You sons of bitches get on away from here, said the bootlegger, and slammed the little window shut.
They looked at each other for a minute and then Suttree squatted in the dust among the flattened cans.
Shit, said Reese.
Suttree palmed his knees and shook his head. We’re hellatious traders, he said.
Boy I hate a dumb son of a bitch like that that dont know the value of nothin.
Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s a long way home.
Coming over the Pigeon River Bridge into Newport a county police cruiser passed them. The old man saw them coming. Wave like they know ye, he said.
Fuck that, said Suttree.
The cruiser went by and Reese waved real big. The cruiser turned at the edge of the bridge and came back and pulled up alongside. A fat deputy looked them over. Who you think you wavin at buddy?
Suttree groaned.
Reese smiled. I thought you was somebody I knowed, he said.
Is that right? Maybe you’d like to come uptown and get a little better aquainted.
He didnt mean anything by it, officer.
The deputy eyed Suttree up and down, little joy in the beholding. I’ll be the judge of that, he said. Where you two goin?
Both reckoned one more wrong answer would be all that the law allowed. They looked at each other. Suttree could hear the river beneath them. He saw himself in a swandive, heedless, lost. Under gray swirling waters. He could hear the cruiser’s motor idling roughly with its high camshaft. Home, he said.
The driver had said something to the deputy. The deputy looked them over again. Well, he said, you’d better be gettin on there.
Yessir, Suttree said.
Much obliged, your officer, said the old man.
They pulled away and turned at the end of the bridge and came back. The driver glanced at them in passing but they were both looking at the ground.
Bastards, Suttree said. I thought for a minute there we were gone.
I knowed how to handle it, Reese said.
I told you not to wave, goddamnit. And what the hell is your officer supposed to mean?
I dont know. Shit, my head hurts.
He was stumbling along holding the top of his head with both hands. Suttree looked at him in disgust. We’d better get the hell out of here, he said.
We better not go through town.
Dont worry, said Suttree. We’re not.
They turned down along the river and Suttree took bearings by the sun and plotted a course crosscountry that should bring them out on the highway on the other side of town. They went wandering mournfully down little dirt tracks and across fields. They went through a shantytown strung out along the edge of a branch, all grass and growing things about the creek and the encampment gone, a land of raw clay strewn with trash, with chickens and scabrous dogs. A cadaverous and darkeyed people watched mutely, furtive and dimly defined in their doorways. Such squalid folk as not even a weed grew among. Reese nodded and howdied to them but they just stared.
They crossed a pasture where grackles blue and metallic in the sun were turning up dried cowpats for the worms beneath and they went on past the back side of a junklot with the sun wearing hard upon them and upon the tarpaper roof of the parts shack and upon the endless fenders and lids of wrecked cars that lay curing paintlorn in the hot and weedy reeks.
They ended up lost in a big alfalfa field. On three sides were woods and on the fourth was where they’d come from.
Which way? Reese said.
Suttree squatted and held his head. Will some son of a bitch please tell me what I’m doing here?
I got to get out of this sun fore my old head pops, said Reese. He looked down. Suttree had tilted forward onto his knees. They looked like castaways. Dont lay down, said Reese, or ye never will get up.
Suttree looked up at him. You would absolutely pull the pope under, he said.
He probably dont even drink. Which way, do ye reckon?
Suttree struggled up and looked around and struck out again.
They crossed into heavy woods and began to climb. The ground was covered with random limestone and there were sinkholes to be fallen into.
You take poison ivy, Sut?
No. Do you?
No. Thank the Lord. I believe this here must be under cultivation.
They went on. They rested more and more going up the ridge. Just sitting in the undergrowth like apes eyeing one another with little expectation of anything and breathing hard. When they got to the top they looked out and they could see below them through the trees a piece of black highway about two miles away.
I dont think I can make it without a drink of water, Suttree said.
Dont drink no water, Sut. It’ll make ye drunk all over again.
Suttree glared at him.
When they reached the highway they were staggerfooted and crazylooking. As far as you could see in either direction there was not so much as a billboard. Suttree sat down by the edge of the road with his feet spread and began to pick at gravels and little straws and things.