Suttree (47 page)

He came down to dinner, good plain food served in the shambles of patched and tacked furniture destroyed in drunken rages over the years. Another week and he was on the streets again.

His first day uptown he weighed himself on the free scales in front of Woodruffs. He looked at the face in the glass.

He went to Miller's Annex and called on J-Bone.

Up and about eh? Did they run you off at the house?

No. I slipped off after your mama went back to work.

How do you feel?

I feel okay. I feel pretty good.

Where will you be later on?

I dont know. I'm going up to Comer's.

You think you feel well enough to drink a beer?

I might get well.

J-Bone grinned. Old Suttree, he said. He's hell when he's well.

What time you get off? Five thirty?

Yeah.

I'll see you then.

Okay Bud.

When he came through the door at Comer's Dick winked at him and raised his hand. Hey Buddy, he said. Got a letter for you.

Suttree leaned on the counter.

You've lost a little weight havent you?

Some.

Where you been?

I was over in North Carolina for a while.

Dick turned the letter in his hand and looked at it and handed it over. It's been here about two weeks, he said.

Suttree tapped the letter on the counter. Thanks Dick, he said.

He sat among the watchers by the wall and crossed his legs the way the old men do and opened the envelope. It was postmarked Knoxville and there was a letter from his mother and a check from his Uncle Ben newly dead. He looked at the check. It was for three hundred dollars. He tapped it in his hand and got up and went to the watercooler for a drink and came back. He wadded the letter and dropped it into the spittoon.

Where you been Buddy boy? called Harry the Horse.

Hey Harry, said Suttree.

Harry stood shapeless in his shirt and changeapron by the cashregister. Bill Tilson made a few slow judo feints and laid the edge of his hand athwart Harry's ear. Ah, said Harry. That was on the bone.

On the bone, called Tilson dementedly, passing on along the tables.

Suttree looked up from the check to the racked cues along the wall, the old photos of ballplayers. A quiet figure there in the bedlam of ballclack and calling and telephones, the tickertape unspooling the sportsnews. Fuck it, he said. He rose and went to the front counter.

Can you cash a check for me, Dick?

Sure Bud. He laid the check on the sill of the cashregister and rang open the drawer. He read the check. Fat city, he said. How do you want it?

A couple of hundreds and some twenties.

With the money folded in his front pocket he went down the stairs to the street again.

He went to Miller's and bought underwear and socks and went out through the Annex and crossed through the markethouse. Old Lippner akimbo in his abbatoir. By the side door blind Walter stood sleeping with his dobro and Suttree touched his sleeve. The blind eyes opened and rolled up. Suttree pressed a folded bill into his palm.

You the only man I ever saw could sleep standing up.

An enormous set of teeth appeared and a strong black hand gripped his forearm. Hey fish man. Naw you wrong. Black man taught it to the mule.

You think I could learn it?

You might if they wouldnt let you set down nowheres.

Suttree smiled. I'll see you later.

The blind man pocketed the bill. I hope you catches the river out, he said.

Suttree crossed the street to Watson's. There in the basement he found his size in a rack of sportcoats and selected a pale camelhair and tried it. Faint lines of dirt along the shoulder seams where it had hung. He looked at himself in the mirror. He took a comb from his pocket and combed his hair.

He found a pair of black mohair trousers that had a small tricornered tear at the rear pocket. Couldnt see it with the jacket on. The slacks and the jacket came to thirteen dollars and ninety cents and he paid and went upstairs and bought a yellow gabardine shirt with handstitched collar and pockets.

In a window above Market Street the old tailor stood peering out through the lettered glass, the dusty ells and bolts of cloth spooled out in the window easing the repose of dead flies and roaches. Suttree came up the dark and musty wooden stairwell and swung through the door with his package.

Nice trousers them, said the old man as he measured the inseam with a tattered yellow tape. He gripped the waistband and tugged at them. He put his arms around Suttree's waist and brought the tape together at his navel. The old man barely came to Suttree's shoulder.

You want some out of the seat too.

I think they'll be all right, Mr Brannam. I've lost some weight.

The tailor tugged at the seat of Suttree's new trousers and looked dubious. You going to carry your lunch here? he said.

Suttree smiled. They're really my size, he said. I'll fill back out.

How much you going to fill?

About twenty pounds.

The tailor pulled again at Suttree's waist and shook his head.

They're okay. Let's just do the cuffs.

When you dont get fat you bring em back, okay?

Okay. There's a little tear there in the back too.

I see him, said the tailor, marking with his chalk.

Suttree waited in a wooden folding chair while the trousers were cuffed and he paid the old man and thanked him and went down the stairs again.

He bought a pair of shoes at Thorn McAn's that had zippers up the side and were the color of blood. With his packages he climbed the stairs to Comer's and at the rear of the premises he stripped and washed and put on his new clothes. His old ones he wrapped in the paper and he left them with Stud at the lunchcounter. Stud took the package and looked back again and whistled and Jake took hold of him by the shoulder and turned him around and looked him over and sniffed at his cheek and tried to kiss him.

Get away you ass, Suttree said.

Ulysees came over to view him with his quiet cynic's smile. Well, he said. Looking rather affluent there, Bud. He kneaded Suttree's sleeve between his thumb and forefinger. Oy, he said. Iss qvality.

Suttree crossed Gay Street to the Farragut and went downstairs to the barbershop. He passed Tarzan Quinn coming up, freshly powdered, swinging his billyclub by its thong to and fro into and out of his enormous hand.

An aged black took his new coat and he climbed into a chair.

Yessir, said the barber, flinging the apron ticking over him.

Shave, haircut, shine ... You do manicures?

No, said the barber. We dont have a manicurist.

Okay. Shave, haircut, shine. And dont spare the smellgood.

The barber brought a steaming towel and wrapped his face and tilted him back in the chair. Suttree lay in deep euphoria, his legs crossed at the ankles, his new shoes easy on the nickleplated grating of the footrest. He listened dreamily to the pop of the razor on the strop.

He half dozed in the chair while the barber pulled his face about, the razor slicing off the hot lavendar foam. Peace seeped through to Suttree's bones. The barber raised him up and began to trim his hair with scissors. The black had settled at his feet with his wooden box of polishes and begun to work over the shoes. The second barber read the newspaper. No one spoke. Suttree's dark locks dropped soundlessly to the tiles. Gentle barber. He drifted.

The barber talced the back of his neck and whipped away the apron and stood back. Suttree opened his eyes. He raised the shoes up one and then the other and looked at them. He climbed down from the chair and looked at himself in the mirror.

The old black held his coat while he paid and then helped him on with it and dusted his shoulders with a little broom. Suttree dropped a half dollar into his palm and the old man made a sort of bow and said thank you sir and the barber said come back.

In the streets a colder wind on his shaven nape. Bobbyjohn stood on the corner with Bucket and Hoghead and two boys he did not know. They seized upon him with great joy. Bobbyjohn was offering him two dollars for the coat, waving the money about.

Where's your stick? said Hoghead. You caint go around lookin like that and no stick to beat the women off with.

Old Suttree's caught himself a hell of a fish somewheres.

He and J-Bone ate dinner at Regas. Bobby smiled when she brought them the menu.

What are you goin for, Bud?

I think I'll go for the large fillet steak.

Believe I'll go for the veal cutlet.

Hell, get the steak.

The cutlet's good, Bud.

Get the biggest fucking steak they own.

The steaks arrived on iron platters sizzling in their own juice and there were steaming baked potatoes with pithy cores to melt the butter over and there was sour cream with chives and hot rolls and coffee. Suttree popped a chunk of steak into his mouth and sat back in the chair and closed his eyes, chewing.

Good aint it Bud?

J-Bone dipped a roll into his platter and raised it dripping with dark gravy and loaded it into his jaw. Lordy, he said.

Where we going tonight?

Anywhere suits me. What about the Carnival Club?

Is this Thursday?

Sure is, said J-Bone. The place will be crawling with lovely young cuntlets.

I'm for that, said Suttree.

He woke in Woodlawn among the menhirs of the dead. He raised himself onto one elbow and looked out across the ordered landscape of polished stones, the pale winter's grass and black trees. He brushed the chaff from his sleeve. An oxblood stain was seeping up his white socks from the new shoes. He staggered to his feet, brushing at himself. His trousers were caked with great patches of mud at the knees and he was damp and cold. Suddenly he crammed both fists in his pocket. His eyes wandered in his head as he grappled with the murky history of the prior night. Dim memories. A maudlin madman stumbling among the stones in search of a friend long dead who lies here. He pulled from his watchpocket a small wet folded paper. It was one of the hundred dollar bills somehow put by. Suttree crossed the spiderfrosted grass of the cemetery toward the fence and the road.

The sun was not so high he could not take his bearings by it and he set off in what he figured to be the direction of the town. A bus passed in a blue stink of diesel smoke, the windows filled with faces. He brushed his hair back and grimaced at the riders. He shaped a curse in the air after them with a leanboned hand.

A half mile down stood a roadside store. Suttree at the drinkbox lifted out an orange bottle and opened it and drank. The woman who kept the store watched him from under her wrinkled eyelids.

I'm not loose from the circus, he said.

What?

I said do you have any aspirins.

She turned and reached a small tin box of them from a shelf behind the counter. Suttree opened the box and emptied the contents into his hand and dropped them into his mouth like peanuts and washed them down with a swig of the drink.

What do I owe you?

Fifteen cents, she said. Old nervous eyes.

Gravegrass clung to his trousers. He pulled the hundred dollar bill from his pocket and spread it out on the counter. She looked at it and she looked at him. She said: I caint change that.

That's all I have.

Well I dont have change for nothin like that.

Well I'll have to owe you then.

He took the bill up and put it back in his pocket.

You'll have to pay, she said. I dont know ye.

I'll write you a check.

She just stood there.

Do you have a counter check?

I dont have no checks.

Do you have a paper bag?

Have what?

A poke.

How big of a one did you want? She was rummaging under the counter.

Any size, said Suttree.

She raised up with a bag. Thisn here's the biggest I got.

That's fine. Do you have a pen?

She had a pen.

Suttree wrote out an enormous I O U across the face of the bag and signed his name and turned the bag around so she could read it. She took small rimless eyeglasses from her apron and bent over the bag. Suttree laid the pen down and left.

He kept off the high roads, going by dogpaths through the hobo jungles down along the railroad tracks. A yardman watched him from the baywindow of a caboose, a bitten sandwich upheld in one hand, his jaws moving slowly. He came out by the L&N depot and went up a brickpaved street past the House Hasson warehouse and over a little concrete bridge with plumbingpipe handrails cold and gritty in his palms. Small waters coiling far below about the feet of the viaduct's diamondshaped stanchions. Along a wall of concrete grown with bright green fur. Suttree climbing toward a watered sun.