Suttree (21 page)

She came with the tea, a tall vase full, chocked with ice, a curl of lemon. He ladled sugar in.

That's Elizabeth again, said the old lady. That's as old a picture as there is, I reckon.

Between the mad hag's face and this young girl a vague stellar drift, the wheeling of planets on their ether trunnions. Likenesses of lost souls haunt us from old chromos and tintypes brown with age. Bloodless skull and dry white hair, matriarchal meat drawn lean and dry on frail bone, a bitter refund ashen among silk and lilies by candlelight in a cold hall, black lacquered bier on sawhorses wound with crepe. I would not cry. My sisters cried.

This here's Uncle Will. You might not remember him. He was like me, he couldnt turn his head to do no good. She turned her head stiffly to show.

Yes.

He was a blacksmith. They all had trades.

He was a drunk, he a grifter.

Suttree turned up a tinted photograph of a satin lined wickerbound casket with flower surrounds. In the casket a fat dead baby, garishly painted, bright fuchsia cheeks. Never ask whose. He closed the cover on this picturebook of the afflicted. A soft yellow dust bloomed. Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky wormbent tabernacle.

What say boy?

Suttree turned. Clayton was standing in the door scratching his stomach and grinning.

Hey, Suttree said.

They shook hands and Clayton patted him on the back.

Mama you know better than to let this fool in the kitchen. He'll eat us out of house and home.

Now you hush, Clayton.

What are you boring him with them old pictures for? You want a drink, Buddy?

Why I'll bet Buddy dont even drink, do you Buddy?

Oh no, Clayton said. Buddy wouldnt take a drink.

Suttree grinned.

Lord I raised some that will, said the old lady. I dont know where they get it at.

At Ab Franklin's, said Clayton, grinning and pouring at the sink.

I mean where they take after it from.

Clayton pointed with the bottle toward the albums. Take a look at a few of them old hard assed sons of bitches in there and tell me if you think any of em ever took a drink.

Why Clayton, said the old lady.

You sure you dont want a drink, Bud?

No thanks.

Put them old moldy pictures up and come out in the back here.

Suttree slid back his chair and rose and followed him out through the sunporch and into the yard, holding for a moment the cold glass of tea against his forehead. Clayton grinned at him.

You better have a little hair of the dog, Bud.

No, I'm all right.

Clayton lowered himself into a lawnchair and stretched his naked feet in the grass. Damn if I didnt tie one on last night, he said. The last thing I remember was somebody sayin did he have a hat.

Suttree held a folded bill toward him.

What's that?

Here. That twenty I owe you.

Hell, that's all right.

No. Here.

Hell, I dont need it.

Go on. He pushed it toward him.

You sure you cant use it?

No. Thanks a lot.

Clayton took the bill and tucked it into his shirtpocket. Well, he said. That old crossbar hotel has got some pretty high rates, aint it?

Suttree took a long drink of iced tea. It had mint in it. He liked the rough leaves against his lip and their rich smell. It does, he said.

Are you still fishin?

Yep.

You want a job?

Nope.

Clayton shook the ice in his glass. You're a funny son of a bitch, he said.

Suttree stood looking out across the fields behind the house toward the mountains. He raised his glass and drained it.

Set down, said Clayton, patting the arm of the other chair.

Suttree propped one foot in the seat of the chair and rested his elbow on his knee. A cool breeze swung the kettled creepers hung from the porchjoists.

I believe it's fixin to cloud up and rain, Clayton said.

Paper said it was supposed to.

How'd you come out?

I just walked.

Where from? You didnt walk out from town did you?

Well, I cut across from the river. I didnt have anything else to do,

I'll give you a ride back this evenin anytime you get ready.

That's all right, Suttree said.

Aunt Martha came from the kitchen with a fresh pitcher of tea.

You'll stay and take supper with us wont you?

I better get on back.

The old lady filled his empty glass. Why Buddy, she said, you stay and eat with us.

Thank you, but I better not.

Hell, just stay with us. You dont have anything to do.

The old lady bent and poured Clayton's half filled glass full. He sat looking down at it. Goddamn, he said. He pitched it out across the grass.

Why Clayton.

Clayton rose and went into the house muttering to himself.

Buddy, I do wish you'd eat with us.

I appreciate it, Aunt Martha, but I need to get back.

Let me bring you another piece of cake.

No thank you. Really.

She came no higher than his shoulder. He almost reached down to touch her.

Clayton called to him from the door: You sure you couldnt use a drink?

Suttree shook his head.

Clayton came out with his drink, one hand in his hippocket. They stood there in the shade, the three of them. Suttree drained his glass and handed it to the woman. I've got to go, he said.

They followed him into the kitchen and through the house. The aunt would have taken his elbow save that her hands were full. She set the glass and pitcher hastily on the table and caught him up. Suttree turned and was surprised to hear her talking of the weather. You let Clayton take you, she said. They will come a storm this evenin long fore you get back to town.

I wont melt, he said.

He got out the door. Clayton was looking past the top of her head.

Take care Bud.

Buddy you come see us, you hear?

He went on down the path into the road. He turned and raised one hand. The old lady waved timidly with just her fingers and Clayton saluted with his glass. It was much cooler and the wind was rising. Coils of dust rose in the road and spun off like smoke and the sky to the west lay banked in a discolored mass of thunderheads.

When he reached the highway large drops of rain were falling. They made hot slapping sounds on the macadam. He could see the rain coming across the fields where the darkly overtaken blooms buckled and dipped. He pocketed his hands and slumped and countrylooking he went down the edge of the black highway in the advancing downpour.

Before he had gone far an old Hudson pulled alongside him and sat there rocking and smoking and chattering while a man leaned across and lowered the glass just enough to let his voice out.

Hop in, old buddy.

I hate to get in your car wet as I am.

Caint hurt this old car.

Suttree climbed in and they pulled away. He watched the steamy green landscape fade beyond the dance of water on the hood.

Boy it's come a clodbuster aint it, the man said.

It is that.

The man was leaning over the wheel to see. He nodded toward the dashboard where the radio was glowing. Listen at that there, he said.

Suttree inclined one ear. A dim voice in the dashboard had a story to tell.

Well he come down from there and he said: See ary raincloud up there? and he said: Nary one. And he said: Better go on up there and look again, and he went on up there neighbors and he come back down again and he ast him again, said did he see ary sign of a raincloud and he told em no, said he'd not saw sign one, and he said: Well, better go on up there one more time, and he done it, went up there, and directly he come down again and he ast him, said: Is they ary raincloud up there now? and he said yes, said: They's one up there about the size of ye hat, and he said: Well boy you better get off the mountain cause it's a fixin to rain.

The driver smiled. He can lay it down, caint he.

Suttree nodded.

I like to hear old J Basil. He's all the time sayin: Aint that right Mrs Mull. Old deep voice. And she'll say: That's right Mr Mull. You like to hear him?

He's all right, Suttree said.

Small birds were crossing the road in the windy sheets of rain. Going up a grade the wipers died and the glass peened over with rainwater. Suttree could not see out. Beyond radio and exhaust and valvechatter he could hear thunder rumbling away over the bewept hills.

They topped the hill and the glass cleared in a slow arc. Around a curve and Suttree pointed. I get out here, he said.

The man looked. Where? he said.

Here. Anywhere along here.

You not goin to town?

No. Just right here.

The driver looked about and he looked at Suttree. They aint nothin here, he said.

Just anywhere along here, Suttree said. This is where I get out.

The driver pulled up along the graveled shoulder and stopped. He watched Suttree. Suttree climbed out into the downpour.

I sure thank you, Suttree said.

You welcome, the man said.

Suttree banged the door shut and stood back. The car moved out onto the highway. Through the runneled glass he could see the man's face turn again, as if to fix him there.

Suttree crossed the road in the rain and blue motor smoke and descended an embankment into the fields. He went crosscountry among easy hills and sometime pastureland, through a copse of dark cedars where the ground was almost dry, down a long and narrow limestone draw where small flat cactus clung to the south walls and the rain swept grayly across the ledges and swirled away before him.

He came out on the bluff and went on up the hill toward the house. Came through the weeds upon a walkway of herringboned brick all but overgrown. Past cracked urns bedight with concrete flora, broad steps, tall fluted columns with their shattered paint. The immense and stark facade seemed to recoil before his footfalls.

As he entered the foyer three young boys dropped like stricken bats from a balcony above the main reception room to his right and lit soundless on the dusty floor and passed out through a window in the opposite wall.

A chandelier lay burst in the floor. He stepped around it and ascended the lefthand stairway, slowly curving into the dusky upper chambers, keeping to the wall because save random jagged spindles the balustrade was gone. At the top of the stairs stood newel and finial intact and solitary like a rococo hitchingpost.

He wandered dripping through the high rooms with their ruined plaster, the buckled wainscot, the wallpaper hanging in great deciduous fronds. Small mounds of human stool with stained shreds of newsprint. From an upper window he watched the three boys go along the brow of the hill in the rain. Wedges of dry cracked glazing lay among the broken panes of glass in the floor. Below the window a mossy courtyard where old concrete dolphins rusted in a dry fountain and the dark handkilned bricks of the walkways lay grown with moss and lichens. Black ivy crept the garden walls and small mute birds peeped out. Across the river, the rainy hodden landscape, he could see traffic going along the boulevard, locked in another age of which some dread vision had afforded him this lonely cognizance.

He emerged from the narrow back stairwell and came up the hall with slow tread over the weathersprung parquetry, past great doors of solid cherry split open in long fibrous cracks and plundered of their knobs and hardware. Into this drawing room with high plaster frieze and foliate scrollwork. Prolapsed and waterstained ceiling, the sagging coffers. He turned, a vain figure in the ruins. Blind parget cherubs watched from the high corners.

Hello, he called. A voice that went from room to room and back again.

Gods and fathers what has happened here, good friends where is there clemency?

One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike with harsh breath and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and bunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail.