In the fluted gullies where the river backed or eddied spoondrift lay in a coffeecolored foam, a curd that draped the varied flotsam locked and turning there, the driftwood and bottles and floats and the white bellies of dead fish, all wheeling slowly in the river’s suck and the river spooling past unpawled with a muted seething freighting seaward her silt and her chattel and her dead.
One morning while he stood on the gallery in the dim early light watching the river he saw an empty skiff go by. Next came looming out of the yellow mist a patchwork shack composed of old slats and tarpaper and tin snuff signs all mounted in wild haphazard upon a derelict barge and turning with the keelless rotations of a drunken bear, going downriver to founder cumbrously against a pier, list and halt, sidle and grope past with the next wall of the shack coming about and along it like plaster caryatids hung there in a stunned frieze above the licking river the figures of four women and two men, pale, rigid, deathless, wheeling slowly away below the bridge and gone in the mist.
Suttree watched the transit of this foggy apparition with no surprise. Two days later when he went downriver he saw the shantyboat pulled up under some willows on the south bank below the sand and gravel company. There was a line of wash hung out and a small skiff swung at tether below the mooring. Some coon hides were tacked flat to the wall, bleached a pale cream color. You’d have thought them to be wares but the hides were dry and all but hairless and seemed forgotten.
Suttree oared past while a group of wide faces watched from a window. When he came back in the afternoon there was a chair on the roof of the shanty and in it a man sleeping. The wash had been taken down and smoke was rising from a stovepipe elbowed through one wall. The skiff was gone.
As Suttree passed beneath the bridge he saw the skiff coming down. A thin young boy was rowing it. Suttree let one oar trail and lifted a hand in greeting. The boy nodded at him, one eye blueblack and swollen closed, and went on.
In the morning he went down early and as he passed the houseboat he saw a young girl come out along the little veranda and turn and squat, her skirts gathered in the crooks of her elbows. Through the fog Suttree was presented with a bony pointed rump. She pissed loudly into the river and rose and went in again.
He was back before noon with his catch. He came up close by the bank and swung around the houseboat. A woman was peering down at him, a stonejawed and apparently gravid slattern resting her belly on the rim of the washtub and regarding him through clotted rags of hair.
Howdy, he said.
She nodded.
I saw you all come down the other mornin. I live cross the river. He rested an oar under his elbow and pointed.
She said uh-hunh.
Suttree smiled. He said: I figured since we were kind of neighbors I ought to stop and say hidy anyway.
She reached down into the tub and brought something up from the bottom of it. He’s asleep, she said.
The mister is?
Yep.
He dipped the oars to stay against the current. You’ve got a goodsized family, dont you?
She watched down into the tub. How her face must look back from the dead well of blue washwater, rocking and licking in what shapes. We got four, she said. Three girls. She paused and pushed her nose against her arm and snuffled. And a boy, she said.
I believe I saw him the other day.
You aint the one hit him in the eye are ye?
No mam.
Somebody hit him in the eye, she said. With a beadle of soapsoftened wood she subdued the grayish rags that stewed in the pot. She lifted something out and wrung it and laid it on a bench.
Where are you all from?
We was from up around Mascot.
I see, he said.
She glanced down at him and went back to her washing. After a minute she said: Looks like you got you some fish there.
Yes mam. You all like catfish?
We eat it some.
I’ve got plenty here, if you’d like one for your supper.
She looked down into the bottom of the skiff. What would you have to have for one? she said.
He began to sort among the fish. I’ll just give you one, he told her.
Well. I’d rather just to pay ye.
Here. He stood in the skiff and handed up a sleek fourpounder.
She took it expertly behind the gills and looked it over. What do I owe ye? she said.
Not anything.
Well, let me pay ye.
I dont want nothin for it.
Well, she said.
I run a trotline on down a ways.
Well.
I got plenty.
Well, I better put him in here.
He sat down and leaned into the oars, watching her go in with the catfish. Before he had pulled more than a few yards upstream she was out again. He thought she had come back to her washing but she called to him across the water. Hey, she said.
Yes mam.
He’s awake now if you wanted to see him.
Well, I dont want to bother him.
He said to thank ye for the catfish.