He rowed on upriver until he came to the landing at Boyd’s Creek. His hands were puffy and clawed and he wished the skiff at the bottom of the river. He went into the store and drank two cold drinks and got a third one to sip on. Coming back out into the glaring sunlight he saw a thermometer hung in a tin coughsyrup sign on the storefront. The red line in the glass ran from bottom to top and out of sight. He eyed it with baleful bloodfilled eyes and turned and spat a grapestained clot of mucus at the cooking world. Not even a fly moved.
It was early afternoon when he came upon them. He passed a huge and stinking windrow of shells on the south bank and struggled upstream through faster water, towing the boat up shoals with a rope over his shoulder, clutching and fending among the shore bracken, the water very cold and clear. They were camped like gypsies under a slate bluff and smoke rose among the trees. The skiff at the bank bore a strange rigging of uprights and crosspoles and a travis bar with lines and hooks hanging from it. The boy squatted on a stump watching him. The womenfolk were boiling wash in a big galvanized tub and the old man was asleep under a tree. When she saw Suttree tying up, the woman called Reese, Reese. Two dry flat birdnotes he’d heard all his life. He didnt move.
Suttree came on up the bank. Howdy, he said.
They all nodded. They were shrouded in steam and they looked limp and half fainting. The old woman’s long white goat’s udders hung half out above the tub and the flesh of her upper arms swung as she wound the water from a pair of jeans. The girl gave him a sort of defeated smile.
Daddy, she called.
Reese opened one eye tentatively from beneath his tree. Yonder’s my partner, he sang out.
Hey, said Suttree.
Come set down. Boy we really into em up here. Looky yonder.
Suttree looked. A black slagheap of riven shellfish lay along the riverbank exuding a greenish vapor and quaking gently with flies.
And looky here.
The musselfisher lifted out the little foxcod purse and tilted into his palm a single pearl.
Suttree picked it up and looked at it. It looked a bit lumpy. What’s it worth? he said.
Caint tell. They’s lots they go by. He took it and rolled it in his palm and dropped it back into the purse. They aint no tellin what it might be worth, he said.
How many have you found?
Well. That’s the only really good’n. I got some others.
Suttree stared bleakly at the levee of shells.
We’ll really get into em now though, what with two boats and all.
Suttree turned and looked down at the old man. He was squatting on his heels, having risen that far by way of greeting. Smiling. Optimistic. A pale and bloated tick hung in his scalp like a pendulous wen.
We got to get your boat rigged. I done hunted up some poles and stuff.
Have you got a hammer and nails?
I got some nails comin out of them boards yonder quick as I burn em. We’ll get some more. They’s plenty of old boards got nails in em.
Suttree was kneading his bloated palms. How do you aim to drive the nails, he said.
Just knock em in with a rock.
Suttree looked at the river. If you just get in your boat you can stretch out and sleep and barring snags wake up sometime back in Knoxville like you’d never been away.
I guess we’ll manage, he said.
Why hell yes, said the old man.
Suttree wandered off to the skiff to get his blankets and gear. He took the two cans of beer he had stowed under the rear seat and tied them to a string and lowered them over the side.
The family had put up a rude lean-to against the wall of the bluff. Old roofing tin and random boards and a plywood highway sign that said Slow Construction Ahead. It all looked like it had washed up there in high water. Under the overhang of the bluff were thin home-sewn ticks and quilts and army blankets. Suttree didnt think it would rain anytime soon so he went on down past the camp with his gear to a little knoll that overlooked the river and where there were some small pines and a wind to stand the insects off. He fixed a smooth place on the ground and fluffed up the pineneedles and spread a blanket and sat down. He lay back and stretched out. The river chattered back a querulous babbling from the limestone shoals below the camp. The trees fell and fell down the lightly clouded summer sky.
Reese woke him kicking his foot. Hey, he said.
Suttree rolled over and shaded his eyes.
What you doin?
I was sleeping.
The old man squatted and eyed the river through the trees. We might’s well get your boat rigged this afternoon, he said.
Suttree rose heavily. He was hot and sweaty and worn out.
You aim to bed down out here?
If it doesnt rain.
You can sleep up in the camp with us.
I snore, Suttree said.
The old man stood up. Snore? he said. Hell fire, son, you aint never heard a snore. I’ll put my old lady up against any three humans or one moose.