Jimmy Smith will shoot you.
The junkman shook his head sadly at the utter truth of this. He rose unsteadily. He smiled. Well, he said. Maybe old Dubyedee will have a little drink.
You can stay here if you want.
The junkman waved a hand about. I thank ye, he said, but I best be huntin that drink. I believe a little drink’d do me more good right now than just about anything I can think of.
Suttree watched him totter down the planks in the band of yellow light. He veered, he stood with one foot, he went on. When he reached the shore he raised one hand.
Come back, called Suttree.
The junkman raised the hand again and kept going.
It was a full two miles out Blount Avenue to his brother’s junklot and the junkman reeled along in the lamplight through a floating world of honeysuckle nectar and nightbird cries and distant dogs that yapped at their moorings.
He made his way across the little wooden bridge and past the dim shapes of the cars and stood before the housetrailer.
Dubyedee!
The waters of Goose Creek purled past the tirecasings and body-panels in the farther dark of the yard.
Come out you old fart.
He stumbled among the articles of their common trade. Blood black and crusted in these broken carriages. A shoe.
Dubyedee! Come out, goddamnit.
He had ceased calling and was sat within a truck when a light came on in the trailer. The door opened and light fell across the yard among the cluttered shapes and Clifford stood looking out. What do you want? he said.
Want Dubyedee. Harvey spoke through the steeringwheel spokes in which his head lay cradled.
What? said Clifford.
He raised his head. Clifford hung in the white web of the broken windshield. I want Dubyedee, he said.
He aint here.
Where’s he at?
He aint here. He dont live here now.
It’s just old drunk Uncle Harvey aint it?
You said it, I never.
No, you never. You smug sack of shit.
What?
I said you’re a smug sack of shit.
Clifford’s head turned in silhouette in the doorframe as if he’d turned to spit. He aint here, Harvey. Go on home.
He aint here Harvey. Go home Harvey. Where’s he live at now?
You caint get out there. It’s too far.
I’ll be the judge of that. Where’s he live at?
Why dont you come up and I’ll give ye a cup of coffee.
Harvey shook his head. Aint you somethin, he said.
What?
I said you sure are somethin. Clifford old buddy. You sure are. Get some coffee in him. Clifford you favor your old man more than a little, did you know that?
You want some coffee I’ll fix ye some. Otherwise I’m goin to bed.
Lord God, Clifford, dont let me keep ye from your sleep. I’d not do it for the world.
The figure shored up in the doorway shifted. You can sleep in the shed if you want. I’ll give you the key.
You aint got a drink in there have ye?
No.
Then you aint got nothin in there I want.
The light withdrew up the path. Then it vanished from the small paned window in the door. Harvey smiled and leaned back in the truck.
Clifford!
Dogs hereto sleeping woke with howls all down the creek.
Clifford!
The light snapped on again. The door opened.
What now, goddamnit?
You wasnt asleep was ye?
I got to work tomorrow Harvey. Some of us is got to work for a livin yet.
Is he payin ye now Clifford? Or you still just gettin your keep.
He pays me.
Big boy like you.
If you dont want nothin I’m goin to bed.
I’ll tell you what I’m makin if you’ll tell me what you are.
You aint makin nothin is what you’re makin. Cause you dont do nothin but lay drunk.
What you are, what you are, said Harvey aimlessly.
You dont need to know.
Dont need to know, dont need to know. You sure you aint got a little drink in yonder?
I told you I’d fix you some coffee if you want it.
Let me tell you about your coffee, Clifford. You want to hear about your coffee?
Clifford didnt want to hear. He shut the door again and the lights went out.
What about your daddy, called Harvey. Want to hear about that thievin son of a bitch? Want to hear how he robbed his own brother blind? Clifford?
Lying in his cot in the early hours Suttree half asleep heard a dull concussion somewhere in the city. He opened his eyes and looked out through his small window at the paling stars, the sparse electric jewelry of the bridgelights hung above the river. Perhaps an earthquake, seams shifting deep in the earth, sand sifting for miles down blind faults in eternal dark. It did not come again and after a while he slept.
Coming back upriver in the hot noon he kept to the south shore and passed under the bridge and passed the lumber company and the packinghouse and moored the skiff at the foot of the path that led to the junkman’s lot and the road beyond. A brief spate of summer rain had fallen in the morning and the smell of it in the shoreland woods rose rank and steamy like the air in a hothouse. On the narrow path he met a cluster of deferential blacks who passed sidling, their eyes cutting to and back like horses. A light clank of baitbuckets and a bristling of canes. The cars in Harvey’s lot lay humped and black in the sun with visible heat rising from them in the wrinkled air. Suttree passed through a reek of milkweed and oil and hot tin toward the little bedstead gate.