Suttree

The old man tried to see without moving his head but he gave it up. Shit, he said. You aint got no lemonade.

Suttree pulled him around by one arm. Come on, he said. Get your ass up from there and let’s go.

A bloated face turned up. Ah God. Just leave me here to die.

Let’s go, Reese.

Where are we at?

Let’s go.

He struggled up, looking around.

How you feeling, old partner? said Suttree.

Reese looked up into Suttree’s grinning face. He put his hands over his eyes. Where you been? he said.

Come on.

Reese shook his head. Boy, we a couple of good’ns aint we?

You dont have a little drink hid away do you?

Shit.

Here.

He lowered his hands. Suttree was holding the almost empty bottle at him. Why goddamn, Sut, he said. He reached for the bottle with both hands and twisted off the cap and drank.

Leave me corners, said Suttree.

Reese closed his eyes, screwed up his face and shivered and swallowed. He blew and held the bottle up. Goddamn, he said. I dont remember it bein that bad last night.

Suttree took the bottle from him and let the little it held fill up one corner and then he tilted it and drank and pitched the empty bottle out through the open window into the weeds. Well, he said. Think you can make it now?

We’ll give it a try.

He pulled himself painfully from the doorless car and stood squinting in the heat little pleased with what he saw. Where do you reckon they sell beer on Sunday up here?

Right here probably, Suttree said, nodding toward the roadhouse.

They passed among the cabins and staggered across the dusty waste of gravel and trash with their tongues out like dogs. Suttree tapped at a door at the rear of the premises. They waited.

Knock again, Sut.

He did.

A slide shot back in the side of the building and a man peered out. What’ll you have, boys? he said.

You got any cold beer?

It’s all cold. What kind?

What kind? said Suttree.

Any goddamned kind, said Reese.

You got Miller’s?

What you want, a sixpack?

Suttree looked at Reese. Reese was looking at him blandly. Suttree said: Have you got any money?

No. Aint you?

He felt himself all over. Not a fucking dime, he said.

The bootlegger looked from one to the other of them.

Where’s that pearl? said Suttree.

The old man raised his foot and put it down again. He leaned against the side of the building and raised his foot and reached down in his sock. He held up his purse.

How come you to still have that, said Suttree. Did you not get any poontang last night?

You daggone right I got me some. But I never took off my shoes. He undid the mouth of the thing and rolled out the pearl and held it up. Looky here, he said.

What’s that supposed to be? said the bootlegger.

A pearl. Go on. Take a look at it.

You sons of bitches get on away from here, said the bootlegger, and slammed the little window shut.

They looked at each other for a minute and then Suttree squatted in the dust among the flattened cans.

Shit, said Reese.

Suttree palmed his knees and shook his head. We’re hellatious traders, he said.

Boy I hate a dumb son of a bitch like that that dont know the value of nothin.

Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s a long way home.

Coming over the Pigeon River Bridge into Newport a county police cruiser passed them. The old man saw them coming. Wave like they know ye, he said.

Fuck that, said Suttree.

The cruiser went by and Reese waved real big. The cruiser turned at the edge of the bridge and came back and pulled up alongside. A fat deputy looked them over. Who you think you wavin at buddy?

Suttree groaned.

Reese smiled. I thought you was somebody I knowed, he said.

Is that right? Maybe you’d like to come uptown and get a little better aquainted.

He didnt mean anything by it, officer.

The deputy eyed Suttree up and down, little joy in the beholding. I’ll be the judge of that, he said. Where you two goin?

Both reckoned one more wrong answer would be all that the law allowed. They looked at each other. Suttree could hear the river beneath them. He saw himself in a swandive, heedless, lost. Under gray swirling waters. He could hear the cruiser’s motor idling roughly with its high camshaft. Home, he said.

The driver had said something to the deputy. The deputy looked them over again. Well, he said, you’d better be gettin on there.

Yessir, Suttree said.

Much obliged, your officer, said the old man.

They pulled away and turned at the end of the bridge and came back. The driver glanced at them in passing but they were both looking at the ground.

Bastards, Suttree said. I thought for a minute there we were gone.

I knowed how to handle it, Reese said.

I told you not to wave, goddamnit. And what the hell is your officer supposed to mean?

I dont know. Shit, my head hurts.

He was stumbling along holding the top of his head with both hands. Suttree looked at him in disgust. We’d better get the hell out of here, he said.

We better not go through town.

Dont worry, said Suttree. We’re not.

They turned down along the river and Suttree took bearings by the sun and plotted a course crosscountry that should bring them out on the highway on the other side of town. They went wandering mournfully down little dirt tracks and across fields. They went through a shantytown strung out along the edge of a branch, all grass and growing things about the creek and the encampment gone, a land of raw clay strewn with trash, with chickens and scabrous dogs. A cadaverous and darkeyed people watched mutely, furtive and dimly defined in their doorways. Such squalid folk as not even a weed grew among. Reese nodded and howdied to them but they just stared.

They crossed a pasture where grackles blue and metallic in the sun were turning up dried cowpats for the worms beneath and they went on past the back side of a junklot with the sun wearing hard upon them and upon the tarpaper roof of the parts shack and upon the endless fenders and lids of wrecked cars that lay curing paintlorn in the hot and weedy reeks.

They ended up lost in a big alfalfa field. On three sides were woods and on the fourth was where they’d come from.

Which way? Reese said.

Suttree squatted and held his head. Will some son of a bitch please tell me what I’m doing here?

I got to get out of this sun fore my old head pops, said Reese. He looked down. Suttree had tilted forward onto his knees. They looked like castaways. Dont lay down, said Reese, or ye never will get up.

Suttree looked up at him. You would absolutely pull the pope under, he said.

He probably dont even drink. Which way, do ye reckon?

Suttree struggled up and looked around and struck out again.

They crossed into heavy woods and began to climb. The ground was covered with random limestone and there were sinkholes to be fallen into.

You take poison ivy, Sut?

No. Do you?

No. Thank the Lord. I believe this here must be under cultivation.

They went on. They rested more and more going up the ridge. Just sitting in the undergrowth like apes eyeing one another with little expectation of anything and breathing hard. When they got to the top they looked out and they could see below them through the trees a piece of black highway about two miles away.

I dont think I can make it without a drink of water, Suttree said.

Dont drink no water, Sut. It’ll make ye drunk all over again.

Suttree glared at him.

When they reached the highway they were staggerfooted and crazylooking. As far as you could see in either direction there was not so much as a billboard. Suttree sat down by the edge of the road with his feet spread and began to pick at gravels and little straws and things.