic past these fine homes on the north shore. Suttree rested from time to time on the oars, studying from this late vantage old childhood scenes, gardens he knew or had known.

He took the inside of the island, narrow water that once had served as race to the old dutchman's light mill and beneath which now lay its mossgrown ruins, concrete piers and pillowblocks and rusting axletrees. Suttree held to the shallows. Silt ebbed and fell among the reeds and small shoals of harried and brasscolored shad flared away in the murk. He leaned upon the dripping oars, surveying the shore bracken. Little painted turtles tilted from a log one by one like counted coins into the water.

The child buried within him walked here one summer with an old turtlehunter who went catlike among the grasses, gesturing with his left hand for secrecy. He has pointed, first a finger, then the long rifle of iron and applewood. It honked over the river and the echo drifted back in a gray smoke of sulphur and coke ash. The ball flattened on the water and rose and carried the whole of the turtle's skull away in a cloud of brainpulp and bonemeal.

The wrinkled empty skin hung from the neck like a torn sock. He hefted it by the tail and laid it up on the mud of the bank. Green fungus hung from the serried hinder shell. This dull and craggy dreamcreature, dark blood draining.

Do they ever sink?

The turtlehunter charged his rifle from a yellowed horn and slid a fresh ball down the bore. He recapped the lock, cradling the piece in his armcrook.

Some does, some dont. Quiet now, they be anothern directly.

What do you do with them?

Sell em for soup. Or whatever. The boy was watching the dead surface of the river. Turkles and dumplins if ye've a mind to. They's seven kinds of meat in one.

What do turtles eat?

Folks' toes if they dont be watchful wadin. See yan'n?

Where?

Towards them willers yander.

Down there?

Dont pint ye fanger ye'll scare him.

You pointed.

Thatn's eyes was shut. Hush now.

He opened his eyes. Redwings rose from a bower in the sedge with thin cries. He bent to the oars again and came down the narrows and into the main channel, the skiff laying a viscid wake on the river and the bite of the oars sucking away in sluggish coils. He tacked toward the south bank in order to bias the bend in the river, coming through the shadowline into a cooler wind. Sheer limestone cliffs rose cannellate and palewise and laced with caves where small forktailed birds set forth against a sky reaching blue and moteless to the sun itself.

Below here the river began to broaden into backwater. Mudflats spiracled and bored like great slabs of flukey liver and a colony of treestumps like beached squid drying grayly in the sun. A dead selvedge traversed by crows who go sedately stiff and blinking and bright as black glass birds from ort to ort of stranded carrion. Suttree shipped the oars and drifted to the bank and stood rocking and recovering as the prow of the skiff grated up against the mud, stepping ashore easily with the rope and mooring the skiff to a root with a halfhitch. He crossed through the high grass and went up the slope, climbing with handholds in the new turf until he gained the crest and turned to look down on the river and the city beyond, casting a gray glance along that varied world, the pieced plowland, the houses, the odd grady of the small metropolis against the green and blooming hills and the flat bow of the river like a serpentine trench poured with some dull slag save where the wind engrailed its face and it shimmered lightly in the sun. He went along the crest of the bluffs through the windy sedge walking up small birds that flared and hung above the void on locked wings. A toy tractor was going on a field in a plume of dust. Down there the island ringed in mud. Suttree scaled a slate out over the river. Turning, winking, lost. He descended through a heavy swale of grass and went on, fording a thorny wicker patch of blackberries, crossing the face of a hill past the promontory kept by the old mansion, a great empire relic that sat shelled and stripped and rotting in its copse of trees above the river and brooded on the passing world with stark and stoned out window lights.

Suttree went along the high rolling country above the river. Two seagulls tracked their pale shapes in the shadowed calm under the bluff and far downstream he saw an osprey turn very high and hang above the distant thunderheads with the sun parried pure white from underwing and panel. He has seen them fold and fall like stones and he stayed to watch it out of sight.

The path he followed wound along the hills through grass and bramble and cut crosscountry toward the lower reaches of the river. It angled down a long bank of shale, it went through a wood. When he came upon the river again it was upon a dead and swollen backwater of coves and sloughs where slime and froth obscured the shapes of floating jars and bottles and where lightbulbs peered from the slowly heaving jetsam like great barren eyes. He went along the narrow path past fishermen, old women, men and boys. Galvanized minnowpails were tied to stumps at the water's edge and picnic hampers stood in the shade. A little girl squatted with her skirt hiked and watched between spattered shins her water trickle along the packed clay. Old men nodded solemnly to Suttree as he passed. Howdy. Howdy. Doin any good?

He went down a strand of mud and crusted stone strewn with spiderskeins of slender nylon fishline, tangled hooks, dried baitfish and small bones crushed among the rocks. Toeing tins from their molds in the loam where slugs recoiled and flexed mutely under the agony of the sun. The path climbed along a wall of purple sandstone above an embayment and in the sunlit shallows below him he could see the long cataphracted forms of gars lying in a kind of electric repose among the reeds. Bird shadows scuttled past but did not move them. Suttree leaned against the face of crumbling stone and watched them. One of the gars came about slowly, the water stirring and going among the willows. His dull side gave back the light like burnt brass. The other three lay like dogs, heavy shapes of primitive rapacity basking in the sun. Suttree moved on. At the head of the cove a hogsnake snubnosed and bloated lay coiled and sleeping in the dry ruins of a skiff.

The path ran on to a landing and there was a biblecamp bus parked there and people in their clothes were floundering around in the water. He descended the grassy bank among the watchers and took a seat. A preacher in shirtsleeves stood waistdeep in the water holding a young girl by the nose. He finished intoning his chant and tilted her over backwards into the river and held her there a moment and brought her up again all streaming and embarrassed and wiping the water from her eyes. The preacher was grinning. Suttree moved closer to watch. An old man nodded to him.

Howdy.

Howdy.

The girl had nothing on beneath her thin dress and it clung wet and lascivious across her cold nipples and across her belly and thighs.

You saved? said the old man.

Suttree looked at the old man and the old man looked back with eyes smoky and opaque.

No, he said.

The old man unscrewed a jar of dark brown liquid he held in his lap and spat into it and put the lid back again and wiped his mouth. Say you aint? he said.

No, Suttree said. He was watching the girl clamber out of the river.

The old man nudged another near him. Here's one aint saved. Says it hisself.

This old man looked past the first one's shoulder toward Suttree.

Him?

Aye.

Been baptized?

You been baptized?

Just on the head.

Just on the head, he says.

That aint no good. It wont take if you dont get total nursin. That old sprinklin business wont get it, buddy boy.

The first one nudged Suttree. He'll tell ye right, he said. He's a lay preacher hisself.

Sprinklers, said the lay preacher in disgust. I'd rather to just go on and be infidel as that. He turned away. He was dressed in soft blue overalls and he was very clean. The other one eyed Suttree again. Suttree was watching the preacher in the river.

Tell him to get down yonder in the water if he wants to be saved, the second old man said. He put one hand to his mouth, his jaw muscles working.

It aint salvation just to get in the water, the first said. You got to be saved as well.

Suttree turned and looked at him. Can you take your shoes off? he said.

The second old man leaned to see him. Jesus never had no shoes, he said.

The first was motioning for quiet with one flapping hand. He turned to Suttree. Aint no need to damp your shoes, he said. A feller can repent shod or barefoot either one. Jesus dont care.

What do you think about the pope and all that mess over there? Suttree said.

I try my bestest not to think about it atall, the old man said. He suddenly flung one arm upward in a gesture of such violent salutation that people drew back from around him.

That's my grandniece Rosy yonder. Just turned fourteen and saved right as rain. Makes a feller wonder at the ways of the Lord, dont it? How old are you, son?

Pretty old, said Suttree.

Well dont fret. I was seventy-six fore I seen the Lord's light and found the way.

How old are you now?

Seventy-six. I was awful bad about drinkin.

I've done it myself.

The old man glanced again at Suttree. Suttree looked about, then leaned to his ear. You dont have a little drink hid do you?

The old man's eyes careened about in their seamed sockets. Oh lord no, he said. I've plumb quit. Lord I wouldnt have nothin like that.

Well, said Suttree.

He'd scooted away a bit and he turned to watch the ceremonies. The grandniece smiled at those on the bank. Some waved.

The other old man leaned across and jabbed at Suttree with a thick finger. Go on, he said. Get down in that water.

There she goes, said Suttree, pointing.

That's my grandniece, the old man said, waving to the waters beneath which she had subsided.

Two women on the grass in front of them were turning and giving them dark looks. Suttree smiled at them. On down the bank groups were unwrapping sandwiches and opening cold drinks. There was a fat woman spread on the ground with an enormous teat hanging out and a small child fastened to it.

Tell him to come to the meetin tonight, said the second man.

Come to meetin tonight, the first one said.