Suttree

by Cormac McCarthy

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

In my father’s last letter he said that the world is run by those willing to take the responsibility for the running of it.

Well, he said. How are you Buddy? Like you see. How are you? Fine. Fine. How is everything going? All right. How did you find me? I saw John Clancy up at the Eagles and he said that you were living in a houseboat or something so I looked along the river here and found you.

Sundays a female evangelist from Knoxville would come out to hold service in the chapel downstairs. Concrete tabernacle, small wooden podium. The prisoners who went seemed stricken nigh insensate by this word of God strained distaff they were hearing. Lounging in the wooden folding chairs, heads lolling. She seemed unaware of their presence. She told old tales from bible days that might have come down orally, so altered were they from their origins.

I preach ever Sunday at four oclock rain or shine. Just straight preachin. No cures, no predictions. Folks ask me about the second comin. Most aint heard of the first one yet. You be here? Suttree looked down at the goatman. Well, he said. If I’m not, just go ahead and start without me.

You see a man, he scratchin to make it. Think once he got it made everthing be all right. But you dont never have it made. Dont care who you are. Look up one mornin and you a old man. You aint got nothin to say to your brother. Dont know no more’n when you started.

The Indian sipped the coffee and regarded him above the cuprim with grave black eyes. I got thowed in jail, he said. When? Last week. I just got out. What did they have you for? Vag. You know. They got me once before.

What’s your name? said Suttree. The Indian turned and looked back. Michael, he said. Is that what they call you? He turned again. No, he said. They call me Tonto or Wahoo or Chief. But my name is Michael.

I’ve seen all I want to see and I know all I want to know. I just look forward to death.

He might hear you, Suttree said. I wisht he would, said the ragpicker.

You told me once you believed in God. The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I’d like to see him for a minute if I could. What would you say to him? Well, I think I’d just tell him. I’d say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there’s just one thing I’d like to know. And he’ll say: What’s that? And then I’m goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together. Suttree smiled. What do you think he’ll say? The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it, he said. I dont believe there is a answer.

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

Well, said Suttree. The woman set a cup of coffee in front of him. You use milk and sugar? No mam, that’s fine like it is.

I never did blame ye for leavin out. Poor luck as we had I reckon ye’d of done better never to of took up with us to start. Did you ever know anybody to be so bad about luck? Suttree said he had. He said that things would get better. The old man shook his head doubtfully, paying the band of his cap through his fingers. I’m satisfied they caint get no worse, he said. But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse, only Suttree didnt say so.

They drove to Asheville North Carolina and spent four days at the Grove Park Inn, a cool room high in the old rough pile of rocks and lunch each noon on the sunny tiled terrace overlooking the golf course and the mountains beyond in range on range of hazy blue. They went about the premises leisurely, these apprentice imposters, or sat by the pool while she told outrageous lies to the other guests. In the cool evenings they cruised through the mountains in the roadster and came back to have drinks in the lounge where a small orchestra played music from another era and older couples twostepped quietly over the dimlit dancefloor.

A quartermoon the color of a broken file lay far down the void. Likecolored figures crossed it. He no longer cared that he was dying. He was being voided by an enormous livercolored cunt with prehensile lips that pumped softly like some levantine bivalve. Into a cold dimension without time without space and where all was motion.

Pretty much sums up the whole book

Mr Suttree in what year did your greatuncle Jeffrey pass away? It was in 1884. Did he die by natural causes? No sir. And what were the circumstances surrounding his death. He was taking part in a public function when the platform gave way. Our information is that he was hanged for a homicide. Yessir.

I’d give a hog a rimjob to get high, she says. And have, says Shirley. On film, says Rosie. The queers in the corner booth turn one to the other in shocked amusement.

I didnt do it they only said I did. Twas a little jewdoctor come in the night with tailor’s shears. Oh do hush, says a languorous faggot glancing upward.

Friends, he says. I come from humble circumstance and rose up in the world by my own efforts. And if I’m to leave my footprints in the sands of time let it be with a pair of workshoes. Someone was tugging at Suttree’s sleeve. A small nun with a bitten face, a smell of scorched black muslin and her dead breasts brailed up in the knitted vest she wore. She tugged with little soricine claws at the bones in his elbow.

As these figures began to cool and take on life Suttree among the watchers said that this time there are witnesses, for life does not come slowly. It rises in one massive mutation and all is changed utterly and forever. We have witnessed this thing today which prefigures for all time the way in which historic orders proceed. And some said that the girl who bathed her swollen belly in the stone pool in the garden last evening was the author of this wonder they attended. And a maid bearing water in a marble jar came down from the living frieze toward the dreamer with eyes restored black of core and iris brightly painted attic blue and she moved toward him with a smile. Suttree surfaced from these fevered deeps to hear a maudlin voice chant latin by his bedside, what medieval ghost come to usurp his fallen corporeality. An oiled thumball redolent of lime and sage pondered his shuttered lids.

Japheth when you left your father’s house the birds had flown. You were not prepared for such weathers. You’d spoke too lightly of the winter in your father’s heart. We saw you in the streets. Sad.

The priest’s lamptanned and angular face leaned over him. The room was candlelit and spiced with smoke. He closed his eyes. A cool thumb crossed his soles with unction. He lay aneled. Like a rapevictim.

One morning the priest came. The bed tilted. Suttree’s body ran on it saclike and invertebrate, his drained members cooling on the sheets.

He had a small cardboard suitcase and he came out of the weeds and set it on the edge of the road and straightened up and began combing his hair. He looked about his appearance, propping one foot on the case and bending to scrape beggarlice from his trousers with his thumbnail. New trousers of tan chino. A new shirt open at the neck. His face and arms were suntanned and his hair crudely bartered and he wore cheap new brown leather shoes the toes of which he dusted, one, the other, against the back of his trouserlegs. He looked like someone just out of the army or jail. A car came down the highway and he gestured at it with his thumb and it went on. Traffic was slow along the road and he was there a long time. It was very hot. You could see his skin through the new shirt.

Suttree watched this industry accomplish itself in the hot afternoon. Downwind light ocher dust had sifted all along the greening roadside foliage and in the quiet midafternoon the call of a long sad trainhorn floated over the lonely countryside.

Suttree saw hands come up from below the rim of the pit in parched supplication. When all these had been attended the boy came down along the edge of the ditch and handed up the dipper to the backhoe operator. Suttree saw him take it and tilt his head and drink and flick the last drops toward the earth and lean down and restore the dipper to the watercarrier. They nodded to each other and the boy turned and looked toward the road.

The boy smiled and stepped back. A car had stopped for Suttree, he’d not lifted a hand. Let’s go, said the driver. Hello, said Suttree, climbing in, shutting the door, his suitcase between his knees. Then they were moving. Out across the land the lightwires and roadrails were going and the telephone lines with voices shuttling on like souls. Behind him the city lay smoking, the sad purlieus of the dead immured with the bones of friends and forebears. Off to the right side the white concrete of the expressway gleamed in the sun where the ramp curved out into empty air and hung truncate with iron rods bristling among the vectors of nowhere.

Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them.