Suttree(117)

He got up and went to the window and looked out. The houses stood above the railyard with a kind of doomed austerity, locked in a sad frieze against the gray midwinter sky. From each chimney like a tattered rag a tongue of coalsmoke swirled. Beyond the tracks lay the market warehouses and beyond these the shapeless warrens of McAnally with its complement of pariahs and endless poverty.

He woke in the paler gray of noon to find Blind Richard groping toward him from the door.

Bud? he said, standing there on the boards in the barren room like a medicineshow clown, casting about in the dead air with his frozen grin.

Hello Richard.

The blind man sat on the bed and lit a cigarette and toyed at the ash with the tip of his little finger. Well, he said. I heard you was sick.

I’m all right.

What was it you had?

Suttree eased himself among the sooty sheets. I dont know, he said. Something or other.

Mrs Long look after ye good?

Oh yeah. She’s good.

Good a woman as ever walked. Ast anybody. Dont take my word for it.

How are you getting along?

I wisht McAnally was full of em like her. Me? I aint braggin much.

Well.

The blind man looked about. Dark sockets clogged with bluish jissom. Smoke drawing upward alongside his thin nose. He knit his yellowed fingers in a mime of anxiety and leaned toward Suttree. You dont have a little drink hid away do ye? he said.

No I dont.

Didnt much allow ye did.

Suttree watched him. How long have you been blind, Richard?

What?

I said how long have you been blind. Were you always blind?

The blind man grinned sheepishly and fingered his chin. Oh, he said. No. I dont remember. I’ve forgot.

Where did you get that lump?

He touched a faint yellow swelling above his eye. Red done that, he said.

Red did?

Yeah. He comes over you know. Comes over to the house. He sets all the doors about halfway shut. I got in a hurry or I never would of run into it. I know him.

How’s everything down at the Huddle?

It’s about like you left it.

They sat there in silence on the bed. Beyond the baywindow lay a deadly and leaden sky. Dimpled by the motewenned glass. A small gray rain had begun.

Well, said Richard. I better get on.

Dont rush off.

I’ve got to get on home.

Come back.

You get well now, said the blind man. You do what Mrs Long tells ye.

I will.

He went down the stairwell holding to the wall. Suttree heard the door close. A few sad birds along the wires watched the rain fall. One had a crooked leg. Gray water was leaking from a rotted length of gutterpipe. As he lay there the water grew more pale and the rain fell and the water grew quite clear and the water beaded on the lacquered leaves of the old magnolia tree in the yard looked bright and clean.





Late Saturday and all day Sunday drunks would come and sit on the bed and talk and sneak him whiskey. None asked if what he had were catching. Mrs Long on her duckshaped shoes came to the top of the landing to complain in her shrill voice and groggy sots clung halfway up the spindleshorn balustrade while ribald laughter rocked in the barren upper rooms of the rotting house.

He came down to dinner, good plain food served in the shambles of patched and tacked furniture destroyed in drunken rages over the years. Another week and he was on the streets again.

His first day uptown he weighed himself on the free scales in front of Woodruffs. He looked at the face in the glass.

He went to Miller’s Annex and called on J-Bone.

Up and about eh? Did they run you off at the house?

No. I slipped off after your mama went back to work.

How do you feel?

I feel okay. I feel pretty good.

Where will you be later on?

I dont know. I’m going up to Comer’s.

You think you feel well enough to drink a beer?

I might get well.

J-Bone grinned. Old Suttree, he said. He’s hell when he’s well.

What time you get off? Five thirty?

Yeah.

I’ll see you then.

Okay Bud.

When he came through the door at Comer’s Dick winked at him and raised his hand. Hey Buddy, he said. Got a letter for you.

Suttree leaned on the counter.

You’ve lost a little weight havent you?

Some.

Where you been?

I was over in North Carolina for a while.

Dick turned the letter in his hand and looked at it and handed it over. It’s been here about two weeks, he said.

Suttree tapped the letter on the counter. Thanks Dick, he said.

He sat among the watchers by the wall and crossed his legs the way the old men do and opened the envelope. It was postmarked Knoxville and there was a letter from his mother and a check from his Uncle Ben newly dead. He looked at the check. It was for three hundred dollars. He tapped it in his hand and got up and went to the watercooler for a drink and came back. He wadded the letter and dropped it into the spittoon.

Where you been Buddy boy? called Harry the Horse.