Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

A week later he got a tow to the forks of the river and began rowing up the French Broad. After nine hours at the oars he pulled into the bank and crawled out with his blanket and slept like a dead man. He had reason to think of the old Bildad up on the Clinch who used to flood his skiff and sleep under water in it to keep the insects off. When he woke in the smoky dawn he felt alien and tainted, camped there in a wilderness with his little stained boat and his weariness. As if the city had marked him. So that no eldritch daemon would speak him secrets in this wood. He ate two of the sandwiches he’d packed and drank a grape drink, sitting there on the bank and watching a wood duck that floated on the river like a painted decoy block mitered to its double on the pewter calm. He rowed on upriver until he came to the landing at Boyd’s Creek. His hands were puffy and clawed and he wished the skiff at the bottom of the river. He went into the store and drank two cold drinks and got a third one to sip on. Coming back out into the glaring sunlight he saw a thermometer hung in a tin coughsyrup sign on the storefront. The red line in the glass ran from bottom to top and out of sight. He eyed it with baleful bloodfilled eyes and turned and spat a grapestained clot of mucus at the cooking world. Not even a fly moved.