Suttree (68 page)

The older lady moved. She made a little motion of gathering the hem of her gown and she looked at him with no change of expression. Yes, she said.

I'm Buddy.

Oh yes. How have you been?

Do you know me?

Are you Buddy?

Yes.

Grace's son.

Suttree smiled, son of Grace. I didnt think you'd know me.

She reached out and took his wrist. Her hand cool and firm. He covered it with his own. She had her eyes fixed on him and would not look elsewhere. They were a pure cold gray and something feral in them but there was no malice there. He looked down at their hands. Hers was trembling, just gently. The old woman sitting by her reached over and put her hand with theirs and nodded her head solemnly. The three of them squatting there on the floor like conspirators pledging themselves.

How have you been, Aunt Alice?

A hollow croak of a voice in the drafty dayroom. He cleared his throat. He turned to see had he attracted attention. An old man in a wheelchair cringing by the wall watched. Chanting to himself some silent doxology.

I'm fine, the old woman said.

Do they treat you well?

Oh, a body ought not to complain.

Does Mother come?

Why she died in twenty-seven.

Does Grace come to see you? Or Helen?

Oh well. She shook her head and smiled. No. They dont come a whole lot.

Does Martha?

No. John comes much as anybody. He took me out. He took me out in his motorcar.

The old woman with them nodded her head. He did, she said. Her John did. Come in a car and fetched her.

The aunt leaned toward Suttree in confidence. He'd been a drinkin some. But I'd rather for him to of come drunk as for nobody to come sober.

Suttree smiled. They were speaking in hushed tones like people in church. The room was enormously silent. He could hear labored breathing, the rattle of osiers among the basketmakers. The clink of a bucket bail out in the hall somewhere. He looked around at the old room, the pale midwinter light that carried the windows tall and slant to the opposite wall and the plaster banded with the bones of lathing.

I never thought to end my time in such a place as this is, she said. If Allen had lived he never would of let no such a thing happen. He was always so good to me. I was like his little girl almost. I was just little when Daddy died.

What was his name? Your father. I never knew his name.

It was Jeffrey. My brother Jeffrey was Jeffrey Junior. Daddy was old when I was born. I know he'd been too old for service in the war between the states. He was a ... He was wild. Pretty wild. They always said about him anyways. He was shot in a fracas of some kind. Long fore he married. Come near dyin. So I always wondered about that, had he died none of us would never have been at all and I never could ... Well, that's a funny thing to think. Maybe we would have just been somebody else. But they said he was, that he had been in trouble, I dont know. I reckon it was so and I reckon Jeffrey must of took after him. I never knew Jeffrey. I was just a baby when ... When he died.

He was hanged in Rockcastle County Kentucky on July 18 1884.

She didnt answer. She said: Allen always said that Robert favored him. But of course Robert never come back from the war. Lord he wasnt but eighteen poor baby. Allen never got over it. They say he died of cancer and that may be but he never had hardly a well day after they brought Robert home. I believe it killed him as much as anything did. They was nine of us you know. Me and Elizabeth outlived all the boys and now she's gone and I'm in the crazy house. Sometimes I dont know what people's lives are for. She looked at Suttree. Her eyes moved and she smiled.

Daddy kept store you know, and we had this horse his name was Captain and he used to pull the wagon delivered the groceries and he was my pet. He'd foller me around, just foller me around like a dog would. We lived in Sweetwater then. And they was hard times then and we had to sell the store and Daddy had to sell Captain. And they took me up to Nanny's because the man was comin to take him, you see. I was just a little thing. Years later when I was a young girl I was in Knoxville one Saturday and I seen this horse standin in front of a feedstore hitched to a wagon and it was Captain. I run over to him and thowed my arms around him and kissed him and I reckon everbody thought I was crazy, me about full growed standin there in the street huggin a old horse and just a bawlin to beat the band.

She pushed the palm of her hand hard against one cheek. She looked up at Suttree and smiled and she looked at the woman by her side who now was weeping and she gave her a great nudge with her elbow. Lord amercy, she said. You're the silliest thing in here.

The woman shook her head and snuffled and Suttree's aunt smiled at him. I want you to look at this old crazy thing, she said. She dont even know what all she's bawlin about.

Do too, said the woman.

It wasnt the first word she'd said but it was the first Suttree'd heard. She had her hand across her forehead and was rubbing it as if she'd have the skin off. She wore a faint mustache and her gray hair stood about her head electrically. Aunt Alice looked down at her with soft amusement. She brushed her cheeks again and turned to Suttree. Her eye was bright and her expression full of sauce. You're a good lookin somethin, she said. I believe you favor E C. You dont have a motorcar do you?

Suttree said he didnt. He felt himself being drawn into modes for which he had neither aptitude nor will. They were both watching him. The tears were gone. Their eyes seemed filled with expectation and he'd nothing to give. He'd come to take. He pulled away from them and they leaned toward him with their veined old hands groping at the emptiness. He rose. Casting his eyes over this wreckage. What perverted instinct made folks group the mad together? So many. He was the only person in the room standing and now they were watching him, eyes vacant or keen with suspicion or incipient hatred. Or eyes betrayed of any earnestness at all. An air of possible insurrection in the room, wanting just the cue to set these wretches clawing at their keepers. He looked down at the old ladies at his feet. They had their hands to their mouth in identical attitudes. I have to go, he said. I cant stay. He tore his look from theirs and wheeled off through the room. An old man in a striped railroader's hat was holding a huge watch in his hand and following Suttree with his eyes as if he'd time him. Their eyes met across the dayroom and Suttree's face drained to see the old man there and he almost said his name but he did not and he was soon out the door.

He was going from phone to phone in the booths of the Park National Bank and he was whistling to himself when a heavy hand dropped across his shoulder. He stopped and looked down, placing the nearest black wingtip shoe. He leaped up and came down on the shoe with his heel, his knee locked. Small bones cracked under the leather. The hand went away. Harrogate never even saw the man. He crossed Gay Street in the noon traffic over the actual hoods and decklids of idling cars, faces white behind the glass, sounds of buckling sheetmetal.

Suttree sought him out under the viaduct among the debris. Gene? he called. There was no fire, no sign of having been one. Cars rumbled distantly overhead. Hey Gene.

Harrogate crawled out of the concrete pillbox and squatted in the dirt. He was ragged looking and shaking with the cold and he had shaved his mustache off.

Suttree squatted beside him. Well, he said. What are your plans?

The city rat hunched his shoulders. He looked frail and wasted with defeat.

You cant stay down here, you'll freeze.

He shook his head slowly from side to side, staring at the raw ground. I dont know, he said. I been in there all day. I figured the law would of done had me by now.

Suttree stirred the dust with his forefinger. They will, he said. This is no place to hide out.

I know it. How'd you find me?

I didnt have any place else to look. Rufus told me you'd been up there.

Yeah. You caint depend on a nigger for nothin. I didnt know where else to go. All them sons of bitches. Many a time as I drunk whiskey with em. They didnt hardly know me.

Suttree smiled. A fugitive's life is a hard one, he said. What happened to your mustache?

Harrogate rubbed his lip. Shaved it off, he said. Maybe they wont recognize me without it. I dont know. Shit.

Well what are you going to do?

I dont know. I was ashamed to come to you.

Maybe you ought to get out of town for a while.

Where to?

Anywhere. Out of town.

Harrogate looked up at him vaguely. Out of town? he said.

If you stay around here they'll nail your ass.

Hell, Sut. I aint never been out of town. I wouldnt know where to go. I wouldnt know which way to start.

Just get on a bus and go. What difference does it make? You've scuffled in this town for three years, hell, you could make it somewhere else.

I dont have no friends somewhere else.

You dont have any here.

Harrogate shook his head. Shit, he said. Bus? I aint never even been on a goddamned bus.

All you do is get a ticket and get on.

Yeah yeah, sure sure, I'd get on the wrong damned bus or somethin.

There's not any wrong bus. Not for you.

Well how the hell would I know where to get off at? And where would I be when I did?

They'd tell you.

He looked at the ground. Naw, he said. I'd never make it. I'd get lost and never would get home again ever. He shook his head. I dont know, Sut. Seems like everthing I turn my hand to. Dont make no difference what it is. Just everthing I touch turns to shit.

Have you got any money?

Not a cry in dime.

What did you do with all that money you were making?

Spent it, naturally.

You could go on the train.

Do they not charge?

You can sneak on. Get in an empty car over in the yards. I can let you have a few dollars.

Train, said Harrogate, staring off toward the creek.

You could go south for the winter. Someplace where it's not so fucking cold. Hell, Gene. You've got to do something. You cant just sit here.

The city rat made a little shivering motion and drew up his feet but he didnt answer.

Who was it nailed you?

Fuck if I know.

Was it a detective? Plainclothes?

I dont know, Sut. I never seen nothin but his feet. I reckon it was the telephone heat. They tell me when them sons of bitches get on your trail you're completely fucked. They wont rest till they get ye.

Telephone heat?

Harrogate looked up warily. You fuckin ay, he said. Them bastards take it personal. He looked at the ground. I knew that, he said. I knew it, but I went and done it anyways.

Dark was falling over the creek and a cold wind was moving in the dry weeds. On the hill among the shacks a dog had begun to bark. They sat quietly under the viaduct in the deepening chill. After a while Harrogate said: They wouldnt be a soul there that I knowed. I'd bet on it.

Where?

In the workhouse.

There wasnt anybody there you knew the last time.

Yeah.

You're not there yet, anyway.

Me and old crazy Bodine used to have some good times racin scorpions in the kitchen. That was after you'd done left.

Scorpions?

Lizards I guess you call em.

Lizards?

Yeah. We'd get the yard man to get em for us. We'd race em on the kitchen floor. Get a bet up. Shit. I had me one named Legs Diamond that son of a bitch would stand straight up with them old legs just a churnin and quick as he'd get traction he was gone like a striped assed ape. Never would touch down with his front feet.

The city mouse shook his head, deep in the fondness of these recollections like a strange little old man there in the blue winter twilight under the bridge. Remembering the sunlight on the buffed floor and the broomhandles laid out and the chalk marks. Lying like the children they were on the cool floor with their fragile reptiles, the small hearts hammering in the palms of their hands. Holding them by their tiny pumping waists and releasing them at a signal. The lizards rearing onto their hind legs as their feet slipped on the smooth waxed concrete, strange little saurians. Harrogate has tacked the hinder toes of his with syrup and it scampers through the barry light to soundless victory.

Old crazy Leithal King worked in the kitchen after that. I believe he was the biggest fuck-up in the workhouse. Shit. I got tired takin stuff off of him he was so dumb. I used to race lizards with him I'd let him take his pick, we'd have upwards of half a dozen in a kettle. I'd have me some chili pepper in my hand and when I got my lizard I'd rub a little of that in his ass. He'd go like he was on fire. Old Leithal'd get em and wouldnt know how to hold em or nothin, half the time he'd pull their tails off. He raced one one time that son of a bitch stood straight up and went right on over backards, feet just a churnin.