Suttree passed by, in these days moving through the streets like a dog at large. Such old things strangely new, the city seen through eyes unsealed. The repetition of its own images had washed out and leveled it and he saw upright and arrant on the dead alluvial grimmer shapes, the city of his remembrance a ghost like him and he himself a shape among the ruins, prodding dried artifacts like some dim paleontrope among the bones of fallen settlements where no soul’s left to utter voice at what has passed. A garrulous jocko was miming buggery behind a young black girl passing on the walk and she turned on him with hot eyes and he fled laughing. The gallery of indolents draped among trashcans and curbstones pointed and croaked. Give it to you mammy, she told them, and the black mummer mimed masturbation at her, two hands holding an imagined phallus the size of a lightpole while the watchers hooted and slapped their knees. To Suttree they appeared more sinister and their acts a withershins allegory of anger and despair, clutches of the iniquitous and unshriven howling curses at the gates and calling aloud for redress of their right damnation to a god who need be interceded with bassackwards or obliquely. Some knew him to nod to and nodded but the hand he raised to greet them with seemed held in a gesture of dread. He moved on in the accomplished dusk. Night found him in the B&J with Bucket and J-Bone and he danced with a young girl who slewed against him shamelessly. Blackhaired, her grimestreaked legs fullthighed under the thin dress, she moved with a kind of lyrical obscenity. She had a tooth out in the front and when she smiled she’d poke the tip of her tongue in the gap. When the place closed they rode through the streets in the back of a cab and he cupped her breast in his palm and she put her tongue in his mouth. He clove her damp and naked thighs with his hand, the moist warm pouched everything tucked under his finger in the silk-crotched crevice there. He took her to Ab Jones’s first. An after-hours place, he told her. He’d had them leap from the cab at the sight of his own dark houseboat there on the deserted riverfront. They drank in a corner and he took her down to his shack and lit the lamp and turned the wick low in the glass.
She sat there on the cot in her pale blue drawers while he ran his tongue in her ear. Her drinking her beer, quivering a little. Bitter taste of wax and the weight of her plump young tit naked in his hand. As she lay back he could see her dull hypoplastic doll’s face and her full vapid look for a moment before her head went under the dark of the wall. He fell asleep sprawled against her.
He’d been sleeping he knew not how long when a light flared somewhere and the joints in the shanty wall were lit like a bead curtain. He thought it was the sweep of a barge’s shorelight but he heard a motor running just beyond his door. He thought police. The motor ceased and the lights dimmed to nothing. He heard a car door slam. He sat up in the cot.
What is it? she said.
I dont know.
Steps on the catwalk, a knock at the door.
Who is it? said Suttree.
It’s me.
Who?
Me. Leonard.
Mother of God, said Suttree.
Who is it? said the girl.
Suttree rose from the cot and scrabbled about for his breeches. He got them on and went to the table and turned up the wick in the lampchimney. The girl sat up in the bed with her arms folded across her breasts. Who is it? she said. She was pulling the sheet over herself.
Suttree opened the door. Leonard had not lied. It was himself. Eyes huge and earnest. He spoke in an excited whisper. I got him, he said.
You what?
I got him. He’s in the trunk.
Suttree tried to shut the door.
You’re breakin my goddamned foot, Sut.
Get it out of the fucking door then.
Listen Sut …
I said no, goddamnit.
It’s too late Sut. I got him out here I’m tellin you.
You’re crazy Leonard. You hear me?
I’ll pay ye, Sut.
Get away. Go get one of your faggot friends to do it.
You caint get them motherfuckers to do nothin. Listen, the old lady told me to tell you she never would forget you for it. Listen …
You tell him to watch his mouth, the girl called out. There’s ladies in here if he dont know it.
Who the fuck is that? said Leonard.
Suttree sagged against the jamb. The lamp on the table behind him was smoking and he stood away from the door and adjusted the wick. You son of a bitch, he said.
Leonard came in and shut the door behind him and leaned against it. He smelled peculiar. Whew, he said. I was afraid you might not be home.
Would to God I wasnt, said Suttree. He pushed back a chair and slumped wearily at the table.
Why didnt you tell me they was someone in here? said Leonard. He nodded affably toward the girl in the bed. Hidy, he said.
Why dont you just go away, said Suttree.
Listen. Come on outside where we can talk.
No.
He glanced impatiently at the girl. We caint talk in here, he whispered hoarsely.
I want to go home, the girl said.
Suttree laid his head on the table. Leonard tugged at his elbow. Sut? he said. Hey Sut.
He got up and got his shoes and put them on. He pulled on his shirt.
Where you goin? the girl wanted to know.
I’ll be right back.
I want to go home.
Just wait a minute, will you?
They walked down the plank and out through the weeds and Suttree sat down. It was a warm night and the city behind them drawn upon the dark with its neon geometry seemed somehow truer than the shape it wore by day. The lights on the far side of the river stood recast in the water like torches shimmering inexplicably just beneath the surface.
Leonard.
Yeah Sut.
Sit down.
He sat. We better get started, he said.
Leonard do you really have your father in the trunk of that car there?
Hell Sut. You dont think I’d kid about a thing like that do you?
Suttree shook his head sadly. He groped about and plucked a handful of weeds and let them fall again. After a while he said: Whose car is it?
Whose car?
Yes.
I dont know. Hell Sut, it dont make no difference whose car it is.
The car is stolen.
Well, shit. I aint goin to sell it or nothin. I just borrowed it is all. Hell Sut, they’ll get their car back. There wont be no heat about the fuckin car.
I see.
There aint nothin to worry about.
No. Of course not.
They sat in silence. Leonard stirred uneasily. After a while he said: Are you ready?
Am I ready?
Yeah.
No. I’m not ready.
Well listen Sut …
I sure as fuck am not ready.
Well it aint gettin no earlier.
I will never be ready.
We caint just leave him in the goddamned car. You know that, Sut.
I know that?
Well what the hell.
You crazy bastard. Why me?
You got a …
A boat. I know. Mother of God.
Hell fire Sut, I’ve done done the worst of it. Gettin the car and the chains and all. It wont take no time.
But Suttree had risen from the weeds. Just dont say another word, he said. Just be quiet.
What about her?
You get in the car and go down to just above that tree there. There’s a landing. I’ll get the boat.
When he went back in she was dressed. I want to go home, she said, and I mean it.