Suttree (50 page)

Daddy, she called.

Reese opened one eye tentatively from beneath his tree. Yonder's my partner, he sang out.

Hey, said Suttree.

Come set down. Boy we really into em up here. Looky yonder.

Suttree looked. A black slagheap of riven shellfish lay along the riverbank exuding a greenish vapor and quaking gently with flies.

And looky here.

The musselfisher lifted out the little foxcod purse and tilted into his palm a single pearl.

Suttree picked it up and looked at it. It looked a bit lumpy. What's it worth? he said.

Caint tell. They's lots they go by. He took it and rolled it in his palm and dropped it back into the purse. They aint no tellin what it might be worth, he said.

How many have you found?

Well. That's the only really good'n. I got some others.

Suttree stared bleakly at the levee of shells.

We'll really get into em now though, what with two boats and all.

Suttree turned and looked down at the old man. He was squatting on his heels, having risen that far by way of greeting. Smiling. Optimistic. A pale and bloated tick hung in his scalp like a pendulous wen.

We got to get your boat rigged. I done hunted up some poles and stuff.

Have you got a hammer and nails?

I got some nails comin out of them boards yonder quick as I burn em. We'll get some more. They's plenty of old boards got nails in em.

Suttree was kneading his bloated palms. How do you aim to drive the nails, he said.

Just knock em in with a rock.

Suttree looked at the river. If you just get in your boat you can stretch out and sleep and barring snags wake up sometime back in Knoxville like you'd never been away.

I guess we'll manage, he said.

Why hell yes, said the old man.

Suttree wandered off to the skiff to get his blankets and gear. He took the two cans of beer he had stowed under the rear seat and tied them to a string and lowered them over the side.

The family had put up a rude lean-to against the wall of the bluff. Old roofing tin and random boards and a plywood highway sign that said Slow Construction Ahead. It all looked like it had washed up there in high water. Under the overhang of the bluff were thin home-sewn ticks and quilts and army blankets. Suttree didnt think it would rain anytime soon so he went on down past the camp with his gear to a little knoll that overlooked the river and where there were some small pines and a wind to stand the insects off. He fixed a smooth place on the ground and fluffed up the pineneedles and spread a blanket and sat down. He lay back and stretched out. The river chattered back a querulous babbling from the limestone shoals below the camp. The trees fell and fell down the lightly clouded summer sky.

Reese woke him kicking his foot. Hey, he said.

Suttree rolled over and shaded his eyes.

What you doin?

I was sleeping.

The old man squatted and eyed the river through the trees. We might's well get your boat rigged this afternoon, he said.

Suttree rose heavily. He was hot and sweaty and worn out.

You aim to bed down out here?

If it doesnt rain.

You can sleep up in the camp with us.

I snore, Suttree said.

The old man stood up. Snore? he said. Hell fire, son, you aint never heard a snore. I'll put my old lady up against any three humans or one moose.

Suttree went on up the bank.

He studied the brail rig in the old man's skiff and went into the woods to cast about for suitable saplings to make the uprights. He'd set the boy to straightening nails, beating them out with a rock. The old man had wandered off somewhere.

He sat in the stern of his skiff and trimmed the poles he'd cut, dressing the forks, shaving the lower ends flat to be nailed to the sides of the skiff. The white waxy woodpeelings coiled up cleanly under his knife and he watched them spin and drift on the river. With the point of the knife he bored holes partway through the flats on the butt end so that the wood would not split when it was nailed. The old man had come down the bank and was sitting on his heels nodding at Suttree's work and making encouraging talk. He always expected everyone to be out of heart.

By evening they had the skiff rigged with a ramshackle and barbarous facsimile of a brailboat's gear. Suttree carried the brails aboard and stowed them in the trees of the uprights and Reese eyed the sun.

You want to make a run this evening?

I dont think so.

You and the boy might make just a short run and see how she does.

Suttree stood up in the skiff and stepped ashore. And we might not, he said.

Well. We can get an early start of the mornin.

Suttree didnt answer. He went on toward the camp where smoke was rising from the supper fire.

Hidy, said the girl with studied boldness.

Hey, said Suttree. She was white with flour to her elbows, bent above a breadboard kneading biscuit dough. The two smaller girls were standing behind her and the old woman was at the fire. One of the girls poked her head around and said something and the older girl slapped at her and they fled shrieking with giggles.

Oh you all ... Mama, make her quit.

You all quit, said the woman. She was stoking the fire and fixing the sheet of tin laid over the rocks. Flames licked from under the edges. There was a kettle and an iron pot on the tin and it sagged badly under the weight.

Is there any coffee? Suttree said.

Is there any coffee Mama?

You know there aint no coffee.

I dont guess there is none, said the girl.

What time do we eat?

In about a hour. It wont be long.

Suttree scratched his jaw and looked about. There was an old mattress in the lean-to and a packingcrate with an oil lamp on it and a miscellany of junk stored along the dark stone wall at the rear. He went down to the river again and stretched out on a cool rock in the shade and looked down into the water. On the rippled silt floor of the eddy a small turtle shifted with uncertain bowlegs. Small bits of wood, twigs, lay furred with silt and a muddog lay inert with its obscene gills branching like bright fungus. Suttree's face shifted and dished. A waterspider crossed on jointed horsehair legs and the river gave off a cool metallic smell. He spat at his trembling visage and sat up and took off his shoes and socks and lowered his feet into the water.

They ate on what looked like an outhouse door. A weathered wooden trestle propped on poles. Suttree was afraid to lean on it. They sat on planks and cinderblocks, the smallest girl's chin just clearing the boards. Suttree was lightheaded with hunger.

The iron pot came aboard and the kettle and pan of biscuits. In the kettle were some rough and hairy greens he'd never met before. In the pot whitebeans. He stirred them but no trace of fat meat turned up. He eyed the boy across the board and began to eat faster.

After supper they sat around the fire while the girls washed the dishes. The old man brought a soft and greasy leather bible from the lean-to and opened it on his knees. When the dishes were done the girls gathered around and the old man commenced to read aloud from the text. Suttree had gone to the river and fetched the two cans of beer. He opened them at the table and carried them to the fire and handed one to the old man. His eyes brightened in the firelight when he saw it. Lord have mercy looky here, he said.

Suttree gestured with his can and drank. The beer was cold and slightly bitter and very good. The old man tilted his beer to drink.

Dont you read scripture and drink that, the woman said.

What?

You heard me. Dont you read scripture and drink that.

Why hell fire, said Reese.

Nor cuss neither. You put that up or finish that beer one.

He looked around to see if anyone might be on his side. Suttree went off down to his little knoll above the river.

They went to sleep like dogs, curling up in their bedding on the ground until they were a scattering of dark shapeless mounds beneath the bluff. The fire had died. Suttree shucked off shoes and trousers and lay in his blanket. The river talked all night in the shoals. Some dogs in the anonymous distance beyond set up a clamor but they were far away and their barking muted by the river fell lost and dreamlike on his ears.

In the morning they were about and breakfasting almost with the first light. Thin cakes of fried cornmeal with sugar syrup. There was still no coffee.

The old man took the girl and went upriver and left Suttree and the boy to themselves. Suttree bailed the boat and stowed the can back under the seat and looked out downstream, A thousand smokes stood on the gray face of the river. After a while the boy emerged from the woods buttoning his trousers and came down the bank and climbed into the skiff.

You ready? he said.

Suttree looked at him. He was sitting in the bow of the skiff with his hands on his knees.

How about casting off for us.

Do what?

How about untying us.

He climbed out and got the rope loose from the stump and threw it into the skiff and knelt in the bow and shoved them off. Suttree let the oars into the river.

The skiff nosed downstream through pales of vapor. A small heron rose clacking from the reeds. The boy swung on it with an imaginary gun. Blam, he said.

I saw ducks on the river coming up, Suttree said.

Boy I bet if I had me a gun I'd kill everthing up here.

He was watching downriver, picking absently at one of the yellow pustules with which his chin was afflicted. After a while he said: What was you in the workhouse for?

Suttree leaned on the oars and looked behind him. They were in faster water and there were little weedy islands in the middle of the river. I was with some guys got caught breaking into a drugstore.

What did you break in for?

They were trying to get some drugs. Pills. They got some cigarettes and stuff. I was outside in the car.

I guess you was keepin the motor runnin and lookout and all.

I was drunk.

The boy looked at him but Suttree had turned to study the water. Across the river a tractor was plowing in the black and fallow bottoms and over the plowed land rim to rim lay a serpentine of mist the course and shape of the river itself like a ghost river there. The sun was a long time coming. In the graygreen light the midsummer corn moved with the first wind and the countryside had a sad and desolate look to it.

Did you go to college? the boy said.

Why?

I just wondered. Gene says you're real smart.

Who, Harrogate?

Yeah.

Well. Some people are smarter than others.

You mean Gene aint real smart?

No. He's plenty smart. You have to be smart to know who's smart and who's not.

I never figured you to be just extra smart.

There you are, said Suttree.

He looked puzzled. Old Gene used to come sniffin around after Wanda, he said. Mama run him off. You got a girl?

No. I used to have one but I forgot where I laid her.

The boy looked at him dully for a minute and then slapped his knee and guffawed. Boy, he said, that's a good'n.

How far down do we go?

We'll run the Gallops first and then go on down to the Wild Bull Shoals.

The Gallops?

That's the next shoals down. Taint far. You say you aint never musseled afore?

No.

Taint nothin to it. Yonder goes a mushrat.

Suttree turned. A dark little shape forded the dawn, a black nose in a wedge of riverwater.

Quick as furs primes I'm goin to be back up here with me some traps.

Suttree nodded, pulling along easily, the oarlocks creaking and the lines of the brail swinging behind the boy's head like a bead curtain. The sun came up. It bored up out of the trees in a greengold light and Suttree's silhouette lay long and narrow down the river among the brail line shadows like a rowing marionette.

He swung the skiff more shoreward. The boy was bent peering down into the water. In the clear shallows suckers trailed by their whiterimmed mouths from the rocks like soft pennants fluttering.

The boy took an empty rubber flashlight from his hippocket and dipping the lens in the river looked down through the gutted barrel at the piscean world below.

Do you see any mussels? Suttree said.

We aint into em yet, the boy said. They godamighty what a catfish.

How deep is it?

Yonder goes a old mudturkle.

Suttree leaned on the oars. How about letting me look, he said.

The boy lifted his head.

I said how about letting me look.

Well. Sure.

Suttree shipped the oars and took the tube from the boy and bent over the side with it. A high sheer rock veered past wrapped in bubbles. Moted panels spun down deeps of dusky jade where dim shoals of fish willowed and flared and drifted back over the cold slate floor of the river. A braided cable among the rocks trailed rags of soft green slime in the current.