The man leaned back and crossed his feet in a chair. Mussel brailin, he said. When the river gets down low towards middle and late summer we go up on the shoals of the French Broad and set us up a mussel camp. I’ve got everthing. I got a boat for it and everthing.
What do you do with them?
Sell they shells. The womenfolk clean em and me and the boy drags for em.
What do they do with them?
The shells?
Yes.
Different things. Make buttons out of em, the biggest part. Some I reckon they grind for chicken grit.
What are they worth?
They fetch round in about forty dollar a ton.
Forty dollars a ton?
That’s right.
That doesnt seem like a whole lot.
The man smiled. Them little fellers is heavier than what you might think. Asides they’s more money in it than just that.
The woman poured his cup full. The man didnt seem to notice, sitting there waiting for her elbow to move on out of the way. When she had done he leaned forward. They’s more to it than just the shells, good buddy. He looked about craftily. More to it than that.
He stayed to dinner. By then the old man had told him about the pearls and even showed him some. Taking from some secret place on his person a small purse tailored from the scrotum of a treefox and setting out the pearls on the oilcloth. Suttree turned one in his hand and held it to the light.
If we had another hand we could run two boats, the old man said.
Can you make any money at it?
The old man turned away in mirthful derision. Money? Shit, boy. Whyyy …
Suttree stared at the pearls. The little cabin had filled with a rich steam of cookery. Plates were clattering and the woman and the oldest girl whispered together at the stove.
How would you go shares if you was interested? the old man said.
Suttree looked up. He looked around the cabin. Shares, he said?
They’s six of us. Everbody works.
Let her set the table, Reese, the woman said.
Reese raised his elbows. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Suttree. Would you go fifths? Not takin out nothin for ye board.
Suttree scooped the pearls into his palm and funneled them back into the purse. His voice sounded far away. I might go fourths, he said.
A soft young breast crossed his nape. The girl leaned and dealt from a tray of old and mismatched silver.
The man took the purse and hefted it in his hand and eyed Suttree. It’s hard work, he said.
Suttree nodded.
The old man grinned. Make ye sleep good of a night.
Suttree had started with a question but the old man suddenly flung his hand across the table. Partner, he said. You’re on.
When they sat for dinner it was a tight fit and Suttree looking around the table couldnt help smiling. The boy came in with his swollen eye as they were taking seats and he studied Suttree without much interest. The two younger girls didnt know where to look at all. This had emboldened the oldest one who set her shoulders and flung her hair back and passed Suttree a platter of biscuits. She was extraordinarily well put together with great dark eyes and hair. The head of the house stood to better grapple with the joint of pork before him. The boy was ladling a great load of beans aboard his plate. Suttree buttered one of the buoyant looking soda biscuits and watched the pale slices of pork fall under the knife, the man turning the roast and finally seizing it in his hands, the white knob of bone coming from its socket with a sucking sound and breaking like a great pearl up through the steaming meat.
He forked the greasy slabs of meat onto what plates he could reach and told the woman at the end of the table to pass hers. Suttree ladled thick gravy onto his pork and biscuits and reached for the pepper. Beans were coming downtable and fat sweet potatoes and coffee was being poured around. He gripped his fork in his fist in the best country manner and fell to.
Dont be shy, called the old man. Eat a plenty.
Suttree nodded and waved his fork.
Harrogate saw them going along Blount Avenue Sunday morning. They wore outfits all cut from the same bolt of cloth and in the church pew standing six across they looked like a strip of gaudy wallpaper cut into those linked dolls madfolk pass their time in fashioning. People could not stop looking. The preacher forwent his station at the door when services were over and there was no one to shake the hands of these new and startling parishioners. Small boys had gathered outside to jeer but the emergence of this little group found them unprepared, inert. They filed out in descending order by altitudes, the father first, out through the sunlit doors in a sextet of calico isotropes and into the street, the elder smiling, along through the crowds and down the road toward the river still single file and with deadpan decorum leaving behind a congregation mute and astounded.
He rowed out to visit. Coming about the end of the shantyboat in his welded skiff and singing out at the woman where she sat on the porch shelling beans.