Suttree had been taken from his bloodied clothes and bathed and laid out in clean coarse linen. Miss Aldrich helped him down the long corridor, the old men watching furiously from their rows of beds on either side. Her soft breast against his elbow, crossing from band to latticed band of morning sunlight where it fell through the barred windows. He stood in a concrete room painted white and pissed painfully a few drops into an oldfashioned urinal and came out again. She was waiting for him. Did you do your business? she said, smiling.
Just a little.
Number one or number two?
Suttree couldnt remember what the numbers corresponded to. Wee wee, he said. He felt completely stupid.
She took his elbow to help him back to his bed.
I can make it all right, he said.
I know.
Oh.
Arent you ashamed?
Of what?
Getting into such a terrible fight. You havent seen yourself in a mirror, have you?
Suttree didnt answer. What’s wrong with my head? he said.
You broke it.
Broke it?
Yes.
Is it bad?
No. Well, it’s not good. It is fractured.
I keep seeing double.
It’ll go away. Here.
Suttree tried to get into the bed painlessly. Shit, he said. He sat with care. How many ribs?
Three.
Who else is here?
You mean your little friends?
Yes.
None. Most of them were treated and taken to jail. A few escaped I think. Are you ready for some breakfast?
I guess so. Am I?
Why not.
She brought him a tray with a bowl of oatmeal and milk and a cup of watered coffee.
Is that it? he said.
That’s it.
She fluffed his pillows, helped him to sit. Soap scent of her hair and her breast brushing across his eye.
I suppose this is Knoxville General? he said, sniffing the porridge.
She smiled. So you dont even know where you are.
Isnt it?
What makes you think you’re in Knoxville?
Come on.
Yes. At St Mary’s you get poached eggs. But you have to say your prayers first.
She put her hand to her mouth. Oh, she said. You’re not a Catholic are you?
I’ve been defrocked. This tastes like wet mattress stuffing.
But do you like it?
Just so so. Listen, what is this ward? It looks like where they lock up dangerous incurables.
It’s just a ward. Most of our patients are older people.
Older? There’s no one in here under ninety. What do they do, unload them here to die?
Yes.
I see.
They’re all indigents. Some of them they bring down here from the nursing home when they get too sick. It’s an experience.
I’ll bet.
You created quite a sensation.
What, among the inmates?
No, silly. Among the nurses.
She brought him the morning paper but he couldnt focus on the print. She cranked up the old metal bed, moving about, flirting with him and smelling good. She told him of her life in the nurses’ home, her wide face full of humor. She roomed in the old morgue along with the other nurses in training. Their beds all leveled under two legs with bricks where the concrete floor sloped toward the drain. At supper she brought her girlfriend, a short heavyset nurse, with instructions to take care of him.
Just remember I saw him first, she said. She winked at Suttree. I’ll see you tomorrow.
But he was afoot and gone with fall of dark. Hobbling down the corridor in his nightshirt past the snoring elders and through the door at the end. A little vestibule. Through the wired glass he could see out into the lobby where the night nurse sat at her desk. Suttree turned and went back through the ward to the doors at the other end. A further corridor, dimly lit. He came upon a washroom and a closet where white orderly coats and jackets hung from pegs above the mopbuckets and jugs of chemicals. He dressed quickly in the first clothes to hand and he looked at himself in the glass. A wounded peon.
He found a door that opened onto the main hall of the hospital and he walked toward the light at the entrance and out into the night. He went down the street toward Central Avenue and crossed to the Corner Grill. His toes were so folded in the old black shoes he’d found that he could hardly walk.
Strange apparition to enter the dim of the little tavern on a quiet Saturday night. Big Frig rose to help him to a booth with elaborate solicitousness and he and the brothers Clancy reckoned him sole survivor of a madhouse rising, an icecream rebellion, before leaning to hear of his trials.
He got a quart of milk from the store and with the bottle under his arm crossed through the winter twilight the littered benchland to the river and home. He had not been asleep long before someone tapped at his door.
What is it?
Aint dead in there are ye?
No.
Aint seen ye about. Allowed ye was dead.
I’m all right.
He lay in the dark listening to the crazed railroader breathing beyond the door. The old man muttered something but Suttree could not make it out.
What? he called.
He was blowing his nose.
Suttree got up and scratched about on the table for a match and lit the lamp and came to the door in the shorts and sweater he’d worn to bed.
Hidy, said the old man.
Come on in.
Was you in bed?
It’s all right. Come on in.
The old man entered stiffly in his striped overalls, his shadow bobbing and looming anxiously behind him. Cold in here, he said.
Suttree set the lamp on the table and went to the stove to poke the fire up.
What happent to your head?
I got hit with a floorbuffer.
Say you did?
What time is it?
Could you not hear it comin?
No. What time is it?
He was hauling at the chain, looking about the dim little cabin. What are you up to?
I was just on my way in. Thought I better check on ye, aint seen ye and all. I thought ye’d died on me.
You and old Hooper are just alike. All you either one talk about is dying. What do you do, sit around and cheer one another up?
Oh no. I see him seldomer and seldomer. A man gets to my age he thinks about dyin some. It’s only natural.
What, dying or thinking about it?
Do what?
I thought you were going to tell me what time it was. The old man tilted the watch in his hand toward the lamp. I caint see good in here, he said.
You want a glass of milk?
I dont use it thank ye.
Suttree poured his tumbler full and drank and regarded the old man. I make it eight forty-six, the old man said.
Suttree rubbed his eyes.
We all got to go sometime.
He looked at the old man.
I said we all got to go sometime. You get older you think about it, Young feller like you.
The old man gestured in the air with his hand, you couldnt tell what it meant. He sat in the chair by the table, still holding the watch in the palm of his hand.
You want a cup of coffee?
No, no. I’m just on my way in.
Suttree leaned back against the wall and sipped the milk. He could feel the air in the cracks like cold wires. The old man sat there, seemed transfixed by the lampflame like a ponderous cat. After a while he heaved up his shoulders and sighed and put away his watch. He rose and adjusted his cap. Well, he said. If I’m goin to cross that river tonight I’d as well start now.
You take care.
He looked about the little cabin. Well, he said. I’m satisfied you aint dead anyways. I’ll look for ye on the river.
Okay.
Suttree didnt get up from the bed and the old man raised his hand and went out into the night. A few minutes later Suttree heard the dogs start up along Front Street and later still when he wiped the water from the glass and peered out he could see the old man on the bridge, or rather he could see the faintest figure disturb the globes of light one by one slowly until the farther dark had taken him.