You welcome. Tell him I’ll come by in a day or two.
Well, she said. Come back when you can.
The next day there was no one about but the day following the man was in his chair again reading a newspaper. Suttree hailed him as he came alongside and the man folded the paper and squinted down at him.
Hey, he said.
How you getting along?
Right tolerable. You the feller sent that catfish by the other day?
I just had more than I needed.
Well I wanted to thank ye. My old lady fried it up and we et it for supper and sure enjoyed it.
Good, said Suttree.
He turned his head and spoke down a ventilator pipe rising from the roof. Hey old woman, he said.
A muffled snarl came back.
You got any coffee fixed?
He started to turn back to Suttree and his face flickered a small annoyance. He leaned to speak into the pipe again. Fix some, he said. Then he looked down to where Suttree sat in his skiff. Come up, he said, and take some coffee with us.
I dont want to put you out.
Aint no bother. She’s got some ready. Just tie up there. Watch them lines. I got me some thowlines out. Just pull in down there on the lower end. Here, thow the rope.
He had climbed down off the roof and was going along the walkway talking and waving the folded paper about. Suttree pulled the skiff in and tossed his rope.
Come on in, said the man as Suttree climbed aboard. He pushed aside a curtain of knotted twine and ushered him in with a grand expansiveness.
As Suttree entered three girls flew to the far wall of the room whinnying like goats and subsided in a simpering heap together on a bed there. Suttree nodded to the woman and she said him a quiet howdy and pointed out a chair. He looked around. There were beds all along the wall and a table in the center of the room with a faded piece of oilcloth and miscellaneous white crockery draped with breakfast remnants.
Set down, the man said. Get ye a chair. Boy wait till you hear what all happened to us.
Suttree could imagine. He glanced again toward the bed and glimpsed a flash of young thighs and dingy drawers. The three of them together were looking at a magazine and stealing crazed looks at him past the edges of it. He sat in one of the low cane chairs and tilted it backward against the bunk behind him and smiled at the man.
Do you know Doren Lockhart?
No.
Well, he’s the one I beat out of forty dollars in this here tong game Sunday afternoon. He’s supposed to be a big gambler up there. I knowed he was mad. I busted him plumb out. He tried to get up some money to get back in the game but time he done that me and Gene Edmonds had all the money and was gone. Old Gene was with us. Where’s that coffee at, woman?
I caint perk it no faster than what it’s perkin.
Anyway we’d drunk some whiskey and everthing and I went to bed. What time was it I went to bed?
He waited a minute and then went on.
About ten oclock. Course I always was a sound sleeper.
A flurry of girls’ laughter rose and died.
And time I woke up it was getting on towards daylight and we was comin past Island Home. I looked out the winder and seen trees goin by and I said: Lord God, we’re plumb adrift. Neighbor, we was. I come up from there and went on out and about that time they was a airplane took off over on the island and I looked downriver and seen Knoxville comin up and knowed where we was at. That son of a bitch had crep up in the night and sawed us loose.
He leaned forward with his hands on his knees and looked at Suttree with a hard eyed squint as if to see which way lay his sympathies. What about that? he said.
Well, said Suttree.
The woman set a cup of coffee in front of him. You use milk and sugar?
No mam, that’s fine like it is.
Bring him some of them cakes.
Have you got any way to get back up there? Suttree asked.
Why hell no. It costes to get a tow if you can get somebody to do it even. What do you think about a son of a bitch would do that?
Suttree regarded him over the rim of the cup. He lowered the cup and cradled it in both hands. Well, he said. I guess I’d call him a poor loser at the least.
You daggone right he is, said the man, leaning back.
What do you aim to do?
Lord I dont know. I thought about huntin me a job down here. You dont know where there is one do ye?
I dont know. You might find something. If you go out Blount Avenue here there’s a woolen mill and a fertilizer plant. Then there’s the sand and gravel company right here. You could ask around.
Well much obliged. I just need to get set up back upriver so as to start in musselin come summer.
The woman set a plate of cookies on the table.
Start what? Suttree said.
The man looked at him. He looked behind him at the woman and toward the girls on the bed. Then he leaned toward Suttree again. Musselin, he said.
Musselin?
Yeah.
Suttree looked at him. What’s that? he said.