Suttree(10)

Better get ye a drink there Sut, fore Nigger drinks it all.

Give Bearhunter a drink, Suttree said.

How about givin Bobbyjohn a drink, said Bobbyjohn.

There’s a man’ll take a drink, said Nigger. Dont think he wont.

Which I will myself, said J-Bone.

Which I will my damnself, said Nigger.

Jimmy Smith was moving through the room like an enormous trained mole collecting the empty cans. He shuffled out, his small eyes blinking. Kenneth Hazelwood stood in the doorframe watching them all with a sardonic smile.

Come in here, Worm, called J-Bone, Get ye a drink of this good whiskey.

Hazelwood entered smiling and took the bottle. He tilted it and sniffed and gave it back.

The last time I drank some of that shit I like to died. I stunk from the inside out. I laid in a tub of hot water all day and climbed out and dried and you could still smell it, I had to burn my clothes. I had the dry heaves, the drizzlin shits, the cold shakes and the jakeleg. I can think about it now and feel bad.

Hell Worm, this is good whusk.

I pass.

Worm’s put down my whiskey, Bud.

I think you better put it down before it puts you down. You’ll find your liver in your sock some morning.

But J-Bone had turned away with a whoop. Early Times, he called. Make your liver quiver.

Hazelwood grinned and turned to Suttree. Cant you take no better care of him than that? he said.

Suttree shook his head.

Me and Katherine’s goin out to the Trocadero. Come on go with us.

I better get home, Kenneth.

Come ride out there with us. We’ll bring you back.

I remember the last time I went for a ride with you. You got us in three fights, kicked some woman’s door in, and got in jail. I ran through some yards and like to hung myself on a clothesline and got a bunch of dogs after me and spotlights zippin around and cops all over the place and I wound up spendin the night in a corrugated conduit with a cat.

Worm grinned. Come on, he said. We’ll just have a drink and see what all’s goin on out there.

I cant, Kenneth. I’m broke anyway.

I didnt ast ye if you had any money.

Hey Worm, did you see old Crumbliss in the paper this mornin?

What’s he done now?

They found him about six oclock this mornin under a tree in a big alfalfa field. He found the only tree in the whole field and run into it. They said when the cops come and opened the door old Crumbliss fell out and just laid there. Directly he looked up and seen them blue suits and he jumped up and hollered, said: Where is that man I hired to drive me home?

Suttree rose grinning.

Dont run off, Sut.

I’ve got to go.

Where you goin?

I’ve got to get something to eat. I’ll see you all later.

Jimmy Smith fell in with him to see him to the door, down the long corridor, mole and guest, an unlatching of the screendoor and so into the night.

It is overcast with impending rain and the lights of the city wash against the curdled heavens, lie puddled in the wet black streets. The watertruck recedes down Locust with its footmen in their tattered oilskins wielding brooms in the flooded gutters and the air is rich with the odor of damp paving. Through the midnight emptiness the few sounds carry with amphoric hollow and the city in its quietude seems to lie under edict. The buildings lean upon the dim and muted corridors where the watchman’s heels click away the minutes. Past black and padlocked shopfronts. A poultrydresser’s window where halfnaked cockerels nod in a constant blue dawn. Clockchime and belltoll lonely in the brooding sleepfast town. The gutted rusting trucks on Market Street with their splayed tires pooling on the tar. The flowers and fruit are gone and the sewer grates festooned with wilted greens. Under the fanned light of a streetlamp a white china cuphandle curled like a sleeping slug.

In the lobbies of the slattern hotels the porters and bellmen are napping in the chairs and lounges, dark faces jerking in their sleep down the worn wine plush. In the rooms lie drunken homecome soldiers sprawled in painless crucifixion on the rumpled counterpanes and the whores are sleeping now. Small tropic fish start and check in the mossgreen deeps of the eyedoctor’s shopwindow. A lynx rampant with a waxen snarl. Gouts of shredded wood sprout from the sutures in his leather belly and his glass eyes bulge in agony. Dim tavern, an alleymouth where ashcans gape and where in a dream I was stopped by a man I took to be my father, dark figure against the shadowed brick. I would go by but he has stayed me with his hand. I have been looking for you, he said. The wind was cold, dream winds are so, I had been hurrying. I would draw back from him and his bone grip. The knife he held severed the pallid lamplight like a thin blue fish and our footsteps amplified themselves in the emptiness of the streets to an echo of routed multitudes. Yet it was not my father but my son who accosted me with such rancorless intent.